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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Clashes Erupt Over Controversial Jerusalem Day March; Today: Biden To Speak At Arlington Cemetery; Holiday Weekend Travel Disrupted By Flight Cancellations. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired May 30, 2022 - 05:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The auto chance is back in business.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need to stand up and move on no matter how much pain and suffering.

MALVEAUX: In Lviv's city center, chef Stanislav Dmitriev is about to open a new restaurant.

STANISLAV DMITRIEV, CHEF, BLUEFIN RESTAURANT (through translator): I love cooking. I love bringing joy to people.

MALVEAUX: Three months ago, Dmitriev had to abandon his sushi restaurant in Mariupol and flee with his wife and two little boys as Russian forces invaded.

DMITRIEV (through translator): We heard a huge explosion. We were very afraid so we packed up and we called our business partners and started to leave.

MALVEAUX: This is the second time Dmitriev has had to pack up his life and start again. He opened his very first restaurant in Donetsk when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014.

DMITRIEV (through translator): Everything was bombed there. Nothing was left, neither from the first or second restaurant. I was just thinking about how to get out -- to get our children out. We didn't have plans to open up another restaurant.

MALVEAUX: But with financial support from friends, he's opening Bluefin again -- now, even bigger.

DMITRIEV (through translator): We want to help our country financially to create a small business.

MALVEAUX: What is it inside of you that keeps you going like this?

DMITRIEV (through translator): We are Ukrainians, period. It speaks for itself. It's our willpower. MALVEAUX: Willpower that is essential to driving an economically strong, independent Ukraine.

Suzanne Malveaux, CNN, Lviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Suzanne, thank you for that report.

Up next, wild weather. Ten million Americans at risk of getting hit with severe storms today. And a first for "Top Gun's" Tom Cruise, next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Clip from Paramount Pictures "Top Gun: Maverick."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[05:36:30]

JARRETT: A controversial Israeli march through Jerusalem Sunday sparked fresh violence between Israeli extremists and Palestinians there. Thousands waved Israeli flags for the annual Jerusalem Day March.

CNN's Hadas Gold is live in Jerusalem for us. Hadas, good morning. How did this situation end up turning so ugly?

HADAS GOLD, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Laura. Some 70,000 people are estimated to have flooded the streets of Jerusalem for what's known as the Flag March. It's when Israelis commemorate when Israel took control of both east and west Jerusalem in the 1967 war. But for Palestinians, the Flag March is very provocative not only because it goes through the Muslim corridor of the Old City, but because Palestinians and much of the international community considers east Jerusalem as occupied territory.

This march has also become a magnet for far-right Jewish nationalists and extremists who, at some points during the march yesterday, were shouting terrible things like "death to Arabs." They were also getting violent. There was some violence in the streets -- in the narrow streets of the Old City. Some of the marchers clashing not only with Palestinians, Israeli police also clashing with Palestinians, with some of the marchers even assaulting journalists, including our own colleagues.

Now, the Palestinian Red Crescent said 63 people were injured. The Israeli police say that they arrested more than 50, including two for assaulting journalists. But we asked them for a breakdown of how many of those arrested were Palestinians and how many of those were marchers and they did not get back to us as of right now.

Now, the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement that he condemned the actions of these right-wing groups, calling them a minority that has come to set the area ablaze, take advantage of the government's strong position against Hamas, which is the militant group that runs Gaza, and trying to use force in order to ignite a conflict.

Now, Laura, it was this same march last year that prompted that military group Hamas to fire rockets to Jerusalem while that march was taking place -- while there was those thousands of people in the streets. And that helped ignite that bloody 11-day war between Hamas and the Israeli army.

And while there were a lot of fears that something similar could happen yesterday, especially as tensions have been so high between Israelis and Palestinians over the past couple of months, the skies, at least so far, have been quiet -- Laura.

JARRETT: All right, Hadas. I know you will keep an eye on this. Thank you.

Back here in the U.S., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband was arrested Saturday night for driving under the influence. Eighty-two- year-old Paul Pelosi was in a car crash before being charged with DUI. Records indicate he was released Sunday morning.

CNN has reached out to the Napa County Sheriff's Office for more details on what happened here. A spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi, meantime, says the speaker will not be commenting on a private matter.

We will hear from President Biden a short time from now as he marks Memorial Day in the U.S. And airlines under pressure. With high fuel prices and a shortage of pilots, can you count on your next flight?

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[05:43:41]

JARRETT: Forty-three minutes -- back now.

And later today, President Biden is set to observe Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery. The president will honor the U.S. Armed Forces in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He will also speak.

More than 400,000 veterans and their loved ones have been laid to rest at Arlington.

Well, a lot of Americans with holiday travel plans ended up going nowhere. Nearly 4,800 U.S. flights have been canceled since Friday. Delta passengers got hit the hardest. The carrier blamed Saturday's cancellations on bad weather and air traffic control actions on Friday. Airlines are also preemptively canceling hundreds of flights for today.

Let's bring in Anthony Roman. He's an investigative analyst and a commercial pilot. So nice to have you, sir -- appreciate it.

What in the world is going --

ANTHONY ROMAN, INVESTIGATIVE ANALYST, COMMERCIAL PILOT, PRESIDENT, ROMAN & ASSOCIATES, (via Skype): Thank you, Laura.

JARRETT: What is going on here? This has been such a nightmare of a weekend for travelers. What's driving the bulk of the problems?

ROMAN: Well, often, the airlines are blamed for these delay problems and cancellations and most often it really is not their fault. The air traffic control system and the airport infrastructure management is a complex, delicate ballet where anything that goes wrong in one part of the segment will have a cascading result on aircraft scheduling.

[05:45:04]

For example, there are a limited number of airways that aircraft can use. If there are too many airplanes in the sky, that will create landing congestion -- back-ups and trying to land aircraft and take aircraft off.

And so, air traffic control has to manage the number of aircraft in the sky. This is often a compounded problem when you have weather delays, mechanical delays on the ground, or scheduling disruptions due to a limited number of gates available to the airlines.

So, you may have 90% of the aircraft on time and if three or four aircraft are delayed on the ground, those aircraft arriving are also delayed through no fault of their own.

JARRETT: Isn't COVID part of the issue here, though? I mean, they got rid of masks and more people are out sick.

ROMAN: COVID is part of the issue, increasing fuel prices, staffing shortages across the board due to COVID. All of it has created a compounding problem.

And the expected decrease in passenger ticket purchase has not really occurred.

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMAN: What we're seeing actually is a surge in ticket sales during the vacation season and a shortage of aircraft, a shortage of crews as a result of COVID. And these compounded problems with airport infrastructure and air traffic control.

JARRETT: Yes, yes. It hasn't slowed people down at all. There's so much pent-up demand.

So, then, do you expect these issues to continue for the summer? Is there any hope on the horizon?

ROMAN: I think we're going to still see some of these problems during the summer. These are complex problems which don't really have very fast solutions. The larger airlines, such as Delta, have amazing resources and

infrastructure. They have accelerated -- and very safe accelerated -- crew training programs, and just this year alone, have added 600 new pilots and crew members. And we'll see that cascading in a positive direction in the next year or two.

JARRETT: All right. Well --

ROMAN: The same with new aircraft and managing the fuel prices, which is another really very serious problem.

JARRETT: Yes, yes, and one that is not going away perhaps anytime soon, or at least unpredictable at best.

Anthony Roman, thank you so much. Appreciate it, sir.

ROMAN: My pleasure.

JARRETT: All right, let's get some weather now. Severe storms are in the forecast from western Wisconsin to northern Colorado. More than 10 million facing the threat of large hail, wind damage, and possibly tornadoes.

Tyler Mauldin has the latest from the CNN Weather Center in Atlanta. All right, Tyler, how bad is this going to get?

TYLER MAULDIN, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, it could get really rough for us later on this afternoon and this evening.

All right, here across the Northern Plants and the Upper Midwest, we have a potent storm system coming together. As it pushes east, it is putting areas such as Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota under the threat of severe weather -- a level four out of five risk. We're talking hurricane-force wind gusts, very large hail, and even strong tornadoes -- strong tornadoes being tornadoes of EF2 strength or higher.

Then eventually, once we get into Tuesday, that threat does shift a little farther to the south and east but we're still looking a level three out of five risk. And we continue to see similar threats across Kansas, Missouri, and also Oklahoma, too.

Then, guess what? By Wednesday, it's not over. We're going to continue to see severe weather but the threat will lessen just a little bit. Those trouble spots will be across the Plains and up across the northeast. Damaging winds, large hail there.

Switching gears and getting down into the Pacific Ocean, we're talking about hurricanes. This is the first hurricane of the season here in the Pacific Ocean. That's Hurricane Agatha -- very close to a major hurricane.

The reason why I bring it up is because it's going to make landfall later on this evening. When it makes landfall in Mexico, it's going to rain itself out and it's going to lead to flooding here. But it then remerges in the Gulf of Mexico and has a 30% chance of

developing into a named storm yet again. However, once it makes its way into the Gulf of Mexico, it's now in the Atlantic Basin.

So what does that mean if it gets renamed in the next five to seven days? That means it becomes our first named storm of the Atlantic season. The Atlantic hurricane season begins on June first. So if this gets a name, it will be the "A" storm and it would be named Alex.

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JARRETT: Ah, yes, the intricate naming system. All right, Tyler. Thank you for that.

MAULDIN: Yes.

JARRETT: Still ahead, the Biden Justice Department now reviewing the police response to the Uvalde school shooting. What went wrong?

But first, the Major League manager who has been skipping the National Anthem in protest. Why he might now make an exception.

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[05:55:03]

JARRETT: All right.

The Boston Celtics managed to hold off the Miami Heat and will play against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

Carolyn Manno has this morning's Bleacher Report and is here with me on set.

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, good morning. Happy Memorial Day to you.

JARRETT: It's nice to have you this Memorial Day.

MANNO: Yes, good to be with you, Laura.

You know, this is a match-up that NBA fans are salivating over. It could not be better. The Celtics peaking at the right time. The Warriors looking to prove that their dynasty days aren't quite over yet.

Boston hadn't lost back-to-back games so far in these playoffs, and coming up, a game-six loss. They jumped out to an early lead on the road and they never let it go.

Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum hit an impressive 3-pointer to beat the buzzer to put Boston up 12 in the fourth quarter. Tatum led the way. He had 26 points.

But Jimmy Butler -- give him credit. He would not let the Heat fizzle out. After a 47-point effort to force this game seven, Butler never left the court last night. He put up an admirable 35. But in the end, he just ran out of gas. Final seconds there, his three for the lead came up short, so the Celtics hold on to win by four.

The two stars embracing each other afterwards. Butler telling Tatum, you know what? Now is your time, as the Celtics are back in the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010. Game one is on Thursday in San Francisco.

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JAYSON TATUM, BOSTON CELTICS FORWARD: Obviously, we know we're going to win the championship, right? But to get over this hump in the fashion that we did it -- obviously, we took the toughest route possible. And then to win in game seven and go to the championship on the road, it's special.

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MANNO: Elsewhere, more than 325,000 fans turned out for Sunday's Indy 500, the largest crowd to see a sporting event since the start of the pandemic. The race coming down to the final few turns.

A crash by NASCAR great Jimmy Johnson with six laps to go, setting up a 2-lap sprint to the finish -- very unusual -- forcing Marcus Ericsson to hold off late charge from all the challengers to win this first Indy 500. Ericsson becoming the second man from Sweden to sip the milk and kiss the bricks -- a racing tradition there. A great weekend of racing.

And while we're on the topic of incredible finishes, let's go to the PGA Tour now. Sam Burns rallying from seven shots back to force a playoff at the Colonial against Master's champ and World #1 Scott Scheffler. On the first extra hole, the 25-year-old, from 38 feet, sinks it equaling the largest comeback in the tournament's history. It was such a fun moment from the weekend.

And San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler says that he is considering pausing his anthem protest for today's Memorial Day matchup in Philadelphia. According to multiple outlets, Kapler said Memorial Day deserves special attention and he's going to decide what makes sense to him in the moment.

On Friday, you might recall in light of the recent school shooting in Texas, the manager said that he would not be on the field for the National Anthem until he felt better about what he said is the direction of our country. He called that decision a personal one. But now, again, making another personal decision to step aside and maybe come out for the anthem on this Memorial Day.

JARRETT: That's interesting. How long has he been doing this protest?

MANNO: Oh, this is new. Yes, this is new.

JARRETT: OK.

MANNO: He just addressed the media a couple of days ago and said you know what? I should have taken a knee when --

JARRETT: Interesting.

MANNO: -- George Floyd was killed. And now, I feel like -- he said on Wednesday he felt like he should have taken a knee to go ahead and show how he was feeling about the school shooting in Texas.

JARRETT: About gun violence, yes.

MANNO: Made a decision that he's going to stay in the clubhouse. But now, on Memorial Day, might make an exception to that.

JARRETT: Interesting.

All right, thanks for being here. Have a nice, I guess, holiday but not a holiday since you're working. But thank you for being here nonetheless.

MANNO: Yes, thank you for having me.

JARRETT: Appreciate it.

MANNO: Happy Memorial Day, everybody.

JARRETT: All right, sometimes people just need a throwback. How about this? Tom Cruise soaring to the top of the box office this weekend in "Top Gun: Maverick."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Clip from Paramount Pictures "Top Gun: Maverick."

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JARRETT: Paramount says the sequel to the 1986 blockbuster raked in, get this, an estimated $124 million domestically for its 3-day opening weekend. The film was only projected to bring in about $80 million. It is the biggest opening weekend of Cruise's 40-plus-year career and his first $100 million opening weekend. It seems hard to believe, but everyone loves "Top Gun."

Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Laura Jarrett. "NEW DAY" starts right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to viewers here in the U.S. and around the world on this Memorial Day, Monday, May 30. I'm Brianna Keilar with John Avlon. John Berman is off.

And we do begin this morning with a nation on edge and more violence just days after the massacre inside a Texas elementary school. Several mass shootings breaking out across the country over the weekend. In Oklahoma, a 9-year-old was injured. Nevada, Arizona, and Tennessee -- most of those shot were teenagers.

The gun violence following the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, the church shooting in California.