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Biden to Crowd Urging Action on Gun Reform: "We Will"; Audience Members in Barclays Center in New York City Run after Mistaking Loud Noise for Gunshots; President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden Visit Memorial in Uvalde, Texas; Uvalde, Texas, Police Undergoing Scrutiny after Waiting 75 Minutes before Killing Gunman in Elementary School Shooting Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired May 30, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: NEW DAY continues right now.

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

And we are beginning 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 nine-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, and the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers. Today the first of many funeral services will begin. We'll have more on that and the president's visit ahead.

AVLON: People are on edge. In Brooklyn an active shooter scare at a boxing match sent folks fleeing the stands and running for their lives.

Eighteen people were injured at the Barclays Center. Turns out, it was just a loud noise heard on the street. It sent crowds rushing to the exits. It's an indication of the anxiety that's out there. CNN's Nadia Romero has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

NADIA ROMERO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Americans on edge once again. Early Sunday at the Barclays Center in New York City, people running for their lives. Police say they mistook a loud noise for gunfire after a boxing match. One person writing on Twitter, "Scary moment as crowds poured back into Barclays Center. My fear was a shooting, but those fears proved unfounded." And another person adding, "Huge stampede near the exit. Literally had to jump on the floor for cover." Tennis star Naomi Osaka was there. She said on Twitter that she was also petrified following the commotion. Eighteen people reported minor injuries. Panic also in Tennessee.

MAYOR TIM KELLY, CHATTANOOGA: I'm heartbroken for the families and victims whose lives were up-ended last night by gunfire.

ROMERO: On Saturday night, large groups of teens and young adults exchanged gunfire in downtown Chattanooga according to police.

CHIEF CELESTE MURPHY, CHATTANOOGA POLICE: Two individual from one group started firing upon the other group. And they believe that there wasn't one intended target at least in that other group, and all the other victims that were shot were unintended.

ROMERO: Investigators said six people were shot, two have life- threatening injuries. Patrick Hickey, an Uber and Lyft driver, was near the shooting and rushed to help the victims.

PATRICK HICKEY, HELPED SHOOTING VICTIM: One of the victims was about 15 feet away from our car. I grabbed a shirt out of my trunk and started to put pressure on that victim. And somebody said there were two more victims just around the corner, one of them with a head shot wound. There were young kids and teenagers running, some of them tripping on the ground, not knowing if they were hit themselves.

KELLY: If you know your kid has access to a firearm, you must intervene before someone, perhaps even your own child, ends up dead.

ROMERO: Investigators don't believe the shooting was gang related. So far, no suspect is in custody. In Taft, Oklahoma, investigators say an argument at an outdoor Memorial Day festival led to another mass shooting early Sunday. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said a 39-year-old woman died and seven other people were wounded. The injured ranged from nine to 56 years old. None have life-threatening injuries, according to the agency.

In Henderson, Nevada, a shooting on an interstate in broad daylight left at least seven people injured, two of them in critical condition according to Henderson police. Investigators say the shooter is still at large.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

ROMERO: The Gun Violence Archive tracks mass shootings when four or more people are shot in a single incident. And at last check this morning, so far this year we've already had more than 225 mass shootings across the nation. John?

AVLON: Unbelievable. Nadia Romero, thank you very much.

And today the first funeral service for one of the 21 victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting will take place for 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza. CNN's Adrienne Broaddus live in Uvalde, Texas, with more. Adrienne?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, good morning to you. The first visitation and Rosary is planned today for Amerie Jo Garza. Her parents described her as someone who loved swimming. That was her favorite hobby. And here it is Memorial Day. Now her parents are spending Memorial Day without her as they prepare for a journey of firsts without their loved one. They're not alone. So much grief and heartache here. And they're having a tough time accepting the unanswered questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

[08:05:05]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need change. Our children don't deserve this.

BROADDUS: The Justice Department says it will review the law enforcement response to the Robb Elementary shooting.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO, (D-TX): I'm glad that the Justice Department is listening and they're going to do a review of the law enforcement response. Like I said, I think everybody was shocked that it took an hour for law enforcement to go in there and finally take out the shooter.

BROADDUS: Law enforcement's latest timeline of events showing officers waited 75 minutes before entering the classroom and shooting the gunman. The response is now under intense scrutiny, especially after the initial timeline provided by police had a number of inaccuracies. Some believing lives could have been saved had officers acted sooner.

I sat down with a parent -- a set of family yesterday. Mom told me that her child had been shot by one bullet through the back, through the kidney area. The first responder that they eventually talked to said that their child likely bled out. In that span of 30 or 40 minutes extra that little girl might have lived.

BROADDUS: The gunman was barricaded in the classroom as students in the room called 911, begging for help. Even as gunshots rang out, police waited in the hallway for backup, equipment, and negotiators before finally using a janitor's master key to unlock the door and kill the gunman. This as more young students have come forward to describe that excruciating hour.

DANIEL, ROBB ELEMENTARY SURVIVOR: He just like shot four bullets into our class. But, like, her nose broke and our teacher got shot in her leg and her torso, but she's all right.

I was hiding under a table next to the wall that goes to like the end of the wall to like the start of the wall. And just like a very big table, but I could still see his face.

BROADDUS: Democrats in the Texas state senate demanding Governor Greg Abbott call a special session to pass stricter gun control laws. This as President Joe Biden visited the grieving Uvalde community on Sunday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Biden, we need help! We need help, President Biden! BROADDUS: Residents pleading with the president for change in the

wake of this massacre. Biden responding to the crowd as he was getting in his car. The president and first lady visited a memorial at Robb Elementary to lay flowers, and then they attended a church service for the victims. Afterward, Biden met privately with some of their families.

JOSE CAZARES, UNCLE OF SHOOTING VICTIM JACKLYN CAZARES: He cared.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He truly cared.

CAZARES: Yes. It didn't feel it was fake.

VINCENT SALAZAR, FATHER OF SHOOTING VICTIM LAYLA SALAZAR: It was really all about my daughter. That's all we talked about. Like I said, they were very gracious. They showed compassion. And that's all we were here for. He listened to everything, and we listened to him. He shed some tears, we shed some tears.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS (on camera): Indeed, this is going to be a difficult week for the members of the community as those parents prepare to say goodbye to 19 children and two teachers. I spoke with a woman who has lived here nearly all of her life, and she told me the initial shock of the shooting is starting to wear off, but the reality of what life will look like is beginning to sink in.

And she said each day the pain gets heavier and heavier. We've seen families standing in front of this memorial with their grief. The only thing that they have to hold onto now are memories of their children because time didn't allow them to say goodbye, say goodbye to kids they thought would live decades longer, John.

AVLON: Just unimaginable grief and heartbreak. Adrienne Broaddus, thank you very much.

KEILAR: Joining us now, national correspondent for "The New York Times," Mike Baker. He has been reporting extensively on the shooting in Uvalde. I do want to discuss, Mike, some of your reporting, but first I want to talk about this DOJ investigation, And the questions you think need to be answered by this investigation.

MIKE BAKER, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I think the bigger picture here is, one, could more have been done to save more lives. but looking back at the history of how officers are trained to deal with these types of active shooters, going back to the lessons of the Columbine High School shooting, it's really the emphasis is on get in and confront the gunman, stop the killing, save lives. That's sort of the number one priority laid out to these officers. So there's a big question about why that was not the priority here, at least for those -- that more than an hour.

KEILAR: Your reporting makes it very clear. Some people might think there's really no manual for dealing with a mass shooting situation like this. There is. Tell us what it says. [08:10:07]

BAKER: Yes, so these officers had actually gone through active shooter training. That was not just in the classroom, too. That was role-playing scenarios inside schools in Uvalde. And in the classroom, it's really that they did two months ago was based on these Texas standards that lay out that go in, first priority, confront the gunman, don't wait for a tactical team, a SWAT team or anything like that. You may need to have a single officer on their own going in to confront the gunman because the importance and the urgency is so high that it needs to stop right away, otherwise the body count will be rising so fast.

KEILAR: One of the big questions is, this on-scene commander, we learned at the end of last week, made this decision to consider this a barricaded suspect situation instead of an active shooter situation, and he did that even as these 911 calls were coming in from kids. Have you learned anything about what he would have known about those calls? Were the police on the ground aware what dispatch, what 911 was getting, the information they were getting from the kids?

BAKER: I think that's one of the big open questions that's going to be part of this investigation, because the state police have sort of indicated there was some breakdown between the 911 calls and what the officers on scene knew. So that's a huge -- that's a huge issue. If the officers had been aware that there were kids in the classroom calling for help and describing the fellow students around them who had already been shot, that might have been a push to higher priority. But that's going to be a part of this investigation for sure.

KEILAR: And the school police chief who made that call, he's very connected to the community, right?

BAKER: Yes. He grew up in Uvalde. He was an officer, started his career in the Uvalde police departments. He went off to other departments, came back. He's been in the world of policing for two decades. He took this job just two years ago, but he's, as you mentioned, really well connected in the community. Just two weeks before the shooting there was an election, and he was chosen to be on the next city council.

KEILAR: Yes, Mike, you've been doing tremendous reporting, and we really appreciate you sharing it with us. Thank you.

BAKER: Thank you.

KEILAR: San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler skipping the National Anthem in protest following the massacre in Uvalde. His reasoning behind that.

Plus, thieves stealing a $2 million, 18 karat pure gold tabernacle from a Catholic Church. Hear how they did it.

AVLON: And you're looking at live pictures from the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, as we commemorate those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our liberty and our democracy on this Memorial Day in America.

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[08:16:34]

AVLON: President Biden facing heightened calls to action on gun safety after multiple deadly shootings in the United States including last week's massacre at a Texas elementary school, and Biden says he's listening.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CROWDS chanting "Do something.")

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will. We will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Joining us now is presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. She's the author of "Leadership in Turbulent Times" and also the executive producer of a docuseries based on that book, which premieres tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern on the History Channel. It's called "Theodore Roosevelt."

Doris, it's great to see you on this Memorial Day. Look, you know, as well as anyone that politics is history in the present tense. So given all the headwinds that President Biden has faced, from guns to the economy, to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, to the difficulty of reuniting a divided nation, I want to ask you the toughest but most important question, give us some perspective on our problems. How do you think the Biden presidency might look in history's rearview mirror?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: You know, normally, when I talk about problems in the present, I'm able to say that we had situations in the past that were even more difficult than the one we're facing today.

You know, obviously, you had a Civil War, you had a Great Depression, you had World War Two, and yet there's a cascading series of crises that President Biden has had to face, that makes it almost unprecedented, combining the fact of what's happened with the pandemic, and the economy, now, the war with Ukraine, but most importantly, a divided country that has to deal with these problems and a country where people in one section of the country feel that people in the other section are the other rather than this common American citizens.

Because what got us through all those other crises, was a sense of a mission that people felt together. They would sacrifice for World War Two, they would come together for the Civil War eventually. So, it's a really difficult set of problems and leaders get judged by how they deal with crises. So he certainly has not had an easy time as President. There is no question about that.

KEILAR: Historically speaking, Doris, this issue of gun violence that we're seeing, how difficult and how possible is a breakthrough? You know, if you put it in a context for there being some chance of that.

GOODWIN: I think we have to believe that it's possible. If we already start out saying, "Oh, nothing's going to happen. It didn't happen after Sandy Hook. People will forget about this in a few more days," I don't think so. I think maybe this is a moment, you know, nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come, as old Victor Hugo once said, and there may well be some way that Republicans understand they have to make some movement forward.

It may not be all that's needed, which is obviously not allow assault weapons to be given out to 18-year-olds, or maybe even 21-year-olds. But if we get better background checks, if we get Red Flags, then maybe as Senator Murphy said, Republicans will learn that they can take these steps, and it is okay, and then, they will be willing to take further steps.

I have some optimistic feeling that the feeling in the country is such that proportions of people that want something done, you know, this is a country where we have to listen to public sentiment, and it is so blocked right now and 90 percent of the people want these commonsense solutions that we have to believe it's going to happen or it won't happen so I am determined to believe that something is going to happen.

[08:20:02]

AVLON: A determined optimist. Well another determined optimist of course was Teddy Roosevelt and he governed at a time of great divisions, but was able to forge something like unity.

I want to play a clip from your new program that's debuting tonight and then ask a question on the back end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOODWIN: Everything can change in a moment. Theodore Roosevelt did everything he could to be ready for that moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Theodore Roosevelt is born into privilege and of great wealth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A very sickly child, so either put up his dukes and fight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roosevelt saw himself as the embodiment of America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was an exemplar of the strenuous life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He suffers loss, he suffers grief.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here's a man who had everything -- education, wealth opportunities.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But he felt all of that must be used to help the lives of the unfortunate. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fairness, justice, equity is what drove him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: You know, Doris, TR is sort of a man for all seasons. He is cited by Presidents on both sides of the aisle. But one of the great challenges he faced was the deep divisions in terms of wealth and inequality that ultimately broke through in the progressive era, which he helped form. What was the secret to him being a catalytic leader at that moment?

GOODWIN: I think the most important thing about Teddy Roosevelt was that the country just as you say, was incredibly divided. The people in the east felt set off from the people in the west. People in the country were suspicious of people in the city. There were big companies swallowing up small companies.

The Industrial Revolution had shaken up the economy, much like the tech revolution and globalization. Lots of immigrants were coming in from abroad. There were new technologies that scared people -- the automobile, the submarine -- people were feeling the change of pace was too much, and he warned that democracy would be at peril if people in different sections or parties regarded each other as the other rather than as common American citizens.

But what made him the right man for the moment was his own career had been an incredibly winding path to the presidency. So he has absorbed different parts of life in different parts of the country.

He started off as that documentary said, as a man of privilege, but he worked in the State Legislature, he saw Tenement Houses there. And then his wife died in childbirth on the same day that his mother who had come to take care of his wife died of typhoid fever in the same house within hours.

So depressed was he, he went to the Badlands to recover and there he became a cowboy and a rancher, so he learned that way of life. And then he comes back to New York, and he is a Police Commissioner wandering around the streets of New York at night, seeing slums in the middle of the night.

Then he gets to be a Rough Rider where he puts together Ivy Leaguers, and woodsmen in this extraordinary fighting force and eventually becomes Governor and President.

But by the time he is President, it's not a normal political path where you go from Congress to the Senate, it is a path that took him to see the other parts of America and then he was able with a square deal to say I want something with fundamental fairness for the rich and the poor, the capitalist and the wage worker.

He was, as you point out with Lincoln, you talk about Lincoln as a soulful centrist. That's what TR was, a soulful centrist fighting for that center cause.

AVLON: I love it. KEILAR: And speaking of that soulful centrist as Avlon describes him,

it's the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln Memorial. It's not just Memorial Day here in Washington, I hope some people as they visit and stand before that monument are able to reflect on that, Doris.

But I wonder, and here, we see so many of them, you see how busy it is today. What are the lessons this many years later that we can take?

GOODWIN: Well, I think you know, as John would understand so greatly, it's not just what Lincoln did, you know that he was the person who saved the union and won the war, and eventually ended slavery, but it's the man and who he was, that temperament of a man who somehow had suffered a great loss himself, but was able to keep his sense of humor, to bring people together from different parts of the party, you know, a team of rivals as he created.

And that he just had a moral character that was able to move forward as events made it possible to bring about that Emancipation Proclamation. And that's what we need, it is that kind of people going into politics today with a sense of character, a sense of purpose, when he almost was told he would lose the 1864 election, unless he compromised on slavery.

The Republicans left in despair when he refused to, he said, "I would be damned in time and eternity if I did so," willing to lose that election, because to keep the goal of emancipation.

That's what we need as politicians with a sense of purpose greater than themselves and ambition that's not just self, but for the country. And maybe we have to depend on that younger generation to take heart from Lincoln. Look at that spiritual place that it was a live monument.

I was there. I'm old enough to have been there for the March on Washington in 1963. It was an extraordinary moment, not just to hear Martin Luther King, but also we all joined hands and sung "We Shall Overcome." You felt that, yes, with this force of 250,000 people, something will happen and it did happen.

[08:25:09]

GOODWIN: The Civil Rights Bill passes, Voting Rights Bill passes. We made great progress, and then again, it has been turned back and we've got to do it again.

Marian Anderson sung there when she wasn't allowed to be at the Constitution Hall. So for Lincoln, I think he would be so glad to know that where he sits is a place that other great movements have come to express their feelings and to make change happen.

AVLON: Great Doris Kearns Goodwin. The Lincoln Memorial: Temple of Democracy, 100 years old today. Thank you so much for joining us on NEW DAY, Doris. Be well.

GOODWIN: Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here with you.

AVLON: Always, always.

All right, bipartisan efforts to overhaul gun laws seem to be gaining some traction in Congress. So how our gun owners responding?

Plus, we're tracking the first hurricane of 2022 now barreling towards Mexico's Coast.

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