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Ed Davis is Interviewed about the Uvalde Police Response; Key Inflation Measure Rose in May; January 6th Committee Blames Trump. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 10, 2022 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Spoke with Arredondo by phone, in written answers and in statements provided by his attorney, George Hyde. Also this morning, a new report by "The New York Times" reveals that law enforcement at the scene were aware that some of the victims trapped inside needed medical attention, but still waited more than an hour to send in police. Transcripts of law enforcement body camera video obtained by "The New York Times" show that a man investigators believe to be Chief Arredondo said, quote, people are going to ask why we're taking so long, but then other officers saying, if there's kids in there, we need to go in there.

Joining me now, former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Look, Chief Arredondo told "The Texas Tribune," not a single responding officer ever hesitated even for a moment to put themselves at risk to save the children. Our objective was to save as many lives as we could. The extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.

What's your response to that?

ED DAVIS, FORMER BOSTON POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, I have sympathy for the chief. He clearly was over his head in this - in this incident. But the facts remain that the rulings, the logic and the rules that we operate by say that we go to the shooter. We don't evacuate people. We step over victims. We go to the shooter to neutralize the threat. That's the mantra that came out after Columbine. And that didn't happen here.

There are clearly many things that go through your mind in a situation like this. But he just made the wrong call. He should not have been concentrating on evacuations. He should have been concentrating on pinning down the suspect, and eventually shooting him. That was the responsibility of the first responding officers. And it took an hour and 17 minutes. That is just off the charts in understanding what should happen in a case like this.

BERMAN: He also told "The Texas Tribune" that he left his police and campus radios outside before entering the school because he thought carrying the radios would slow him down. He also said that in some parts of the school he knew that they would be useless anyway.

Your response to that?

DAVIS: Well, John, these are the basics that you need to have by your side when you're commanding a situation like this. When you're the chief and you walk into this incident, you are not a first responder. You are in charge. So, he can say that he didn't think he was in charge, or that someone else may have been in charge. But the truth of the matter is, if you're the chief, and you're standing in that hallway, you need to have good communications, you need to understand the environment that you're dealing with, and you need to understand the rules and issue orders consistent with the rules. None of that happened.

There's a lot of excuses why it didn't happen, but I think that the chief didn't do himself any favors in this article because once the professionals come in and start to look at and disaggregate these statements, there's still going to be obvious nonfeasance and malfeasance here.

BERMAN: Look, the chief says he didn't consider himself the incident commander. That in and of itself raises questions, correct?

DAVIS: Right. It flies in the face of the National Incident Management System, and the command structure, underneath that NIMS, that clearly state that the local police chief is in charge. Now, they can cede control of the - of the process to somebody else, but when they get there, and for those first critical ten or 15 minutes, they are in charge.

I mean, John, you can call the fire department and have the jaws of life or a Halligan tool brought in. I've used those throughout my career when I was in narcotics to knock doors down. The idea that we -- they had to wait for a particular key just doesn't make any sense to me. Or, quite frankly, I don't think any other first responder in the field.

BERMAN: And, again, this interview comes after "The New York Times" released the results of their investigation.

What's your reaction to the reporting that the officers waited and knew that there were children, this is their reporting, that they knew that children were injured in the classrooms?

DAVIS: When there's a chief on site, the officers will follow the chief's lead. That's what they do. It might be a sergeant. It might be a lieutenant. In this particular case it was actually chief of police.

When that chief is on site, that chief is responsible for everything that happened there. And you can't ask officers in this environment where police officers are being prosecuted around the country, you can't ask them to go rogue, to violate the orders or the policies or procedures that they're supposed to follow.

So, the officers did what they were supposed to do. The problem was with the command.

[08:35:01]

It wasn't with the training. It wasn't with the theory. It was with the command.

BERMAN: Ed Davis, as always, thank you so much for your insight and helping us understand these brand-new reports we're seeing today.

DAVIS: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: All right, the May inflation report just came in. We will give you the numbers, next.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And the shocking, new details revealed about President Trump's role in the January 6th riot. We have more on the House committee's debut hearing coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Brand-new inflation numbers just in. CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans here.

What do they say?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Cruel summer. Record high gas prices that play in these numbers. And 8.6 percent year over year inflation. That is, again, the highest since 1981 when you look at the core rate, month over month, it's 1 percent there. But 8.6 percent, that's - that's really a tough number to swallow here.

It's gas prices, but the CPI, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, John, saying that it's broad-based. I mean you're talking about food, gas, shelter, some of these fuel categories are just almost off the charts here.

[08:40:04]

You look at the trajectory. It doesn't feel like there's very much peaking. Remember last month we were talking about whether this would peak. Well, guess what happened after we saw the last number, right? We saw gas prices reach these record after record high, and so that's what's at play here.

So, if you want to try to find a sign of the peak, it would be in stripping out food and energy and looking month to month, that is 0.6 percent increase. That matches last month. But people, you know, look, people have to drive, they have to eat, and they have to live some place. And those are categories that are still rising here. So, the Fed raising interest rates aggressively, but this is exactly why, because the Fed's got to cool off numbers like this.

John.

BERMAN: All right, also joining us now, CNN business correspondent Rahel Solomon. So, Rahel, not the peak, also not what was wanted or expected this

morning.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Not what was wanted or expected. Look, investment banks were polled (ph), sort of expecting, what did they want to see. The numbers were about 8 to 8.5. So even this is coming in hotter than what a lot of people were expecting as the top. A sign perhaps of a slight not getting worse, you know, in terms of core month over month.

But when you look at some of the categories that consumers most experience, food, those prices going up 10 percent, inflation, 10 percent year over year. The cost of shelter, 5.5 percent year over year. This is why some economists are really concerned about those who don't have a lot of wiggle room in their budget to begin with. You're seeing things like food prices go up. Of course we talk about energy every day.

ROMANS: Look at that gasoline number.

SOLOMON: Exactly, 48.7 percent compared to a year ago.

I spoke to Diane Swonk, a prominent economist, yesterday about sort of what she is seeing in terms of the consumer. And she told me, look, everybody feels inflation, but not evenly. And the fact that higher income households can spend on the most discretionary of things, such as travel, is as important a narrative as those who are hunkering down. It perpetuates inflation she said. So this is not certainly something that people wanted to see.

BERMAN: What next? What now?

ROMANS: Well, you know, we're going to hear from the president today. He's going to be at the largest, busiest port in the United States in Los Angeles, and he's going to talk about inflation and supply chains. We'll probably hear more about how we've got to work out these supply chain problems to help bring down prices overall.

But the White House has also said it has limited tools and has deployed everything that it has in its armory, right? We need to see a resolution of the war in Ukraine. That doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon.

Also, I think to Diane's point, people are still driving. AAA notes that people haven't stopped using gasoline, they haven't changed their behavior yet, because for two years we didn't drive as much, we didn't fly anywhere, and there's this pent-up demand that is so ferocious in the economy that's also driving some of these inflation numbers. The Fed has a very, very fine line to walk here, really aggressively raising interest rates but not pushing the U.S. economy into a recession.

SOLOMON: And we're going to hear from them next week, when they meet next week. David Kelly of JP Morgan telling me yesterday that his concern is that they are going to overshoot. And when you get reports like this, you know, you can understand why that concern may be there. BERMAN: Brianna.

KEILAR: And, Christine, you know, some of these expenses, you just can't avoid them.

ROMANS: I know.

KEILAR: For a lot of people, I mean, I get it, some people are saying, OK, I'm just going to like - I'm just going to foot the bill for gas. Some people don't have a choice, right? So, they're paying for gas. They can't avoid paying more for food. What are they going to do? What's your advice for them?

ROMANS: Look, you're absolutely right. And this is something that really falls disproportionately on low income households. When you talk to the airlines, they're seeing this brisk demand for expensive plane tickets. That's not happening in low-income households. They still have to put gas in the car to drive.

You know what's another interesting trend here, you're starting to see local police departments and first responders trying to figure out how they're going to pay for the higher gas prices. Several different police departments in the United States have already said that they're going to have to have automated responses to some routine calls, right? They're going to have to decide what calls they're going to get in a patrol car and go to because of the high cost of gasoline. And I think that that's going to be something really to watch going forward as well.

One interesting angle of this, too, we still have millions of people who are working remotely. So, for those people, again, these are higher income people who aren't feeling it maybe as much as low income people who really -- and businesses, diesel costs are just terrible. So, it is being felt differently across the economy, no question.

SOLOMON: It's a tale of two consumers, you could say.

ROMANS: Yes, it really is.

BERMAN: And, again, Rahel, the Fed, that's what people are watching right now, may have to raise interest rates even more aggressively than they are?

SOLOMON: Well, it seems the expectation of the consensus is about half a percent next week. Unclear if they would do more than that. But the question now is what might we see two meetings from now, in September. Might they raise rates again half a percentage point.

So, all of it is very data dependent. Jay Powell has said that all along, they will be very data dependent. But data like today becomes increasingly more important for them.

Rahel Solomon, Christine Romans, thank you.

We have new, disturbing video from the Capitol riot, plus these new details on what the January 6th committee says was a plot from Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election.

[08:45:07]

A "Reality Check," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: A damning condemnation of former President Trump last night from leaders of the House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Chair Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney placing much of the blame for the violence on Trump himself.

John Avlon with our "Reality Check."

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The emperor Nero infamously fiddled while watching Rome burn. Donald Trump watched TV. That's one of the highlights from the first night of the January 6th committee hearings. The ex-president never called any government official to stop the violence on Capitol Hill. Mike Pence did that.

Instead, Trump leaned back and enjoyed the show, (INAUDIBLE) to approve of the mob's calls to kill his own VP. That's a surreal definition of the dereliction of duty.

We also learned that for weeks key members of Trump's team were telling him that he lost the election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL BARR, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: Repeatedly told the president in no uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud, and, you know, that would have affected the outcome of the election.

[08:50:07]

IVANKA TRUMP, DAUGHTER OF DONALD TRUMP: I respect Attorney General Barr. So, I accepted what he said -- was saying.

JASON MILLER, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Matt Oczkowski, who is the lead data person, was brought on and I remember he delivered to the president pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: They knew the truth. They told him the truth. And Trump couldn't handle the truth. So, he lied. He lied loudly and repeatedly to save his massive yet fragile ego. And a lot of his supporters believed him. And, sadly, some still do.

Watching footage of the attack, I was struck again by the tribal sickness of it, how Trump flags seemed to outnumber American flags, all the confederate flags and the Qanon shwag (ph) and the militia gear.

Now, some of the mob were members of right-wing vigilante groups who seemed to be coordinating the initial assault. Many more were amped up average citizens who'd bought into the big lie, but all were hooked on the drug of hyper partisanship and so these self-styled superpatriots attacked police officers in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

Listen to the testimony of Officer Caroline Edwards.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFFICER CAROLINE EDWARDS, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE: I was called a traitor to my country, my oath, and my Constitution. In actuality, I was none of those things. I was an American, standing face to face with other Americans, asking myself, how many times -- many, many times how we had gotten here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: That's the key question, how did we get here? Because this hyper partisan hatred didn't happen overnight and we still haven't learned the right lessons from the attack, right? Because the big lie is still a lie. The group think that depends on putting party over country and dividing America into us against them, it diluted people into believing that an assault on the Constitution was a defense of the Constitution. That an attack on democracy was a defense on our democracy.

But let's be clear, you can't credibly pretend to be a patriot and affect indifference about January 6th, as Congressman Liz Cheney said.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues, you are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: And there needs to be accountability for this fever to finally break. Not just for the members of the mob, but, more importantly, for the people who plotted this attempted coup.

Listen to Chair Bennie Thompson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BENNIE THOMPSON D-MS: Any legal jargon you hear about seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States boils down to this, January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: An attempted coup is a serious as it gets. The equivalent of an attempted murder on our democracy by a sitting president.

The legal jargon, it matters because without accountability the coup plotters we will normalize future efforts to overturn elections and trash the peaceful transfer of power.

Those are the stakes. That's why these hearings should matter to anyone who actually gives a damn about our democracy.

And that's your "Reality Check."

KEILAR: John Avlon, thank you so much.

BERMAN: Time now to meet this week's CNN Hero. Rabbi Amy Weiss has a simple yet essential mission to provide millions of pairs of underwear to underserved children across the country. Why? Because not having underwear can impact a child's self-esteem, attitude and even school attendance.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RABBI AMY WEISS: Underwear is just an overlooked item and it's super expensive. So, the parents who are struggling financially tend to think, you can't see the underwear, so it will be OK.

There is a crisis for this very essential need that really makes a big difference in their social and academic world.

Kids who need underwear don't want used underwear, right? That's gross, isn't it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

WEISS: We only give away new underwear. Kids, they want what all of us want, security and dignity. We want to increase these kids' self- esteem and confidence. That's really what it is all about, helping fill that gap when no one else is doing it, and to keep them in school. When they've got underwear, it's just easier to be a kid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: More than a million pairs of underwear suddenly showed up on Amy's doorstep thanks to a rallying cry from a famous friend. Find out who in the full story at cnnheroes.com. And you can also nominate someone you think should be a CNN Hero.

What a wonderful effort right there.

[08:55:02]

KEILAR: I love that. It is actually so expensive. You'd think that underwear for a child, it's like such a small piece of fabric. It is oddly expensive.

BERMAN: And it makes such a difference in a child's life. And you know it's the type of thing people don't want to address, don't want to face. Good for her for doing it.

KEILAR: Yes, wonderful. BERMAN: All right, much more on the impact of the hearings we are now

seeing unfold before our eyes and also these incredibly high levels of inflation.

CNN's coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)