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Erin Burnett Outfront

Audio: Dispatcher Informs Police Kids Still Trapped In School; Senators To Meet On Gun Control Tomorrow, Biden Expresses Optimism; Gun Maker Behind Rifle Used In School Massacre Under Scrutiny; Besieged Ukrainian City In The East Increasingly In Russian Hands; Russia Says It Successfully Tested Another Hypersonic Missile; January 6 Panel Drops Fight to Get RNC Data, First Hearing Days Away. Aired 7- 8p ET

Aired May 30, 2022 - 19:00   ET

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

[19:00:24]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next, the investigation into the deadly Texas school shooting ramping up as troubling new video reveals what police knew while they waited outside of that classroom.

Plus, the maker of the weapon used in the rampage, it's a family-run company with a history of aggressive and provocative ads, who are they?

And Putin makes a push for a crucial city in eastern Ukraine, what it could mean for the war if Russia prevails.

Let's go OUTFRONT.

Good evening, a everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow, in tonight for Erin Burnett. Welcome to a special edition of OUTFRONT.

And tonight, growing outrage in Uvalde. Texas. New video obtained by ABC News appears to show police knew the children were still alive inside that classroom as they waited outside for back-up. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DISPATCHER: Advise we do have a child on the line. Child is advising he is in the room full of victims. Full of victims at this moment.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HARLOW: CNN has not been able to independently confirm the source of that audio nor when it was heard exactly but this adds so much to questions about why the gunman remained inside the classroom with students more than an hour before he was killed by a Border Patrol Tactical Response team.

Now, the Justice Department is conducting their own independent review of the police response and President Biden vowing to get something done after meeting with the families of the 19 students and two teachers killed in that mass shooting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The folks who were victimized, their families, they spent three hours and 40 minutes with me. The pain is palpable, and I think a lot of it is unnecessary. so I'm going to continue to push.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Lucy Kafanov was OUTFRONT tonight live from Uvalde.

And, Lucy, what is happening in the community now as they learn more, as they hear audio like we just played?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, people have been streaming in here all day, all weekend long to lay down flowers, candles, stuffed animals, to mourn and pray for the 19 children and two teachers who were gunned down that Tuesday. As we speak, there is a rosary service and a visitation being held for Amerie Jo Garza, who was just two weeks past her tenth birthday when her stepfather dropped her off the school for the last time, and soon, a funeral service for 10-year-old Maite Yuleana Rodriguez who dreamed of becoming a marine biologist.

These funerals taking place as new chilling details emerge painting the last final moments of what happened inside that school. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAFANOV (voice-over): A chaotic scene as police rush to evacuate children.

DISPATCHER: Child on the line.

KAFANOV: Dispatch audio revealing some police were aware at some point that kids were still trapped inside.

DISPATCHER: Child is advising he is in a room full of victims, full victims at this moment.

KAFANOV: More devastating details from officials of at least two children calling 911 multiple times, pleading for help as the gunman is still inside the school. For more than an hour, before police enter a classroom and kill him. Frustrated at the scene by one account, the Border Patrol decides to go in without orders from the police chief and command.

ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D), TEXAS STATE SENATE: What's been made clear is that at that point, the CBP team that went in in frustration said, we're going in.

KAFANOV: The police response is now under investigation by the Department of Justice.

GUTIERREZ: At the end of the day, everybody failed here. We failed these children. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were maybe some errors that were made. I am

filled with anger, but I feel no hatred towards them. We were thankful to have Ellie for the nine years of her life with us.

KAFANOV: Two services are taking place today, visitation and rosary for Amerie Jo Garza and then, tonight, a memorial service for Maite Yuleana Rodriguez.

President Biden visited Uvalde on Sunday to offer support for the victims, the second time he's visited a community devastated by a mass shooting in the last two weeks. The most critically wounded were brought to San Antonio's University Health Hospital.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, anesthesia is on their way, blood bank is on their way.

KAFANOV: CNN got exclusive access inside.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is one of the teams we formed and the day of the mass casualty event.

KAFANOV: As pediatric trauma medical center director, Dr. Lillian Liao, and her team drilled for another mass shooting.

Four of the victims were brought right here to university hospital, three little girls and the shooter's grandmother. Some of the doctors and nurses say that responding to these kinds of mass shootings is taking a personal toll.

[19:05:05]

DR. LILLIAN LIAO, DIRECTOR, PEDIATRIC TRAUMA MEDICAL CENTER: I kind of fell back to when I was ten years old -- and so, when I was ten years old, my family immigrated to this country and my biggest challenge was learning to speak English, and you just can't imagine what these children are going through. And it's really unfair. It's really unfair.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAFANOV (on camera): You heard the emotion from the surgeon there, Poppy and, you know, this is someone trained to deal with human beings on their absolute worst days. These doctors can help heal some of the physical wounds, but they worry about the invisible, emotional scars that these kids are going to carry the rest of their lives -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Lucy, thank you for that, to you and your team and for speaking to that surgeon, just hearing from her meant so much. We really appreciate your reporting on the ground.

OUTFRONT now, Anthony Barksdale, CNN law enforcement analyst and former, acting Baltimore police commissioner, and Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, also author of he new book, "The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in the Age of Disasters", and what a disaster this has been.

Thank you both for being here.

Commissioner Barksdale let me begin with you, you saw it in that surgeon's face and in her tears saying the hardest thing she had to learn when she came in this country at 10 was how to speak English and look what the children are going through now, and the 911 dispatch audio shows us, we can hear it. The kids are in the classroom, calling again, and again, saying there are multiple victims and police are still waiting outside.

Is there any reason police should not have immediately broken down that door? After hearing that audio?

ANTHONY BARKSDALE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: There's absolutely no reason, justifiable reason. If you know that there's a child calling that's still alive, you go in. That's what you do. You go in.

At all cost. You -- even if you don't know what's going on, you don't know how many people are -- I don't even want to say that. You go in. That's what I -- you go in. Yeah.

HARLOW: Juliette, to build on what the commissioner said, listen to this from Texas State Senator Gutierrez, of course, he represents Uvalde, that's his district. Here's what he told our colleague, Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D), TEXAS STATE SENATE: I sat down with a family yesterday. Mom told me 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Right. Time is everything. Time was everything. Is there any question in your mind, Juliette, that the lack of response, the lack of going in that classroom, those 78 excruciating minutes cost children's lives?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: No, and I think the narratives we're hearing, the first person accounts from parents that we're hearing, the jest of the answer is that time, and, time is everything. And that's why that active shooter training is rather simple -- I mean, you just eliminate the threat because all of this other stuff that's going on, the phone calls, is someone, alive, someone bleeding out, where is this person, none of it matters at the moment of the active shooter because it's too confusing. We can't depend on, you know, having situational awareness, having systems that are actually telling us what's happening in real time.

So what we've learned over 20 years is you eliminate the threat and then everything else can happen after that. You can save more children, you can get the injured children to hospitals and you can figure out what in fact is going on and we know this to be true, that the system did not work, because the incident command system broke down. The Border Patrol simply said this is not sustainable. We're going in.

HARLOW: Right.

KAYYEM: So the proof is that even the people there understood that the failure to activate, activate the active shooter protocols was a mistake.

HARLOW: And thank God, you know, they finally did.

KAYYEM: Yeah.

HARLOW: Commissioner Barksdale, there are no national guidelines, really standard response in active shooter situations, and you got, what, 19,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.

[19:10:01]

I understand that it's pretty simple at this point in terms of the instructions are go to where the gunshots are and go right away, right? That's a lesson from Columbine. However, would any sort of national standard make a difference here? And by simple, I don't mean the response to it, obviously that's incredibly difficult on the ground but the point is it's clear. The direction is clear.

But does that need to be standardized nationally?

BARKSDALE: Well we learned our lesson at Columbine.

HARLOW: Right.

BARKSDALE: So a national standard would help, but I don't know if all agencies understand the value of those lessons learned. We just watched this collapse happen, this deadly failure happen. So putting out the standards may help, but jurisdictions already should be looking at this incident, should be looking at Buffalo and saying we've got a national problem with young shooters with high powered weapons able to defeat basic body armor.

So maybe every patrol car in every jurisdiction, even a small to largest agency have tactical shields that can withstand rifle fire, bullet resistant blankets, tourniquets, anything, breaching tools to get in the doors and not have to wait for a janitor to give you some keys, because you got to go when this is going on.

You got to push, you got to be aggressive. You've got to be willing to die to save those behind these doors. And that's the job.

So you can put your national standards out, but you have to train. You have to train, train, train, for the day that it happens.

HARLOW: So, Juliette --

BARKSDALE: So, this whole crew failed, except for the federal officers.

HARLOW: And, Juliette, the Justice Department is now going on and going to lead this independent review. What can that lead to, in terms of answers, possibly saving lives in the future, or is this just about figuring out what went wrong there?

KAYYEM: Oh it's going to be both. So one is obviously the lessons learned and may just be to reaffirm what we already knew, right, that the best situation would have been they went in early. We need to prepare for this story to change again.

I study disasters and crises, I wrote about ones from the past and every narrative will change. And this one will, too. We may come to better understandings of motivations or planning of what happened.

But we do know we owe it to the 21 dead, obviously, to listen to their stories in some way. What happened over the course of that long stretch and then to memorialize it so that their parents and their families can understand how, in fact, they died. We think we know but I think we have a lot more to learn.

HARLOW: You're absolutely right, this could change once again.

Juliette, thank you very much. And, Commissioner Barksdale, we appreciate it.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

HARLOW: All right. We have a lot ahead. OUTFRONT next, gun control discussions among senators right now on the front burner, but for how long?

Also, CNN on the front lines as Russia is on the verge of seizing a key city in eastern Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: We were told the Russians have tried already to get in town and it looks we may have witnessed another attempt over there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Also, the U.S. playing catch up in weapons that can travel more than five times the speed of sound. How did America fall behind Russia and China?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:17:19]

HARLOW: Tonight, bipartisan group of senators will meet tomorrow to try to find an agreement on gun control measures. This as President Biden is expressing optimism that some meaningful change could come after last week's horrific shooting in Uvalde. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Second Amendment was never absolutely. I think things have gotten so bad that everybody's getting more rational about it. At least that's my hope and prayer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: That is his hope and his prayer. Well, this comes as we're learning much more about the controversial marketing tactics of the company that made the gun used in the Uvalde shooting.

Our Tom Foreman is OUTFRONT.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Look at the contrast. The raw panic caused by a young man with an assault rifle and the slick promotional video from the company that made it.

MARTY DANIEL, CEO & FOUNDER OF DANIEL DEFENSE: We love to build great gun.

FOREMAN: That's Marty Daniel, founder of Daniel Defense, which authorities say made one of the weapons used by the Uvalde shooter around his 18th birthday and which posted this provocative image of a toddler a week before the slaughter.

DAVID CULLEN, AUTHOR, "PARKLAND: BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT" & "COLUMBINE": It's morally unconscionable, I'm shocked but not surprised somebody is doing this, of course, they are because they can and will make money doing it. But they need to stop and need to either, we either shame them into stopping or legislate or regulate them into stopping.

FOREMAN: The company took that image down, yet Georgia-based Daniel Defense is a small firearms company with a big knack for headlines.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My family's safety is my highest priority.

FOREMAN: For example, when the NFL refused this Daniel's ad for the Super Bowl because it promoted guns, Marty turned the rejection into avalanche of attention.

DANIEL: The majority of the Super Bowl fans have the same values that we have at Daniel Defense, and that is we believe in protecting our families.

PROTESTERS: Shame on you! Shame on you!

FOREMAN: Gun control activists say the company is clearly going after young customers with nods to pop culture icons and video games, while Marty keeps railing about gun control for the older set, as he did in this outdoor hub interview some years ago.

DANIEL: The anti-Second Amendment crowd just looks for any excuse to ban guns any way they can.

FOREMAN: Amid the anger after Uvalde, the company pulled out of this year's NRA convention. Its display replaced with a popcorn stand. The company says: We are deeply saddened by the tragic events. We will cooperate with all federal state and local law enforcement authorities in their investigations.

That pledge may be tested.

[19:20:00]

Congress is asking Daniel for details about how he operates, noting: Your company continues to manufacture large quantities of assault weapons and aggressively market them to the public. The deadly impact of your products is by design.

While the company keeps leaning on its message of freedom, shooting sports, and growth.

DANIEL: It's the way that we do business. It's the way that we pay attention to every detail. It's the quality that we put into every product.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN (on camera): We asked Daniel Defense for any further comment, we are still waiting on anything more from them.

Worth noting though, that letter from Congress says that they found weapons from Daniel Defense in the room with the shooter in Las Vegas a few years ago, when all of those people were killed at the concert. That is the kind of spotlight that even companies like this create attention, may not like moving forward.

HARLOW: Tom Foreman, thank you for that really important reporting tonight.

Let me bring in Ed Scruggs, a Texas-based gun control advocate, who at Governor Greg Abbott's request was a member of two task forces following the mass shootings in Texas in 2018, and 2019.

Ed, thank you for being with me tonight.

ED SCRUGGS, FORMER BOARD PRESIDENT, TEXAS GUN SENSE: Thank you so much for having me.

HARLOW: Both of those efforts, ended up in resulting in nothing, no meaningful gun reforms were passed in Texas after those mass shootings in 2018 and 2019. And you say despite this horrific massacre, in Uvalde, at the elementary school, you don't think anything will change. Why?

SCRUGGS: It's unlikely. Believe me, working in this field for so long, it hurts my hearts to say it. But through my experience, in 2018 and 2019, you know, before you ever step into the ring with somebody, you need to be very clear-eyed about your opponents.

And I learned that our state leaders, at least, realize the danger that is out there, the threat to public safety. But they are not going to buck, their base, which is becoming more and more radicalized with each day. In these meetings, the governor started them by being open to a red

flag law, some laws regarding the reporting is stolen firearms, stronger storage laws, which was a good start. And he ended up abandoning all of his proposals when the legislative session started. So, that just gives you an idea.

HARLOW: Our viewers are looking a video of you sitting right next to Governor Abbott, this is May of 2013.

SCRUGGS: Yes.

HARLOW: And you talked about that moment, saying that in 2018, you are surprised. You are also welcomed that he seemed very receptive, especially the red flag laws, you brought them up. He said, look, this passed in Indiana, he said, well, I'm paraphrasing. Passed in a red state, you know, there should be likelihood that it could do well here.

And then -- and then that completely, completely changed. But he did say this week, Governor Abbott, the status quo is honest unacceptable. You had no faith in that.

SCRUGGS: Well, you have to -- you have to parse the words, and read between the lines. He says that the status quo is unacceptable, but what does that mean? I've also heard him say that all of the laws passed in 2019 will be revisited, well, that wasn't very much.

I think -- I was impressed in my initial meetings with him. His breadth of knowledge and understanding of the issue is very deep. He knew it a red flag law was, he knew with the current regulations, where and that was a good start. So, then when he abandoned the proposals, and ran away from it, the first time. I can say, hey, I know there is political pressure, but there was no excuse for the second time not doing anything.

And he and other state leaders, including our lieutenant governor, made clear signals that they knew the dangers that were out there, and that were posed by this.

Our lieutenant governor said that he would take an arrow to the heart to oppose the NRA, to pass extended background checks -- well, what happen to that? Nothing. And the people of Texas, and the people of this nation need to realize, that that is where we are, they ran from their proposals because they are afraid of a base that will not bend.

So, that's why we need to be very realistic about the prospect of talks here, as long as they stay in power, as long as Congress stays the way it is, the state legislation stays the way that it is, it is going to get worse. Prepare yourselves for that.

So, we just -- that does not mean that we give up, we just have to recommit as individuals, and find new ways to continue the fight.

HARLOW: Ed, you need those voices with the seat at the table, as you had.

Ed Scruggs, we will watch. Thank you very much for your time tonight.

SCRUGGS: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

HARLOW: Of course.

OUTFRONT next, a key city in Eastern Ukraine maybe about to fall, as the last people there live in terror.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

[19:25:02]

HARLOW: And the U.S. scrambling as it falls behind in a world -- behind the world really in developing hypersonic weapons, which Russia is already using to attack Ukraine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: A significant development tonight. The E.U. agreeing to ban more than two thirds of all oil imports from Russia, just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed E.U. -- urged, rather, E.U. nations to enact an oil embargo so that Russia pays a higher price of its invasion. He slammed the EU for not yet hitting Russia with a sixth round of sanctions. This as Russia may be on the verge of seizing control of a key city in Eastern Ukraine.

Nick Paton Walsh is OUTFRONT.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR (voice-over): This is the last road into Lysychansk. Putin's forces have moved with rare focus here, and they soon encircle the pockets of two cities on the river were driving into.

Ukrainian forces we saw here, mobile, tense, at times, edgy. And this is why -- across the river here, the besieged city of Severodonetsk, increasingly more in Russian hands, whoever you ask.

[19:30:07]

We can hear the crackle of gunfire down towards the river below.

What we were told, the Russians have tried already to get into town, and it looks like we might be witnessing another attempt over there. That smoke near one of the remaining bridges into the city.

Our police escorts shout "drone" often used to direct artillery attacks. We are on high ground, exposed and scattered.

It is a tale of two desperations here, that which makes people stay, and that which makes them finally flee.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated): We've not slept for three months.

WALSH: Leonid is the latter. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated): Shooting. Windows shaking. It's a

catastrophe. One man told me the Germans in the war were better.

WALSH: Some who stay are increasingly angry about what's left of the Ukrainian state here. A young woman was killed here, a day earlier, by a shell. And locals told us not to film, saying cameras attracted shelling.

Russia's bloody persistence and unbridled firepower is bringing the kind of victory in the ruins they seem to cherish. This cinema was a bomb shelter, local officials said. It's unclear if, when the huge airstrike hits, the Russian military was aware it had been empty days earlier.

Just startling how whole chunks of this cinema have been thrown into the crater there. Just the ferocity of the airstrikes we're seeing here, designed, simply, to get people out of this town. Those who stay among the sides of glass feel abandoned already.

ANYA, LYSYCHANSKI RESIDENT (through translator): Many, many people, but there is no gas or water, or power, or anything. We asked the aid workers today when it will all come back, and they say there are only prostitutes, junkies, and alcoholics left. That means the aid workers have left.

WALSH: Lydia is carefully picking up the pieces of the air strike, which she felt the full force in her apartment, eight floors up.

There's an old lady on the first floor and me, with my disabled son, she says. He doesn't really understand the war is happening. Retreat lingers in the empty air. If Putin takes here, he may claim he might have achieved some of his reduced goals in this invasion. It's the unenviable choice of Ukraine's leaders if this is the hill it's men and women will die on.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (on camera): Poppy, I think the small, awful victories that Putin may be trying to achieve by storming towns like Severodonetsk and Lysychansk may be part of his strategy to try and foment the idea that his war is getting some kind of success finally.

At the same time, he seems to be waiting, too, for Western allies to get more concerned about their own economies, the impact of sanctions on gas supplies and maybe exploit the cracks between that alliance.

None of this, though, reduces the daily horror for Ukrainian civilians -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Yeah. Nick Paton Walsh with remarkable reporting -- Nick, thank you.

OUTFRONT now, retired Army brigadier, General Mark Kimmitt. He was the assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs under President George W. Bush.

General Kimmitt, thank you very much.

And just responding to Nick's reporting that you just saw there. I mean, how significant would gaining control of Severodonetsk actually be for Putin?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, I think Nick is exactly right. These are small victories. They are not significant strategic victories. Putin would get a little more of Luhansk, but he still has the entire area of Donetsk that he would take back. So this is more for propaganda than it is for significant military gains.

HARLOW: Let me ask you about something that seems quite significant that President Biden said and made clear, that there are limits to the type of support U.S. is willing to send to Ukraine. Listen to him and this reporter's question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Are you going to -- are you going to send long-range rocket systems to Ukraine?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that can strike into Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: You commanded units with these types of rockets. Why are they so important, and is President Biden right to rule this out? Is that the prudent decision right now?

KIMMITT: Well, if we bring these rocket systems and, we basically are doubling the range of the current artillery that we've already sent in.

[19:35:07]

And if we send our most advanced rockets, that would take it from about 25 miles range to 200 miles range. And candidly, the rocket would have a warhead about five times the size of the artillery.

Now, unfortunately, it has been said that we're giving the Ukrainians just enough to fight, but not enough to win, but the Russians have made it very clear that this would, quote, cross a red line. And it may very well be that the president is concerned about keeping this remarkable NATO unity together. So he may be holding back, at least at the longest range rockets that these can fire. But they could very well be providing the systems with a shorter range fires.

HARLOW: Understood. General Kimmitt, thank you very much for your time tonight, and of course for your service to this country.

And on this Memorial Day, President Biden spoke about wars and those who fight them. In his speech today at Arlington National Cemetery, he called this a day of pain and a day of pride for so many who are living without family members who died in their service to this country. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Democracy is not perfect. It's never been good -- perfect. But it's worth fighting for; if necessary, worth dying for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: President Biden says democracy is the soul of America. A gift, quote, made wholly by those who we've lost along the way.

OUTFRONT next, Russia is bragging about testing and using weapons that can travel more than five times the speed of sound. The United States isn't there yet. Why?

And the January 6 community backs down from a key legal challenge. Does it signal a weakness in their investigation?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:40:53]

HARLOW: Well, Russia says it has successfully launched a hypersonic missile that traveled over 600 miles. Video released by the Russian Ministry of Defense reportedly shows the launch of the cruise missile from the Bering Sea. This as the U.S. struggles to catch up to that technology that Russia has already deployed on the battlefield.

Kristin Fisher is OUTFRONT.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS COMBS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, SAN ANTONIO: This is where all the magic happens. This is where the converging nozzle. Without this, you don't have a hypersonic wind tunnel.

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Chris Combs runs the hypersonics lab at the University of Texas, San Antonio, home to a new state of the art mach seven wind tunnel, a key tool in helping the U.S. catch up to China and Russia in developing weapons that travel more than 5 times the speed of sound.

Hypersonic missiles and aircraft could be the future of warfare because their speeds and maneuverability make them extremely difficult to defend against.

COMBS: There were one of only about five in U.S. academia that can do mach 7 plus.

FISHER: And there's only a handful of government-run industrial grade hypersonic wind tunnels in the U.S.

In fact, during a meeting with a defense secretary in February, two people in the room told CNN that CEOs of America's largest defense contractors describe the scarcity of wind tunnels as a choke point in testing. COMBS: For the big wind tunnel facilities, it can be one, two year

wait time right in you to schedule things out. I'd say six months would be pretty fast.

FISHER: A critical delay as the U.S. is still in the early stages of its hypersonics program with the air force successfully testing Lockheed Martin's missile called Arrow last week after three failures.

But Russia isn't just testing these weapons. It just became the first country to ever actually use hypersonic weapons in war, using them at least 10 times in Ukraine, according to the Pentagon.

BIDEN: It's a consequential weapon.

FISHER: And China successfully tested a hypersonic weapon that orbited the globe last year.

DR. MARK LEWIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NDIA EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES INSTITUTE: At one point, the Chinese were building their wind tunnels as quickly as we were decommissioning wind tunnels.

FISHER: Mark Lewis, a former top Pentagon official working on hypersonic estimates Beijing is building a new hypersonic wind tunnel every six months.

LEWIS: We really need our test infrastructure, our wind tunnels, in order to be able to advance in this field and frankly, we've allowed that capability to atrophy over the past few years.

FISHER: This tunnel in Texas is only eight inches wide and took about three years to build. The biggest hypersonic wind tunnels are eight feet wide and would take about five to ten years to build, according to Combs.

COMBS: You're not putting a full-sized airplane test vehicle in any of these facilities. There's nobody in the world that's testing in a 20 foot hypersonic wind tunnel, right? That type of technology just doesn't exist. It's simply too much air.

FISHER: So instead, they test small 3D printed models. These are the ones that are unclassified.

These are the models that you can show us. How many models do you have that you can't show you say?

COMBS: Well, I can't tell you that. This is the type of thing we can have in our wind tunnel when CNN is here.

FISHER: In terms of how long it would take to catch up, this hypersonic wind tunnel took about three years to build but the big ones could take anywhere from five to ten years and China is building a new one almost every six months.

Kristin Fisher, CNN, at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

(END VIDEOTAPE) HARLOW: OUTFRONT next, major concession from the January 6th committee as public hearings are about to begin. Why are they backing down now?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:48:32]

HARLOW: January 6th committee backing down from one of its biggest fights just before its first public hearing, this fight over access to the RNC's email marketing data. But the committee revealing in a new court filing that it wants to delay legal arguments until later this summer.

Ryan Nobles is OUTFRONT.

Ryan, good evening. Why, what -- why? What do we know about why the committee is backing down on this request at least for right now?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's an issue of timing, Poppy. They just do not have enough time to continue this legal battle and then, if they were to win this legal battle, get all that information and then process it in a timely manner which would allow them to use them in their upcoming hearings which are going to take place in the month of June. So, it's just an issue of resource and dividing and conquering with the investigative staff that they have. They just don't have time to deal with this right now so they'd rather wait until after their hearings and later in the summer.

You know, this is a tactic by many Republicans and Trump allies who have been fighting legal challenges with the January 6th committee just trying to run out the clock because they know the committee is basically going to be done by September. So, the more legal hurdles they throw in the way, the tougher it is for the committee to do their job.

HARLOW: Sure, a lot of lawyers working overtime on that. This comes as former President Trump wraps up attacks on the committee's vice chair, Liz Cheney. Here's some of what we heard from him at a weekend in Wyoming for Cheney's GOP primary rival.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: There is no RINO in America who is thrown in her lot with the radical left more than Liz Cheney.

[19:50:07]

True. Terrible.

(BOOS)

She has gone crazy. With Liz Cheney support, the un-select committee has turned the United States House of Representatives into an instrument of political torment and repression.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: The message from the former president is clear. I just wonder what your reporting is on what Cheney feels about this issue. Is she worried that it's hurting her?

NOBLES: Well, she is embracing it, Poppy. She formally launched her campaign last week. Her introductory video talked at length about she believes the most existential threat to the United States right now is this threat to democracy of which she views Donald Trump as the biggest potential problem in that space and what is so interesting about this race in particular, in Wyoming is it will be a true referendum on whether or not the future of the Republican Party is at its core just about the big lie, because what Donald Trump has been forcing many Republican candidates to do is embrace that in exchange for his endorsement.

In places like Georgia, Brian Kemp rejected that but didn't go out of his way to attack Trump. He tried to run a separate race. In this race, Cheney is running against Trump and specifically, against the big lie. That's why this would be so interesting to see how Republican voters respond.

HARLOW: And absolutely will.

Ryan, thanks so much for your reporting tonight.

NOBLES: Thank you.

HARLOW: OUTFRONT next, she was a trailblazer in the kitchen, so far beyond. We're going to preview "Julia" which premiers tonight on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:55:32]

HARLOW: Well, Julia Child has been inspiring millions to take risks and try new things in the kitchen for decades. Now the new CNN film, "Julia" tells the story of the pioneer chef that changed the way Americans think about food, television and women.

Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People could relate to her. I learn how to cook at my age and you can learn at your age to cook as well.

JULIA CHILD, TV CHEF: Cooking is, well, lots of it, one failure after another, and that's how you finally learn. Now, just like that.

It's very nice to know that you can make all these goodies yourself. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She opened doors for me as a person that I could

cook.

CHILD: We're making the stew of stews!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We would Julia's show with my grandmother and then grandpa would go buy the ingredients and we would cook that meal. She just seemed so unpretentious that you thought if she could do it, you could do it. We all grabbed on to Julia and we began cooking her things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Well, I'm so happy to bring out now, Julie Cohen, one of the directors of Julia which premiers on CNN in just a few minutes.

Julie, Julia Child is fascinating for so many reasons, so beloved since the days of black and white television. I just wonder what it is about her that made you want to tell this story.

JULIE COHEN, DIRECTOR, "JULIA": Well, you know, we had told the story of Justice Ginsburg, "RBG". We were looking for someone who changed America in a very different way. And Julia really did. She's actually a deceptively important figure. She changed our whole culture.

HARLOW: She famously never considered herself a feminist but there's no question she was a trail blazer. What did she mean to so many?

COHEN: You know, she meant so much to women who could look at what she was doing on television. At her age, by the way, Julia Child wasn't a TV figure at all until she was already 50 years old.

HARLOW: Right.

COHEN: And people really saw her as someone that they could learn a lot from about cooking but also just about the pleasures of food and of wine, and the idea that she came on TV at the time in the early '60s, the idea that a women on television would teach you something was pretty new. Like women were just supposed to be window dressing.

HARLOW: Imagine that.

She is one of my earliest memories in my life, is that -- I mean, she really is. She was really just sort of in our household. My mother was such a great cook and I learned so much from her. I cannot wait to see the film.

Very quickly, biggest surprise, as you learn more about her story.

COHEN: A love story that's not only romantic and beautiful but downright sexy. We took in to calling Julia's pear and almond tart "sexy pear tart". And when you see the film, I think you're going to know why.

HARLOW: Can't wait to see it and everybody is about to see it right here on CNN. Julie, congratulations to you and Betsy, to the whole film on this

film very, very much. They tell me I have an extra 30 seconds. So how different was this for you, though, than telling the RBG story?

COHEN: It was a whole different story. A whole like culinary delight's galore and if people have a few more seconds before the film starts, I would urge strongly to run to your refrigerator, if you don't have a salad like I do, like I know what's in the movie. Just grab whatever's there because trust me in a few minutes, you're going to be very hungry.

HARLOW: And some good wine as well. Tonight is not the night to diet. You can start that in the morning. Congratulations.

COHEN: Absolutely.

HARLOW: Congratulations to you and the team. We can't wait to see it and we're so happy to have it premiering tonight right here on CNN.

Thank you again, and now, you're off the hook. Go enjoy the film.

COHEN: Thanks, Poppy. Bon appetit.

HARLOW: Oh, bon appetit to everyone.

Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Don't forget, you can watch OUTFRONT anytime, anywhere on CNN Go.

The CNN film "JULIA" begins right now.