Trump Blames DEI for the Crash

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Cooner country. Okay, my friends, what a press
conference yesterday, Holy shumoli. As you know, it is the
biggest story in the country, in many ways, the biggest
story in the world United forgive me. American Airlines from

(00:23):
which of taw Kansas on its way to Reagan National Airport,
and here is now the absolute latest that we know.
Was on a standard flight glide path to land at
Reagan National. Sixty passengers were on board, plus four crew members,

(00:44):
sixty four in total. Inexplicably, it then collided with a
black Hawk helicopter on an annual military training mission. There
were three crew members on the black Hawk. They never
stood a chance. It now appears pretty convincingly that the

(01:09):
black Hawk inadvertently wandered onto the flight path of the
American Airlines and then boom. There was a massive mid
air collision several hundred feet above the Potomac River. It
was a huge fireball, and then both of the helicopter

(01:32):
and the plane then obviously fell into the Potomac. Initially,
there were reports that there were three or four survivors
that turned out to be false. All sixty seven are dead,
all of them. They have recovered about thirty bodies, dead bodies.

(01:52):
They're still trying to recover more dead bodies. And the
question now is what went wrong? What went wrong, and
what is now becoming very obvious, is that one thing
in particular went wrong. And I want to stress this,

(02:15):
this is very important. What we're now being told is
that the flight crew of American Airlines was a fairly
or well experienced flight crew. The Blackhawk helicopter crew was
also a fairly experienced crew. So it wasn't lack of

(02:36):
experience on the part of the pilots. What is inexplicable,
And this is what President Trump, to his credit, addressed
yesterday forcefully aggressively, and to be honest with you, maybe
even a little too aggressively. Okay, and I'm gonna get
to this in a second, But overall, I thought his

(02:58):
larger point was comprove correct, completely correct. Why was the
helicopter at the same altitude, at the same elevation as
the plane. That is what is inexcusable. As Trump rightly said,

(03:21):
he goes, Look, I've been taking planes my whole life.
I fly on a private plane. I'm always in the sky. Yes,
you will see planes a little bit below you. You
will see planes a little bit above you. Now it's
a bit you know, it's a bit unnerving, it's nerve wracking.
But the reason why that is is in case there's

(03:42):
a miscommunication and you're told to go left when you're
supposed to go right, or you go right when you're
supposed to go left, there's going to be no collision
in the air. But instead they were both at the
same out and now we know pretty much exactly what happened.

(04:05):
There was a third plane and if you look at
the video, it's clear just slightly above the helicopter, and
so the air traffic controller. And by the way, we've
also now found out there were supposed to be two
air traffic controllers in the air tower. It turned out

(04:29):
there was only one, only one, and so one individual.
To me, this is unthinkable, Honestly. I know. Technically, according
to FAA guidelines, you can have one and you can
combine monitoring both helicopter traffic and plane traffic. I get it,

(04:50):
but I'm sorry. The usual protocol, as many pilots have
been telling me, and as air traffic controllers have been
telling me, is no, Jeff, you want one person with
a set of eyes on the planes. And another person
with their set of eyes on the helicopters. Duh, well
not that night. That night there was only one, not two,

(05:14):
and that person had a tremendous responsibility monitoring both air traffic,
I mean plane traffic forgive me, and helicopter traffic. And
then the air traffic controller just before the accident, before
the collision radios the helicopter pilot and says do you

(05:38):
have a visual on the CRJ which was the plane,
and the helicopter pilot radio's back. I have a visual.
I have a visual, meaning I see it. I see it.
But it now appears what that pilot was looking at
was the plane above, not the American Airlines ride in

(06:04):
his path. And then kaboom, kaboom. They never stood a chance.
And so as I said on X, and this now
bears repeating, and this is what was Trump's point. This collision,

(06:26):
this tragedy, this horrific crash, was completely one hundred percent preventable,
and it was fundamentally due to incompetence and human error.

(06:49):
And for saying this, Trump is being wreaked over the coals.
He is being utterly a The media is on the
wall path and there's a you're blaming d I. You're
blaming d I. How dare you blame diversity equity inclosure?

(07:10):
How dare you caged? And by the way, what is
most disgusting. We had a call yesterday, you remember Mark
from Medford. It was about oh, give or take a
twenty eight twenty five in the morning, and he said, Jeff,
how long do you think before the media starts blaming Trump?

(07:30):
And I was naive. Jerry, even the quarterman now is naive.
I said, ah, I give him three hours? What three hours?
Within another fifteen minutes, By eight thirty eight forty, they
were still pulling the bodies out of the Potomac. You
still had people submerged under the water. CNN blaming Trump,

(07:54):
Democrats blaming Trump, Liberals blaming Trump. You're blaming Trump. When
the air traffic controller, and this is to me what
is unforgivable. The air traffic controller never directed the pilot

(08:18):
to the proper altitude. As I said on X yesterday,
and I want to repeat this, The job of the
air traffic controller is not to just ask the pilot
do you have a visual i e. Do you see
there's a plane ooh about ten seconds away from smashing

(08:40):
into you. You don't ask the pilot if they have
a visual. That's too passive. That's true. I'm sorry, that's incompetence.
You're the air traffic controller. You gotta take control of
the situation. You gotta say, hey, you're right on the
flight path, elevation, altitude. I need you to go here, here, now,

(09:05):
go here here now. That never happened. That never happened.
And now those three pilots are dead. Sixty four of
the passengers on the American airlines are dead, including, by

(09:27):
the way, fourteen members of the US skating community. Six
of them, my friends, were our own right here in Massachusetts,
the Skating Club of Boston. I had to make it
even a little bit more personal for the cooner man.
Six of them live a couple towns over from where

(09:49):
I live in Norwood. Two coaches, two skaters, teenagers, teenagers
and their mothers. Because of air traffic controller negligence, incompetence

(10:13):
and error. And you're blaming Trump. What is he now? Really?
What is he?

Speaker 2 (10:21):
God?

Speaker 1 (10:21):
He's got to fly the planes, he's got to fly
the helicopters, he's got to run the air traffic control tower.
Now listen now, to President Trump, I thought he was presidential.
The country needed reassurance. They needed to know are the

(10:43):
sky safe? Can we trust to ever fly again? Will
we clean up the mess? And it is a mess
at the FAA. Listen now to Trump at his press
conference speaking to the entire country about that horrible, terrible
crash that took place right near Reagan National Airport. Roll

(11:08):
cut forty nine, Mike.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
I speak to you this morning in an hour of
anguish for a nation. Just before nine pm last night
in American Airlines, regional jet carrying sixty passengers and four
crew collided with an Army black Hawk helicopter carrying three
military service members over the Potomac River in Washington, DC

(11:33):
while on final approach to Reagan National Airport. Both aircraft
crashed instantly and were immediately submerged into the icy waters
of the Potomac.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
Real tragedy.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
And then he said, this is going to be a
dark night that is going to haunt this country for
years to come, and that he is not going to
forget what happened, and he's going to make sure that
this never happens again. Roll cut forty nine, b Mike.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation's capital,
then in our nation's history, and a tragedy of terrible proportions.
As one nation, we grieve for every precious soul that
has been taken from us so suddenly, and we are
a country of.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
Really we are in mourning.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Is this really shaking a lot of people, including people
very sadly from other nations who were on the flight.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Now, Trump then told the country, look, we're on top
of it. He brought in Pete Buddhagig sorry, Pete, Hegseth,
forgive me. He then brought in obviously JD. Vance and others.
Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, was working all night, working
the phones, coordinating the response, the recovery, the rescue operations, saying,

(13:03):
we are going to make sure that the FAA now
returns to the highest standards, both in terms of pilots
a cruise and especially when it comes to air traffic controllers.
Now listen to President Trump because he's a thousand percent

(13:23):
correct on this, saying what I want answered and what
needs to be answered, is this roll cut fifty one, Mike.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
So we also are the same thing. We've seen it
many times.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
I've had the honor of hearing tapes types are scary,
very scary tapes. You had a airliner coming in American Airlines.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
He was doing everything right, he was on track.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
He was the same track as everybody else they came in.
It's probably the track as they've had for twenty five
years or more. He's coming in the path, and for
some reason, he had a helicopter that was at the
same height obviously when they hit, but pretty much the
same height and going at an angle that was unbelievably bad.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
How did that happen? I'm sorry, but this is inexcusable.
How did that happen? And so Trump is then asking, well,
we got some audio. We have the air traffic controller
telling the pilot of the war of the black Hawk.
Do you see the plane? Do you see the plane?

(14:45):
And Trump's like, what do you mean do you see
the plane? Your job is to direct the pilot, to
direct the helicopter.

Speaker 5 (14:55):
You don't just.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Leave it in the hands of the pilot. Be so possive. Hey,
there's a plane or right there, Oh, it's about ten
seconds away. It's gonna smack you the smithereens Do.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
You see it?

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Roll caught fifty one a mike.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
When the air traffic controller said do you see you
know he's talking about do you see him? But there
was very little time left when that was stated. And
then also he said follow him in. And then almost
immediately after that, you know, seconds after.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
That, there was the crash that took place. Well you
follow him in. That means like everything's fine, follow him in.
He had a pilot problem.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
From the standpoint of the helipcopter, I mean, because it
was visual.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
It was a very clear night. It was cold, but
clear and clear as you could be.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
The American Airlines plane had lights blazing, they had all
their landing lights on.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
How does this happen? Now? This is where things got
then crazy, and they've continued to be crazy ever since.
This is where it's all blown up. Now. Trump then,
and this is very important, please all of you, you
need to understand this. Trump then read from the FAA,

(16:25):
the Federal Aviation Administration's own website. Okay, their own website
in which under Obama, which then Trump rescinded and then
restored under Biden. And it's on their own website that
they are actively now recruiting people with quote unquote severe

(16:52):
intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. I'm not kidding people who have
all kinds of psychiatric problems, intellectual disabilities. You run down
the epilepsy. Nothing against Look, please, people are epileptic. It's
not your fault. But my god, what if you have

(17:13):
a seizure flying a plane. What if you have a
seizure and you're running air traffic control? This is who
under Pete Budagig, the worst transportation secretary we ever had
in our country's history, and under Joe Biden, this is
what you are trying to staff your FAA pilots and

(17:34):
air traffic controllers with in the name of divercity and equity,
an inclusion. Listen now to Trump, how much how much
time left? Okay, I'm gonna play it on the other side. Now,
please remember when I play this, the media is acting.

(17:58):
They're lying, they're saying, oh Trump, just you know, it
was like stream of consciousness. He was just making it up. No,
he was reading from the FAA's own website. And it
was updated in March of twenty twenty two. Okay, very quickly,

(18:19):
because the lines are jammed, so I want to go
to the phone lines. But Trump now made it clear
yesterday in his press conference that he thinks DEI played
a part in what happened, a role in what happened,
and he obviously took a blowtorch to Pete Bootagege and

(18:41):
his disastrous leadership at the Secretary of Transportation and especially
over the Federal Aviation Administration and Biden and how they
hired so many people for the sake of diversity while
lowering standards across the board. Listen now to and again,
I want to reiterate this. He's reading this from the

(19:05):
FAA's own website, which they updated in March of twenty
twenty two. Bodhaig Budhajig was then the Transportation Secretary, and
of course Dementia Joe was the president, So this is
their FAA. I want you to listen now to what

(19:27):
they were aggressively trying to recruit and hire across the
entire Federal Aviation Administration. Honestly, it's shocking. It truly is shocking.
We're not talking DEI in terms of race or gender.
We're talking now DEI intellectual disability and psychiatric problems. Roll cut, Mike,

(19:56):
roll cut sixty nine. Please.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
I do want to point out that various articles that
appeared prior to my entering office.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
And here's one.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with
severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing, And there
says FAA says people with severe disabilities the most underrepresented
segment of the workforce, and they want them in and
they want them.

Speaker 4 (20:32):
They can be air traffic controllers. I don't think so.
This was.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
In January fourteenth, so that was a week before I
entered office.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
They put a.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Big push to put diversity.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
Into the FAA's program.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
So there you go, I mean, there you go. Now,
he elaborated, Okay, because you tell this is why I've
been saying. And you know, Dave, our Western PA correspondent
in Pennsylvania, said, Jeff, please please please please mention this
dei equals die d ie. When you're talking about people's

(21:11):
lives on planes, on trains, in ships, or police or firefighters,
or doctors or surgeons or nurses, or I could go
on and on. You don't start playing with these sort
of ridiculous quotas. Do you care what gender your pilot is,

(21:39):
Do you care what race your pilot is? Do you
care what sexual orientation your pilot is I just want
the best person for the job period. I want color blind,
I want gender blind, I want merit based hiring. Period.

(21:59):
The people score the highest on the tests, who have
the highest mental, psychological, emotional, physical abilities to do the job.
These people are trying to recruit again, nothing wrong. Well,
epilepsy is Look, people suffer from all kinds of things.
But you can't have somebody who's epileptic being a pilot

(22:21):
of a plane. You're insane, or being an air traffic controller.
Why because they get seizures and what happens if it
happens on the job as an example, or there are
some people. Look, he's right. To be an air traffic
controller is a very high stress, high performance job. As

(22:45):
he puts it, you're playing three D chests in the air.
There's forty fifty sixty planes coming in at once at
whatever within a ten to fifteen minute period. You need someone,
as he put it, with a lot of IQ with
high brain power. This is you know, we're not talking
about some twenty five thousand dollars a year paper pusher.

(23:08):
When you're talking you know, life and death. You put
nothing but the best. Listen, now, okay, this is him
Trump saying, look what they were actively trying to recruit
under BOODAGEIG and under Biden roll cut seventy Mike.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
You've committed that the FBI will not be politicized.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Seventy seventy Mike.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
Another article the Federal Aviation Administration.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
This was before.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
I got to office. Recently, second term. The FAA is
actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems,
and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and
inclusion hiring initiatives spelled out on the agency's website. Can

(24:01):
you imagine these are people that are I mean, actually
their lives are shortened because of the stress that they have.
Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their
lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the
stress where you have many, many planes coming into one target,

(24:23):
and you need a very special talent and a very
special genius to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
I mean, it's obvious. Oh yes, as he put it,
this is just common sense. Now. The media attacked him
right away, right away, saying, so you're blaming Democrats Di
and Biden for this, right where's your evidence? Where's your evidence. Well,

(24:52):
if you want evidence under Footaging, the FAA was a disaster.
As I pointed out X last night, Bootage, Ake and
Biden turned the FAA into a woke DEI disaster. Plane

(25:12):
parts were falling from the sky, remember Alaska Airlines. Literally
the door, the cockpit door just blew off, so you
had plane parts falling from the sky. I'm gonna read
to you a story not now later. Washington Times jan Sorry,
February first, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty four, a year ago.

(25:39):
Chronic shortage of air traffic controllers. Chronic shortage of air
traffic controllers. Why because they were hiring on race and
so they had tons of qualified white males who, by
the way, scored one hundred percent on the tests, were

(26:02):
the most qualified by far candidates, but they were rejected
for job after job as air traffic controllers, job after
job after job after job, because they were obsessed with
race and gender based quotas. You want to know why

(26:24):
there weren't two people in that room at the air
at that air traffic control tower, because there was a
chronic shortage of air traffic controllers under boota jig under Biden,
because they didn't want to hire based on merit. You
have technology that they're using dating to the nineteen eighties.

(26:48):
That's how much they screwed things up under Biden and Botajig.
And remember Bootajig himself was the ultimate DEI hire, the
ultimate d I hire. Why was he hired to be
Transportation secretary? Because he was gay?

Speaker 2 (27:08):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
You remember that famous picture of him, what is it?
They had the him and his partner that they they
adopted a couple of kids, a couple of babies, do
you remember that? And he had this like plastic chest
feeder that you know, like it looks like two female
breasts and it's made of plastic, and he puts it
over his you know, his chest, and he's feeding the baby,

(27:33):
you know, through the one of the the artificial nipples. Okay,
the the the chest feeder. So that's what he was
doing while he was supposed to be Transportation secretary. This
is all at the feet of buddhage Ake and Biden.

(27:54):
Now the only thing that I fault Trump for Otherwise
I thought his press conference was bad. On I thought
it was a brave, strong, frankly reassuring press conference. Clearly
on DEI on the larger point, he's completely right, not
one hundred one thousand percent correct, where I do fault Trump,

(28:16):
and I don't want to seem like I'm nitpicking, but
I did cringe when he said, specifically at one point
that DEI was to blame or play the key role
in this particular collision. Now, maybe he knows something we don't, Okay,
I'll grant that, but I'm like, well, we don't know that.

(28:38):
We don't know that the helicopter pilots were DEI hires.
In fact, it looks like they weren't. And that air
traffic controller we don't know if that air traffic controller
was a DEI higher. We don't know that. So he
kind of, I thought, jumped the gun a little bit
and potentially opened himself up to criticism. Six one seven

(29:02):
two six six sixty eight sixty eight is the number. Okay,
So just a quick clarification because many of you are
reacting to what the Kooner man just said before the break. Uh.
And this is from Rob as an example on Messenger,
and he's upset and I don't blame him, you know, Jeff,
where's your evidence? It's freaking floating in the Potomac. And

(29:26):
I mean, yes, you know, and I'm Rob is right.
I mean, that's evidence of incompetence. There's no question. He's
completely right. There was gross incompetence, gross human error. This
was completely preventable, one thousand percent. My only point is

(29:46):
we don't For example, we now know that the lead
pilot on the black Hawk helicopter was a white male,
an experienced white male, so that wasn't a DEI hire.
Now as for the air traffic controller, we don't know
if the air traffic controller was a DEI higher. I'm
not trying to nitpick. I'm just saying, look, for clarity's sake,

(30:10):
I think what Trump should have done, He could have
done this. That's what I meant when I said maybe
a little bit too aggressive. Yes, say, look, we got
a problem across the bureaucracy, we got a problem across
the FAA. We got a problem with in our whole
transportation system because of Biden and Botagig. Now, and he
did say this to be fair, He says, well, look,

(30:31):
we don't yet know the exact cause of the collision.
We don't know specifically what made the air traffic controller
make the decision that that person made. So he did say, look,
you know, on this particular case, we don't know if
it was DEI, this specific one, so he did, you know,

(30:55):
put in some caveats. But the impression he gave was that, well,
this was caused by DEI. And I'm like, well, we
don't know that now. Maybe it's true now. And this
is why you're saying, well, Jeff, why are you parsing hairs,
because what the Washington Times article states is that there's

(31:16):
a chron three thousand, three thousand white male air traffic
controllers were deliberately not hired under Biden and Bootagig because
they wanted to hit these race, gender based quotas. So
the problem is, but you know, they tried to lower standards,

(31:36):
but there's still a chronic shortage. So there were not
enough air traffic controllers across the country. That's why at
Reagan National there should have been two in the tower,
there was only one in the tower. And what the
Washington Times article also points out, and this is to

(31:58):
me again unforgivable, is because of this obsession over DEI,
and they were not hiring qualified white men who were
acing the tests and getting one hundred out of one
hundred on all the attributes needed to you know, to
be an air traffic controller. Is that then the current

(32:19):
crew of air traffic controllers are working much longer hours,
in fact, mandatory longer shifts over time weekends. They were
complaining of burnout and overwork. And that's another point that
Trump was making yesterday. So what I'm saying is the

(32:40):
air traffic controller, you know, having to monitor both helicopter
and air traffic, okay, and plane traffic, and god knows,
maybe overworked, exhausted. It may not be that the person
is a DEI higher. It just may be that that
person was so run down and so overwhelmed with responsibilities

(33:05):
that a mistake was inevitable. And this is my larger point.
For years, for years, under Biden Budagiic, for years, there
was whistle blower after whistleblower after whistleblower that came out
and said, you don't know how many near misses there
have been, not just at Reagan but at some of

(33:28):
our biggest airports in the country. We don't have enough
air traffic controllers, and that they're overworked, and that they're
working ridiculous long hours, they're exhausted, they're doing overtime after overtime,
after overtime, and that the technology is thirty forty years

(33:51):
old here, how could you not have sensors? To me,
it's my car has a sensor that if I'm about
to get into an accident or anything close, it starts
warning me like crazy, and then the brakes will even lok.
We don't even have basic technology upgrades. Why because of Buddhageigg.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
And Biden.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
And so you at air traffic controller after air traffic
controller warning us saying there's gonna be a massive accident.
It's not a question of if, it's a question of
when there are just too many near misses. And finally, yesterday,
you keep playing, as I said on another show when

(34:39):
I did a radio interview, I said, you keep playing
Russian roulette, Someone's eventually gonna die. And that's what happened yesterday.
So my point is this Trump's been in office for
what ten days, He's the one trying to increase the
standards at the FAA. Who lowered the standards at the FAA, Bootajig,

(35:05):
who wouldn't modernize the technology system, Bootajig who made who
guaranteed that there was a chronic shortage of air traffic
controllers Botajig, who had playing parts falling from the sky botajig.
And that's what Trump was getting at yesterday. He goes,

(35:25):
he has such made such a mess that now we
got to clean up his dirty work. One more cut
that I want to go to the phone lines listen
to Trump saying, no one ran the FAA more badly
than he did. And now we've got the mother of
all collisions and crashes. Roll cut seventy one.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Mike, the FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buddhajegg
a real winner.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
And that's the guys that a real do you know badly?

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Everything's run since he's run this Department of Transportation, he's
a disaster. He was a disaster as a mayor. He
ran his city into the ground, and he's a disaster now.

Speaker 4 (36:13):
He's just got a good line of both.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
The Department of Transportation his government agency charged with regulating
civil aviation. Well, he runs it forty five thousand people
and he's run it right into the ground with his diversity.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
I agree with him. My god, if anyone owns this,
it's him, it's botajig. If anyone owns what happened Ultimately
it was the mistake I believe of the air traffic controller.
Maybe the pilot a little bit, but I think it
was the air traffic controller. There no way should they

(36:50):
have been at the same altitude. No way, that was innforgivable, unforgivable, unforgivable,
and then not being directed to another spot, another altitude immediately.
But you want to talk about the mess in the air,
the mess in air traffic control towers, the antiquated, dated

(37:10):
technology system. This is what happens when you put a
man who openly admitted that the only qualification he had
to be transportation secretary was that he proposed to his
lover at an airport, and so he finds planes and
airports romantic and sexy. This is what happens. Agree, disagree.

(37:33):
So let me ask you double barreled question number one.
Should the Federal Aviation Administration be trying to get people
with intellectual and psychological or psychiatric disabilities to be pilots,
to be air traffic controllers, and to work at some

(37:55):
of the most dangerous sensitive positions in the country. I
say it's in saying what say you? And number two
is Trump? Right? Did DEI play a role? Maybe even
a critical role in that tragic crash over the Potomac River.
Six one seven two six six sixty eight sixty eight

(38:18):
is the number John in Plymouth. Thanks for holding John,
and welcome, good morning. Thank you for taking my call,
my pleasure, John.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
My brother. I come from a long line of pilots.
My father was a pilot. I have two nephew dinner pilots.
My niece is training to be a pilot, and my
brother is a retired pilot from American Airlines of forty
plus years. We were talking about this the other day
and he said, sometimes it's difficult to see other aircraft

(38:54):
at night because the lights of the aircraft can easily
blend into the lights on the ground at the angle
just right. However, the helicopter stated that he had the RJ,
which means regional jet in sight. While the RJ was
much higher than him and descending, it only had the

(39:14):
sky as a background at that time. Obviously this was
the helicopter's fault. Twice he stated that he had it
in sight, and twice he was granted maintain visual separation.
That means he's responsible to avoid the RJ and not

(39:35):
rely on the controller to give him instructions on where
to turn, etc. He was instructed to pass behind the RJ,
but instead hit him from the forward right of the jet.
So horrible. If you're not sure you have the traffic
in sight, you just say negative contact. Then the controller

(39:58):
would tell him to turn immediately. He goes on to
say the fact the helicopter pilot requested visual separation relieves
the controller. However, he should have canceled the helicopter's visual
clearance when he saw the imminent collision unfolding. I can't

(40:21):
say he's one hundred percent that fault, though the helicopter
pilot is also complicit.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Oh yeah, I think you probably nailed it, John. I think,
in other words, there's blame, you know, on both. And
I think what complicated everything, John, and again you may
disagree with me, is that there was another plane in
the picture. And so I think there was a kind
of a bit of a miscommunication. I think I think
the pilot is looking at the plane above and say, no,

(40:49):
I got it, I got it, I got it. But
the air traffic controller is talking about the American Airlines
flight that's coming, you know, right on the glidepath. And
I think it was that communication mix up, that misunderstanding
that was I think the toxic cocktail, the combination that
led to what happened. Agree, disagree, I would agree.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
The other thing that comes into play here, I believe
the EI is involved because he said this particular control
tower was supposed to have be staffed with thirty people.
There was only nineteen. The other thing that comes into
play here is the controller was working. He was doing

(41:36):
the job of two controllers. Military aircraft is on a
separate frequency, so he had to keep switching back and
forth from the commercial jet to the military aircraft. Well,
it may not seem like a lot, but that's delay
and he's having to do both jobs of one person

(41:57):
or of two people.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
John, You're completely right, You're completely see. That to me
is what's inexcusable. That's why you know, people are very
upset at me. You're saying, well, how dare you know
go after Budajig. I'm sorry, but Trump has only been
president for ten days. You know, the guy, the guy's
not God. For four years, Bullagig and Biden laid waste,

(42:25):
laid siege to the FAA. And look, let me just
read to you here here, please, John, I don't I
want you, I want to get your your take on this. Okay,
here it is all right. Look this is the Washington Times,
my former paper. Look it up. February first, twoenty twenty four.

(42:50):
I'm just gonna read to you the headline, FAA turned
away qualified air traffic controllers based solely on race. Again,
this is a year ago, a year ago. Let me
just read to you the opening line quote, the disturbing

(43:11):
rise in near misses at our nation's airports is no accident.
And then it goes on to talk about this massive
class action lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration. Why because
they turned away They refused to hire three thousand perfectly

(43:32):
well qualified white males. These were all applications, super qualified,
but they were the wrong race and the wrong gender.
And so because of this, and by the way, the
FAA recorded this is in the article. This was just
in Uh, this is twenty twenty four. The FAA recorded

(43:56):
too serious near miss runway incursions at Reagan National and
Baltimore Washington International last year. It's basically in twenty twenty three.
So the article is saying, look, it's so bad that
we basically almost had a collision at Reagan National which

(44:18):
ended up happening unfortunately a couple days ago, and at
Baltimore Washington International. Now vigilance is waning. I'm reading straight
from the article. Vigilance is waning because the nation's air
traffic control towers, this goes to your point, are woefully understaffed.
The people responsible for keeping planes from smashing into one

(44:42):
another are tired after working long mandatory overtime shifts to
make up for the lack of controllers. And then why,
because they had this diversity initiative, they to put on
the brakes on hiring so they could then change the

(45:05):
rules so they could have people hired based on race,
based on gender, then unbelievably under Biden, based on intellectual
psychiatric disabilities, which is to me, which is to me insane.
And so anyway, so here it is more than three thousand, okay,

(45:32):
listen to this, now, more than three thousand, according to
the article, more than three thousand air traffic control top
performing motivated applicants lost out because they weren't members of
this ethnic clubs. So there you go. And then the

(45:56):
article literally ends with if we don't change this, we're
gonna have a collision or a crash, and people are
gonna die. And John almost right on cue. A year later,
we had what happened at Reagan National. Final word to you.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Jeff, this was so avoidable. And here to add to this,
We're lucky, and I don't say this lightly. We're lucky.
This has been the only crash in this particular area
because this is normal flight patterns for military Blackhawks. They

(46:36):
always cross and overlap incoming aircraft. We're lucky this is
the only one that's happened. This has got to stop.
They got to change these flight patterns. There's no reason
for a black Hawk to be flying in the path
of any commercial airliner or any overlapping of flight paths,

(46:58):
especially when you're coming in approach.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
It's unforgivable.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Nothing that jet could do. Nothing the jet could do.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Oh, I agree, No, I agree, I completely agree. John.
As always, thank you very much for that call. Okay,
we have not heard from him for a while. I
don't blame him, poor guy. He he guaranteed a Kamala
Harris Victory said it was one hundred percent to zero
she was going to win based on January sixth, because

(47:29):
that was the worst atrocity that committed on the United
States since the Civil War. So he's been silent for
a couple of months, but like Lazarus, he has now
risen from the dead. Bill in Sudbury, Bill, nice to
hear from you, my friend, and welcome.

Speaker 5 (47:50):
Good morning, good morning, good morning. I kind of agree
with the last point of that last call that maybe
we shouldn't be shuttling these guys back and forth by helicopter.
It's a ten minute cab from Reagan to the Pentagon.
Maybe they should drive and not fly back and forth
quite so frequently. I kind of think this is probably
something with that. But you don't get the implication of

(48:10):
what the president said yesterday. You don't see the pattern.
You say he's only been president for a week, yad,
but we watched him for four years, so we have
some sense of how he operates. And the unfortunate implication
of what he said yesterday is if a black woman
is unfortunately sitting in any of those chairs, well that's

(48:31):
the reason and we can all go home. That's the
implication of what he said. And that's what's totally shameful
about it. You should be decrying it. The fact that
you're smoothing it out and making excuses for that is shameful.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Well, Bill, did you watch the press conference?

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (48:50):
I did, and I thought it was horrible. The fireman
off fishing bodies out of the sea, and he's talking
about Pete Bootage edge.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
He didn't give a crap about any of that.

Speaker 5 (49:01):
His first job was to absolve himself of any responsibility,
because remember, he's not responsible for anything as well.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
What is well, hold on, now, now you're playing politics,
how is he to blame for what happened at Reagan?
You're saying he's absolving himself of responsibility. What's his responsibility?

Speaker 5 (49:22):
Reponsible for his words that he said from the podium yesterday.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
No, no, no, no, no no no, he said, no, no, no, Bill,
let's not chank. No no, no, no, no, Bill, Come on,
come on now, let's let's be honest. For once, you said,
he's trying to absolve himself of his own responsibility. So
what was he responsible for in terms of the crash.
He has no responsibility to absolve himself of. He didn't

(49:47):
fly the plane, he didn't fly the chopper, he wasn't
in the tower. So how can Trump be blamed for
what happened? Are you blaming him for what happened.

Speaker 5 (49:58):
Not blaming him for what happened, but he's the president
the United States, and some responsibility eventually lands on him,
and you're an automatic thing.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Oh no, no, are you telling me? Hold on now,
are you telling me that if a plane crashes in
the United States, the president is automatically responsible. If there's
a car accident, the president is responsible. Are you serious?
And you know you conveniently, Bill, you conveniently ignore what

(50:29):
a disaster Pete Budagigg was. Did you forget all those
planes falling out of the sky. Did you forget the
trains derailing and the chemical spills? Did you forget the
ships slamming into the into the bridges? Did you, By
the way, who is the one that caused the chronic
shortage of air traffic controllers? Now it's coming out there

(50:52):
should have been at least two people following that plane
in the and the helicopter. There was only one who
was the one that led to the chronic shortage of
air traffic controllers? It wasn't Trump, It was Boodajig. So
what we're supposed to pretend that the last four years
didn't happen, build that your people didn't drive this country,
into the ground,