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Trump's Baselessly Links Diversity Initiatives to Collision; Rain Could Hamper Recovery Efforts in Icy Potomac River; Divers Battle Mud, Zero Visibility in Recovery Efforts. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 31, 2025 - 06:00   ET

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


KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Friday, January 31. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING.

[05:59:54]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We do not know enough facts to be able to rule in or out human factor, mechanical factors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: New details and new footage. The latest on the investigation into the worst U.S. air disaster in decades.

Plus, new video, exclusive to CNN, showing the moment of the collision.

And a dangerous recovery. First responders battling icy waters and mangled wreckage as they recover the victims from the collision.

And --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Pointing fingers. President Trump lashing out at DEI, just hours after the deadly collision.

And --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PETER WELCH (D-VT): Can you say the words, "Joe Biden won the 2020 election"?

KASH PATEL, NOMINEE FOR FBI DIRECTOR: Joe Biden is the -- was the president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: A combative confirmation. Vermont Senator Peter Welch joins us live as the president's cabinet nominees face a barrage of questions on Capitol Hill.

Six a.m. here on the East Coast. This is a live look at Ronald Reagan National Airport on the waters of the Potomac.

We are expecting the recovery efforts there to resume shortly.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It is wonderful to have you with us as we continue this morning to cover the latest on the investigation into the deadliest air disaster here in the U.S. in decades.

CNN obtaining two new exclusive videos overnight. These are both cell- phone videos showing surveillance camera replays of just how the collision unfolded. So, let's look at the first video.

You can see the Black Hawk helicopter is going to enter on the left- hand side of your screen, and it moves towards Flight 5342, which is on the right. A bright explosion erupts, and the plane and the helicopter both spin out of control, crashing into the river below. You see the splash.

The second video appears to be a surveillance video from the airport itself. It shows the helicopter moving along the river with the plane on a final approach to the runway. And you can even see the light from the helicopter and the plane shining down onto the water.

Then the collision and the explosion, sending both aircraft careening into the Potomac River.

There were 67 people in total on those two aircrafts, and all of them perished.

Recovery operations are expected to resume this morning. Sources tell CNN that about 14 people remain unaccounted for in the river as they suspended operations late last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUTCH HENDRICK, RESCUE DIVER: The mud becomes an intense problem. The severe lack of visibility means that they are going through an aircraft in braille, and now we're going through an aircraft fuselage that is torn apart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: NTSB investigators have recovered both the voice and data recorders from Flight 5342, and they hope to have a preliminary report ready within the next 30 days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER HOMENDY, CHAIR, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD: As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine, and the environment. So, we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. Again, we will look at the aircraft, we will look at the helicopter, we will look at the environment in which they were operating in.

That is part of -- that is standard in any part of our investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Of course, as the investigation unfolds, those who are impacted by this tragedy are just beginning to process this immense loss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY KERRIGAN, FORMER U.S. OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATER: We've been through tragedies before, as Americans, as people, and we are strong. And I guess it's how we respond to it.

When you find out, you know, you know some of the people on the plane, it's -- it's even a bigger blow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That was -- you may recognize her -- the figure skater, Olympian Nancy Kerrigan, because the U.S. figure skating community learned that 14 of the victims on board that plane that collided with the Army helicopter, they were coaches, young skaters, and their family members coming back from a skating event in Wichita.

And of course, it's an unimaginable loss for all of the friends and family members who've been left behind. Those 67 people lost to this disaster.

What did we also see yesterday, though, is that just a little over a week into his second term in office, President Trump was confronted with this national tragedy.

It's a moment when our presidents often unite the nation and console those who are suffering. Here's what we heard from our president yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen, because this was the lowest level. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program.

[06:05:03]

DAVID SANGER, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Mr. President, you have today blamed the diversity elements, but then told us that you weren't sure that the controllers made any mistake. You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones --

TRUMP: Yes.

SANGER: -- who made the mistake.

TRUMP: It's all under investigation.

SANGER: I -- I understand that. That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.

TRUMP: Because I have common sense. OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: After he made those remarks in the briefing room, President Trump was asked to clarify his comments, and he was asked if he was planning on visiting the site of the disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you have a plan to go visit the site where --?

TRUMP: I have a plan to visit, not the site, because what -- you tell me, what's the site? The water?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, to meet with the --

TRUMP: Want me to go swimming?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- first responders down there.

TRUMP: I don't have a plan to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: "Do you want me to go swimming?" he asks.

Upon hearing about President Trump's yesterday -- Trump's comments yesterday, I just -- I want to share with you what our CNN aviation correspondent, Pete Muntean, had to say about it, and here's why.

Pete is a pilot himself. He is someone who loves flying, despite knowing just how dangerous it can be. Both of his parents were pilots, and he actually lost his mother in a plane crash.

Here's what he said on our air yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: It is just so, so soon. Way too soon to make any sort of indictment or insinuation that air traffic control was to blame here, that hiring policies were to blame here, that the pilots of the Black Hawk were to blame here.

This is something that investigators will have to go through, not only on the scene; and they are there now doing the lord's work. This is only the precipice. And so, for the families that are going through hell right now -- and

I know this, because I've lost my late mother to a plane crash -- this made it even more hellish.

What was that? I just cannot -- I'm sorry to get angry, but what is the point of -- of making some sort of speculative, wide-ranging, rudderless claim about anything about hiring at the FAA?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, our panel is here to discuss: Michael Warren, senior editor at "The Dispatch"; Kendra Barkoff, former press secretary to Joe Biden; and Brad Todd, CNN political commentator and a Republican strategist.

Welcome to all of you.

Brad Todd, I want to start with you on the president, because this is something we have seen from Trump. The word "blame" kept coming to my mind as I watched that press conference yesterday, because much of why Trump has been so successful as a politician is because of the politics of blame.

He blames people; he blames other people. He blames. That's just what he does in situations like this. He levels blame. Pete, I think, said it incredibly well. What is your perspective on how the president handled the -- the moment yesterday and whether that was the right thing for our country?

BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, Donald Trump is good at a lot of things. One thing he's bad at is being a mourner.

Yesterday was a day when the president needed to be a mourner and needed to lead the country in mourning. And he -- he's really bad at that.

I think before he went out, he should have gone and watched President Reagan's speech after the Challenger disaster, where Peggy Noonan had written for him a poem which Reagan knew, about them slipping the surly bonds of earth. The poem is called "High Flight."

It was a moment for poetry yesterday. There are going to be plenty of time to argue about the FAA's policies and DEI and other mistakes it's made, but yesterday was definitely not that time.

He's just more comfortable in combat and confrontation. I think he -- I think he takes situations where mourning is in need and tries to shift it out of mourning into -- into -- into a battle that he's more comfortable with. It was the wrong key yesterday.

HUNT: Kendra.

KENDRA BARKOFF, FORMER PRESS SECRETARY TO JOE BIDEN: I mean, that's -- that's -- that's exactly it. I mean, the lack of compassion, the lack of empathy with him. He had a real opportunity to go out there and to talk about these

families who have lost loved ones. And the ability to not have any sort of compassion, to -- to not even say that he was going to go and meet with the families who have lost their loved ones, it's -- it is sort of incomprehensible that this is where we are and this is our president. And --

HUNT: Is it incomprehensible, though? I mean, doesn't -- didn't -- don't we -- didn't we know going into this that this was what this was going to be like if President Trump was back in the White House?

BARKOFF: Yes. But also this happened, you know, across the river from where he lives currently in the White House. And it's just -- it is -- it is -- it is unbelievable that you can be so tone-deaf and not realize, OK, the first thing I should say is something about these lost souls.

HUNT: I think it's worth noting he did, at the top of the press conference, say that this was a national tragedy and that he did try to express some semblance of that.

[06:10:06]

But it was also very clear that he had prepared all of this other material and all of the ways in which he was going to blame various things.

Michael Warren, it does seem to me -- and you already invoked the great Peggy Noonan, who we often read from on this show. And she -- I think she wrote this column, actually, possibly before the -- the crash actually happened. It was published afterward.

But it's really focused a little bit on what happened earlier in the week with the funding freeze and some of the other things we've seen from the Trump administration.

But she wrote this: "For all the talk of the new professionalism in the Trump administration -- operation, they have to get used to the chaos again and ride it." She's talking about Republicans in Washington, "tempting the gods of order and steadiness. After one week, they concluded the first administration wasn't a nervous breakdown and the second isn't a recovery. Again, they're on a ship with a captain in an extended manic phase who never settles into a soothing depression."

MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE DISPATCH": Yes, I mean, Peggy Noonan is a great writer, and there -- it was 39 years ago this week that the Challenger disaster happened. And that speech really, you know, you saw a president rise to the occasion in that.

I don't know. I agree with you, Kasie. I don't know why we're surprised that Donald Trump, this is not a strength of his, to -- to sort of rise to these moments. We saw this in his first term quite a few times.

There's -- there's a weird phenomenon when you're watching Donald Trump respond to this, where it almost seems like he's not the president in that moment, like he's a commentator. Maybe on a show like this, sort of, you know, talking about those thoughts as they come to him.

And it's just not the place that that Americans, you know, need their president to be right now.

The other thing is, I'm a reporter. I like to work with facts. And I think David Sanger at "The New York Times" pressing him on that -- that -- that disconnect between him saying, we don't know what the facts are. We don't know why this happened. And that's what the investigation is for.

So, for the president to say that and then to draw conclusions, to find that blame, I think that's -- that's the role of the press, is to press him on that disconnect. And I was glad to see that happen in the briefing yesterday.

TODD: Well, disaster is one thing. The public will allow a government official to say we don't know yet. They understand you don't know yet. And it's important to say what you don't know and as much as what you do know, and then to come back and revise that as quickly, quickly as you can.

It's really kind of one of the easier jobs in politics, believe it or not, as disasters, because all you have to do is tell what you know, and that's that. That was the procedure yesterday.

BARKOFF: And I was going to say that briefing yesterday sort of triggered back to 2020 COVID for me personally. And him walking out to the briefing and talking about how drinking bleach is OK for COVID.

HUNT: Injecting bleach.

BARKOFF: Injecting bleach. Yes, exactly. Excuse me. But it's one of those things where he -- it's -- it's so far-fetched. And all he has to do is we're looking at the science. We're looking at things just, you know, take a second.

HUNT: And to that point, I mean, Brad, isn't that -- that version of Trump that Kendra is talking about, the one that lost the election, right? Like more than perhaps any other, like, reason why Trump was thrown out of office in 2020?

TODD: Unpredictability has always been an Achilles for him. And action has always been his strength. And I think you've seen a lot of action in the first week that voters like.

And I think going back to that action plan of these things I've said I'm going to do, now, I'm going to do them and I'm going to do them swiftly. I think in some ways, he got in a hurry here.

Obviously, DEI and some reforms of agencies and changing out personnel is a big part of his agenda. There's time for that. There's time for that in the next couple of weeks even. It doesn't have to wait. Doesn't have to wait till the summer. HUNT: It doesn't seem like the public is necessarily not with him on a lot of the things that he has to say.

TODD: That's correct. That's correct.

HUNT: But that doesn't mean they'll like it in the mourning of people.

TODD: It's not what you do 12 hours after a plane crash.

HUNT: Yes. All right. On that note, just as we conclude this conversation here, which has obviously been a political one, I think I just want to bring it back to the family members of -- and -- and friends and loved ones of those 67 people who perished in that plane crash.

And there really are no words that any of us can give them to make it better or to change it. And we're talking here about leadership in times of crisis and what that means.

And Brad actually referenced Ronald Reagan and what he had to say in a moment of incredible national tragedy, and the words that he had to say about the people that perished then. And to end here, we'll just -- we'll just leave you with those words as we -- as we remember the victims of this tragic crash.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:19:38]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

Rain in the D.C. area here today as crews are trying to recover the remaining victims in the frigid Potomac River after that deadly collision between the American Airlines plane and the Army helicopter.

Our meteorologist, Allison Chinchar, joins us live with more on this. Allison, what will first responders be facing today?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right. So, they're going to be dealing with a lot of rain, because this isn't just a small section. You can see this huge cluster of rain right through here on the radar. And most of that is going to funnel its way across the mid-Atlantic as we go through the day today.

[06:20:07]

So, the temperature right now, 48 wind chill, 38 degrees. So, it feels a lot colder with that wind in place.

Again, temperatures will be warming back up, but the rain is also just going to stick around for much of the day.

It's not just Washington, D.C., that will see the rain. Much of the mid-Atlantic, but even stretching down into the Southeast. Places like Knoxville, Atlanta, even up until Philadelphia and New York also looking at some rain showers.

Some snow on the back edge. So, Buffalo, Cleveland looking at the chance for some snow, as well.

But all of this clears out by tomorrow morning.

On the West Coast, we are bracing for multiple atmospheric rivers that will be impacting the West Coast over the next few days. Some of them very strong atmospheric rivers. We're looking at a Level 4 for this area right around San Francisco, and some of the neighboring communities just slightly to the North of that.

It's not just rain, but it's also snow. Several of these areas, especially the higher elevations, expected to get 6 to 12 inches, some spots, as much as 20 inches total.

HUNT: All right. Allison Chinchar for us this morning. Allison, thanks very much for that.

All right. Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, those painstaking recovery efforts set to resume this morning on the Potomac River, dive teams battling really difficult obstacles underwater.

Plus, Democratic senators questioning some of President Trump's picks to lead cabinet agencies. I'm going to be joined by one of those senators, Vermont's Peter Welch.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:25:45]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is terrible. And it's -- it's graphic, right? But they encountered people inside the plane still strapped in their seats, and they weren't able to remove them right away.

Our divers and the Metropolitan Police Department's divers dived continuously for five hours in these frigid cold temperatures.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Recovery efforts are going to be intensifying in the Potomac River this morning as divers continue the search for the remaining victims of this tragic collision. The teams are facing significant challenges underwater in near-zero visibility, even though the twisted fuselage rests in just a few feet of water.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HENDRICK: The mud becomes an intense problem. The severe lack of visibility means that they are going through an aircraft in braille, and while we're going through an aircraft fuselage, it is torn apart.

So every foot, every six inches that you move, there's a potential of another snag, another -- some potential injury for the divers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: And joining us now is retired Navy captain and Navy diver Bobbie Scholley.

Bobbie, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us.

I just have to say, imagining the horrific scenes that many of these divers are going to be encountering is very, very difficult to think about. And I am just struck by how much we owe our first responders, because the things that they do for us in the wakes of these tragedies is just phenomenal.

And I'm hoping that you can kind of take us inside and help us understand what it is like in a situation like this, especially when you are also facing incredibly adverse conditions, freezing water, that makes it even harder to do this really, really difficult job.

BOBBIE SCHOLLEY, RETIRED NAVY CAPTAIN AND NAVY DIVER: It is -- it's -- it's a very difficult job. Kasie, thanks for having me on board.

This is one of the hardest jobs that I think divers end up doing. And unfortunately, we get called upon to do this more than we like to -- to think.

It's hard, rigorous work to do. You heard in your previous piece that, you know, it's -- it's cold. It's dark. It's -- a lot of hazards with the twisted metal and the aviation wire and that sort of stuff. So, so physically, it's -- it's a hard job.

And emotionally, it's a hard job, too. For a lot of divers, you're just in the mission, and you try not to think about the mental aspects of the job, and you put that on hold until after the mission is done.

I think a lot of us would say that, you know, we don't think about that until much, much later. But that is something that comes into play.

And -- and leadership has to deal with that and make sure that their -- their divers are taking care of all their first responders. Obviously, have to be aware of that and take care of those aspects.

The weather that's coming in, of course, is going to make this job even tougher, physically. And it's just something that we really need to give our first responders and our divers a lot of credit for.

HUNT: Absolutely. Bobbie, can you tell us what else they're looking for? I mean, we know that the so-called black boxes, the voice and data recorder from the plane have been recovered. What other things will divers look for in a situation like this that might help us understand more about why this happened?

SCHOLLEY: Well, in my experience, the National Transportation Safety Board has wanted to get back every piece of the aircraft, looking for something that might have been a cause of mechanical error.

I'm not saying that that would factor into this investigation, but there's all sorts of things that could lead up to just any explanation.

Of course, they'll want to get the rest of the victims, which is a priority. And they've got the black boxes. But there could be other factors, pieces of equipment that the crew had might -- might have been using. And just anything that might have played into this. Equipment, communications equipment that might have been a factor in this investigation.

So, all of those individual pieces of --