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Inside Politics
With No Evidence, Trump Blame DEI For Deadly Midair Collision; 67 Presumed Dead In Midair Collision Over Potomac River; Trump Baselessly Blames Democrats & Diversity For Plane Crash; Trump Baselessly Appears To Blame FAA "Diversity Push" For Collision; Plane's Fuselage Found In 3 Sections In Potomac River; American Airlines CEO Says Pilot Were "Experienced". Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired January 30, 2025 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:00:00]
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Sean Duffy is the transportation secretary. He spoke articulately. I will point out that I did not hear from NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, who was in the press room. That is really significant, especially during something like this. It is a huge tragedy, and I do not use that word lightly.
PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: It is a huge tragedy. We still don't have the answers. As our Kaitlan Collins asked him, President Trump, are you getting ahead of this investigation because we don't have those answers. And when he was pressed further about how he can blame DEI when he also can say in the same sentence. He doesn't know if it's the air traffic controllers fault raising questions about the helicopter pilot. He said, it's just common sense.
But again, what we need to remember here are there are 67 families who are mourning because of this midair collision, who are looking for answers, who don't want politics. They want answers, and they are mourning the loss of their loved ones, and that is what we need to remember in this moment.
Thank you for joining us. I'm Pamela Brown. Stay with us. Inside Politics with Dana Bash starts now.
DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I want to reset now at the top of the hour and talk about the calamity in our nation's capital and following the breaking news on the devastating midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and a military Black Hawk helicopter.
First, I want to show you live pictures of the Potomac River. First responders have been working tirelessly since last night, overnight to recover bodies from the frigid waters in the Potomac River. Tragically, all 67 people on board, the two aircraft are presumed to have perished. Making this the deadliest aviation disaster in the United States in more than 20 years.
As this is happening, the president of the United States went into the White House briefing room and almost immediately began to blame Democrats for the diversity programs that were in place, suggesting, as he admitted, without evidence, that perhaps there is a connection between that and what you are looking at.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse. They have to be talented, naturally talented geniuses.
You can't have regular people doing that job. They won't be able to do it, but we'll restore faith in American air travel. I'll have more to say about that. I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office, and here's one, the FAA diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. And that is amazing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: I just want to emphasize what you're looking at is live. This is just a few miles down the road from the White House. The bodies of the 67 people believed to have perished are still being fished out of the Potomac River, the icy Potomac River. When we heard that from the president of the United States and from other senior members of his cabinet in addition to some words of condolence and remorse and prayers for some of them.
I do want to get straight to CNN's chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins. Kaitlan, you were among those questioning the president. One of the things that really struck me was when some of the really legitimate, important questions about what basis he had for calling out these DEI programs in general, but particularly at this time, and his answer was, common sense.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Dana. This is President Trump's first time inside the White House briefing room since he took office this time and he came out here, took a moment of silence for the victims here. We know there are 67 people who were on board both of these aircraft, neither are expected to have any survivors.
And moments after that, though, the president cast a wide array of blame on multiple targets, including his the person who was in office before him, President Biden, the former transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, Democrats generally, DEI policies, and also, on multiple occasions, the pilot of that U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter, essentially arguing that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and saying that something could have been done differently there.
Now, I should note. We were sitting in here in here in the briefing room. We heard from the Vice President J. D. Vance, the newly sworn in transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
[12:05:00] We did not hear from the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, who was sitting right there in those chairs, or the new acting FAA administrator, who has been named, presumably in the last few hours.
Because before that, there had been no administrator at the FAA in this position. The person who was in that position before left, before Trump took office, and right now, the head of the FAA is vacant, the deputy head of the FAA is vacant, the head of the TSA is vacant, and the deputy head of the TSA is also vacant. And so, all of these questions about staffing and what could have played a factor here is very much still under investigation, Dana.
As the president came out here and was casting blame. One thing I noted was that there are still bodies being pulled from the water of the Potomac right now. We know from officials that we heard from earlier that that rescue and that recovery operation is very much still underway, and some really difficult conditions that first responders were dealing with last night.
Now there are big questions about what this investigation looks like going forward and what happens next year, but the president using this moment to also cast blame on multiple targets, including hiring practices. He said, within the air traffic control system.
Now this investigation to state the obvious is nowhere near done yet, and we do not have any indication. And we did not hear from the head of the NTSB during this briefing on what they believe could have been here. When Trump was asked if he had seen any evidence to back up what he was saying, he said, Dana, that he was just using common sense.
BASH: That's exactly right. Kaitlan, thank you so much. And you couldn't see, I don't think of what we're showing on the screen. But just to sort of underscore your point, the same one that I made at the top, and I think we need to keep doing this.
We showed the pictures, and this is live as we speak, of these first responders trying to find the remains of the passengers on this commercial flight, in addition to those who have not yet been pulled out from that Black Hawk helicopter.
Jeff Zeleny, I want to go to you. You also are -- have been covering this, and you're watching and talking to sources about the approach that President Trump. And again, I just want to say it wasn't just President Trump, it was also the vice president and the defense secretary who were talking about in addition to the need for questions to be answered. But before we have those answers, casting the blame on the policies of the Biden administration.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Dana, we are entering a period here where government matters, competency matters, and that is going to be a central theme throughout this investigation. But there was little talk of the investigation and much more speculation in the briefing room just there, but that hour of anguish the president started talking about just instantaneously turned into a period of blame. Blaming former Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, blaming former President Barack Obama, blaming former President Joe Biden. The buck clearly does not stop with this president. The blame begins with him.
But the bottom line of this is, once again, as we enter in this second Trump administration, using some muscle memory, perhaps from the first. The calibration of this will be important. The DEI programs that he talked about and railed against. We have zero idea if they had anything to do with this. Most certainly they did not.
But you are so right to say on screen there, as we are seeing the bodies are still being pulled from that frigid Potomac, like the president said. But that did not stop him, of course, from launching into a laundry list and pointing the blame and fingers elsewhere.
We are going to learn a lot more about this investigation. I think that's where the focus should be. Certainly, it was a tragedy, and it could have been a failure in many respects. But what the president was talking about there certainly is not only getting ahead of it, but most likely talking in the wrong direction.
But what a Peter Alexander from NBC News asked specifically, I thought it was a very interesting question there, pointing the fact that most of these programs and the qualifications for being air traffic controllers were in place during the Trump administration as well.
But never mind all of that right now for this moment, at least, before the victims are even identified, I think that is where the focus should be. With the president clearly turned to blaming his rivals, but this is his watch now, Dana. This is his government.
BASH: Yeah. It sure is. Thank you so much. Jeff, appreciate it. I want to go here to Pete Muntean, who is our aviation correspondent and also a very experienced pilot yourself. In this context, I do want you to talk about what we know about. And let me also just say, this is not the conversation that I expected to have with you.
I wanted to have a conversation, and we will about what we know about this crash, what we know about what went wrong. Obviously, something did in a very tragic way, but because the president of the United States brought all of these programs up. I need you to explain to our viewers the reality of what these programs are and were.
[12:10:00]
MUNTEAN: Let's talk about the press conference for a second, because 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. It is hard to do. But they will have to do this for months and years after this. There will be hearings. There will be lots of questions to be asked. 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 making some sort of speculative, wide ranging, rudderless claim about anything, about hiring at the FAA. The facts are this. The policies have changed at the FAA, and they were doing more off the street hires, starting back in the Obama administration.
BASH: What does that mean?
MUNTEAN: Meaning hiring people not from the traditional pipeline of going to air traffic control schools, academies, going to colleges that specialize in that, that hiring people from the street, taking them to the FAA Academy and then putting them into facilities across the country.
The bottom line is this. The air traffic control system in the United States is facing an incredible shortage of controllers. And that is something that the Biden administration, to their credit, really tried to shore up. They hired 1800 controllers in the last year. Their goal is to hire about another -- was to hire another 1500 this year.
I cannot imagine after that press conference if any air traffic controller wants to go to work for this government, it's beside the point. The first priority of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has not really been aviation safety. And I'm looking at a press release, and I have the receipts, an hour and 48 minutes before the first call for this crash went out. United States -- this is the first press release from Sean Duffy.
Secretary Sean Duffy takes action to rescind woke DEI policies. So that, the number one, day one priority for this administration has been DEI. And it seems like an incredible distraction from what is taking place in our aviation system right now. This is symptomatic of something that has been going on for years.
There have been runway incursions and near misses at airports across the country that happened in big numbers in 2023 --
BASH: Because?
MUNTEAN: -- because the system is just pushed to the limit. And you know, we're talking about 3 million people, the population of Los Angeles, flying in one day the Sunday after this past Thanksgiving. I mean, it is incredibly huge. And there's been a huge demand for air travel on the commercial side and beyond.
And so, things are really, really bursting at the seams, and the warnings had been flashing in orange and red and even more to say that this could happen. And this is the story that, you know, I never wanted to cover. And my airline pilot buddies in a group chat today, they feared that this could happen.
And so, we've now are transitioning a bit from the conversation from what happened to how this could happen. But for the president to slink in and provide his own narrative of this, the commander in chief, the person who start with -- this was most of the facts, it's beyond that.
BASH: I want to get David Chalian in on this in a second. But I just want to underscore that last point because what we want to do here is provide the facts as we know them. The as we know them part of this is really key, because the answer is, we don't know a lot of the facts yet.
MUNTEAN: It's too early.
BASH: He is the president of the United States, presumably, he has more information than you and I have. Having said that, just going back to the DEI of it. Because if I'm somebody watching in the world who was just trying to get information about this, wondering, do I take my flight tomorrow? And I hear him saying that these are diversity and equity programs, talking about the specifics about people with disabilities being hired, so on and so forth.
Can you just please based on your reporting, based on the facts, explain the veracity of that and the potential impact of any of these programs on how the system works?
MUNTEAN: Air traffic controllers are faced with challenges every day, and right now, they are working most of the mandatory six-day weeks of 12-hour shifts. It is not a glamorous job. It's very hard. I know some controllers. It's a tough gig.
[12:15:00]
And so, for the president to say that they are some -- for some reason, a workforce that is not up to snuff, I think that's not totally emblematic of the totality of the truth here. There are a lot of good people doing a lot of good work. And the bottom line is aviation up until this point and there have been blips on the radar, has been incredibly safe in the United States.
And the last time we saw a major fatal commercial crash in the U.S. was 2009. So, we have not seen something that happened with a lot of regularity in the 70s, 80s and 90s. We are the gold standard of aviation safety worldwide.
BASH: But you did say there were a lot of near misses, and I know we have --
MUNTEAN: No doubt.
BASH: -- some guests, including Mary Scavino here -- excuse me, Mary Schiavo, here to talk about that. But first, I do want to just continue on this conversation about President Trump and that press conference. CNN's Washington bureau chief, political director, David Chalian, is here. David, what are your thoughts?
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF & POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, as you said, you want to just go through the facts that we know. And here, here's something that the president himself said at that press conference. He said, quote, we don't know necessarily that it was the controller's fault.
And then proceeded to speak at length at something directly at odds with that, which he said, which is, we don't know it was the controller's fault. And then went on to talk about diversity programs and how it relates to potentially hiring air traffic controllers because he wanted to put one of his pet issues in the first 10 days of this administration front and center.
Nobody, as you know, Dana, has a larger microphone or megaphone than the president United States. And him walking to the briefing room and trying to dominate and shift and create and craft the narrative around this tragedy that occurred last night was clear for everyone to see.
And the other fact that we should just put out there is as this investigation is unfolding and in its early hours, as families are still grieving as they receive the news of what happened. It is a fact that President Trump came to the briefing room and injected politics directly into this, not only by trying to tie one of his pet issues, you know, trying to go after DEI programs in the government up front, but just outright blaming Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg for a whole bunch of stuff.
And so, he chose, after a minute or so of a unifying message of trying to say that what binds us together as a nation in moments like this really overwhelms all our differences. And then he went right on to inject partisan politics directly at the center of it, where it simply -- there's no evidence to suggest it belongs there.
BASH: Yes. That is definitely a true fact, as they say. David, thank you so much. It's always really important to have your observations, your analysis and your reporting. I do want to go back to the conversation that we plan to have before the president's news conference, which is what happened? What went wrong?
Pete Muntean is still here. CNN aviation analyst and former Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo is here, as is Shawn Pruchnicki, a former commercial pilot and accident investigator.
I want to start with you here at the table. Can you just kind of give us your broad look at this? And if you were still in the job, what you would be looking at, first, second and third, right now?
MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST & FORMER TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT INSPECTOR GENERAL: Sure, and condolences to the families. So first of all, in terms of sorting out the facts the National Transportation Safety Board and the military investigation board. There will be two on this. One, and they will both, you know, do their investigations. The NTSB will have precedence. And I have worked in aviation since 1974 to reassure people the NTSB is not political.
In fact, the board is chosen that way intentionally. It's there -- they're two chosen by each side, and then the chairman is chosen and was reappointed. And these accident investigations are not political. I mean, I have participated in many including in private practice, and you have to sort through wreckage. You literally, in some cases, put planes back together.
And so, I want people to be assured that the NTSB will sort out the facts. And they're very, you know, they will be very objective. So, in going through all that, I mean, I flew into DCA last night at 7:30 on PSA, American Airlines PSA flight just ahead of them. It was cold, it was choppy, there was light chop, and but the weather didn't have anything to do with it. But had been busy. The flights had been delayed. There were a lot of planes out there trying to get in.
[12:20:00]
So, the facts that, and I won't repeat everything. Pete said -- Pete laid out the facts that have been released so far that the aircraft was under air traffic control. It has to be, it's commercial passenger service aircraft. It was cleared into land. It had that air space. And the aircraft, the passenger aircraft was cleared in and had that air space.
So, so far, we don't know anything more than that about the aircraft itself. It was where it was supposed to be, and so far, we know following the orders. When the air traffic control asked the helicopter, if they had the plane inside, that gave us another big clue. We now know that they were visual flight rules that they were expected to see and avoid that aircraft, and that they were expected to look for it and stay away from it.
By looking at some of the radar and it's just public radar, the NTSB and the military investigators will have much better. It looked like -- this was at 350 feet. The helicopter --
BASH: Which is very low.
SCHIAVO: Yes, but the helicopter was supposed to be lower. There are certain corridors and certain altitudes at which the helicopters are allowed to operate. They obviously have to be in coordination with air traffic control. But it appears that it was higher than what ordinarily they would be operating at that particular point.
And in terms of facts, I mean the rest, they're going to have to sort out. The bigger picture, you know, the 1000-foot view, as opposed to the 10-foot view is, Pete was absolutely right. This problem with congested air space and near misses has been brewing for several years and we have reached record levels. And it's many different things. It's near misses in the air, tremendous numbers of near misses at the airport and runway incursions.
We have equipment that some equipment is installed in many airports, but we have much more equipment that we could put in place, and we could put it in many airports. So that's something that has to be worked out. Will be worked out. And again, that's not political, it's technical, and it can be expensive and important to be done.
The other thing that we have that's a big issue is we have 5000 commercial public use airports in this country approximately. And yet, we stuff most of our traffic in about 30 airports. And so DCA is congested. DCA was supposed to close when Dulles opened. I'm old enough to remember that because of the dangers and the congestion, et cetera, but we all love DCA.
So, it's open, but we stuff more and more flights. And a few years back, we even decreased some of the separations between the aircraft. So, we have set up a couple trends that are not going in the right direction, throw drones and on top of that, and we have very congested airspace without enough, you know, proper separations, equipment, et cetera, and we need to spread out the aviation. And somebody is going to have to make that hard decision of what's too much.
BASH: Yeah. It certainly is a hard decision. I want to get Shawn Pruchnicki. And Shawn, just before you begin, I want to play for our viewers just a short bit of what we heard from the air traffic control center.
(AUDIO PLAYING)
BASH: And then silence. Shawn, your thoughts?
SHAWN PRUCHNICKI, AVIATION ACCIDENT INVESTIGATOR: Well, the primary thing that comes to mind is that, if the helicopter was and, you know, we have to be careful with that video that we saw from the Kennedy Center. But, you know, there's some suggestion here that it, the helicopter was coming from behind the RJ, is that, as the, you know, with visual separation.
When you're coming from behind an airplane, it's much more difficult to keep visual separation. When you're in front of an airplane, as we saw, when you can see the airplane coming at you, it's very obvious. It was that very bright light that we saw, right?
But as a former airline pilot, when you're behind one, especially at night, especially when the airplane is descending toward a very bright, lighted area, like the airport terminal area would be, it is easier to lose sight and relative closure speeds. So that is something that the NTSB is going to have to look at.
If that could have been a possibility, that they could have seen it, and they could have lost sight of it a few moments later, and as they were trying to regain sight, the collision occurred. I'm certainly not speculating, saying that had that happened, that will be something the NTSB is going to look at.
BASH: And Pete, let's get back to what you have been hearing from your sources. It is early. They're going to get the black box. Are going to do investigations, as you said, that will last for months and years, but just in the short term.
[12:25:00]
MUNTEAN: It's obviously going to be about how the incident was able to sort of pass through the holes in the Swiss cheese and the redundancies in aviation, and how this came to be. But the real question, and I want to see if we can take the map one more time, because that is so telling about the flight path of American Airlines.
The flight coming in from the south, from Wichita, Kansas, was lined up to land on runway one, which is the busiest single runway in the National Airspace System. That's the main runway at national that runs north to south. And then did a sidestep maneuver that is relatively common to land on runway three, three, that's one of the crisscrossing runways that points to the northwest, sort of toward the Pentagon. That is over the shores of Maryland on the east side of the Potomac.
It's a relatively common maneuver, typically used by regional jets like this. They're small enough that they can use that slightly shorter runway, but it is quite close to the route that is commonly used by military helicopters and government helicopters that transit the D.C. airspace all the time.
They are supposed to talk to air traffic control. We have that on the audio tape from live atc.net that they were speaking to air traffic control. They were under the positive control of the controller in the tower there. You could hear both sides of the conversation. They're supposed to at least be monitoring, and they should be having two-way communication.
The real question now is, why is that helicopter route there --
BASH: Right.
MUNTEAN: -- so close to innocent, paying passengers who were flying in all of the time at national airport? Why does it need to be so close to the final approach there? And that is the question that I'm hearing emerging in the aviation industry.
BASH: Is this -- should they have been there? Is this a typical route for a test flight for these Black Hawk helicopters?
MUNTEAN: It begs the question, why do training in some of the most congested airspace in the country? And I know as a flight instructor, there is a laundry list of airports when you are relatively new pilot that you cannot go into. And this, I think, should maybe be considered, maybe something where the military does not do training and they use a special piece of airspace, some other place that is a bit more sanitized.
I don't use the term tragedy lightly. This is my 15th year as a reporter. I reserve it for really few things. This is indeed a tragedy, and it is something that was so preventable and should not have happened.
BASH: All right. I'm going to have to sneak in a quick break. Thank you so much. Coming up. I'm going to talk to a top Kansas lawmaker who sits on a critical aviation subcommittee about the doomed airliner that took off from her home state.
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