Transcript
Rachel Maddow (0:00)
So Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term in late January, right? And then right away, a series of things started happening that were very, very, very bad. January 29th, we had a terrible mid air collision, right? Killed 67 people just outside Reagan National Airport in the Potomac river in Washington, D.C. then two days later, it was a medical transport plane that crashed in Philadelphia. Six people on board the plane were killed. One person on the ground was. Another two dozen people on the ground were injured. Then two days after that, a United Airlines plane caught fire on the tarmac in Houston. Flames seen shooting out of the wing. 104 passengers and five crew members evacuated out of that plane. Three days after that, it's a Japan Airlines plane that smashes into the tail of a Delta Airlines plane on the tarmac at SeaTac at the Seattle Tacoma Airport. Two days after that, they recover the wreckage of a small commercial plane that crashes in Alaska. All 10 people on board killed. Three days after that, one person killed as one plane smashes into another at the airport in Scottsdale, Arizona. Five days after that, two people killed in a small plane crash in Covington, Georgia. Four days after that, two people killed when two planes collide midair at an airport just northwest of Tucson, Arizona. At this point, we're not yet one month into Donald Trump's second term, but it just keeps going. February 24th, a Delta flight from Atlanta is forced to turn around and have an emergency evacuation after the cabin fills up with some kind of smoke. One day later, it's an American Airlines flight that is forced to abort its landing at once again Reagan national airport in Washington, D.C. in order to avoid colliding with another plane. Four days after that, it's a FedEx plane that lands at Newark Airport with an engine on fire. Over the next two weeks, there are 15 more people killed in nine more air crashes, including one alongside a Nashville highway that kills three children. Then we get a Delta Airlines flight smacking its wing into the Runway while It's landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Then back again at Reagan National Airport in Washington. A Delta passenger plane is preparing to take off and a military jet is preparing to land. And both of those aircraft receive emergency last second instructions to divert, divert in order to prevent yet another collision. Then it's a flight from Florida to Newark. It has to divert to Washington Dulles after a fire in the cabin. A week later, there are six members of Congress on board an American Airlines plane that clips the wing of another American Airlines plane at once again Reagan national airport in Washington, D.C. that same day, a helicopter crashes into the Hudson river in New York City, killing six people, including three children. Over the next 10 days, 21 more people are killed in seven more plane crashes. April 22. That thing you think never happens in real life happens on the tarmac at Orlando Airport. Passengers have to evacuate down the slides, just like they show you in the emergency procedures thing that the flight attendants do. They have to evacuate down the slides as their Delta flight catches fire in Orlando. And I could keep going, I'm not including all of them because we'd be here all night. But perhaps you saw this weekend that again, two passenger planes were forced to abort their landings at the very last second to avoid a collision with a U.S. army Black Hawk helicopter again at once again Reagan national airport in Washington D.C. the head of the FAA, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration is a job that is not supposed to turn over with every new president. It's one of the jobs that has a five year term because it's a technocratic job. It needs stability. It's not a particularly political position. Except now. Before the election in September, Donald Trump's top campaign donor, Elon Musk, demanded publicly that the FAA administrator must resign. He needs to resign. At that point, the FAA administrator was only about a year into his five year term. There had been no major US Plane crashes in years and years and years. But under his leadership, the FAA had issued a few hundred thousand dollars fines against Elon Musk, SpaceX. And so there's Elon Musk. He must resign. He must resign. A few weeks later, thanks in part to Elon Musk providing the largest political donation in the history of the United States, Elon Musk's candidate gets elected president. And that FAA administrator who Elon Musk had publicly hunted. He sees the writing on the wall and he resigns. And the new president, Donald Trump, doesn't even bother to name a replacement. He hasn't even bothered to put an acting official in the job of running the Federal Aviation Administration until after that mid air collision over the Potomac. He has, however, picked the husband of one of his favorite Fox News hosts, a guy who was once a contestant on the Real World on mtv, a guy with no aviation or transportation experience whatsoever. He has picked him to be his Secretary of Transportation. A man who has never run anything large and, you know, nothing against MTV at all. But it is possible this guy is in slightly over his head. He at least seems quite freaked out by the gravity of his job. We have an aging infrastructure around air traffic control. And so if we don't, if we don't build a brand new system, there's going to be failures and people will lose their lives. People will lose their lives. Says man with no experience at all who Donald Trump has put in charge of aviation safety in America. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that at a Cabinet meeting last week. He said that at a Cabinet meeting last week and it was alarming. It sparked a bunch of headlines, freaks people out when the secretary of transportation says people are going to die. When the guy says like that on camera at a Cabinet meeting, people worry. But we now know that when he said that at that Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, something really terrifying had just happened that he must have known about when he said that. But the Transportation Department at that point had not said anything about it publicly. Well, here's what we now know. That Cabinet meeting where he said people are going to die, right when he made that comment, that freaked everybody out. That Cabinet meeting was Wednesday, last week. Something had happened on Monday of last week that we now know the details of. And you might have seen some of the news around this, you might have seen some headlines over the past few days about things being really snarled at the Newark Airport in New Jersey. Hundreds of flights canceled, hundreds of flights delayed. And this isn't like a widespread thing, even though Newark is really close to at least three other major airports in New York and Philadelphia. Why is Newark Airport alone having hundreds of flights scratched and hundreds of flights delayed every day? In fact, we are eight days in now to Newark having hundreds of flights canceled, hundreds of flights delayed every single day. Eight straight days of this. What's going on? And some of this is even worse and weirder. It's not just delays and cancellations. The biggest commercial airline at Newark Airport is United. United just ended 35 of its round trip flights in and out of Newark. Those aren't just like canceled for a day or delayed for a day. United has announced they will longer fly those round trips at all. What's going on? Well, something has just happened at Newark Airport. New York Times tonight, quote, air traffic controllers temporarily lost communication with planes at Newark Liberty International Airport last week. Quote, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers association said that on April 28, which is last Monday, controllers responsible for separating and sequencing aircraft in and out of Newark Airport temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control and were, quote, unable to see, hear or talk to those aircraft. Former head of the Air Traffic Controllers association telling New York magazine, quote, your only job as an air traffic controller is to prevent airplanes from colliding. Your number one tool to separate airplanes is talking to them via communication, via the frequencies. If those go out, you have no ability to talk to them, no real ability to discern exactly where these airplanes are. That is something that should not happen, but yet it apparently did happen last Monday at Newark Airport. Bloomberg News reporting today, quote, when radar or radio frequencies stop working, there are no fail safes, meaning controllers must simply wait for the system to come back online. Bloomberg also reporting today that following the outage at Newark Airport on Monday, quote, multiple employees were placed on trauma leave, meaning air traffic controllers were placed on trauma leave. Quote, the incident left several controllers visibly shaken with at least one person experiencing stress induced heart palpitations. And some air traffic controllers shedding tears after this incident on Monday. NBC News reporter Tom Costello reporting this weekend that one air traffic controller who handles Newark Airport airspace told him, quote, it is not a safe situation for the flying public and, quote, don't fly into Newark. Avoid Newark at all costs. The air traffic controllers, the air traffic controllers are having heart palpitations, breaking down in tears and having to take trauma leave because of what is happening in the faa. Air traffic controllers are sneaking word to reporters it is not safe. How do we get a functional government back? Air traffic controllers aren't just like a team or like a private company. That's the government, right? The whole air traffic control system is a government operation. We've got air traffic controllers losing contact, losing the ability to communicate or see any of the planes that they are actively in that moment controlling to try to stop them from smashing into one another. Just waiting until the systems come back up and hoping those planes have not hit each other while the systems were down. Having no way of knowing, breaking down in tears, having to go on trauma leave and sneaking word to reporters that this is not safe. That's our government right now. We are the greatest nation on the planet and the most important economic and military and cultural power the modern world has ever known. And it is not close. But this is our government now under these guys. I mean, this government must be working for someone, but it is not working to, I don't know, keep the planes in the sky. This was Washington, D.C. today. Senators and members of Congress and the former head of Social Security under President Biden, Martin O'Malley, rallying today in Washington, D.C. to try to defend Social Security from what Trump is doing to it. Specifically these members of Congress and these senators today rallying to try to stop the confirmation tomorrow of Trump's nominee of a Doge guy to run Social Security.