Transcript
Dan Bongino (0:02)
Get ready to hear the truth about.
Michael (0:04)
America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino. Folks, I hope you understand we're starting early today for a reason. Just a tragic situation last night. Everybody's worst fear. I have a fear of flying and have for a long time because of the lack of control. I mean, you're obviously not on a steering wheel, handling, a stick shift, a gas pedal or a brake. Your life is in someone else's hands. I've had this fear of flying for a long time. Just an unimaginable situation. And, you know, I try to use my words carefully because in times of tragedy, I think it's important to. When I say unimaginable, I mean it. I've flown in and out of Reagan as many of you have. I mean, I think Michael just flew out of there a couple weeks ago. I don't know, three, 400 times. I mean, it was our home airport, and we were all agents in D.C. it's how we got pretty much everywhere. It was either that or Dulles. And I never imagined the situation where there would be a midair with. With a helicopter. It's a sensitive topic for me, obviously, because of the tragic nature of it, but also because I've been involved in a number of helicopter flights in that. In that exact same area. So I've seen both ends of it, the planes taking off and landing, having flown out of there. And I've flown up the Potomac many times in. In these hilos, in these birds, and it never even occurred to me that this would happen. So here's how we're going to handle this. Number one, obviously, we're going to do it responsibly. I got to tell you something right now. I love you all, the P1s and the listeners out there in the Bongino army. You guys and ladies are the best in the business. And you know why? Because you never get ahead of yourselves. I'm on X this morning, and Michael and I were chatting about it before. I mean, a total show, and it rhymes with fit. What a mess. People are ready with a thousand different theories. Why do we need to draw a conclusion? I don't understand why we need to do. Not you. Not you. I. I want to be absolutely clear. Not you. I don't understand why we're not even 24 hours out and everyone has the need to jump on clicks on X to say I definitely know what. I promise you don't know what happened. I promise it is okay to say that it is also okay to ask questions. I have five open questions I want to get to. We'll play the footage we have and the reason we're starting early is Donald Trump is going to speak. President Trump, excuse me, at 11 o'clock. And I want to take some of it live. We'll do our best to take as much of it as we can. So we got you all covered today. Stand by, folks. Increase tariffs on our trade partners, tax cuts and regulation changes. Learn why gold is a viable diversification tactic now more than ever. The company I use, Birchgold, is releasing its ultimate guide for Gold in the Trump era with a forward by Donald Trump Jr. To get your free copy along with Birch Gold's free information kit on Gold, text my name, Dan to the number 989-898. Here are the facts. The national debt continues to increase. Our interest payments on the national debt continue to increase. Gold is still one of your best hedges against the weakened dollar. And Birchgold is still the company I trust to help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax sheltered IRA in gold. So text Dan to 989-898 for your free copy of the ultimate guide for Gold in the Trump era. There's no obligation, only information with an A rating from the Better Business Bureau and thousands of happy customers. You can trust Birchgold. Text Dan to the number 989-898 today. Message and data rates apply. You know what, guys, I'm going to skip the bell today. I don't usually do that, but given the tragic circumstances, that's usually more of a celebratory event for me. Starting to show. But I'm not. This is going to be deadly serious stuff today. So let me ask some open questions first. If you're just waking up, getting the news, maybe you're out in the west coast, uh, Reagan Airport. There was a flight, it was descending, getting ready to land. It was in what is unquestionably very congested airspace. There are a lot of programs, some I'm familiar with, we're obviously not going to be talking about that involve tracking a lot of these incoming and outgoing aircraft. It's a very congested area. It is not a huge airport. It is a very tough place to land due to the congested space aircraft is landing. It is a flight from Wichita, Kansas, gets into a collision with a Blackhawk helicopter on an army training mission. According to what Secretary Hegseth said. It doesn't appear at this point that there are any survivors. Appears going to be close to 60 plus souls lost, which is horrific obviously. So some open questions first which we'll address and we have some footage going on here too that we're going to get to and footage of the crash which you know, I'll warn you, you may not want to see it, but it's important that we cover it accurately. Number one is these aircraft, not so much the helicopter, but the airplane involved. They have this crash avoidance system built in that if you've done anything with FAA TRACON TFRS 8 is frizz frizzes, air security picture stuff which we do. You're pretty familiar with how this works. I'm not a pilot. I'm not the Wikipedia pilot. I don't pretend to be a pilot. I just telling you things we've dealt with. Having dealt with the air security picture often. Was that off? When you get within a certain landing distance and a certain altitude, was it working? Was it, is it off? Is it off automatically? Why didn't it go off? Was it, you know, when they get below a thousand feet as you I saw a couple of people commenting this morning, was that crash avoidance system not working or does it just go off? Were they below that certain altitude? So that'll be an open question because obviously that's what this system is designed to avoid a crash like what happened. Second, was it a case of target fixation where sometimes you'll talk to these I will never forget one of the White House military aides was a, was a helicopter pilot. Talked to me often about flying at night, how it was difficult for him to operate at night without night vision. Also talked about things like target fixation and things like that crowded battlefields. Did they the helicopter pilots, were they fixated on an aircraft taking off and did they miss the one landing that's a big miss, obviously a tragic one where they fixed. Were they fixated on the wrong target? Open question, third question. Was there night vision involved? Did it have anything to do with the closing of the visual field? I believe the night vision was available from what I'm hearing from early reports. But it's an open question because until I get a conclusive answer, I'm applying the Bongino rule here. Fourth is the obvious one. Just how did this happen? Flight path wise, this is a known flight corridor that's very busy. How did this happen? Is it an altitude issue? Obviously we're going to wait for some reporting on that. And then fifth, uncomfortable question people have to ask. I see it as highly unlikely. I want to say that in advance but It'd be irresponsible not to at least consider. Was there a possibility that some of this was maybe not accidental? I just want to say in advance, given from what I've heard from a number of pretty good sources and some media homework I've been doing, that seems highly unlikely. However, applying the Bongino rule works both ways. Don't draw conclusions means don't draw conclusions. It doesn't mean don't ever ask a question ever for the rest of your life. Then what's the purpose of this show? So those are five open questions I have right now. Uh, let's check out the vo, the voiceover. Sorry for using lingo. We'll talk over. You can see the video here on the screen right now. You see it right there. Obviously, it's not the greatest video, but you can see the. The aircraft on descent into the Runway. And then you'll see at the end, obviously, a flashing light. That's the crash between right there, between the helicopter and the plane. Plane lands in the Potomac. It apparently inverted at some point, is in three pieces. Again, an unimaginable tragedy. And I use my words carefully. I have flown in and out of that airport so many times, as of many of you, it's nothing specific to me. I actually enjoy flying out of Reagan. It's very convenient. It's one of the reasons that D.C. lawmakers will do almost anything to keep that airport open and running. I don't know if you know this, but there was a. Some significant talk after 911 about closing that airport because of its proximity. Now, it would be inappropriate completely for me to comment on these matters, but I think it's a matter of public information out there. There are obviously programs to control and monitor the air traffic there, because, ladies and gentlemen, you make one wrong turn, you're on top of the White House, the Washington Monument and the Capitol like that. There is really very little time for contingency operations to take place. Air after 9 11. There was some talk about closing Reagan. However, the convenience of it. Lawmakers use it. The talk about closing it is now pretty much disappeared. There's the only talk now is how to expand it so there is significant traffic that comes in and out of there. Secretary Hegseth issued a statement. Secretary Pete Hegseth, of course. Secretary of Defense Ayesha Hosny reported on the statement on her Twitter feed. She's a reporter from Fox. Quote, this was an annual proficiency training flight. It was a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation. They did have night Vision goggles. We'll see if they were using them or not. That's why I'm going to leave that an open question. The 12th Aviation Battalion as of now was granted a 48 hour operational pause on contingency missions as what happened is reviewed. Obviously Secretary Hegseth's a guy I trust. He's not going to lie to us. When we get some conclusions on what happens, I'm sure he'll be the one to tell us. Let me say as well, I have a lot of personal connections to the cabinet secretaries involved. They have been in office for less than a few days, including Secretary Hegseth who just swore in Secretary Duffy, Sean Duffy, former congressman, another close personal friend. I mean obviously the father of Evita, who I mean it's just obvious one of the hosts of our show here. So we have a lot of close personal ties. Secretary Duffy just swore in yesterday. Yesterday. So talk about, I mean, day one on a job. So his briefings have been as good as you can expect at this point. But he just got there. He just got there dealing with this unimaginable tragedy. I want to play this. It's a clip from cnn. Disregard that. It's CNN for a second. Sometimes on these matters I just go to the commentators. This guy is a subject matter, an expert, a guy by the name Pete Montine. But this is a really, really informative clip where he's talking about again, I'm trying not to talk about this like I'm some kind of like new Wikipedia pilot. I am not an expert on this. Let me say this in advance. I am not a pilot, but I have been on both of these aircraft, Black Hawks and obviously just flying into Reagan many times. If you've ever been on a Blackhawk, you'll notice right away that these helicopters are typically designed for air to ground missions. You know, they're not typically air to air. They're designed for air to ground missions, especially these. So when you look at the visual field of the helicopter, it's hard to see up but relatively easy to see down. I want you to listen to this guy, Pete Montin on CNN who explains pretty well clips about a minute 30, but it's worth your time about if there was a visual obstruction and this is just a catastrophic we didn't see him and we crashed into each other, which we'll never know because it appears everybody's dead at this point. And the Black Hawk, from what I know, does not have a black box. Obviously the aircraft does the airplane. I want you to listen how the visual obstruction may have played into this. Check this out.