tv Chris Jansing Reports MSNBC June 18, 2024 11:00am-12:00pm PDT
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it's good to be with you. i'm katy tur in for chris jansing. the head of boeing is about to testify on capitol hill facing intense questioning about whether the jetmaker is safe. including brand-new safety allegations from yet another whistleblower just this morning. we'll go into the hearing when it starts. plus, donald trump heads to wisconsin after calling milwaukee a quote, horrible city. what do people in the crucial swing state think of those comments? and what happened when russian president putin went to north korea to meet with kim jong-un? and what promises were made between the two authoritarian leaders. let us begin in washington with boeing. the jetmaker is facing a quote, moment of reckoning, as its outgoing ceo will have to answer to lawmakers in a senate with the subcommittee on
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investigations. ceo david calhoun is expected to start with an apology and an admission of mistakes made. but will that be enough? especially as another whistleblower contends boeing still puts profits above safety. in just released testimony to the same committee, current boeing employees, sam mohawk, questions boeing's ability to track damaged or inadequate aircraft parts and alleged that the jetmaker hid improperly stored parts from the faa saying quote, in june 2023, the faa notified boeing's renton plant that it would be conducting an inspection. once boeing received such a note, it ordered the majority of the parts being stored outside to be moved to another location to intentionally hide improperly stored parts in the faa. so what will calhoun say in response? and how can he convince not just
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lawmakers, but the public, that boeing planes are still safe? joining us now is nbc's tom costello and sahil. tom, the hits keep on coming for boeing. >> well, that's right. the newest whistleblower, and you're looking at live pictures of david calhoun sitting in the hearing room. you may have seen the live shot, there you go. as he showed up this morning, family members of the 346 people who died in the max 8 are there demanding accountability. they want to see boeing and cal huge and the former ceo criminally charged by the dea. the latest whistleblower is alleging essentially things haven't changed that much at boeing despite the company's assurances they have turned over a new page. this they are doubling down on quality control and safety and
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they want whistle blowers to come forward. essentially, these new whistleblowers are saying they are being intimidated by managers and supervisors. that there's still a game kind of on the actually assembly line of moving pieces around. even putting bad pieces on planes and that managers are telling them don't report it, don't say anything to the faa. keep quiet. that's going to be a big part of today's hearing and make no mistake about it. david calhoun knows he's going to be a pinata for the next few hours. nobody's going to come to his defense or the company's. they're expressing their anger, outrage, demanding accountability. honestly, i think you have to ask, okay, but is congress going to give the faa more money to put more inspectors in the plants? it's easy to scream and yell, but is congress going to do anything to in fact help the faa do a better job. >> good question.
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i want to ask jack about what the faa would need, but one more about david calhoun, tom. he, again, is the outgoing ceo and you said he's going to be acting at the pinata for this subcommittee hearing. what about the next guy or gal that comes in? what sort of scrutiny will they be facing? what sort of promises will they have to make, vows will they have to make in order to keep boeing on the up and up? >> well, look at those people holding the photos of their family members. they have been at nearly every single hearing over five years since the max 8 crashes overseas. they are not going anywhere. they are going to keep the pressure up and right now, the justice department is considering whether they should bring criminal charges against boeing. and the new ceo will have to face that reality and much more intense faa oversight. already, they've got 36 faa inspectors in boeing plants. they want to raise it to 55. those families want to see 100
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inspectors in the plants. so the pressure is on boeing to stop just talking about it, but actually make improvements. that's unlikely to change anytime soon. >> and you're seeing those family members standing. that's at the request of senator blumenthal who is chairing this hearing. he's asked all the family members to rise and show the pictures of their loved ones. again, killed in crashes on boeing jets. and i'm just struck, jeff, by yet another whistleblower coming out today. the senate subcommittee released his testimony but this is another person raising the same concerns and now adding a new one on top of it that boeing was hiding things from the faa. hiding how they were storing faulty parts from the faa. how does the faa handle that sort of allegation? >> yes, katy. the whistleblowers are coming out of the woodwork and part of it is because boeing is
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encouraging people to speak up. every whistleblower to be taken seriously by the faa and investigated. you've got two ends of the spectrum. the whistleblower saying things are really bad, almost criminal. and boeing saying no, no, we don't retaliate. the truth is somewhere in the middle. that's why each report is a body blow to boeing and it's going to require the faa to investigate. >> tom was just saying the lawmakers have to put up on this. add money and give the faa more authority, more help in order to go in and investigate jet liners. what does the faa need specifically? what is it not capable of doing right now? >> so, administrator whittaker testifying before congress a couple of weeks and indicated they have increased the number of inspectors on the floor just like tom indicated. i don't know whether he wants to have any more. they're going to have to think about other ways to skin this
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cat. it might be more inspectors but again, where are you going to put them? what kind of expertise do they need? it's really a process problem that boeing has that the faa has to solve. >> walk me through that more. if i'm a passenger about to fly on a boeing jet, i want harder answers than that. i want more concrete answers than that, jeff. >> well, so the faa is doing the best job they can. they've been getting more money from congress. congress is supporting them 100%. it's difficult to explain to the public that aviation is still very safe and the fact that there's so much attention on these problems indicates that the system is working to resolve them. so i don't know, it's just difficult to come up with three or four hard answers to say this will solve the problem. aviation is complex and it's going to take a group effort and time to solve this. >> it also relies on public
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confidence and if the public confidence plummets, i mean, that's irreparable damage or damage that's really hard to repair if you are a jet liner, especially one as big and as you as boeing. sahil, what have you heard from lawmakers about what they want out of this yet another committee hearing and another round of testimony from david calhoun? >> reporter: first, we can report that mr. calhoun arrived on capitol hill about an hour ago. according to our colleague, he has already apologized to the families in that room. you see him in that room now in what is guaranteed to be a contentious and uncomfortable hearing. this comes after the chair of the committee released a host of documents from new whistleblowers including two he says that are coming forward for the first time. blumenthal says it reveals a
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culture that disregards its workers, a culture that desperately needs to be repaired, unquote. those are richard blumenthal's words. one claims that boeing is improperly tracking and storing parts that are damaged or otherwise out of specification. maybe even installing them on airplanes. these are the allegations this whistleblower, who's apparently currently a boeing employee, says he was asked to conceal evidence and is facing retaliation for it. another whistleblower according to blumenthal suggests to rely on workers to inspect the planes. of course, there's been a human cost to these problems and errors with boeing planes. let's take a listen to one victim who lost a family member in a crash. >> if we are here living in this nightmare that doesn't seem to end of what has now become our lives, why should the people who make decisions continue to not face the people they let down?
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these with weddings that daughters will never have their fathers walk them down the aisle for. parents that will never see their children walk, talk, go to high school, graduate. have jobs. have their first driving lessons. and i'm just hear so this can be the image and also, really here for the public to remind you guys to keep pushing. >> reporter: and that is the tenor of what mr. calhoun will be responding to at this hearing, which is already underway. >> it's so hard to see the images of those lost loved ones. as she said, family members have lost them forever. this is not something that an apology will repair. but as she also said, this is the public's issue and the public needs to push on this in order to get boeing in line and to send a message to other jet liners, to other aircraft manufacturers that they need to keep safety as a top priority over profits.
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is tom back with us? tom is going to get back with us quickly. i think part of the issue, jeff, and that has been so galling to me in reading about where boeing made this left turn was that in the early 2000s, a new company came and took over boeing. a new ceo that really pushed profits. it was no longer engineers in charge of boeing and that's when things started to change. >> that is. there was a slow evolution of changing from engineering to profits. i think the engineering's always been there. when boeing moved away from seattle to its new headquarters in chicago and they got new leadership in and you had bean counters rather than engineers run the company, that's probably where some of this lies. >> listen, engineers are the ones highly focused on safety, on putting these planes together, getting them to
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function properly. getting them to advance in technology. bean counters are counting beans. i think you said it all there. thank you very much. we're going to dive into this hearing once the boeing ceo starts his testimony. that will be in just a couple of minutes, but first, we're going to take a very quick break. in 90 seconds, donald trump prepares for a rally in wisconsin but will he have anything to say about what multiple sources told nbc news he said about the city of mill don't go anywhere. don't go anywhere. here's to getting better with age. here's to beating these two every thursday. help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need... ...without the stuff you don't.
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last thursday in his first visit to capitol hill since the insurrection, donald trump told republican lawmakers that milwaukee, wisconsin was a horrible city. according to multiple sources in the room who spoke with with nbc news. today, donald trump is heading back to wisconsin to rally supporters and while the former president claims he never said that, the dnc is pouncing. putting up billboards that read, quote, want to know what's really horrible? donald trump for wisconsin's economy. shaquille brewster is on the ground in wisconsin. if i have to interrupt you, i'm so sorry, but tell me about the reaction of wisconsinites toward donald trump and whether this is
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dampening the turnout for his rally. >> reporter: there's no sign that it is right now. that language you heard that was reported from donald trump when he was talking to house republicans, that's something that republicans here in the state of wisconsin say themselves. i've covered this state for several years and it has come up at republican events over and over talking about crime in milwaukee. talking about what they believe was lack of election integrity in milwaukee. again, that's all been studied. it's been adjudicated. the election was fair and free and donald trump won here, excuse me, donald trump lost here, but what you are hearing from folks here, what they want to hear from him on stage, issues like immigration. issues like the economy. the interesting thing there is the economy is something that democrats in the state are almost daring him to talk about. and that's because they want to highlight the reason why president biden was here in this exact town just last month. they want to highlight that president biden was able to bring a major manufacturering
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project, a $3.3 billion project to this town when donald trump failed or at least failed to deliver what he promised he was president. when you talk to his supporters, you bring those facts to them, they're not focused on those details. they're focused on the posture you hear from donald trump and it had emotion he evokes from them. i want you to listen to one of my conversations i had with someone that kind of paints that picture of why it's so hard from the economic message you're hearing from the democrats to overcome what they're seeing from donald trump. >> when you're talking to your friends about donald trump, what are you saying to them? >> he's for the people. he -- i'm getting emotional. i don't know. >> you're getting emotional. why? >> i just, i feel like he actually cares about the country. and it takes somebody who's been in business, america's ran like a business. it really is.
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and he, there were so many less wars, gas prices, everything was cheaper. with biden, i just feel like the world has changed a lot. >> ladies and gentlemen -- >> reporter: something that is breaking through and seeming to break through with some of these republican voters, something we're going to hear from president biden at the white house. the immigration announcement that will shield about half a million people from the possibility of deportation. that is something people here are very upset about and you can bet donald trump will mention it while on stage. >> thank you very much. let's bring in mark and jim messina, who served as the white house deputy chief of staff in the obama white house and the campaign manager for obama's 2012 re-election campaign. gentlemen, thanks for being here. mark, what do you think about donald trump going back to wisconsin? >> well, you'll notice he's not in milwaukee. he's in raseen. it's a kind of place he would
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presumably do much better. there's something very familiar about the playbook of trashing a city. a predominantly black city. he is sort of signaling in some ways to these suburban voters that he desperately needs that he does not want to associate himself with that. he would say specifically it's the crime, the homelessness, all the things people would crudely associate with the inner city. you know, whether he's actually has any realtime knowledge of milwaukee is pretty dubious i would say. i don't suspect it will hurt him beyond maybe a little short-term embarrassment, but he doesn't seem terribly capable of embarrassment. >> this does feel like much of what we've been hearing. have heard from donald trump over the years. also reminds me of what he used to say about philadelphia in the lead up to elections. got to watch philadelphia and
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the not so subtle overtones of what he was suggesting there. the democrats though are using this, they're trying to, with these billboards. what does that accomplish? >> two things. one, democrats need to continue to consolidate their base and fire up their voters in milwaukee. this will help there. mark and i would agree the way you win in wisconsin is the suburbs of milwaukee. they're saying this impacts you, too. this makes your city near you more controversial. i think it's more than just a one-day story because he's going to be back here for four days a t the republican convention and have to hear this and see billboards and see the democrats wail away. as we can attest, the problem with donald trump's campaign is he continues to say crazy things that blow up his message. or a day or two days. eft and when you start to self- -- set yourself on fire, it's not very helpful to your campaign.
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>> how does this penetrate to the voting blocks or the voters that aren't paying attention to cable news, that aren't watching television, that maybe aren't seeing these billboards? voters who are more siloed in social media. maybe they don't pay attention to politics, but are just fed information from the various algorithms they use. how do you find a way into those spheres, jim, if you're the biden team? >> well, a couple of things. one, big events get into the spheres. swing voters only think about politics form in its week and in that time, they only react to the big news. and the biggest news we've seen the really moving swing voters is the trump conviction. and now two-thirds of these what i call double doubters that are going to decide this election now think donald trump shouldn't be running. that's a big deal. i kind of agree with mark that it's unlikely this one day
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statement about milwaukee is doing to push through that. the way you get it to push through is have people talk to their friends and family about why this is a bad statement and hurt the whole place. >> jim, thank you very much. mark, thank you. we're going to dive into the boeing hearing. i believe david calhoun's apologizing. let's listen. >> we have our associates stand up. past and present. i want you to know we are -- >> nearly every second, a boeing
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commercial or defense product takes off and lands somewhere around the world. making us responsible for the safety of millions of passengers and flight crews every day. including our men and women in uniform. aerospace safety is built on a robust industry wide system that relies on self-disclosure, accountability, and continuous learning. this scrutiny to be held to the very highest standard is fundamental to why commercial aviation is by far the safest mode of transportation today. i know full well this is an industry where we simply must get it right. every single time. i've served as president and ceo of boeing since january of 2020. following these tragic accidents. i joined the aviation industry as president and ceo of ge aircraft engines. my introduction to aerospace
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safety was after the tragic accident in 1989 of flight 232. due to an uncontained engine failer that led to sweeping changes, safety management processes and contributed significantly to flight safety going forward. from this experience, i understand the gravity of boeing's role in upholding the integrity of aerospace safety in our industry. we regret the impact of the incident happened on the alaska airlines team and passengers and we are grateful to the pilots and crew. we are thankful there are no fatalities. from the beginning, we took responsibility and cooperated transparently with the ntsb and faa in their respective investigations. in our factories and supply chain, we took immediate action to ensure the specific
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circumstances that led to this accident could never happen again. importantly, we went beyond to look comprehensively at our quality and manufacturing systems. and we slowed things down. dramatically. the launch this more comprehensive look, we have held standouts in our plants and listened to employees and acted on their ideas. we've brought in an independent quality expert and we have announced our intention to reacquire spirit aerosystems, the manufacturer of our fuselage. in consideration of these inputs, boeing developed a quality action plan with very specific metrics which we will use to hold ourselves accountable and the faa will use to provide the oversight required. most importantly, it is our people. over 170,000 around the world
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who are our greatest strength. we've asked every one of our employees to consider themselves an aviation safety advocate. we're committed to making sure every employee feels empowered to speak up if they see a problem. we also have strict policies that prohibit retaliation against employees who come forward. it is our job to listen regardless of how we obtain feedback and handle it with the seriousness it deserves. much has been said about boeing's culture. we've heard those concerns loud and clear. our culture is far from perfect and we are taking action. we understand the gravity and are coming forward with transparency and accountability while elevating employee engagement every step of the way. our airplanes have carried the equivalent of more than double the population of the planet. getting this right is more than
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critical for our company. our customers who fly our planes every day and our country. we're part of a global ecosystem and they're all committed to learning from every incident. it is this relentless focus on improvement that has led to our industry's unparalleled safety record. it is with this mindset we are taking comprehensive action to strengthen safety and quality and we know as america's premier aerospace manufacturer, this is what you and the flying public have every right to expect from us. thank you, mr. chairman. howard and i would be happy to take your questions. >> thank you, mr. calhoun. we'll have seven-minute rounds. i'll begin. mr. calhoun, more than five years after the max crashes,
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you're once again making promises and seeming commitments. they seem highly aspirational. they are very general. to correct course. do you think boeing has done enough to date to make those kinds of corrections and what would you say to the whistleblowers who have come forward and faced retaliation? >> senator, thank you for the question. i ask myself that question every day. have we done enough. i'll remind everyone the findings on the accidents and we all participated in the investigative work. we saw the conclusions by virtue of the ntsb reports and the local regulators reports.
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these issues were attributed to the development of the plane and a software package known as mcas. we took responsibility. >> you accept boeing was responsible for those crashes. >> i accept that mcas and boeing are responsible. >> but sir, has enough been done to date already. >> this is the answer. the development process for an airplane starts with an engineering effort. so we have revamped our engineering effort at large. we have created a series of design practices including a new one referred to as human factors. it speaks directly to the work that needed to be done to prevent mcas from creating the environment that faced, that those pilots faced at that moment. so we did that. we established a safety management system. we learned from the faa and our airline customers what it was and how to implement it. we've been listening to it.
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we tuned that safety management system into every plane that flies every second of every day. >> let me be more specific and i apologize for interrupting but we're limited in terms of time. boeing has a code of conduct that states and i quote, i will never retaliate against or punish anyone who speaks up to report a concern. end quote and yet the whistleblowers that we have heard including testifying before this committee have reported a host of retaliatory behaviors from reassignment to exclusion from key meeting to being sidelined and sidetracked in their careers. verbal harassment and threats and even physical violence. after whistleblower john barnett raised his concerns about missing parts, he reported that
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his supervisor called him 19 times in one day and 21 times another day. and when he asked his supervisor about those calls, he was told quote, i'm going to push you until you break. he broke. when whistleblower sam mohawk raised concerns about boeing's concealment of non conforming parts, he was put in charge of completing corrective action investigation with an impossible deadline. and then threatened with formal discipline including firing. he couldn't meet that deadline. when i read about these experiences, i wonder whether boeing really wants change. how can you reassure us that boeing is going to in fact end
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this broken safety culture? >> senator, i'm going to start by assuring you that i listen to the whistleblowers that appeared at your hearing. something went wrong. and i know the sincerity of their remarks. >> let me ask you a more -- >> and then with respect to our company, we do have a policy. i often, often cite and reward the people who bring issues forward even if they have huge consequence on our company and our production levels, et cetera. my leadership team does that. we survey our people with respect to do they feel empowered to speak up? that survey performance gets better and better. it's never perfect. we work hard to reach out to our people. immediately following alaska, we had a standdown. the standdowns continue and they rotate and we listened to
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everybody. i'm trying to deal with 30,000 ideas on how we can move forward. how do we make their jobs easier. train them more effectively. we are working hard -- >> how many of your employees have been fired for retaliating against whistleblowers? >> senator, i don't have that number on the tip of my tongue, but i know it happens. i know it happens. i am happy to follow up and get you that number. >> i would appreciate you're following up. let me ask you. have any of your supervisors, your managers, anybody been fired for retaliating against people who speak truth to power about defects or problems in production? >> senator, we have fired people and disciplined people and i am
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happy to follow up -- >> who have you fired and how -- >> i can't, i have concern on privacy and as you know every one of those cases -- >> but will you come back to this committee and tell us? >> i will most certainly get back to you, sir. >> let me ask you, have you been aware of how boeing has complied with requests for information from this committee? >> probably not by line item. no, sir. >> well, let me show you a sample of this data produced by boeing in request of this committee. i'll show you a bigger display and the details have been provided to you. are you able to make sense of this? >> no, sir.
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>> complete glob l di book. can you justify these productions? >> i would describe it precisely as you did and i can't justify. and i will most definitely follow up. >> my time has expired on this first round and we're going to try to stick to the time limits because we have a number of colleagues here and i want everybody to have a first round. we will have a second round for colleagues who want to do it. i turn now to the ranking member. >> pick up where the chairman just left off. you said you'll check into that. did you talk to the individual responsible for come plying with our information requests? have you had a meeting with that individual or group of individuals? >> senator johnson, my team knows and i have talked to them
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about the need for transparency at every stage. beyond that, no, i did not review each line item. >> so who would be your direct report responsible for providing this committee the information requested? >> accommodation of my counsel and my government affairs office. >> so you'll talk to them today about this. >> yes, they're right behind me, yes, it's registered. >> you said you've listened to the whistleblowers. have you directly spoken to any of the whistleblowers? >> i have not directly spoken to any of the whistleblowers. >> do you think that would be a good idea to do that? >> i do. >> i'd recommend it. >> yep. >> exactly what are you doing then to investigate the complaints? if you haven't spoke to them directly? just turned it over to your counsel? >> we have a team, an ethics hot
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line and a team of investigators. the most important thing in every whistleblower out of the chute is to make sure we understand the substantive issue being discussed and do safety analysis immediately and go out and interview everybody that's involved and or has touched any of that work and assure ourself that we have safe airplanes and if there are corrected actions to take with respect to the points they make with us, that's what we do and we try to get on that immediately. but there's always an objective view and a number of perspectives particularly with engineering disciplines. >> how many employees does boeing have? >> 170,000. >> so having run a much smaller operation, i realize i don't control what everybody does. you try and set policies, communicate as clearly as possible. the question i have for you because it's quite shocking to have a supervisor calling
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somebody up 19 times in one day. and making the statement i'm going to break you. my guess is you don't condone that kind of behavior. have you looked to your incentive system within boeing? and let's face it, there's obviously pressure from your sales force, manufacturing operation to deliver the planes they've sold to airlines. there's pressure throughout companies. i can just imagine that the pressure is being applied to boeing associates throughout the company. okay. i get that. i've been in manufacturing. have you reviewed for example your incentive systems that would maybe drive that kind of behavior? having to meet quotas? have you reviewed that? >> this year, we made a number of significant changes to our incentive structure that really emphasizes all things safety
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including the running a just culture with that respect. and a just culture, i think, is the environment that you would like us to run. and so yes, that incentive alignment is now in place. >> so prior to our last hearing, one of the articles i read, whether fair or unfair, talked about, your disclosure, probably the sec. where you were scoring high on esg and dei and your score was zero on your quality. these are internal quality performance measures. can you speak to that report? are they concentrating in dei and esg at the expense of really meeting quality performance measures? >> senator, i've never seen those two things ever come into
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conflict. i don't believe my team has ever allowed for them to come into conflict in any way. >> not necessarily conflict. it's what you're emphasizing. where are you putting your management emphasis? >> again, senator, there's a comp system. there's also what we work on every day all day knowing how important and critical it is for the future of our company. safety and quality is it. it's been that way since january of 2020. because of what we have been responded to. safety and quality. that is what we talk about. >> i'll mention another article, one of the reasons, we need a free press. it would be nice to have a completely unbiased free press, but we need investigative reporting. we only have so much staff here at a committee level so we really need journalists going out there and digging up stories. one of the things i thought interesting before this hearing
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spoke to the very real problem, the difficulty you are having in finding, first of all, your manufacturing workforce is aging. throw in covid on there, early retirements, you lost a lot of experience. and in the past, sounds like boeing was able to tap into a workforce that was, that had experience in the aerospace industry and you don't have that luxury anymore. i'm not exactly sure when that changed. i know coming from manufacturing myself, it's been difficult to hire people because face it, we tell our kids, got to get a four-year degree and got to be in management, so we don't encourage people to go into manufacturing. can you speak to that challenge of hiring people in a manufacturing setting for a high quality, high demand aerospace industry? >> senator johnson and i appreciate the question more than you know. the post covid moment in the
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aerospace industry has been unbelievably difficult to navigate. we have 10,000 suppliers. we put almost two and a half million parts into a 787. boeing, because it's big -- >> okay, so we've been watching the boeing hearing. just a quick note for senator johnson who's calling for more investigative journalism. when you spend years tearing down journalists and journalism, you tear down the financial supports for journalists and journalism. the viewers, the eyeballs, the people who read newspapers and thus make it very difficult for journalism to support the expensive side of things. the very expensive side of things, which is investigative journalism. just to note. this boeing hearing is going to continue for a lot longer. we've only gotten through one and a half senators. but what you saw in the beginning there was david calhoun, again, the outgoing ceo of boeing, turn around and
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address the families of victims who are in that room today. holding up pictures of their loved ones who have died in boeing crashes. very reminiscent of what mark zuckerberg of formerly facebook, did the other day when he was on capitol hill testifying about the perils of social media. turning around and addressing the victims of social media directly. again, answering questions, lawmakers are trying to get questions about whether boeing is now not just accountable for what has gone wrong at the committee, but has made repairs. made the fixes it needs to to ensure that the manufacturing process is safe. that outdated parts are not getting on planes. that bolts are actually being screwed in, et cetera. we're going to continue to monitor this. as the day goes on, we'll bring you back once we have any breaking news from it.
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but we also have nbc news capitol hill correspondent, ryan noble, joining us as well. ryan, one of the big things that came out of this in the beginning was that senator blumenthal thinks there should be a doj investigation into boeing. >> reporter: yeah, i think that was significant. and senator blumenthal has been one of the biggest critics of boeing over the past couple of years and what he believes is a lack of transparency from inside the company in terms of the way they're conducting business. and you know, one of the other major things that's going to come out of this hearing today is yet another whistleblower coming forward with real concerns of not only boeing using outdated or not up to code parts for some of the manufacturing of their planes, but also covering up the fact they were using the wrong parts in some of this construction. that speaks to a bigger problem of that there isn't the right level of accountability and the right level of tracking as to
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the way these planes are constructed before they leave the line. obviously, there are safety standards that go across all forms of transportation, but the airline industry is perhaps the most rigorous in making sure any sort of aircraft that gets out of the manufacturing process and ends up on a tarmac at an airport where the public can be a part of it, that that's gone through every single rigorous check and back up to make sure that it is safe to fly. that's one of the reasons there hasn't been a major commercial airline crash in the united states in quite some time. so the lawmakers want to make sure that doesn't happen. there have been enough near misses here over the past couple of years. many connected directly to boeing airplanes and they're afraid if boeing continues this lax attitude that is perceived or accused of by some of these whistleblowers that something terrible could happen in the near future. that's part of why you're seeing calhoun being pressed here and
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why lawmakers want more, if possible, even a doj investigation. >> quite a few near misses including the door blowing out in the middle of a boeing flight on alaska airlines just a few months ago. ryan, thank you very much. again, we're going to monitor this hearing. there is breaking news out of massachusetts. if you call or text 911, you're not going to get through. there's a statewide 911 outage according to boston state police. they are telling everyone there to pull a fire box if they have an emergency or call the number for their local department. boston mayor wu says calls are not going through and as of now, she says they don't know what is causing the outage or when it will be fixed. find the number for your local fire department or find a fire box and call an emergency crew directly. coming up, in his own words, what dr. fauci is revealing
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about his interactions with donald trump when covid was hitting this country. s hitting this country (reporters) over here. kev! kev! (reporter 1) any response to the trade rumors, we keep hearing about? (kev) we talkin' about moving? not the trade, not the trade, we talking about movin'. no thank you. (reporter 2) you could use opendoor. sell your house directly to them, it's easy. (kev) ... i guess we're movin'. right now you can get a free footlong at subway. just buy any footlong in the app and get one free. just scan the qr code and enter promo code flbogo. it only works from the other side of the screen, buddy. you still got a land line in your house. order now in the subway app.
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dr. anthony fauci has a new book out driving, diving right back into the pandemic and telling the public exactly what it was like trying to get donald trump and his administration to take covid seriously. in on call, a doctor's journey in public service, dr. fauci describes dozens of worrying interactions including a 2020 phone call with the former president where he says donald trump tried to urge him to be sunnier about the pandemic. which at that point, had killed more than 220,000 americans. quote, tony, i really like you and you know that, but what the f are you doing? you really need to be positive. dr. fauci recounts donald trump telling him quote, you constantly drop bombs on me.
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last night on rachel, dr. fauci elaborated. >> he wanted it so much to be like the flu because historically, the flu peaks then goes away in march. april, it's gone, then you could go on with the election cycle. >> it has a season. >> he kept on saying it's going to disappear like magic and that's when i had to start saying no, i'm sorry, that's not going to happen. i had to do that publicly. when that didn't work, he started invoking magical cures. when that wasn't working, he brought in scott atlas who told him everything he wanted to hear. >> with us, dr. gupta, global health policy expert and msnbc health contributor. i think part of, you know, it's interesting to get him on this now, dr. gupta, because i think a lot of us have forgotten what it was like during the day of
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the pandemic. you and i talked almost every day back then. what was it like trying to figure out this novel virus? novel because it was brand-new and how the public should react to it. >> just hearing you talk about it is so evocative of those early days. we were talking about flattening the curve and ventilator supply. things i think we've lost that memory of. to your point, i think what really struck me, i think about those moments when you and i talked about beach. should you or should you not. hydroxychloroquine. the whole bit about flu. should you get the flu vaccine? that takes me back to gosh, where were we as our nation's highest elected official behind the scenes didn't realize it was important to get the flu shot. yet he's overseeing all these
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massive health institutions turning out that proactive advice. to me, that really struck me from that interview. >> and dr. fauci saying the party was telling people everything was fine. not telling people how to be safe. not understanding that how to be safe was in conflict with telling everybody that it's all fine. >> well, and to his point, he's surrounded himself with a radiologist, scott atlas, who was telling him what he wanted to hear. as he talked about one million lives averted when it came to deaths from the vaccine, we've lost sight of that especially now as we're thinking about potential threats like bird flu. >> let's talk about future threats like bird flu and there have been doctors who said they're worried about it. it's hard to hear that, jim, especially after all the memories, even the ones we've forgotten, but the memories left of covid and how trying that was. how important is it for an
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administration to be prepared and do you know anything of how the biden administration has approached this over the last four years? >> literally, it is incredibly important. as dr. gupta was just saying, these things happen in realtime and you need an administration who first of all, cares about the science. wants to get it right. and secondly, wants to have an honest conversation with the american public. not just saying it's going to be okay in april. wants to say look, these are tough times, we're figuring it out. i think what's the biden administration has done. the problem with this election is that people have forgotten some of trump's behavior so this book is really important to remind people how erratic trump was during those moments. >> i was reading an article by brian settler, remember when he claimed that google was building a website to help people find
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covid tests and google didn't know what he was talking about. all these details that have been forgotten because four years is a long time and people don't want to remember how ugly things were. when you were trying to campaign on an issue of are you better off today than you were four years ago? and four years ago was the pandemic. donald trump's trying to do that. how do you remind people of how bad it was if you are running against somebody who was in charge during that time? >> that's why this debate next week is going to be so important. part of what joe biden has to do in the debate is remind people. the difference between he and donald trump. the reason they fired donald trump four years ago. the second thing, you buy a burge of really expensive tv ads and say remember all this crazy stuff like bleach, some of these other things that made no sense.
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to start to remind these voters, which is not what you want again for another four years. >> and he kept saying it was just going to go away. or don't test when you won't have any cases. poof, everything's fine. dr. fauci also talks about the threats that he faced as a public servant. and he said he was used to hate mail. he had gotten hate mail for aids, fighting ebola. racially tinged e-mail, but this time, he got hate mail directly threatening his life including what he thought could have been anthrax or ricin. when you were on our air almost every day during the pandemic, what was your experience as being somebody in the public health sector trying to tell people they should take this seriously? >> i think it was a microcosm of what he experienced, of course, but to his point, what really resonated was something he mentioned to rachel about
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antiretro virals and what was happening in south africa where there was this misinformation being led by the president at the time that they were not safe. may propagate the illness and how they were able to combat that misinformation very effectively because they didn't have the eco chamber of social media. we live in a different time where it's much harder to combat this information. >> yeah, because social media spreads like the cliche, like wildfire, and it's really hard to tell somebody something's not true after they've already internalized it. dr. gupta, jim messina, thank you very much for joining us. still to come, president biden marks the anniversary of daca dreamers with an announcement that could affect about a half a million people. that is next. don't go anywhere. a million people that is next don't go anywhere. (bell ringing) someone needs to customize and save hundreds with liberty mutual! (inaudible sounds) (elevator doors opening)
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good to be with you. i'm katy tur. president biden just announced a major new executive action to protect roughly 500,000 undocumented spouses along with the children of those wives and husbands. it is an election year move that could do a lot to appease progressives who have been angry about president biden's moves at the border. we've been talking a lot about that. it's something the dhs
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