lottery tickets and scratchers from anywhere with jackpocket. transportation is one of the largest contributors to global emissions. the world needs a better way forward. at westport fuel systems, we're pioneering alternative fuel systems, enabling the world's engines to run cleaner and perform stronger. westport fuel systems. stuart: 11:00 eastern time. at any moment, president trump will deliver remarks on the deadly plane crash outside of dc. what we know so far, around 9:0n american airlines flight from wichita, kansas, collided with the u.s. army helicopter in midair, right near reagan national airport.

64 people on board the passenger jet, three soldiers on the black hawk. no one survived. rescue crews have been working around the clock to recover the victims. meanwhile, the reagan national airport set to reopen at this hour. we're going to bring you live updates and trump's remarks as soon as we get them. aviation analyst and i've asked other guests on the program the same question, why was black hawk helicopter so close to an active airport? >> morning, stuart. that's a normal corres core door them and it's on the potomac whether coast guard, park services, army and presidential helicopters and up and down that corridor all day long. this is a, i think, unfortunate incident that happened and the timing was just perfect that both aircraft were in the same

place at the same time. stuart: is there a problem with whine indications here because the american airlines plane was just landing and i believe there was contact between the air traffic columbia and the helicopter, would miscommunication be in play here? >> absolutely, stuart. that's an excellent point. communication is key obviously at preventing accidents. what happened here, that cascading of events that are all at the same time. so what happened was one aircraft was departing and it was a similar sized jet and going for them and telling them to lookout for traffic and go behind and the plane was climbing out and in below and behind that aircraft. they did say an approaching airplane, another departing plane. when you get a when you're in close proximity to other planes,

the crew could have been off. one other thing, they were at same altitude with the arriving jet of the mishap jet, and they were also at similar speeds. the black hawk goes about 155 knot helicopter as far as air speed. the approach speed on that regional jet is complete the catch a the same speed. so -- about the same speed. you have a perpendicular plane -- helicopter approaching the landing aircraft and like merging on a highway, you're at ground level with another car and moving at same speed and merging, there's no relative motion. your eye wouldn't necessarily pick that up even though the helicopter had collision light on. the aircraft when it passed the helicopter, we're only talking about the air croft less than

100 feet and might have had a chance to see that . they're so focused on the approach at that point, they're looking at the runway and how they're going to land the plane and their checklist. stuart: there's all these demands that we update and modernize the air traffic control system. this is an ongoing demand for literally decades. do you believe that the air traffic control system, which we now have, is outdated and in need of a serious upgrade? >> i'll partial agree with that but the faa is upgrading part of the system but the current system we have works fairly well. the other portion of the air traffic control system is the pilot in command. with good training and good communications, we try to mitigate these mishaps. however this was a perfect

storm, an airplane departing and airplane approaching and a helicopter at co-altitude perpendicular and it was a perfect storm situation where there was just not time to react. stuart: got it. ken christensen, thank you for joining us this morning. very important topic and we appreciate you being here. thank you, sir. as we're waiting for president trump to make his remarks on the crash, i'm going to check the markets for you. the nasdaq is now down 100 points but the dow is up 66 points. it's a split market this morning. show me big tech, please. that's the center of the action again. we have a mixed picture on the big tech stocks. alphabet, as in google, that's up but apple, amazon, nvidia and microsoft, especially microsoft way, way down. 6% drop there. $27 lower on microsoft. the yield on the 10-year treasury not having much impact on the market this morning and just above 4.5%. the chinese startup deepseek

claims they spent just $5.6 million to produce new ai revolutionary chat bot. good morning, madison. madison: morning. stuart: how much have the competition been spending? madison: billions of dollars and with this news, they plan to spend billions more in 2025. deepseek saided they did it for under $6 million and there's questions within the industry how accurate that is and ai and developers here full speed ahead and meta reported after the bell and capital expenditures in the range of 60-$65 billion because of increase investments in generative ai. $65 billion. that's up from $39 billion in 2024. microsoft down today but they say part of the problem is their data center capacity hasn't expanded fast enough. there are plans to invest $80 billion to beef up ai infrastructure and all this as softbank is reportedly in talks to invest up to $25 billion into

openai. that would potentially make it chatgpt's biggest investor. some of that money could be used for openai's commitment to star gate. that's the $500 billion project with the goal of keeping u.s. in front of ai dominance. in fact, ceo sam altman is making rounds in dc today to show off new ai capabilities that are coming in q1 and to make sure that the u.s. government is in the most capable hands when it comes to ai. now, china currently might have the upper hand because of deepseek but things move so quickly and venture capitalists tell me deepseek will only further spur ai competition and innovation and potentially bring down the cost of these ventures. >> sill cal vanly and -- silicon valley and new york and all around the world saying i can do that. innovation flight reel will double the speed for already a speed that's been unheard of

before. madison: when it comes to ai race, you constantly have different people in the lead. at one point openai, then anthropic and now deepseek and continues to change and part of that is all the money going in. last year, $97 billion were invested in artificial intelligence and padval tells me he believes the dollars will be there but companies will get a smaller piece of the pie because they can do more for less. stuart: thank you, madison. i want to bring in ray wong on this. do you believe deepseek did what they did sr. $6 million? >> i don't think that's the cost, stu. they took $5.6 million but chips on the back end on top of hardware and other infrastructure there but it was definitely magnitudes of order cheaper than what our ai companies are doing. stuart: do we need to keep on spending hundreds of billions of dollars as we are doing?

>> well, the short answer of it, we do. it's not just chips and data centers and power. in order to play in ai, you've got to have all three and what we're trying to do is go after the big prize, which is artificial general intelligence. can we get to that capability? along the way, we've got to make sure that things are cheaper and this actually helps in terms of making it easier for companies to access ai and making sure that everybody can access ai and take advantage of those powers. stuart: can you explain what is artificial general intelligence? >> well artificial general intelligence is when we get to this point where there's machines making decisions, these computers are able to think on their own and advance thought and so almost -- well, you'd say that is intelligence and it's going to happen outside of humanity. stuart: okay. i'm looking up microsoft. they reported ai business is surging, but look at the stock,

it's down 6.5% this morning. can you explain that? >> yeah, a lot has to do with the fact they have an amazing sales execstive, julie son, and he sold more than they can deliver. we have a situation with microsoft underinvesting in the data centers and a book of business that's hard to beat and the cloud business growing 20-30% year over year, they have to be able to support the customers that want more capacity and partnership with openai is great because they can put them in the lead in ai and gave them ai revenue. then on the back end, there's so much investment to be able to build out the data centers and modernize them to support that and that's what investors are reacting to. stuart: o done? reaction overdone? >> i think it's overdone. microsoft is going to be one of the winners in the ai war and they'll be around for quite some time, almost 95% of the fortune 500 have microsoft inside them and then the global 2,000, it's also a great business that's there. it's not -- people aren't going

to leave microsoft. they just have to invest in capital expense in data centers, ai, and buildout. stuart: okay. thanks very much indeed, ray. interesting perspective on ai, microsoft, and deepseek, all good stuff. ray, thank you very much indeed. now this, the democrats in deep trouble and may be making a lot of noise at confirmation hearings and mounting legal challenges to trump's agenda, but voters are leaving them behind. the go-to party now is the gop, we haven't seen this in years. a qu quinnipiac poll wednesday w unfavorable rating is a record high, 57% and massive 26 point gap. it's just as bad in the ugov poll, 38% favorable and 58% unfavorable. there's a pattern here. trump and republicans are gaining popularity and democrats are sinking.

why? cnn poll has some answers. almost one-third of democrat voters say these days they feel less like a part of the democrat party. they feel left out. six in ten democrat voters say the party needs either major changes or to be completely reformed. clearly the de-satisfaction runs deep. it's very hard to see what the party can do in the short term. there's no leader. senator schumer as leader? not happening. he's a politician whose politics have been rejected. where was he when the aging joe biden was running the party into the ground? aoc as a leader? no way. far left new york politicians have zero national standing. gavin newsom? no way. excuse me. incompetent california politician haves no national standing. no leader, no policies either. you can't lead simply by obstructing your opponents. resistance without viable policies just goes nowhere. this is one of those moments in history when a newly elected

dynamic president with a plan sweeps the field and leaves his opponents gasping for breath. that's my take. meanwhile we're still waiting for president trump to speak about the dc plane crash. we'll bring you that speech and more after this.

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stuart: any moment, president trump will speak about the plane crash in dc and we'll bring you that speech once it happens. former pentagon official and army helicopter pilot veteran amber smith joins me now. amber, first of all, you're a black hawk helicopter pilot. have you flown in this area, around dc, in conditions like this? do you know what it's like? >> so i was a kyla pilot, not a

black hawk pilot to clarify. the big question people keep asking me is how on earth was a black hawk helicopter able to directly fly into civilian airliner, and sadly based on my experience and what i have seen in terms of the video and the audios that have come out of the crash it's easier than most would think. it appears that though the pilots had a visual con fir mission and aircraft traffic they received from tower, and appears as though they likely were confirming visual contacts with the wrong aircraft and they likely probably never even saw the aircraft they ended flying directly into. how is that possible? lights?

fly ago helicopter is very challenging and very stressful during the day in perfect conditions. add in flying in the national capitol region as you mentioned where there's probably the worst in the country in terms of congested traffic with the blend of helicopters and reagan airport being right there with nonstop commercial airliners in and out. it's very busy and some of the most challenging air space tootle in for these pilots and add in flying at night. i don't know if it's been confirmed or not. if it's under night vision goggles, can you fly with those -- stuart: amber, i wanted to ask you about that . i can't confirm the helicopter pilots were using night vision goggles, but i have to ask you about them. there's reports that using these goggles in a highly lit area like the dc area, makes them less effective. is that accurate? >> it is. you get sort of like a white out

or you can get behinded by high levels of lights and when you look at things under night vision goggles, you often have a halo effect or significant light can white it out essentially. if that area flying right over reagan is extremely well lit. if you're flying under goggles, around washington dc, any metropolitan city, they're lit up and flying under goggles like that i don't want to see it would make it more challenging, but it would mar narrow your vision for sure. you're looking through tubes and unless you're facing directly at what you're trying to look at, you are going -- you can miss a lot. they call it the scan. when you're in the cockpit, you're constantly scanning to look for everything, and there's likely some crew coordination elements at play here as well.

i also think it's very bad practice from some people that i have spoken with that how frequent and normalized it has become to constantly clear helicopter traffic on commercial airlines that are on financial or short final at reagan because of the congestion and trying to get everybody through. but sadly it doesn't make -- it's not very safe as we have seen. stuart: indeed. i have used those night vision goggles in normal circumstances. they light everything up like it's daylight. they're extraordinary. in a brightly lit environment, you got a problem. amber smith, thank you very much indeed and now the president on the crash. >> i'd like to express a moment of silence for the victims and

their families, please. [ moment of silence being observed ] >> thank you very much. i speak to you this morning in an hour of anguish for our nation. just before 9:00 p.m. last night, an american airlines regonol jet carrying 64 passenger and four crew collided with an army black hawk helicopter carrying three military service members over the potomac river in washington dc while on final approach to reagan national airport. both aircraft crashed and instantly submerged into the icy waters of potomac. real tragedy.

the massive service connected and have rescue mission was underway thruout the night, leveraging every asset at our disposal and the local, state, federal military, including the united states coast guard in particular. they've done a phenomenal job, so quick, so fast. it was mobilized immediately. the work is now shifted to a recovery mission. sadly there are no survivors. this was a dark and excruciating night in our nation's capitol, and in our nation's history, and a tragedy of terrible proportportions. as one nation we grieve for every precious soul that's been taken from us so suddenly, and we are a country of really we are in mourning. this is really shaken a lot of people, including people very sadly from other nations who were on the flight. for the family members back in

wichita, kansas, here in washington dc and throughout the united states and russia, we have a russia con contingent ofy talented people on that plane. very, very sorry about that and whose loved ones were on boar the passenger jet. we can only begin to imagine the agony you're all feel, nothing worse. on behalf of the first lady, myself, and 340 million americans, our hearts are shattered alongside yours and our prayers are with you now and in the days to come. we'll be working very, very diligently in the days to come. we're here for you to wipe away the tears, and to offer you our devotion, love and support. there's great support. in moments like this, the differences between americans fade to nothing compared to the bonds of affection and loyalty that unit us all. both as americans and even as nations. we are one family and today we

are all heart broken. we're all searching for answers. that icy, icy potomac. it was a cold, cold night, cold water. we're all overcome with the grief for many who have so tragically perisished and will o longer with be with us. the journey ended in the cold waters of w potomac but ended in the warm embrace of a loving god. we do not know what led to this crash but we have very strong opinions and ideas, and i think we'll probably state those opinions now. over the years i've watched as things like this happen and they say well, we're always investigating and then the investigation three years later they announce we think we have some pretty good ideas. but we'll find out how this disaster occurred, and we'll ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. the faa and the ntsb and u.s. military will be carrying out a

systematic and comprehensive investigation. our new secretary of transportation, sean duffy, his second day on the job when that happened. that's a rough one. we'll be working tirelessly. he's a great gentleman. whole group of great people, and they are working tirelessly to figure out exactly what happened. we will state certain opinions however. i'm also immediately appointing an acting commission tore faa, christopher, a 22 year veteran of the agency. highly receiver malik taylored. christopher, thank you very -- highly respected. christopher, thank you very much. the highest standards of those working in the aviation system. i changed the obama standards from mediocre to extraordinary and you remember that and only the highest aptitude have to be

highest intellect and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers. that was not so prior to getting there when i arrived in 2016. i made that change very early on because i always felt this was a job that -- and other jobs too, but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence, and we didn't really have that and we had it. then when i left office and biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. i put safety first. obama, biden and democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen because this was the lowest level. their policy was horrible and their politics were even worse. as you know last week, long before the crash i signed an

executive order restoring our highest standards for air traffic controllers and other important jobs throughout the country. it was very interesting. about a week ago, almost upon entering office, i signed something -- last week, that was an executive order, very powerful one restoring the highest standards of air traffic controllers, and others by the way. my administration will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety. we have to have our smartest people. doesn't matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. matters intellect, talent, the word talent. they have to be talented. naturally talented geniuses. they can't have regular people doing their job. they won't be able to do it. we'll restore faith in american air travel and i'll have more to say about that. i want to point out that

articles appeared prior to my entering office and here's one. faa diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. that is amazing. faa says, people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the work force and they want them in and they want them -- they can be air traffic controllers. i don't think so. that was january s a week before i entered office and put a big push to put diversity into the air traffic control program. then another article, federal aviation administration, this was before i got to office. faa actively hiring workers that

suffer intellectual disabilities, psychoi can't tell ick problems and mental and physical conditions under diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency's website. can you imagine. these are people that are their lives are shortened because of the stress they have. brilliant people have to be in those positions, and they're lililives are shortened, very substantially shortened because of stress and many, many planes coming into one target. and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it. targeted disability are those take into accounts between the federal government as a matter of policy identified for special emphasis and recruitment and hiring. the faa's website states, they include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability,

psychiatric disability, and dwarfism all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, little runway. the initiative is part of the faa's diversity and inclusion hiring plan. think of that. the initiative is part of the faa's diversity and inclusion hiring plan, which states i dids diversity is integral to completing faa's mission. i don't think so. i think it's the opposite. faa we can site shows that the agency's guidance on diversity hiring were last updated on march 23 of 2022. they wanted to make it even more so. then i came in and i assume maybe this is the reason the faa, which is overseen by secretary pete buttigieg, real winner. that guy is a real winner.

know how badly everything has run since he ran the department of transportation. he's a disaster. he was a disaster as a mayor. he ran his city into the ground, and he's a disaster now. he's just got a good line of bullshit. department of transportation and government agency charged with regulating civil aviation. he runs it, 45,000 people and he's run it right into the ground with his diversity. so i have to say that it's terrible. a group within the faa, another story determined that the work force was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. this was in the obama administration just prior to my getting there. and we took care of african americans, hispanic americans

and everybody that the levels nobody has ever seen before. it's one of the reasons i won. they came out with a directive too white. we want the people that are competent. now we mourn and we pray and we'd like to ask all americans to join me in a moment of silence as we ask god to watch over those who have lost their lives and bring comfort to the loved ones and i just want to say god bless everyone in this room. this has been a terrible, very short period of time. we'll get to the bottom of it. so we also say the same thing and seen it many times. i've had the honor of hearing tapes, tapes are scary. very scary tapes. you have an airliner coming in, american airlines. he was doing everything right. he was on track. he was the same track as everybody else that came in. probably the same track as they've had for 25 years or

more. he's coming in the path, and for some reason you had a helicopter that was at the same height, obviously when they hit but pretty much the same height, and going at an angle that was unbelievably bad. when the air traffic controller said do you see, talking about do you see him? there was very little time left when that was stated. then also he said follow him in. then almost immediately after that, you know, seconds after that, it was the crash that took place. well, you follow him in, that means everything is fine. follow him in. you had a pilot problem from the standpoint of the helicopter had been -- it was visual. it was very clear night and it was cold but clear and clear as

you could b. the american airlines plane had lights blazing. they had all their landing lights on. i could see it from the kennedy center tape. we had a tape up on the kennedy senter and that's the primary -- i'm sure we'll see other tapes because it's such an area where there's a lot of cameras, lot of cameras looking up into the air. into space. where'll probably see many other shutoffs it before too much time goes by. there was a situation where there was a helicopter that had the ability to stop. i have helicopters, you can stop helicopters very quickly. had the ability to go up or down, had the ability to turn. the turn it made was not the correct turn obviously. and it did somewhat the opposite of what it was told. we don't know that would have been the difference and the

timing was so tight and it was so little. so little time to think. what you did have was vision. the helicopter had vision of the plane and you had vision of it all the way. perfect vision all the way from kennedy center where the tape was taken. for some reason, there weren't adjustments made. again, you could have slowed down the helicopter substantially, could have stopped the helicopter, could have gone up or down or straight up, straight down. you could have turned or done a million different maneuvers. for some reason it just kept going and then made a slight turn at the very end, and by that time it was too late. they shouldn't have been at the same height because if it was at the same height, you could have gone under or over it. nobody realized or they didn't say that it's at the same height. at the same height, it still

wouldn't have been great but missed it by quite a bit. could have been a thousand feet higher or 200 feet lower. but it was exactly at the same height and somebody should have been able to point that out. so all of this is going to be studied, but it just seems to me from a couple of words i like to use the words common sense. some really bad things happened. and some things happened that shouldn't have happened. you had a helicopter going in identical direction. you had a helicopter that was at the exact same height as somebody going in essentially the opposite direction. you had a plane follow ago track, which is a track that every other plane followed, and i don't imagine -- i know i've heard today that they might have been following the proceeding plane, which was pretty close but not that close, the proceeding plane. you wouldn't have even been able to see that because of the direction the helicopter was

coming in at. you had a confluence of mahadeo bad decisions that were made -- bad decisions that were made, and you have people that lost their lives, violently lost their lives. we're going to take a few questions. i'd like to ask our new secretary of transportation to say a few words, sean duffy. great gentleman, just started. it's not your fault, and i know you agree with me very strongly on intellect and even psychological wellbeing of the air traffic controller. such a important position, and i think i can't emphasize stronger, i changed it when i first ran in 2016, i changed it. we had the highest standard that you could have. then they changed it back, that was biden, to a standard -- i read it to you. that was from one of your papers, one of the people in this room actually wrote that, and then i changed it back a few

days ago. and unfortunately that was -- we'll see. we don't know that necessarily it's even the controller's fault but one thing we do know, there was a lot of vision and people should have been able to see that, you know, at what point do you stop it? what point do you say well, that plane's getting a little close. this is a tragedy that should not have happened. please. >> thank you, mr. president. i would just note the president's leadership has been remarkable during this crisis. we have had a whole of government response: local, state, federal, and when you see that kind of cooperation, it begins with leadership in this body so thank you for that, mr. president. you make our jocks allottees -- jobs a lot easier. you made an important point that when we deal with safety, we can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety

that impact the lives of our loved ones and family members. i think you make a really important point on that, mr. president. that is the motto of your presidency, the best and the brightest. the most intelligence coming into these spaces. i want to take a moment and extend my condolences to the families of the loved ones. we commit to them that we are going to get to the bottom of this investigation, not in three years, not in four years but as quickly as possible with the ntsb who is here today as well as faa. what happened yesterday shouldn't have happened. it should not have happened. when americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination. that didn't happen yesterday. that's unacceptable. so we will not accept excuses. we will not accept passing the buck. with are going to take responsibility -- we are going go tostake responsibility at

department of transportation and faa to make sure the reforms dictated by president trump are in place to make sure these mistakes do not happen again and i want to thank you for your leadership again, mr. president, and i appreciate the confidence you've placed in me. >> thank you. >> pete, would you like to say something? >> thank you, mr. president. again, i want to echo what the transportation secretary said about your leadership from the moment we found out about this, we were in contact with the white house trying to determine exactly what happened. i would echo it as well, no excuses. we're going to get to the bottom of this. first and foremost from the defense department want to pass our condolences to the 64 souls and their families that were affected by this. never should have happened. and certainly the three service members, the three soldiers. young captain, staff sergeant, and the cw2 chief officer. on a routine annual retraining of night flights on a standard

corridor of continuity of government mission and tragically last night a mistake was made and the president is right. there was some. some sort of elevation issue that we have immediately begun investing at dod and army level. army cid is on the ground investigating and top tier aviation assets inside dod are investigating to get to the bottom of it so that it does not happen again because it's absolutely unacceptable. i want to echo what the transportation secretary and e ewe, blood pressure, said because it per -- you, mr. president, said, we'll have the best and brightest in every position possible. it is color blind and merit based. the best leaders possible whether flying black hawks, flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government. the era of dei is gone at the

defense department, and where he need the best and brightest whether it's in our air traffic control or whether it's in our generals, or whether it's throughout government. thank you for your leadership and courage on that, sir, and we'll stand by you on it. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> jd, please. >> thank you, mr. president, for your leadership i want to reemphasize something the president said and wee were all on the phone and communicating and getting to the bottom and communicate to the american people about what happened and something the president said that i think bares reemphasizing is that when you don't have the best standards in who you're hiring, it means on the one hand you're not getting the best people in government, but on the other hand it puts stresses on the people who are already there. , and i think that is a core part of what president trump is going to bring and has already brought to washington dc is we want to hire the best people because we want the best people

at air traffic control, and we want to make sure we have enough people at air traffic control who are actually competent to do the job. going back to just some of the headlines over the past ten years, you have 3400s of people suing the -- many of hundreds of people suing the government to be air traffic controllers but turned away because of color of their skin. that policy ends under donald trump's leadership because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry. thank you, mr. president. >> thank you. >> on dei and the claims you've made, are you saying this crash was somehow caused and result of diversity hiring and what evidence have you seen to support these claim s? >> just could have been. we have a high standard. we've had a much higher standard than anybody else, and there are things where you have to go by brain power and go by psychological quality, and psychological quality is a very important element of this. these are various, very powerful tests put to use and terminated by biden and biden went by a

standard that's the exact opposite. so we don't know. we have o two planes at same level, helicopter and a plane, that shouldn't have happened. we'll see -- we're going to look into that and see. but certainly for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, smartest, sharpest, we want somebody that's psychologically superior and that's what we're going have. yeah, go ahead. [ questioning being asked ] >> will the u.s. government will able to facilitate the transfer of their remains. >> yes, we will. we've been in contact with russia and the answer is yes, we will facilitate. please, go ahead. >> thank you, mr. president. the situation in the [inaudible]

the president has been mediating the conflict between rwanda and democrats because he wants to bring peace and stability. the situation is really bad right now. i want to hear from mr. president if you have any plan in the future to bring peace in the country -- >> we're not answering questions about rwanda and it's very serious i agree, but it's not appropriate to talk about but it is very serious indeed. >> names of the people kill, and you are blaming democrats and dei policies and air traffic control and seemingly the member of the u.s. military flying that black hawk helicopter. don't you think you're getting ahead of the investigation right now? >> know, i don't think so. with the names of the people? the names of the people that are on the plane? you think that's going to make a difference. >> does it count for their families -- >> we're a group of people that lost their lives. if you want a luisa of the name -- list of names, we'll give that soon and we're in coordinate with american airlines and in coordination

very strongly with the military, but that's not a very smart question. i'm surprised coming from you. please. >> thank you, president trump. thank you for being here. based on your analysis so far. do you have a sense of who is at fault if it was the plane, helicopter, air traffic control, and can you assure people that it is safe to fly in and out of dc? >> well, i've given you the analysis and the analysis is it was based on vision. we had a lot of people that saw what was happening. you had some people that knew what was happening. there was some warnings but the warnings were given very, very late. those warnings were given very late and it was almost as they were given a few seconds later there was a crash. should have been brought up earlier. but the people in the helicopter should have seen where they were going. i can't imagine people with 20/20 vision not seeing what's

happening up there. again, they shouldn't have been at the same height. you're going in reverse directions or sideway directions. obviously you want to be at different heights. i see it all the time when i'm flying. you have planes going in the opposite. they're always lower, we're higher or -- so if somehow there's a screw up, it's not going to be a tragedy. it'll be close but there's never going to be a tragedy if you're at a different elevation. for whatever reason, they were at the same elevation and also, from the american airlines standard, he's along the track every plane is along. saying what was helicopter doing in that track? very sad. visually somebody should have been able to see and taken that helicopter out of play and should have been at a different height. >> thank you, sir. mentioned russians on board that plane, what other national seizure disorderses 124 >> there were a cup -- nationalities?

>> we have a couple other and we'll announce in a few hours with specific information and calling the countries and spoken to most of them but there were some other countries represented. not about this. >> you've issued an executive order you say and aviation safety and this crash happened after this order was issued. was the order successful and what more can you change? >> we issue it had three days ago -- issued it three days ago and in the process of making those changes. this is something that should have been done a long time ago. actually my original order should have never been changed d and maybe you wo wouldn't have d this problem. >> we see every day life that's very often [inaudible] hires or issues that you just mentioned. what plan did you have other than firing some of those

diversity hires in the federal government. what plan do you have? >> yes, that's the answer. if we find people are not mentally competent. you see the language. the language is put out by them, and if you see that -- i'm not going to bore you by reading it again, but these are not people that should be doing this particular job. it would be very different for certain jobs but not people doing this particular job. >> mr. president, you've today lend the diversity element and then told us you weren't sure that the controllers made any mistake and then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistakes. >> it's all under investigation. >> i understand that, that's why i'm trying to figure out how you can come to the collusion right now that -- conclusion that diversity had something to do with this crash. >> because i have common sense and unfortunately a lot of peep don't. we want brilliant people doing

this. this is a major chess game at the highest level. when you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time and all coming in different directions and you're dealing with very high level computer work and very complex computers and one of the other things i will tell you is that the systems that were built, i was going to rebuild the entire system and then we had an election that didn't turn out the way it should have, but they didn't build the systems properly and spent a lot of money renovating the system, spending much more money than bringing a new system for air traffic controllers meaning the computerized systems and there's certain companies that do a very good job. they didn't use those companies. they used comp companies that sd not have been doing it. i think it's very important to understand that for some jobs, and not only this but air traffic controllers, they have to be at the highest level of genius.

>> i want to ask you about ice skaters in a moment because the u.s. ice skating committee was affected. the faa text you read is real but the implications that this policy is newer and stems from efforts that began under president biden or transportation secretary pete buttigieg is demon strategies blizzard warnings false. seriously false. it was on the faa website. >> i read it. >> there for the entirety of your administration too. my question is why didn't you change it during your first administration? >> i did change it. i changed the obama policy and we had a very good policy and biden came in and he changed it and then when i came in two days, three days ago i signed a new order bringing it to the highest level of intelligence. >> welcome back -- sorry. you mentioned a vision was probably the problem that was an issue in this crash. there's been some reports that one of the pilots in the helicopter myobe using night --

may be using night vision -- >> we don't know that . we'll know that very soon. it may change your view plane in you have the night vision. it's very possible that could have happened. that would be maybe a reason why you wouldn't see as well as on a clear night and see sometimes better without it. couple more. >> is it helpful to have your secretary of transportation confirmed and does this intensify your interest in getting other nominees confirmed quickly? helpful to have secretary of transportation con numbered and intensify your interest of getting other nominees confirmed quickly as well? >> sure, we want fast confirmations and the democrats, as you know, are doing everything they can to delay them and felt they've taken too long. we're struggling to get very good people that everybody knows are going to be confirmed, but we're struggling to get them out faster. we want them out faster. it's a good question actually. we have been pushing sean.

everyone knows sean for a long time. he got many, many democrat votes, but they want to take as long as they can. they ask questions like some of the questions that peter would ask that were totally irrelevant and not very good questions, but they want to keep it going and going as lon as possible. i was very -- long as possible. i was honor that had you got so many -- honored you got so many democrat votes. that was very good. >> [inaudible] is the information that -- >> the what? >> the helicopter was involved and is there anything you can talk about that? >> these are things that will come up with the investigation. you don't know, but the helicopter obviously was in the wrong place at the wrong time and a tragedy occurred. please. go ahead, please. >> thank you, mr. president. you've been critical of the

current regulations and you've called for reforms at faa. i'm curious, sir -- >> i made the reforms. three days ago. >> yes, sir. what's your message to the public in the weeks and months ahead. should they feel hesitant to fly and if you can clarify something that the secretary said when you said this helicopter went on a continuity of government mission. >> i don't know what that refers to, but they were practicing. they were -- they do that and call it practicing, and they were -- that's something that should be done. it's only continuity in the sense that we want to have very good people, and that has to be in continuity and that's what they're referred to. but it was basically practice and it was a practice that worked out very, very badly. >> on the first question, should people be hesitant to fly right

now? >> no, not at all. i would not hesitate to fly. this is something that has been many years that something like this has happened, and the collision is just something that we don't expect ever to happen again. we are going to have the highest level of people we've already hired some of the people that you already hired for that position long before we knew about this. i mean, long before -- from the time i came in we started going out and getting the best people because i said it's not appropriate what they're doing. it's a tremendous mistake. you know, they like to do things and they like to take them too far, and this is sometimes what ends up happening. with that, i'm not blaming the controller. i'm saying there's things you could question like the height of the helicopter, the height of the plane being at the same level and going in opposite directions. it's not a positive, but we're already hiring people. flying is very safe. we have the safest flying anywhere in the world. we'll keep it that way.

thank you, all, very much. thank you very much, everybody. appreciate it. stuart: well, that was -- i'm going to call that a sensational news conference given by the president in the wake of that deadly plane crash. the president came out and immediately blamed diversity. he blamed dei and the diversity policy of the aviation administration for the -- he put blame here. he went out of his way to call pete buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, a disaster. he then said, look, he heard the tapes, the president had heard the tapes from the crash. he said the air traffic controller told the helicopter pilot to follow him in. that was follow in a commercial jet liner. then there was a crash.

it seems there's miscommunication, and the president did seem to be blaming air traffic control for this tragedy. michael balboni, former new york homeland security adviser joins me now. did you get the same impression, michael, that the president is blaming, perhaps one specific air traffic controller? >> i think the president was dividing this analysis into a tactical analysis of was refreshing for the american people to hear and important given the sense of how busy and important the washington dc airport is. the number of flights that happen there, you got to reassure people that this is going to be looked at but people are -- separate piece he's responding to folks from democratic party who are saying it's his fault this happened and talking about policy. what's really important here is to understand that helicopter

pilots talk to [inaudible] that's whole training and the airport space -- the space by the airport in washington dv is especially highly regulated area. you just don't go in there without a lot of permissions and a lot of information. obviously there was a mistake, a big, big mistake and what the altitude was and nobody notice it had or call it had out or the fact that the pilot himself was not able to see what should have been seen. stuart: okay, the president was asked specifically should americans now feel safe to fly? he specifically said, yes, even though he criticized the institution, the federal aviation administration for i did veersty policies. those -- diversity policies and those policies are still in place, that personnel is still in place, carrying through into the future. yet the president says it's okay. it's okay. we are safe. do you see a contradiction in that?

>> i think it did say it's a difference between operational or tactical analysis versus a strategic analysis [ broken audio ] stuart: i have to interrupt. weave got a problem with the audio here, and this is a very important subject. we have just seen -- again, i'm going to say the word, it is a sensational press conference delivered by the president of the united states. he's been in office for ten days, he's now handling a major tragedy, and to me he appeared to be pointing the finger of blame at diversity and air traffic control and the policies of diversity that have created the air traffic control system and personnel that we have now. he seemed to be pointing the he seemed to be pointing the finger of blame. that is "my take" away from it. i'm out of time. "varney and company" is done. "the big money show" starts now. >> we are a