Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: is a Countdown bulletin podcast, the second of the day.
Speaker 1: In the wake of the Potomac River crash, and now
Speaker 1: Trump has insulted the dead. He has insulted those who
Speaker 1: died aboard American Eagle Flight five three four to two
Speaker 1: and aboard the US Army Blackhawk helicopter which collided Wednesday night.
Speaker 1: That extraordinary insult in a moment, But perhaps worse yet,
Speaker 1: it turns out that within hours of Trump's insane insistence
Speaker 1: that the crash had something to do with diversity, equity
Speaker 1: and inclusion DEI the dog whistle for pure unabated racism,
Speaker 1: It did not have anything to do with DEI. It
Speaker 1: had more to do with the Department of Government Efficiency DGE.
Speaker 1: Air Traffic control, guiding both the passenger flight and the
Speaker 1: chopper as they approached National Airport in DC Wednesday night,
Speaker 1: was reportedly understaffed, and instead of a controller in charge
Speaker 1: of flights and a second controller in charge of helicopters,
Speaker 1: the same person was doing both jobs simultaneously. If the
Speaker 1: philosophy of any individuals was at fault here, it was
Speaker 1: that of Trump and Evon musk and the rabid desire
Speaker 1: of impossibly and unnecessarily rich people to gain more money
Speaker 1: they could never live long enough to spend because of
Speaker 1: their hateful fear that some ordinary person somewhere has one
Speaker 1: dollar that a billionaire will never get to steal from them.
Speaker 1: This wasn't Dei, It was Dge. The New York Times
Speaker 1: has now reported that the disaster, and perhaps the forerunner
Speaker 1: of the trimming of the federal budget not a fat
Speaker 1: but of bone life and death protection for this nation's citizens,
Speaker 1: took place in a context of chronic understaffing at National Airport.
Speaker 1: Quoting the first internal FAA report, Sydney Ember and Emily
Speaker 1: Steele of The Times quote that report is saying that
Speaker 1: the staffing at the air traffic Control tower in DC
Speaker 1: was quote not normal for the day and volume of traffic.
Speaker 1: That quote is from the FAA report. The Times ads
Speaker 1: quote the controller who was handling helicopters in the airport's
Speaker 1: vicinity Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing
Speaker 1: and departing from its runways. Those jobs, the Times continues,
Speaker 1: typically are assigned to two controllers rather than one. This
Speaker 1: increases the workload for the air traffic controller and can
Speaker 1: complicate the job. One reason is that the controllers can
Speaker 1: use different radio frequencies to communicate with pilots flying planes
Speaker 1: and pilots flying helicopters. While the controller is communicating with
Speaker 1: pilots of the helicopter and the jet, the two sets
Speaker 1: of pilots may not be able to hear each other. Unquote.
Speaker 1: It was to fulfill the cliche a disaster waiting to happen,
Speaker 1: and Wednesday night had happened, and it may have already
Speaker 1: been exacerbated by the mindless buyout offer Musk reportedly steamrolled
Speaker 1: through actual government officials, offering government employees, including air traffic controllers,
Speaker 1: cash to leave their jobs more or less immediately. The
Speaker 1: controlled tower at National Airport in Washington was already about
Speaker 1: one third below staff needs as called for by both
Speaker 1: the controllers union and the FAA, and sixty seven people,
Speaker 1: including several young girls just starting their figure skating careers,
Speaker 1: are dead because of it, and Trump exploited those deaths
Speaker 1: by associate them not with understaffing and insufficient government spending,
Speaker 1: but with DEI. It was also noted late Thursday that
Speaker 1: the same DEI regulations that Trump has railed about for
Speaker 1: months and since his inauguration, almost without stopping for breath.
Speaker 1: Those regulations have been in place since twenty thirteen, meaning
Speaker 1: that Trump served the entirety of his first term at
Speaker 1: his acolytes, at his siicophants, and his cult members, did
Speaker 1: not say anything about, did not do a thing to
Speaker 1: eliminate these supposedly disastrous guidelines, which are in fact present
Speaker 1: to protect against racism and sexism and white supremacism like
Speaker 1: Trump's racism and sexism and white supremacism. And on the
Speaker 1: same score, the stumbling response to the tragedy from the
Speaker 1: NEPO hire now serving as Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy,
Speaker 1: the nondescript former congressman whose wife was one of Pete
Speaker 1: Hegsett's co hosts on the Fox Weekend morning show, the
Speaker 1: man now leading the investigation into this disaster. Duffy voted
Speaker 1: on the twenty nineteen bill HR two six seven, the Transportation, Housing,
Speaker 1: and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act in English
Speaker 1: funding for the FAA. Sean Duffy in twenty nineteen voted
Speaker 1: against funding the FAA. And then there is this continuing
Speaker 1: escalating crisis of Trump's self awareness or lack of self
Speaker 1: awareness of his insulting, arrogant, seemingly delusional reaction to the crash.
Speaker 1: This is wherein he insulted the dead. He insisted it
Speaker 1: was Dei. He insisted that it was a time for
Speaker 1: everyone to come together in shared grief. He insisted the
Speaker 1: controllers might have screwed up. He insisted that since he
Speaker 1: owns a helicopter, he knows the copter pilot could have
Speaker 1: avoided the accident. He then insisted he wasn't blaming any bud,
Speaker 1: and then he circled back to insisting that he already
Speaker 1: knew it was Dei, and you, reporter, citizen, survivor of
Speaker 1: a victim, you just weren't as smart as he was,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't see the obviousness of what was in
Speaker 1: reality his irrational guests. He made that guess before the
Speaker 1: black box from the plane had even been located, And then,
Speaker 1: in a situation that he had already made worse, impossibly worse,
Speaker 1: he somehow outdid himself in the Oval office, as Trump
Speaker 1: finally got around to appointing an acting FAA chief to
Speaker 1: replace the one Musk talked him into forcing out last week.
Speaker 1: Trump late Thursday afternoon did the almost unthinkable. He trivialized
Speaker 1: the healing rituals of mourning to which the grief stricken
Speaker 1: will doubtless turn in the coming days. The visit to
Speaker 1: the crash site. You will hear clearly Trump mocking a
Speaker 1: reporter for asking him if he would visit the site.
Speaker 1: But towards the end, the reporter talks over Trump's answer,
Speaker 1: So what he says at the end is less clear.
Speaker 1: Listen carefully, he finishes with, you tell me, what's the site?
Speaker 1: The water? You want me to go swimming? Do you
Speaker 1: plan to go visit the site anyway? I have a
Speaker 1: plan to visit, not the site, because what you tell me,
Speaker 1: what's the site to order? What's the site? The water?
Speaker 1: You want me to go swimming? There is no human
Speaker 1: being inside Donald Trump. There is no empathy. There is
Speaker 1: no sense that others matter for a moment, not even
Speaker 1: the sense that, even if it meant nothing to him,
Speaker 1: his presence might be for some reason of value to them.
Speaker 1: And behind even that minimal, lowest bar of sympathy, something
Speaker 1: else has newly broken inside Trump. Even last year, even
Speaker 1: on the campaign, Trump could recognize the opportunity to exploit
Speaker 1: tragedy and grief for political purposes when that opportunity appeared
Speaker 1: before him. Extraordinarily, that skill now seems gone. Whatever is
Speaker 1: wrong with him, It has now erased his instinct to
Speaker 1: manipulate the grief of others, to recognize a good photo
Speaker 1: op when it appears before him. It is a new
Speaker 1: level of Trumpian inhuman behavior. What's the site the water?
Speaker 1: You want me to go swimming? My answer to that depends, sir,
Speaker 1: on whether or not you can swim. The rest of
Speaker 1: this bulletin is a repeat of Wednesday Afternoon's first update.
Speaker 1: If you've heard that already, feel free to hit stop
Speaker 1: right now. Thank you for listening. This is a countdown
Speaker 1: bulletin podcast. I'm Keith Olbriman. In a a news conference
Speaker 1: suggesting actual, virulent, uncontrolled madness and requiring his immediate removal
Speaker 1: under the terms of the twenty fifth Amendment to the Constitution.
Speaker 1: The President of the United States of America insisted that
Speaker 1: a horrific tragedy that had occurred barely fourteen hours earlier
Speaker 1: that had claimed the lives of sixty four passengers and crew,
Speaker 1: including at least fourteen members of the American figure skating community,
Speaker 1: including two teenage champions and their coaches and their mothers,
Speaker 1: to say nothing of the deaths of three active serving
Speaker 1: US military personnel in a helicopter. This nightmare excuse for
Speaker 1: a human being insisted this accident was caused by DEI.
Speaker 1: This is the President of the United States who forced
Speaker 1: out the head of the Federal Aviation Administration last week
Speaker 1: and did not bother to even appoint an acting FAA
Speaker 1: commissioner to succeed him until after they were already fishing
Speaker 1: the bodies out of the Potomac. This is the president
Speaker 1: of the United States who appointed not an idiot Fox
Speaker 1: News propagandist host to be Transportation Secretary, but rather appointed
Speaker 1: an idiot Fox News propagandist host's husband, a man who
Speaker 1: cannot successfully say the word pattern. He pronounces it pattern.
Speaker 1: This is the President of the United States who a
Speaker 1: week ago yesterday, froze the hiring of new air traffic controllers,
Speaker 1: which had already been gutted by the Republican House and
Speaker 1: the previous Republican presidency, the quantity and quality of which
Speaker 1: has been in unchecked crisis since Ronald Reagan fired all
Speaker 1: eleven thousand of this nation's air traffic controllers in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, but sure it's Dei. Oras Trump's idiot lawyer
Speaker 1: Elina Haba called it last night on television in a
Speaker 1: malapropism with tragic implications. Quote, Dee, it's Dei. When they
Speaker 1: cannot confirm if the helicopter pilot actually gave control confirmation
Speaker 1: that he saw the lights of the jet with which
Speaker 1: he collided but was looking at the wrong jet or
Speaker 1: at the wrong lights, when they cannot even yet rule
Speaker 1: out hypotheticals, when they don't even know yet if either
Speaker 1: the plane or the helicopter had some kind of catastrophic
Speaker 1: mechanical failure, when they cannot figure out if communications somehow
Speaker 1: shorted out, or if any of a thousand other possible
Speaker 1: tragedies unfolded, or if the Pentagon Pete Hegseet's Pentagon caused
Speaker 1: this by running a training mission at night in the
Speaker 1: middle of the approach to the busiest runway in the country.
Speaker 1: But Trump is certain because he's Trump, and he is
Speaker 1: a super genius, and he knows everything, and he already
Speaker 1: told you that, and he's always right, and he blamed
Speaker 1: it on Dei and Pete buddhage Edge and Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: I guess because he's a super genius. But nobody told
Speaker 1: him that he has been president of the United States
Speaker 1: for eleven days now, and his people have been in
Speaker 1: charge for eleven days now. And if he thinks he
Speaker 1: gets a pass because they all just started, they all
Speaker 1: just started only because they dragged their feet on the
Speaker 1: transition process, in which nameless, faceless bureaucrats in the outgoing
Speaker 1: administration warn nameless faceless bureaucrats in the incoming administration of
Speaker 1: the challenges and the crises and the fixes that were
Speaker 1: only midfix. This was the process Trump skipped. But Trump
Speaker 1: does not bother with details because he is materially brain
Speaker 1: damaged and evil and descending into some combination of sinility
Speaker 1: and insanity, and because he long ago stopped processing the
Speaker 1: world around him, and if he hears one hundred differing voices,
Speaker 1: it turns out they are all inside his world. Threatening
Speaker 1: head today lame the diversity elements, but then told us
Speaker 1: that you weren't sure that the controllers made any mistake.
Speaker 1: He then said, perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones
Speaker 1: who made the mistakes. Investigations. I understand that. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out how you can come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion right now that diversity has something to do
Speaker 1: with this crash because they have common sense, okay, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately a lot of people don't. Of course, he does
Speaker 1: not have common sense. He does not have sense of
Speaker 1: any kind. That is the gist of this nightmare. That
Speaker 1: is the essence of this crisis. The studies are professors
Speaker 1: Dunning and Krueger long ago established by asking participants how
Speaker 1: they thought they did on an exact compared to everybody
Speaker 1: else taking the same exam, that it really is true.
Speaker 1: The people who know the most and are the smartest
Speaker 1: will assume that there are others around them who know
Speaker 1: more or have studied harder, who at least know as much.
Speaker 1: The people who know the least, though, are convinced they
Speaker 1: literally know everything and no one else knows anything. That they,
Speaker 1: of course, finished first among the exam takers on average.
Speaker 1: It turns out with remarkable consistency that those who think
Speaker 1: they have finished in the top quarter have almost invariably
Speaker 1: finished in the second to lowest quarter. It is called
Speaker 1: the Dunning Kruger effect, and it has now reached its terminal, final, tragic,
Speaker 1: insolvable nader in Donald Trump, I will add here that
Speaker 1: if you doubt the pervasiveness the completeness of Trump's malfunctioning
Speaker 1: brain and malfunctioning personality. He conducted his news conference having
Speaker 1: apparently had today or yesterday and not realized it looked
Speaker 1: like this. Having had yesterday or today, his eyebrows dyed
Speaker 1: a yellowish white, unlike any color he has ever previously
Speaker 1: dyed them, so startling that his face gave the appearance
Speaker 1: that his actual brows had been stolen, or perhaps had
Speaker 1: fallen victim to DI. He did not notice, and no
Speaker 1: one could tell him. Would that it was all as
Speaker 1: stupid and embarrassing as that would that it stopped here
Speaker 1: for at the same moment, Trump was explaining that he
Speaker 1: with eyebrows that looked like the Joe Peshi character from
Speaker 1: the JFK movie. Only White knew what caused the crash.
Speaker 1: It was Di. In fact, all that proves is that
Speaker 1: he has learned how to say dei, when others like
Speaker 1: Alina Haba didn't quite master it. While the news conference
Speaker 1: was ongoing, Robert F. Kennedy Junior was on Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: still unable to explain what Medicare parts A, B, and
Speaker 1: C are, even though he was questioned about this exact
Speaker 1: same thing last week and thus was given notice that
Speaker 1: this might come up on the exam, and he could
Speaker 1: have spent some five minute span in the last week
Speaker 1: and could have put his hands on a book rather
Speaker 1: than on his penis in front of a camera phone.
Speaker 1: Mister Kennedy also again repeatedly denied things he has said
Speaker 1: and positions he has taken, and he insisted that blacks
Speaker 1: should get fewer vaccines than whites do. If mister Kennedy,
Speaker 1: the nominee to run Health in Human Services, really wants
Speaker 1: to improve health and provide human services in this country,
Speaker 1: he should look into donating his body to science, perhaps
Speaker 1: later this week. And at the same time these things
Speaker 1: were going on Trump's nominee to ruin them. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that was a typo. It's run the FBI. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it is ruin the FBI. Trump's nominee at FBI was
Speaker 1: asked if he could say Joe Biden won the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election. Just repeat those words, and Cash Pateel literally
Speaker 1: could not and would not say them. Patel was also
Speaker 1: asked if he knew the fascist and white supremacist talk
Speaker 1: show host and podcaster Stu Peters, and he said nod
Speaker 1: off the top of my head. No, And Senator Dick
Speaker 1: Durbin then listed the eight times Cash Pattel had appeared
Speaker 1: on a webcast called the Stu Peters Show. And in
Speaker 1: front of a Senate committee, Trump's nominee to be Director
Speaker 1: of National Lack of Intelligence, Tulsey Gabbard, imploded when she
Speaker 1: was asked about a predicament only somebody as careless and
Speaker 1: arrogant and fundamentally stupid as she is could get themselves into.
Speaker 1: Were you aware, asked New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich that
Speaker 1: the Islamic cleric you met during your inexplicable twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: to meet the leaders of the ASAD dictatorship in Syria,
Speaker 1: were you aware that this cleric had threatened to activate
Speaker 1: a network of suicide bombers in the US and Europe.
Speaker 1: Answer yes, and you are a traitor. Answer no, and
Speaker 1: you are a dangerous buffoon. And Gabbard answered I was not,
Speaker 1: and I had not heard that until today. That Trump
Speaker 1: has filled his quote government unquote with legitimately literally incompetent
Speaker 1: people is a tragedy on its own, the debris from
Speaker 1: which is still being taken out of the Potomac. But
Speaker 1: what multiplies this nightmare, what expands it beyond all proportion,
Speaker 1: What turns it and turns Trump into a clear and
Speaker 1: present danger to every person in this country and every
Speaker 1: person on this planet, is that, instead of the final
Speaker 1: line of defense against a team of morons being the
Speaker 1: proverbial president with the sign on the desk reading the
Speaker 1: buck stops, the final line of defense in this world
Speaker 1: today is this dangerous, arrogant, condescending, unstable, below average intelligence
Speaker 1: monster whose metamorphosis into a candidate for institutionalization has now
Speaker 1: peaked with his latest, newest, strangest obsession, his conviction that
Speaker 1: the answer to any crisis, that the answer to any tragedy,
Speaker 1: that the response to any real human pain is to
Speaker 1: blame it on D. E. I. Donald Trump must be
Speaker 1: removed from office. Impeachment bills to be filed weekly until
Speaker 1: the minority party regains control of the House might work
Speaker 1: no faster than two years from now. The twenty fifth Amendment,
Speaker 1: providing for an emergency remedy for the exact inability to
Speaker 1: discharge the powers and duties of the presidency that Trump
Speaker 1: exhibited today is the correct way to save this country.
Speaker 1: It is also I add with I hope gravity and
Speaker 1: not menace in my voice. It is also the easiest
Speaker 1: it has been a countdown bulletin podcast. The next scheduled
Speaker 1: edition is Monday. I'm Keith Alreman. Countdown with Keith Alreman
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.