They like to do things and they like to take them too far and this is sometimes what ends up happening.
Now with that, I'm not blaming the controller.
I'm saying there are things that you could question, like the height of the helicopter and the height of the plane being at the same level and going in opposite directions.
It's not a positive.
But no, we're already hiring people.
No, flying is very safe.
We have the safest flying anywhere in the world and we'll keep it that way.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you very much.
unidentified
I'm not sure if you're going to be able to under the EI.
Pete, thanks for that.
Thank you.
Secretary don't be welcome.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg responded to President Trump's claim that the Biden administration was to blame for yesterday's mid-air collision.
In a post, he called the president's remarks despicable and said, As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying.
We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew air traffic control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.
President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA.
One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe.
Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.
Later, President Trump signed a number of aviation-related executive orders following the deadly collision between a military helicopter and a passenger plane near Washington, D.C.
The first is the formal commission appointing Chris Rochelot to be the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.
And since the commissioner position is, excuse me, since the administrator position is currently vacant, he will act as the administrator since he's now been appointed deputy.
Second, for your signature, we have a presidential memorandum titled Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety.
In light of the damage done to aviation safety by the Biden administration's DEI and woke policies, what this presidential memorandum orders is for your Secretary of Transportation and FAA administrator, in this case, acting FAA administrator,
to basically ensure that we are actively undoing all of that damage, that we are assessing how much damage was done, and that we're ensuring that people hired within the FAA, in keeping with your memorandum of January 21st, are only the most outstanding, capable people for the jobs that they are being hired into.
No, I think we need very smart people running the flights and doing it.
You know, the ones that aren't good, they'll either do one of two things.
They'll have too many coming in and they can't handle it, or they'll have the people waiting up in the air, which everyone's been caught in that situation, and circling the airports for an hour.
And that's no good either.
unidentified
Mr. President, are you aware of the helicopter?
Military helicopter training flights that are flying around National Airport all the time, which should they be blowing?
A lot of the structure is already there, as you know.
unidentified
Mr. President, you said that competence may have played a role.
Are you aware of any performance issues or disciplinary actions that were taken against anyone who was working the tower last night or flying the plane?
No, and I hope that's not the case in this case, but certainly over the years it's been the case.
And it's the case with respect to close calls and it's the case with respect to circling for hours on end.
You know, planes circle a lot and they circle because the people bringing them down, these people that have to be very, very smart, and it's not based on anything other than the brain.
We need the smartest people.
We need both psychologically smart and just brilliant, period, and we are going to have them in our control towers.
We are going to have the most competent people in the country in our control towers, not people that are there for any other reason.
unidentified
You said that you envisioned sending the 80-something thousand IRS agents hired under Biden to the border.
If people aren't coming to work, if they're not going to come into the office and report as per the date that you know what it is, everybody knows what the date is, it's been very well documented, then they're going to be terminated.
unidentified
You're not concerned, though, that if many people take that offer, there could be shortages that could lead to the same thing.
Look, birthright citizenship was, if you look back when this was passed and made, that was meant for the children of slaves.
This was not meant for the whole world to come in a pile into the United States of America, everybody coming in and totally unqualified people with perhaps unqualified children.
This wasn't meant for that.
This was meant when it was originally done for the children of slaves.
And that was a very good and noble thing to do, and I'm in favor of that 100%.
But it wasn't meant for the entire world to occupy the United States.
unidentified
So you don't see it requiring a constitutional amendment that would be...
We're going to make that determination probably tonight.
On oil.
Yeah, because they send us oil.
We'll see.
It depends on what the price is.
If the oil is properly priced, if they treat us properly, which they don't.
Look, Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade.
They're treated us very unfairly on trade.
And we will be able to make that up very quickly because we don't need the products that they have.
We have all the oil you need.
We have all the trees you need, meaning the lumber.
We have more than almost anybody in those two categories.
In oil, we have more than anybody.
And we don't need anybody's trees.
We have to free up some of the tree areas that we have.
We have great lumber in this country.
We have to free them up environmentally, which I can do very quickly.
But we don't need what they have.
And for us to be subsidizing Canada to the tune of $175 billion a year and subsidizing Mexico to the tune of $250 billion, $300 billion a year.
And Mexico is a method of China sending in its product.
And with China, I'm also thinking about something because they're sending fentanyl into our country.
And because of that, they're causing us hundreds of thousands of deaths.
So China is going to end up paying a tariff also for that.
And we're in the process of doing that.
We'll make that determination of what it's going to be.
But China has to stop sending fentanyl into our country and killing our people.
unidentified
Mr. President, Israeli media has reported that conversations between Nets and his government and the White House have signaled that the U.S. may be about to pull its troops out of Syria.