You'll Never Believe Who Trump Blamed For Plane Crash
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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the 2nd act of Trump's presidency, which is the same as the first but somehow worse as he throws all manner of racist and sexist tropes out as blame for the American Airlines mid air collision disaster. They then explain the humanitarian crisis that is Trump's plan to place undocumented immigrants at Guantanamo Bay, before finishing on Democrats who have been caught in corruption scandals hoping for pardons from Trump.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckering Podcast.
I'm J.J. Sexton, here with Nick Housman.
Nick, buddy, how are you doing?
Oh, just another Weekender, man.
But we're getting ready to be – every Friday is going to be another day, another adventure in this administration.
It really is.
And, you know, I don't know.
We talked about it on Tuesday's show about sort of the – Mental and emotional sort of effects of this thing.
And keeping track of it and working through it is really difficult.
We have another show where, I mean, my God, Nick, the stuff we have to cover today is wild.
I just want to remind people, first of all...
Please take care of yourselves.
And please, please, please prioritize your mental health and well-being.
Log off from this stuff.
Shut Trump off.
Do not allow him to just infiltrate every moment of your lives.
You are not going to be able to resist if you burn out, if you lose all hope and become cynical.
So that is the first thing.
Nick, also a reminder for the people listening, go to patreon.com slash MikeGregPodcast, become a patron, support the show, listen to the entire weekender, all that good stuff, but also join...
It has been heartening for me to see our community take care of each other, stay on top of these things, also prioritize their mental health.
And I, for one, am very thankful for them. - Absolutely.
We have to take care of each other.
We have to just sort of share our communities and our energies together to find that kind of peace and respite from what's happening here.
And then also to remind us also we need to fight.
Yes, we have to fight, and that's one of the reasons we're doing this.
Well, Nick, we're recording this on Thursday, and so last night, Wednesday night, I had had a long day of research and looking through all this stuff and keeping track of some of the things that we have to talk about in just a little bit.
I was sort of relaxing, and then, of course, there is no respite from this a lot of the time.
A major disaster in Washington, D.C. American Eagle Flight 5342 was involved in a mid-air collision with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan Airport in D.C. The vehicles crashed into the Potomac.
We believe that 67 people have died in a terrible tragedy.
It is the first major U.S. airline crash in six years.
We will talk about Donald Trump's reaction to this and how the Republican Party and the administration are dealing with this.
But what are your first reactions on this awful tragedy?
You know, I suppose, I don't know, my first reaction might be like, we're fortunate it doesn't happen more often.
And I certainly think that in my brain, and I do pay attention to these things a lot of the time, and I feel like it's anecdotal, but...
It's possible that in the more recent past that we've heard more about close calls, and it just feels like things are sort of teetering on the edge of safety here.
And then certainly when you do a deeper dive into that specific airport, it sounds like a nightmare, basically, to fly in and fly out of there anyway from that standpoint of being an air traffic controller or a pilot.
So it is awful.
And to have to see this on the video, I wouldn't watch it if you haven't yet.
It's just frightening, and it makes it hard to stir up your courage to then want to get back on a plane.
Yeah, and there's something to talk about there in terms of the, you know, quote unquote, courage to fly.
I famously do not like flying for a variety of different reasons.
You know, the U.S. economy relies on people getting on flights.
And that is one of the reasons, you know, that our economy works the way that it does is because there has been a sterling record for the most part in terms of these incidents not happening.
But Nick, and again, it's hard to keep track of time.
I can't remember if it was last year or the year before.
You and I did a segment that was talking about all of these whistleblowers who were coming out and saying, hey, this thing is stretched.
It is stretched incredibly thin right now.
And we are basically, we have all these perfect ingredients.
We're having all these near misses.
We're having all these near catastrophes.
If something doesn't change, we're going to see a major disaster.
And here we are.
And there is a lot to talk about in terms of what happened in D.C. with this catastrophe.
But we also have to pay attention to how this administration, how they facilitate it, and how they go ahead and deny what they're doing.
And we have to talk about how it occurs and how it goes forward.
And unfortunately, we do have to listen to now the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, because we do have to zoom in on how this is being handled at that level.
Diversity into the FAA's program.
Then another article, the Federal Aviation Administration.
This was before I got to office.
Recently, second term.
The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out.
On the agency's website, can you imagine?
These are people that are, I mean, actually, their lives are shortened because of the stress that they have.
Brilliant people have to be in those positions.
And their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress where you have many, many planes coming into one target.
All right, Nick, before we get into the ins and outs of this, I just want to set the table and point out that Donald Trump froze hiring within the FAA and with air traffic controllers.
On top of that, the head of the FAA was pressured by Elon Musk to resign on January 20th.
We do not have anybody really in charge there right now.
So instead of having a conversation about how the Trump administration might have played a role in this terrible tragedy, What is Donald Trump doing?
He is going ahead and blaming it on what we will now refer to as DEI, and I want to push people to stop saying DEI for a variety of reasons, which we'll get into a second.
There is no explanation whatsoever of why this is.
There is no proof that this played into it in any way, shape, or form.
There are things we could be talking about, but instead, we're listening to this asshole say things like this.
Right, and things that are patently untrue.
And so you have to remember that most of what he says is untrue.
And if you want to argue that it's because of this weird prism that they view reality in, or it's nefarious where he's just choosing to sort of flatten out lie about what they're actively recruiting for air traffic controllers.
Which is ridiculous, what he's saying.
And we have another sound clip here where, thankfully, a reporter actually asks him about it because I think that's important to follow up.
And maybe we'll finally have some pushback on some of this bullshit he says.
So here's the clip. - Today, blamed the diversity elements, but then told us that you weren't sure that the controllers made any mistake.
You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake?
It's all under investigation.
I understand that.
That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.
Because I have common sense, okay?
And unfortunately, a lot of people 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 they're 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.
Okay.
Common sense is this response.
And again, this goes back to some weird default setting where if it's not a white guy doing a job, then the baseline is they're not qualified.
And that's what it comes down to, which is why we have to stop saying DEI, because it is shorthand for the idea that things fall apart if white men of a certain class are not in charge of everything.
They have figured it out because, first of all, DEI is...
It sounds, because it is, jargon that comes from an elite class, which is in corporations and institutions and universities and you name it.
So people are going to rebel against it.
It has also, much like woke, it has become this sort of catch-all euphemism that allows them to carry out an agenda of segregation.
That goes ahead and filters everything through this.
We don't know yet why this happened.
There are a variety of reasons why it might have happened.
That is why you and I are not going to sit here and say specifically, this is what occurred.
But you know what this is about?
It is about papering up the fact that the systems that we currently have, they're all screwed up.
They just are.
There are a variety of reasons why whistleblowers kept saying this stuff was going to happen.
We've had all these near misses.
We've had Boeing aircraft that have basically fallen apart in the sky, right?
We have overworked air traffic controllers.
We have declining standards with these companies.
We have increased flights.
Everything has to be about more profit and has to constantly be moving forward.
And I will say, because we call balls and strikes where we see them.
Trump did go ahead and try and lay this at the feet of Biden and Obama.
They played a role in this too.
They were presidents in a period of neoliberal acceleration.
You know who was between those people?
Donald Trump.
There's a huge amount of blame to go around for what has happened in this country, for infrastructure failure that hasn't been taken care of.
But the entire point of Donald Trump's administration is to make an enemy.
Blame it all on them.
Never, ever take responsibility.
And it doesn't matter what's real.
It doesn't matter where the facts lead.
They have to give you an emotional story that feels real for the supporters and goes ahead and validates their worldview.
And what happens in the middle of all this, Nick, is that you and I, the people we love and the people that we care about, and even complete strangers are put in increasing danger because they create this emotional story that feels real to their supporters and doesn't actually go where they are.
The facts lead them.
Yeah, I don't even think I heard Trump say anything about, you know, feeling for the families that are in the victims.
No.
You know, this is an opportunity to blame Debs.
And I think they're also setting the stage for any future disaster that's going to happen on their watch due to what their negligence is going to be blamed on the Democrats.
And that's always sort of been the playbook.
And it's very hard to sort of...
Combat against that because you have so many people who are looking for any kind of ammunition to blame Democrats for anything.
And the DEI thing is also interesting to me because I kind of feel like it's the reason why Democrats bled voters.
However you want to look at this, BLM, DEI, I've been involved and talked to people who are supposedly lifelong Democrats who have also railed against these woke notions.
You know, there needs to be a shift of, and I hate to say it's just vocabulary, but something about, you know, those terms and the ideology has radicalized people that normally had been, you know, relatively progressive.
Well, of course, that's what happens.
And during an era of increasing neoliberal austerity and precarity, you are pushed against one another.
We've talked about it before.
It's like crabs in a bucket, right?
Trying to climb over one another.
And instead of actually growing a level of prosperity and shared beneficial interest...
It's been pitting groups against one another.
So instead of recognizing that you and me and everybody listening to this who is white, that we stand to gain if people of color and gay people and trans people and if women and immigrants, if they're treated well and if the poor are treated well, that if we all will do better.
If it is a more free-growing environment in which multiculturalism or expanded rights and liberties and protections, we all rise together.
But fascism is always about creating in-groups and out-groups.
And the consequences of that is that we all suffer from it, except for, of course, the wealth class.
That benefits from it, that intentional division.
And whenever we're saying, and Nick, this is a whole list of them, DEI, CRT, you know, any number of these things, what we're actually doing is we're having a conversation about issues that has been designed and the foundation has been laid out for people like Christopher Rufo and all these think tanks and institutes that are funded by the wealth class.
So we're already fighting with one arm behind our back.
We're already granting them the same way during the 2024 election.
We were all like, yeah, immigration is a big, giant issue.
We need to figure out who can deport the most people.
We're going ahead and giving up the advantage of actually fighting about rhetoric.
And you and I have been paying attention to politics for forever.
This has always been the case when it comes to the Democratic and Republican parties.
The Republican Party always controls the rhetorical...
This is white supremacy.
And if you're going to talk to Donald Trump about this, you have to say, Mr. President, are you saying that this crash wouldn't happen?
If only white men were in charge of this.
Right.
Right.
Are you saying that there's inherently something wrong with people of color and women and gay and trans people?
And by the way, I think Donald Trump would walk right into that conversation.
For sure.
You'll get him to say, well, it's common sense.
So something like that again.
And I'm glad that you brought that up in that sense because it's really sort of pitting the ideological boundaries of what government should stand for in our lives.
That's right.
But that kind of leadership that we need to have that would encourage people to view this as a community is simply absent.
It hasn't been there for a while.
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