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Feb. 1, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
30:58
Troubles with the FAA - January 31st, Hour 1

Sean covers the tragedy of another plane crash and the ever-growing concerns that the FAA needs the best and brightest in its workforce!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right.
Thank you, Scott Shannon.
Thanks to all of you for being with us.
Happy Friday, eight hundred nine four one Sean.
If you want to be a part of the program, um, of course, our top priority has got to be the families and the people, the 67 people that lost their lives when this Black Hawk Army helicopter crashed into this passenger jet landing at Reagan National Airport.
I mean, could you imagine is your family member and you're waking up, you know, to that shock, you know, and I it's I can't imagine the pain that they feel.
However, you know, and I'm I'm gonna pivot here, not out of insensitivity or for any reason to politicize what has happened here, but we've got to make sure we make emergency fixes to the FAA because we're learning things that should shock the conscience of a nation that have been going on, and that that should have not never been going on.
We we start with John Solomon's report.
We told you about this yesterday that this midair collision was preceded by months and even years of near misses and safety warnings, and it and it runs much deeper than that as we learn more and more every hour, every day.
And we better fix this and fix this fast, or else this is gonna happen again, and we're gonna have more morning families.
And I don't want any more morning families.
I don't want the ones we have.
I want them to, you know, there were people waiting at the airport for their loved ones, and and that that plane was just minutes away from landing.
And we find out in 2023 there were 19 near misses at airports across the country.
It's one of the largest totals in years.
And the same thing last year, including specifically, and I'll give you the instance in a minute at Reagan National.
Multiple collisions were nearly avoided.
You know, if you look at this headline from 2024 in May, federal officials are investigating another close call between planes at Reagan National Airport.
There was one just a day or two before this incident.
And if you look at the FAA, they didn't under Biden, they they actually were looking at America's airport system.
America's, quote, air traffic control system is suffering from quality control issues and staffing shortages that are putting safety at risk.
Well, that should have been a five alarm fire for the country.
And I know, you know, people like you know, Mayor Pothole Pete Buddha judge was busy with his billion dollar, you know, racist road project.
Well, I still don't even understand what the hell he was trying to do with that thing, but and then dealing with climate control and and the climate initiatives and DEI initiatives, but they weren't focused on what would they be being very specifically warned about.
And then we learned that the control tower staffing at Reagan National, the busiest airport in the country, was not normal and has and isn't normal most days, but it wasn't normal during last night's deadly crash.
One air traffic control worker was managing the helicopters in the planes.
Guess what?
That's a job normally done by two people, not one person.
You know, we don't know why the helicopter was flying so high above what is normal 200 feet.
We did we have no explanation for this at all.
You know, why they didn't listen to air traffic control.
And and we're gonna get into the issue of the pilots and involved in this case in a second, but you know, one air traffic controller doing the job normally done by two people is unacceptable.
They not only have to have a staff, they they have to have an emergency backup staff.
This is not you don't compromise safety.
You know, the CEO of United Airlines warned that ongoing air traffic controller shortages are a major problem.
The airlines knew about it and have been outspoken complaining about it.
You know, these other people like, you know, during the uh Biden Harris administration and pothole Pete, they're preoccupied with intolerant roads and bridges and a billion dollars for racist road.
I mean, what does that even mean?
And, you know, climate change and DEI.
It's not a secret across the entire Biden administration.
DEI prior was prioritized over meritocracy.
We can't have that in this country.
Now, what we didn't know is this has been years in the making.
And this was first adopted in 2013 under the Obama administration.
They launched this outreach program for diversity and inclusion.
Democrats have been sneaking this under the radar for a long time.
The word woke was not really as prominent in our vernacular during the first Trump administration.
But by the way, all of these things were taken off the FAA website as soon as Trump signed his DEI initiative now that it's become front and center in the country.
But anyway, what was on the FAA website up until January 22nd, two days after Donald Trump became president and signed the executive action on DEI, you know, was a push to hire workers with among other things severe intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems.
Now, can anyone explain why that would be a matter of policy?
We have stories out today of a thousand applicants that were not hired because they didn't meet that that's they didn't check that certain box.
They could have had more personnel.
They could have been fully staffed.
They if if they didn't put these policies in place and implement them on steroids and human growth hormone under Biden and Harris.
A 2013 FAA document raised the issue in stark terms.
How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve diversity goals?
Well, I don't think, you know, if you work as an air traffic controller, first of all, it's a hard job.
I know people that do it.
I know people that have done it.
You you better have the ability to multitask at a very, very high level.
You better have fast decision making qualities.
That is not something the average person is not a job for the average person.
This is a job for somebody with a very, very specific set of skills that can manage and multitask many things at once and have a lot of balls in the air because there's a lot of planes in the sky.
It was a 2024 lawsuit that alleged the FAA turned away that the thousand air traffic control applicants solely based on race alone.
And now they're understaffed.
Tell me how that makes sense.
You know, but it turns out for years that woke politics were putting our lives in jeopardy, and we just didn't know.
And we had canaries in the coal mine and a rising incidence of near crashes, and we didn't pay any attention to it.
And this this sh in other words, this whole thing was preventable.
And I know it's not good news for the families, and I'm I don't want to add to people's pain.
I can't imagine the suffering they're going through.
But we do have to prevent this from happening again, and we've got to move quickly.
A helicopter and passenger plane nearly collided over Reagan the night before Wednesday's mid-air collision.
The night before, again, Solomon at JustTheNews.com.
Another plane headed to Reagan National, almost crashed into another helicopter on Tuesday night, the night before this American Airlines flight collided with a military helicopter.
And Republic uh Airways uh flight 4514 was forced to abort its first landing attempt at the airport on Tuesday after air traffic control warned that a helicopter was in the vicinity.
And anyway, they executed a what's called a go-round maneuver and safely landed a few minutes later.
Now, if you're on the track to land an airplane, I do happen to know a lot about flight.
I have a lot of friends that are pilots.
It's that is your lane, period.
End of sentence.
Everyone else has to stay out of your way.
Quote there's a helicopter over Georgetown, northbound, 300 feet, again, flying above altitude.
Uh the air traffic controller told the plane.
The pilot confirmed the warning, was told to go around the helicopter and try and land again, which it did.
No plane landing should have to make that maneuver.
Thank goodness that that pilot had to be good at his job.
The incident occurred just the night before American Airlines, you know, collided.
That flight collided with the Black Hawk helicopter.
And we lost 67 lives this day.
By the way, the two black boxes, the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the American Airlines plane.
It looks like they know where it is and it's being recovered.
But if the Washington Times goes in, critics have long warned that the FAA's focus on DEI diverted time resources from air travel safety.
It hobbled the agency as it grappled with air traffic control shortages, antiquicated monitoring equipment and an increase in near misses on crowded airport runways.
Maybe instead of a billion dollars to make roads less racist, you know, maybe that money could have been spent updating avionics and monitoring equipment for air traffic control to keep American flyers safe.
An unidentified source telling the AP that the air traffic controller in charge of monitoring the air space at the time of the collision was performing the work of two people again, confirming that air safety concerns prompted eleven Republican attorneys generals to write the FAA last year and question the administration's hiring practices and priorities.
This has been going on under the radar.
I read the news every day, and I this is not something that caught my attention.
In 2022, the FAA pledged to diversify their workforce by rethinking their hiring practices, and administration officials assigned long-term goals to amplify diversity, accessibility, LGBTQ issues.
I'm about meritocracy.
You know, remember this too.
Under the Trump years, if if you care about opportunity and an opportunity society, the president in the modern era that created record low after record low unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women in the workplace, African American youth unemployment, that was Donald Trump.
And he didn't use it by implementing affirmative action or DEI hiring practices.
But the FAA declaring 2023 the year of inclusion while ignoring warnings about staff shortages and a lack of safety and preparedness in the air.
And the focus, you know, began under the Obama administration.
Point out more than 3,000 rejected applicants filed a lawsuit claiming discrimination.
The FAA dropped the biographical assessment in 2018 after Congress enacted a law banning its use.
But that's as far as it went.
I mean, and then you find out like we're finding out today, both West Point and the Air Force Academy have been awarding cadets degrees in diversity, equity, and inclusion studies.
I mean, that's our military.
Now it's coming to an end.
It's already at an end.
And President Trump blew the lid off the way DEI's impacted hiring practices.
Anyway, as of January 8th, knowing Trump's coming in, West Point permitted as late as January 8th, West Point permitted cadets to minor in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
As of January 9th, the Air Force Academy still offered a DEI minor, according to Internet Archives.
Around the same time the DEI miners disappeared, President Trump ended DEI programs and federal agencies, you know, vis-a-vis that executive order.
I mean, does any of this make sense to you?
The military, air traffic control, there are certain jobs that have got to be the best, the brightest, the most qualified, no other consideration.
And this is one of them.
I mean, now we we learn about this control tower shortage.
And we learn about, you know, understaffing.
And we're learning about all sorts of things regarding this.
You know, runway runways are seeing more near misses than ever before.
This is out of control.
And it can be fixed, and it must be fixed if Americans want to fly in safe skies.
You have 14, you know, great skaters from the national team among the flyers from the championship.
Now their life isn't any more important than any of the other lives, but I mean, these are some of the most gifted and talented skaters.
We'll never see them again.
Ever.
One of the pilots of the American Airlines commuter jet was, you know, Engaged to be married.
How do you think that poor woman is feeling today?
If you want to know America's ten busiest runways, Reagan is number one.
LAX number two, Newark number three, Chicago number four.
The second one in Newark, there are actually two.
LaGuardia and Dallas and San Diego, all up there.
You know, and then people upset, well, Donald Trump brought these issues up yesterday.
He's bringing it up because it's got to be solved and got to be, and Pete Buddigudge blasting Trump after the president excoriated him.
Where was Buddha judge?
Why was he more concerned about racist roads when they have equipment that is outdated and a shortage of air traffic controllers?
Tell me, tell me if that sounds like the right priority to you.
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Now, one of the reasons Blackhawks often don't have the warning, uh, the T Wax uh TCAS system is because they they fly in formation often and they'd be going off all the time.
That's part of the reason that may need to be reconsidered, especially if they're flying out of airports like Reagan National.
But anyway, put that aside, there's no reason the day before this this midair collision, they nearly had another mid-air collision at the same airport involving another helicopter.
And why was it above the 200 foot foot limit here?
Nobody's been able to answer that question.
NTSP member Todd Inman was asked by Fox Business about whether the helicopter's altitude played a role.
He said, right now we're not ruling anything in or anything out, but I would be very careful to anyone who's listening to to this to rely upon the shelf software speculation that they're seeing online.
Our job is to get the absolute facts.
I got it.
We'll get the black boxes.
But it but it is above what normal altitude is.
And also it's the responsibility of every other aircraft if somebody is on approach and about to land and they're on their track, that it's the obligation of every other aircraft to stay out of that aircraft's way.
And of course, as managed by air traffic control, ATC, that's their job.
One NTS uh B member says we know where the Black Hawk helicopters, black boxes are.
That's good news.
Another NTSB member says it will take several days to extract information from those black boxes.
A former Blackhawk pilot suggests adding collision avoidance systems to aircrafts.
This is what we've been talking about now for days.
And uh lastly, you know, could you imagine a Wichita pastor, a Kansas pastor who helped the families as they arrived at the airport in Wichita on Wednesday night, searching for news about their loved ones.
I mean, everybody was a quote in stunned silence.
Could you just imagine?
It just it just feels so bad for these families, but I don't want it to happen again.
Why are you bringing these issues up?
Because they need to be addressed immediately.
Uh, President Trump is now uh out there, and he's very clear, ending weeks of speculation.
The White House confirming again today that the president will be leveling aggressive tariffs on U.S. trading partners.
Caroline Levitt, who's done a great job as White House press secretary, said Trump will be implementing 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, as well as a 10% duty on Canada in retaliation for the illegal fentanyl that they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country.
These are promises made and promises kept by the president.
Now, there are a group of conservatives out there that are just dead set against the president ever talking about terrorists.
No, no, no, it's gonna be it.
And liberals are saying it's a tax on the American people.
No, it's not.
Uh how Donald Trump can be on the political scene since 2015 and them not understand him at any level is I it's beyond my comprehension, frankly.
Let me tell you what Donald Trump and tariffs means.
It means this is the beginning of a negotiation.
Remember, he got Canada and Mexico to get rid of NAFTA, and we got a better trade deal.
He got the Romain of Mexico policy.
You know, building the wall.
All of these things factor into the president's thinking, and he's using something called leverage in negotiation.
It's called the art of the deal, if you want to put it in his parlance.
He's negotiating.
I know I know Donald Trump as well as anybody.
Everything with him is transactional.
Mr. President, um, can I have an interview?
Uh uh, I'd like you for 42 minutes that'll cover or 44 minutes that'll cover the full hour.
I'll give you 15.
So I don't ask for 44 minutes.
I start higher.
Can I have can I have a little over an hour?
I'll give you 30.
All right, how about 45?
I'll give you 40.
I'll take the 40 and then go with the 40 44 that I need.
It's a negotiation.
You just got to know Trump to understand it.
Linda, how true is that?
And then the other part is when he starts talking, he doesn't want to stop.
And we saw that.
I don't know anyone else like that at all.
Well, I'm I got his team like in front of like they get behind him just off to the side of the camera, and they're like, you know, rolling their hands or rap, rap, rap, rap, rap.
And at one point, I just in the live interview, I wanted I hadn't asked him about the economy.
I hadn't asked him about Iran, Iran.
I hadn't asked him about China and Russia, and I'm like, oh no.
I got so much ground to cover, and he was spending a lot of time talking about California.
He literally said, I don't care.
And they said, All right.
And at that point, the rap signal stopped.
You know, people think, well, you're interrupting the president.
I'm like, I'm trying to go.
I already got his answer on California as far as I was concerned.
However, I think people at home need to also want to hear about the economy, more on immigration, more on Iran, China, Russia, important questions.
So you got to kind of balance it as a host.
Sometimes it's hard, although he's a very easy interview in many ways.
It looks like another Trump bashing MBC news star, Chucky Todd has gone the way of CNN fake news acosta.
They're both out the door, gone with the win.
Todd says he's leaving MBC because the national media has lost the trust of the American people.
I wonder whose fault that is.
Because our ratings have never, thanks to all of you, been higher.
You know, Todd comes from a noticeably less visible presence.
You know, from the day he took over, I mean, the day that there'll never be another guy like Tim Russert.
He's a very special man.
Tim Russert would call and ask my opinion on issues.
Tim Russell would come on this show.
Tim Russell came on TV.
Tom Brokar used to come on.
Peter Jennings would come in my radio studio.
So would uh come on TV.
Hospitals now beginning to implement Trump's ban on transgender surgery for minors, hospitals in Colorado, Virginia, the nation's capital said that he have stopped transgender procedures for minors as they evaluate Donald Trump's new executive order.
Good.
It is a life-altering decision.
You cannot go back.
It's over.
And you know, if we can't sell a beer or a cigarette or a vape to anybody under 21, maybe the same standard should apply.
Or if you can't serve in the military till 18, make it 18, whatever the age is, but it certainly isn't 12 or 13 or 11.
Senior FBI officials have been told that they will be fired next week if they don't resign first.
Thank goodness.
It's sad.
You know, I I have my cousin.
So my grandfather's brother had two sons.
Well, he had three.
One was a Christian brother.
The other two were FBI agents.
And I've said this before.
Billy Flynn is alive and well.
He wrote a book and he mentioned me in it and praised me way more than I deserve.
But he did put in the story that I've told.
I grew up and they were deity in our family.
I mean, they had reached the highest level considering their parents had all come from Ireland.
And they made it to the FBI.
And he loves the FBI.
And it was the world's premier law enforcement agency.
Little little changes after Herbert Hoover.
Just like we had the premier intelligence agencies, etc.
And the church committee, you know, dealt with some problems at one point.
Now we have to clean it out again.
Several senior FBI officials, the people that have been promoted by the likes of Chris Ray and James Comey.
They have been told to leave the agency or expect to be fired next week.
Well, unfortunately, as part of the weaponized DOJ and an FBI that's been weaponized that hasn't done its job, and one big example, glaring example is enforcing the laws at our border and then going after, you know, pro-life, you know, peaceful protesters and moms and dads like Linda at school board meetings that are against woke policies or gender affirming care.
They, you know, their priorities have been screwed up.
Or those people involved in the witch hunt against Donald Trump.
You know, Trump is telling senior FBI ranks, resign, or you're going to be fired.
Federal employees have been ordered to remove their pronouns from email signatures by the end of the day.
This is an ABC News report.
Employees of multiple federal agencies were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures by today, Friday afternoon, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News.
Pronouns, other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from the employees' signatures by 5 p.m. on Friday.
Oh, I have about an hour and 14 minutes left before the deadline.
Federal employees at the DOJ uh Department of Transportation, they got the directive all across federal agencies.
The president also refocusing the FBI from chasing January 6ers and rounding up Harris Biden illegals.
Yeah, maybe they should focus on finding the terrorists that we know are in the country, known terrorists, known murderers, rapists, known cartel members, known drug dealers, known gang members.
I think that's a that's that's reprioritizing the FBI back to its what it should be involved in.
The anti-Trump FBI agent, we told you yesterday responsible for opening the Jack Smith elector case against the president.
Now new information from a whistleblower in case brought by John Solomon, uh reported by John Solomon, Jostenews.com, uh, which I think is nothing but progress.
Um we have so much news out there.
It's hard to get it all.
This is the hardest thing to do.
Well, you know, we'll ex we'll get back into, we spent a lot of time yesterday on these nominees, Democrats reverting to form.
You know what?
They're just angry.
After the election, they were in a state of shock and then denial and now and grief, and now that is now they've now evolved into the rage and they've reverted to form, which is just to go after Donald Trump on the immigration front, a gun used in Vermont and a against a border agent and a border agent shootout is linked to a double murder suspect, according to prosecutors.
Good grief.
It's so dangerous these jobs.
Uh anyway, the murder of a Pennsylvania couple is linked to the deadly shooting of this Vermont Patrol agent.
That case in Delaware, that couple killed in their home in late 22, now linked to the line of duty shooting death of that border patrol agent in Vermont.
By the way, why did Democrats defend violent criminal illegal immigrants against Trump raids?
Why?
I'll tell you what I think it comes down to.
Democrats would rather score cheap political points and run on a narrative that they're the most compassionate people on earth.
But they're not having compassion for the murder the Americans murdered, raped, and victims of violent crime.
Makes absolutely no sense at all.
Anyway, there are reports out there about some trans cult, but I have not been able to independently verify all this, so I'm gonna hold off and we'll have more on that on Monday.
U.S. Sheriff uh could face prosecution.
Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General called on Thursday for an investigation of an upstate New York sheriff who released an undocumented illegal immigrant from custody in apparent escalation of the Trump administration's campaign against Sanctuary Cities.
Anyway, he was named Deputy Attorney General last week.
He said that the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York is looking into the failure of the sheriff to honor a federal arrest warrant.
Let me tell you what that's called.
Aiding and abetting in law breaking.
If I did it, I'd go to jail.
Under especially with Merrick Garland and Joe Biden.
A notorious migrant gang expanding its presence in democratic cities as ICE is struggling to keep up.
In this case, Aurora, Colorado.
Pretty scary what's been going on there.
No immigrants should be detained, says a left wing nonprofit.
Really?
This is a pretty interesting.
They're called the Acacia Center for Justice.
Left wing group.
They say that the federal immigration contract claims that the immigration system is intentionally designed to exploit black and brown people.
Is spending apparently overseeing $769 million, providing lawyers for illegal aliens.
And the group says that its aim is to provide due process.
You see, when you enter the country illegally, you're not an American citizen.
You don't have the same rights as American citizens.
Anyway, 800 941 Sean.
The outgoing DNC chair, a little late, says Democrats, they should have stuck with Biden.
California got to give a tip of the hat to Gavin Newsom.
I know you heard me right.
He apparently has stopped a vote to Trump proof proof the state, avoiding public debate over funding that protects illegals with felony convictions.
You know what that's going to result in?
Arrests of a lot of officials in California.
If they try and interfere, they should look into the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.
All right, you voted big government out.
you've voted efficient government in.
Going to take a while for the Harris-Biden economy to be replaced.
We're looking at reconciliation to make that happen.
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All right, we have a lot to cover today.
We'll check in with our aviation experts when we come back.
And what we have learned about this midair crash over the Potomac.
Also, this group, mom's behind Make America Healthy Again.
They're having a huge impact helping RFK Jr.
We'll get to that.
My interview with JD Vans coming up.
Your call's coming up 800 941 Sean on this Friday.
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