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