This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome to the Gary and Shannon Show. There is a whole lot to get to. Obviously, the big story of our day is going to be the plane crash, this American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter in the Potomac or I should say, just over the Potomac River next to Reagan National Airport in Washington, d C.
Sort of on the border there.
Since the Potomac is the border between the Wash, the District of Columbia, and the state of Virginia.
It is a.
Very heavily traveled air corridor, not just because of its proximity to the Reagan National Airport, but because of the
military base that's just across the river. And as I was looking up last night the footprint of what kind of we're talking about in terms of the location of this plane crash from last night, You've got Joint Base Anacostia Bowling literally across the Potomac River from the Rega National Airport, and with that comes a whole lot of military Department of Defense National Intelligence National Defense Intelligence Agency. That's also the hangar for Marine I, the helicopters that
are used to shuttle the president around. Secret Service has a massive building along Joint Base Anacostia Bowling. There's a lot of traffic, just traffic in general, that goes on in that corridor. So we heard from the President, we heard from the new Secretary of Transportation, we heard from the new Secretary of Defense, all of them involved in the aftermath of this horrific plane crash helicopter collision from
last night. At least twenty eight bodies have already been pulled from the Potomac River after the helicopter apparently flew into the path of that airplane last night as that plane was coming in for landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport. The plane carried sixty passengers, four crew. There were three Army soldiers aboard the helicopter, and according to the fire chief in DC, we don't believe there are any survivors.
Several hours ago, they decided that this was no longer a rescue effort and that it was going.
To be a recovery effort in the Potomac River.
The plane itself, there were a questions because it was dark by the time this accident happened last night, several reporters that I was watching from WTAM, from WTP on radio from other places in and around DC, they couldn't tell definitively whether or not the plane had gone into
the river. They said it was pretty clear by eyewitness accounts that the helicopter had gone into the river, but that they could not tell because the the visibility was so low because it was at night, that they couldn't tell if the plane itself had gone into the river.
Now it turns out that according to officials who have been on the river, the rescue boats, the divers, the plane itself, a small Bombardier airplane, had gone down into the river and broke into three different sections, three different parts. I suppose a positive is that the river in that area is not very deep. Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, said it's maybe waist high, and there was another report that it was about seven feet deep in that area.
So the fuselage isn't going to necessarily disappear in seven foot deep water depending on the amount of damage, et cetera. But it still does not mean it's easy to recover the bodies. It is a river, it is full of silt is the visibility is very very low, and the water temperature is somewhere between thirty five and forty degrees.
So even in the best wetsuit, the rescue divers and now recovery divers that you have working on all of that thing are going to have a hard time staying down there for any amount of time.
So we'll get into that.
I have a lot of sound to play from some of the news conferences that we heard earlier today, from the President's comments just a short time ago, from what the Secretary of Transportation has said, Secretary of Defense, the Governor of Virginia, all of them are going to be in this roundup of different sound, And I think most importantly in terms of kind of getting a picture of what happened, the air traffic control tapes, the actual words
spoken by air traffic controllers to both the airplane and the helicopter just before the collision may shed some light on what it was that actually happened that led to this horrific crash. Also other stuff going on today, the confirmation hearings continue. Not only do you have Robert F. Kennedy Junior going again before a Senate committee, this one the Health Committee instead of the Finance commitee from yesterday. You've got the Director of National Intelligence nominee, Tulca Gabbard.
She is going on. She may be pre cruel. I guess you could argue that she is the one who in the most trouble and has the most uphill climb in terms of confirmation. But also Cash patel Man, who's been nominated to take over the FBI, his hearings today in front of the Judiciary Committee.
So all of that, and locally some.
Notions perhaps about how are two huge fires started and they may have been very different by the way, the Eton fire and the Palisades fire. All of that still to come on this Gary and Shannon Show. And Amber alert still up for the two little girls believed to have been taken by their father after he killed their mother up in the San Joaquin Valley. Alana and Aria Maldonado, two and three years old, might be headed to Mexico.
Their dad last seeing.
Driving a gray Hyundai Elantra California license plate eight l z D zero eight four and if you see it, obviously should call it nine to one one and internationally. Hamas handed over three Israelis and five Thaie hostages in Goza today, but Israel delayed the expected release of the Palestinian prisoners that were part of this swap because of
the chaotic scene at one of the handover points. A bunch of large crowds, I mean hundreds and hundreds of people were swarming around these hostages as they were being turned over to the Red Cross. So they decided to hold off on that for just a bit. Another rain event coming to southern California. We will see rain probably Tuesday through Thursday of next week. National Weather Service is forecasting what they say is a minor to moderate rain event, so a quarter of an inch to an inch of
rain expected Tuesday through Thursday. Rainfall amounts could be a little bit higher in the mountains and the hills, maybe one to two inches, and they said the rain the snow level is going to be just a bit higher.
Flight of a All right, so let me set the scene just in terms of the location of what we're talking about, this air crash from last night on imagine a why that why is the Potomac River and the top left branch is the continued portion of the Potomac River upriver.
The right branch of the WY on top is the Anacostia River. They come together, then the Anacostia disappears, basically becomes the Potomac, And on the body of the WY, they're sort of straight up and down. On the left side, you've got Reaga National Airport. On the right side, you've got a military base, Joint Base Anacostia Bowling just across
the river from the airport. And the way this happened last night, the airplane, the American Airlines jet coming in from Wichita, was flying basically south to north and it was going to make a broad left turn and land at Reaga National Airport. So it's coming up sort of the body of the why if you will, coming up
the river. The helicopter is coming from the north to the south, following that left arm of the WY, sort of coming along the Potomac River on a training flight according to the President, according to the Secretary of Defense, and at some point as the plane is descending to come in for its final approach, the helicopter is apparently rising at somewhere between two one hundred and fifty three hundred feet, which is as the plane is descending into
that same airspace and then the collision happens. The air traffic controllers had asked the helicopter if they had visual on the airplane, and they referred to it as CJR, this regional jet, and it's the type of jet that they were looking for.
I don't know what happened with them. There was a puision on the.
Three You can hear in that air travel played this little part again. You can hear people in the background reacting to what they saw outside the tower. So according to transcripts and what we can tell from the radio tower, the helicopter did acknowledge that they did have visual on that airplane, but it might have been the wrong airplane. That's the best theory that's been floated so far, that
it was simply a mistake by the helicopter pilot. I've seen information from people who say that they were controllers at that airport for several years. It's normal operation because there are a lot of military operations in that area. According to the Secretary of Defense, by the way, which we'll hear from a little bit later, this may have
been a continuation and of government training flight. Now when he says that it sounds like all hell break this is a training exercise in case all hell breaks loose and they need to get members of the government out of DC or bring them into d C or whatever they would do. But it would be sort of the doomsday kind of environment training exercise that they were doing.
But they do it very regularly. Now when.
One of our friends, friends of the show, is in contact with former air traffic controllers there at DCA, and they said that it's very common for air traffic controllers to let everybody know who might be involved, to let the airplane know the helicopters come, and then let the helicopter know the airplane is coming, and make sure that both of them have visual contact with the other. Can you see that airplane? Can you see that helicopter? And it looks as if not a conclusion by anybody, no
National Transportation Safety Board. But the President has said something similar to this that he believes it was a mistake.
By the crew in the helicopter.
If this is true, it's likely that the helicopter identified the wrong airplane that it's flying and off to its right side, off to its starboard side, you're looking at planes taking off and landing at Reaga National Airport and when asked if they have eyes on, if they have visual on that regional jet, they may have been looking at the wrong airplane and flown directly into the path of the airplane that eventually they collided with and went
down again. Sixty four people, sixty passengers, four crew on the American Airlines jet that was coming in from Kansas, three Army soldiers on the helicopter.
All of them are believed to have died.
Former Coast Guard diver shannon's Gaff said, these conditions for the divers that are now looking for the people involved in the crash, the conditions for the divers are just as dangerous.
You know, they're out there in terrible conditions right now trying to get that get that done. The survivability for tempatures in thirty five degree water is about an hour to an hour and a half and that's for someone that's healthy, that has lecture on. So they're really I've got some real challenges to affect this safely, and I'll be pulling for them.
Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram, Etcetera has agreed to pay about twenty five million dollars to President Trump to settle this lawsuit that was brought against the company and Mark Zuckerberg after they suspended Trump's accounts after the attack on the Capitol of January sixth. Of the twenty five million, about twenty two million goes towards a fund for the President's future sentential library. The rest of it's going to go to legal fees and other plaintiffs who signed onto the case.
And in this settlement, Meta does not agree to any wrongdoing. At the top of the hour, we're going to talk about the potential clues that we have about what started are two massive fires earlier this month, the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire, and they may be very, very different. We'll explain what that's going to look like coming up at the top of the hour. Glen Youngkin is the governor of Virginia.
I've noticed this morning that all teams had shifted from recovery. From rescue to recovery. Is just heart wrenching and is heart wrenching for the families that I know. We're expecting a loved one to be home with them last night, and that is where all the focuses are today.
Again, Glenn Youngkin, Governor of Virginia. Sixty four people on board that American Airlines playing the collido with an Army helicopter. Three crew members on the Army helicopter, All of them are feared dead. President Trump gave sort of a play by play earlier today.
Just before nine pm last night, an American Airlines regional jet carrying sixty passengers and four crew collided with an Army black Hawk helicopter carrying three military service members over the Potomac River in Washington, DC, while on final approach to rega national airport. Both aircraft crashed instantly and were immediately submerged into the icy waters of the Potomac. Real tragedy. The massive search and rescue mission was underway throughout the night,
leveraging every asset at our disposal. And I have to say the local, state, federal military, including the United States Coast Guard in particular, they've done a phenomenal job, so quick, so fast. It was mobilized immediately. The work has now shifted to a recovery mission. Sadly, there are no survivors.
Pete Hegseth is in the new Secretary of Defense that's got to deal with the military aspect of this being the Army helicopter.
Routine annual retraining of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government mission. The military does dangerous things, it does routine things on the regular basis. Tragically, last night a mistake was made, and I think the President is right, there was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DoD and
Army level. ARMYCID is on the ground investigating top tier aviation assets inside the DoD are investigating, sir, to get to the bottom of it so that it does not happen again, because it's absolutely unacceptable.
Okay, to go back to President Trump, he had said that it appears that the pilot of the helicopter, or at least the crew of the helicopter, made the mistake that caused the accident.
Is it fault if.
It was the plane, the helicopter, air traffic control? And can you assure people that it is safe to fly in and.
Out of DC.
Well, I've given you the analysis, and the analysis was who's based on envision. You had a lot of people that saw what was happening. You had some people that knew what was happening. There was some warnings, but the warnings were given very very late. You know, those warnings were given very late. It was almost as they were given a few seconds later there was the crash. It should have been brought up earlier. But the people and
the helicopter should have seen where they we're going. I can't imagine people with twenty twenty vision not seeing, you know, what's happening up there.
Okay, this is where they're going to get into trouble. They being President Trump Secretary of Defense Pete hag Seth, they are now suggesting that diversity, equity and inclusion programs are also responsible for this crash. Here, for example, the President this just this morning, when he's talking about this plane crash, reads an article about FAA hiring practice.
I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office, and here's one. The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing, and there says FAA says people with severe disabilities the most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in and they want them they can be air traffic controllers. I don't think so.
This was Pete Hegseth a short time after that.
I want to echo what Transportation Tectory and you, mister President said, because it pertains the DD as well. We will have the best and brightest in every position impossible.
As you said in.
Your inaugural, it is color blind and merit based the best leaders possible, whether it's flying blackhawks and flying airplanes, leading platoons, or in government. The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it's in our air traffic control, or whether it's in our generals, or whether it's throughout government.
And then there was this late in that news conference, the President was taking.
Questionss I understand that.
That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion.
Right now that dubricity had something to do with this.
Crash, because they have common sense, okay, and unfortunately a lot of people don't.
This is going to get him into trouble. What if these were the best in the brightest. What if the air traffic controllers who are in charge of the situation from last night were top of the class, regardless of DEI, hires, et cetera. They were the top of the class. What if the hell helicopter pilot, the army pilot, what if he was the best or she.
I don't know.
The idea that you're now injecting the d I listen, and I agree with him. All of those positions should be merit based hires. I completely agree with him. But the idea that now you're shoehorning this into what has become I think it's the third worst air traffic tragedy in the United States history, that that is the first of all, that this would be the time that you would do that less than twelve hours after the crash.
And then to suggest.
That that was had anything to do with the crash before you know exactly what happened, that's going to come back to bite them.
I think again.
I agree that that air traffic controllers, pilots you need the best period, color blind hiring, a gender blind hiring, whatever.
Yes, I completely agree.
But to suggest now that you know that that was what caused this crash a little ridiculous. At these twenty eight bodies now have been pulled from the waters of the Potomac River. After that, American Airlines Jack carrying sixty passengers and four crew, collided with an Army helicopter with three on board while the airplane was landing at Ronald
Reagan National Airport near DC. Cruisers still looking for other casualties, but don't believe there were any survivors that would make it the deadliest US air crash in about twenty four years. We know that there was a group of figure skaters apparently on board the plane from Wichita, Kansas that was bound four DC. A bunch of figure skaters US figure skating.
The governing body for the sport said that skaters were returning from a training camp or top juvenile, intermediate and novice skaters that follows the National figure Skating Championship which were held in Wichita over the weekend. Some Russian figure skaters were among those on the plane. According to a spokesperson for the Kremlin, one of the young figure skaters did not get on that flight because his dog was
too big. A guy named John Maravilla set to be among the passengers on board American flight fifty three forty two, but he posted about his ordeal on Instagram yesterday saying not allowed past gate to board flight. And he's got a picture of his dog apparently, and he wrote, get me TF out of Kansas please. He rented a car and said he was going to drive the rest of the way, which would have been a fourteen hour drive, but the size of his dog prevented him from getting
on that airplane. Last night, also in Washington, d C. Confirmation mania continues. A trio of President Trump's top allies appear for these confirmation showdowns, Tulcy Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Junior for day two, and Cash Patel appearing in confirmation hearings this morning.
It's going on right now.
One of the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee he committee is Tommy Tubberville. He says, it's huge. We're going to separate the men from the boys in this hearing. Most of the attention. Well, let me get into the Kennedy thing first of one of the outspoken supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Junior as the potential Health and Human Services Secretary is doctor Pat Sun Shong, whose name should ring a bell if you're in southern California.
He's the new editor of the La Times, the new owner of the La Times, I should say just yesterday, he posted two days ago. Sorry, he posted on X. I had not met Bobby Kennedy until a few months ago. The more I got to know him, I truly believe he has the American public's interest at heart. I've worried about toxins and the cause of cancer my entire career as a physician scientist. I really hope he is confirmed.
And then tags RFK Junior. If you remember some of the stuff that we talked about yesterday and the hearing for RFK Junior in front of the Finance Committee, of all things, they spent a lot of time talking about measles, but they didn't spend a lot of time talking about chronic diseases and food supply issues that have tainted, you know,
chemicals that exist in our food supply. So just to give you an idea of who it is that's asking those questions, one tally said that the word measles was used twenty five times by Democrats on the Finance Committee yesterday. None of the questions about his big push recently, not about vaccines, not about measles or anything, but about chronic health problems that constitute the national security emergency that he is concerned about.
Today.
Like I said, he's going before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Tulca Gabbard. Meanwhile, she has been nominated to take over as Director of National Intelligence. There were a couple of different versions of her story and the suggestion that there are as many as three Republican senators who have expressed a doubt that she should be confirmed. I don't know if they are actual hard knows, but they have expressed some doubts. So we'll see how her
hearing goes today before the Intelligence Committee. And then Kash Patel, the guy who has been named to take over the FBI. A couple of things. He was asked by Dick Durbin about President Trump's January sixth party.
Was President Donald Trump wrong to your blanket clemency to the January sixth defendants?
Thank you, Ranking member.
A couple of things on that one, the power of the presidential part It is just that the president welm.
I can see he has the authority.
I'm asking was he wrong to do it?
And as we discussed in our private meeting, Senator, I have always rejected any violence against law enforcement, and I have including in that group is specifically addressed any violence against law enforcement on anywhere.
Sixth, Now, he did not go so far as to say he disagreed with the press.
He can't.
I mean, it's political suicide for him to come out and suggests that he doesn't think that they should have been.
Should have been pardoned.
But I mean made it pretty clear that he abhors the idea of fighting against law enforcement.
So that's between he and Donald Trump. Are you aware that, then, this is South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.
Are you aware that the FBI had volumes information that the Still dossier was a bunch of them and nobody ever told anybody.
At the top?
He did say, answer, expect are they lied about it being told?
That's correct.
So are you aware of the fact that the FISA court rebuked the FBI. Are you aware of the fact that FBI lawyer went to jail because he misled the court by manipulating an email from the CIA?
I am.
Now, keep in mind whatever political side you're on doesn't matter.
Keep this in mind.
There's one per in each of those confirmation rooms, in each of those hearing rooms, there's one who is under oath.
One.
Senators on either side can say whatever they want, and you've seen it. They can bluster, they can lie. Bernie Sanders can put up pictures of baby onesies and there's no expectation. That's not the right word. There's no requirement that they tell the truth. They bluster, they politicize, they make speeches, and then they oftentimes don't allow the actual
nominee to make any actual statement. All right, Up next, the investigation into what caused our massive fires, two very different fires, the Eton Fire and the Palisades Fire.
We'll talk about both of those when we come back to Gary and Shannon. You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.