Trump vs DEI | Takeaways: Congressional Hearings

You're listen Saints KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI AM six forty. Bill Handle here on a Friday morning, January thirty one. Some of the big stories we are looking at. The confirmation hearings continue on and they are I would use the word hilarious. And the aftermath of the collision. Now

Good questions?

Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane? Also a question that's going to be asked. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. We're hearing that across the board from aviation experts.

And then he finishes with.

In cap letters and three exclamation points, not good, totally appropriate, and then then noon happens. Okay, and he says at a press conference, we do not know what led to this crash.

But we have some very strong opinions and ideas.

And then, as usual, he has his press conferences, which tend to go off script and rambles a bit, and his opinion is that the cause was a diversity push in the FAA's hiring process, the diversity push DEI diversity equity inclusion, which is a mantra, less so in certainly less so in business these days and in schools, but still there in the federal government. Effectively, what he's doing is he's blaming the DEI programs in the FAA as

No, but I have some strong ideas. This is what I've heard.

And then in a live broadcast from the Oval office, he signs the executive.

Order and, in the words of an off camera VP. JD. Vance totally pin the responsibility for the crash.

This is Vance on the Biden administration's DEI and woke policy.

That is who to blame.

And Vance is saying to him, and this is off camera, as you said in your inaugural it is color blind, merit based. Pete Hegsith, who was also at the press conference, said the era of DEI is gone at the Defense Apartment. We need the best and the brightest, whether it's in our air traffic control, or whether it's in our generals, or whether it's throughout the government.

We need qualified people in government.

All right, President Trump, Let's talk about who he nominated and confirmed. Pete Hebsith, right, professional qualifications include mismanaging two small lobbying organizations. His entire career in the military was as I think he got as high as lieutenant. And then his history of drinking. He admitted that mistreatment of women, he denied that.

Well, there you go. And who else, let's go through the list.

Patel, there's some issues there. Telsea Gabbert with her defense of letting out the secrets of the United States.

Right. Remember, and here's one of my favorite ones.

Linda McMahon, who happens to be the wife of Vince McMahon of wrestling fame. She has been nominated as Education Secretary, not to run the Department of Education, but to dismantle the Department of Education.

And how much how much experience does she have? Well? Not much? Yeah, and the and the cabinet posts.

If you talk about a meritocracy, it's it's completely crazy. Uh, it's not a meritocracy. This is not what this president wants. He wants fealty. He wants loyalty.

It's that simple. By proof.

For example, the FBI, he has just cleaned out some senior FBI officials and investigators who investigated him. Gone, DJ gone, but a dozen of those attorneys, even though it was their job. You go against me, you are gone now. To be fair, the civil service, which the FAA has,

So I'll tell you what's going to happen.

People engaged in directing air traffic coming up, testing for food safety, safety, preventing terrorism, vital public functions. It's going to change traumatically. It is not going to be a meritocracy. I guarantee it. It is not, especially if you look what's going on right now. It's going to be loyalty.

And Trump has.

Made that crystal clear. I want loyalty. That's what I want. Chrispher Ray, who was the FBI head of the FBI, straight out Trump said, I need loyalty from you. That's what I want now. To be fair, the presidents do put in people who tend to be pro president, although some have not, some have kept many have kept cabinet positions through another administration, a Democrat of a Republican, or a Republican keeping Democrats.

But this is on a whole new level.

Now, let's go to Washington for a moment and talk about the airspace above Reagan National Airport. Okay, two days ago, Wednesday, seven hundred planes had already taken off and landed at Reagan the airport when the collision happened. American Airlines Flight five three four to two is a Canadian jet and it's a regional jet smaller than seven thirty seven. And then the military hospital, the military helicopter, Army helicopter, because

Years about the busy airspace.

The increasingly busy airspace above the nation's cast capital, Reagan Airport is on seven hundred and thirty three acres right next to the Potomac River River.

That's a small footprint for an airport that is this busy.

It's across from downtown Washington, it's across from the military's joint base, the Ana Costilla Bowling Space, and space is so tight that the regulators actually dole out takeoff and landing rights, I mean really tight. Now every airport does that, but not like this. And why do they keep on

I don't think so.

And so that's convenient. And so last year, for example, six flights were added or attempted to be added.

Because it's just so convenient.

I mean, legislators go home on the weekends, they go home during recesses. And why would you go all the way across town and take a forty five minute drive when you can go ten minutes to the airport. And at the same time, you have all these airplanes flying above since you have that military base right next to it.

You got helicopters that go across the.

Potomac every day, and a lot of them are military flights from the Pentagon and government agencies, and all of them are flying together, and they have different air corridors and different heights altitudes that they fly at, and usually, well, it's not easy. If there is a screw up, well, this is what happens. We don't know if this has grew up with air traffic controllers yet they're investigating it right now and pilots.

So I've been complaining for decades about this.

So we heard this yesterday from our KFI aviation expert who we talked to, and he agreed and he parroted what Army Secretary nominee Daniel Driscoll said. This is an accident that seems to be preventable. That's the word we're looking at, preventable.

Now.

The pilots on the helicopter were all very well experienced trained pilots, so we're not talking about new pilots.

This was not a new pilot training.

These were training exercises by seasoned pilots.

There is an issue.

We do have the air traffic controller and this as usual asking the helicopter do you see that jet specifically? And you hear the pilot in the airplane go yes, I see it. Now there's an issue as to whether he really saw that plane or not, because there was another plane right near it. The collision happened instantaneously, the fireball.

No one survived it.

And yesterday I mentioned that if there is a silver lining, a tiny little silver lining of sixty four people dying or sixty seven people dying, it's that no one knew what happened. It was instantaneous and so no one suffered. No one anticipated the plane going down. I mean, can you imagine you're on an airplane and it's going down, and you've got a minute or two before it hits the ground. What goes through your mind? I mean, I

None of that happened. So we're going to find out what did happen.

And you will see there are also allegations, but these are facts that one air traffic controller was doing the job of two.

Was that unusual? Maybe not?

It was relatively calm. We're gonna hear a lot more over the next few days as to what happened. That's going to be a big story. Okay, tonight or tomorrow. The President may or may not put a twenty five percent tariff on Canada and Mexico, and he threatened tariffs having to do with illegal immigration and the smuggling of chemicals used for fentanyl. But what he said was it really has to do with oil coming from Canada and Mexico.

This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the twilight zone.

Yep, that pretty well says it, doesn't it. So the twenty five percent tariff may kick in tomorrow.

He hasn't sided yet.

He said he's going to decide tonight, but he's still considering.

We don't know.

We may we may not, and tonight is going to happen. So this one now is based on the price of oil charged by Canada New Mexico, where we get.

Oil, we also sell oil.

But that's besides the point, and it's I guess not illegal immigration. Even though that was a major point. Illegal immigration, of course, coming from the southern border, the smuggling of chemicals used for Sentinel coming from.

The southern border. Canada. Who the hell knows.

Maybe it's lumber that's coming in and we're going to grow our own trees. Canadian lumber is a huge, huge one that we buy. Now, a quick word about twenty five percent tariffs on the oil that's coming in. And I'm going to just talk about reducing energy costs. Forget about reducing wood prices for a moment, all right, Who pays the tariffs?

Now?

The president has said that it's the country that sells us products.

That's not true. We pay the tariffs.

The manufacturers, the factories here pay the extra amount of money the tariffs, and then we end up paying the tariffs.

And what did he.

Say in a twenty twenty four town hall in Pennsylvania. And he kept on saying this one year from January twentieth, we will have your energy prices cut in half all over the country.

Okay, I mean it worked.

Eighty percent of the voters identified gas prices as a concern during the election. He won six in ten of voters who said they worried about prices at the pump.

That's a sixty percent rate.

And what we did is four point six million barrels of oil daily coming from Canada, and this is October five hundred and sixty three barrels from Mexico. US daily production, by the way, during that month was thirteen and a half million dollars. According to Matthew Holmes, the Executive VP and chief of Public Policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, he said straight out, this is a lose lose.

Now we're going to lose, and you're going to lose. This is going to make life a lot more expensive.

Adding to the cost of energy does not make energy less expensive. I don't know how that works. I went shopping for eggs yesterday or the day before, and I was stunned at the price of eggs.

I mean stunned. However, according to the administration, the.

Higher the price of eggs that I pay, the lower the cost to me. Do we play that twilight zone again just for the purposes of this show, Yeah, let's play it again.

Let me rephrase, okay, or say it again.

The higher the price of eggs, the lower are cost.

This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the twilight zone.

Yep.

So gas prices average three dollars twelve cents a gallon across the US, not the same as last year, and according to Trump, it's going to go down to a dollar sixty a gallon. Here in California, we're already at twenty two dollars a gallon anyway, so it doesn't matter what we pay.

And there are other issues.

I mean, you've got the world pretty upset about all of this and what's going on where you have these arbitrary tariffs being thrown out at countries. He made the same threat in November against the Bricks Group of Nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates. Putin suggested, because he's under some very serious sanctions, let's forget about

Is that going to happen? I don't think so, but just insane?

Okay, what else is going on in the world of Well, the nominees that are in front of the Senate Committee right now on Capitol Hill and the read.

That are kind of fun Robert F.

Kennedy, Junior Tulci Gabbard for National Intelligence, Head of National Intelligence, Cash Betel for the FBI, and there's a lot of fireworks going on there.

So what is going on?

Well, they're in front of both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, and we're talking about the Senate committee that moves.

The nomination forward to the vote in the House or on the.

Senate floor, and it is controlled both the Senate and the committees are controlled by the Republicans, which means I'm guessing I'd be surprised if all three.

Weren't confirmed, no matter what the problem is.

So we start with Kennedy, the master of the anti vaxx world, and one of the people that are really upset about this is the chair of the Committee Health Education, Labor Pensions Committee, Senator Bill Cassidy, who is a lawyer, who's a doctor, Republican.

He is not happy with.

Kennedy's position at all, and he said, I've been struggling with your nomination.

So what is the situation? Well, how about the autism issue? Right?

He has said many times that vaccination cost cause autism.

By the way, he didn't back down from that either.

He wouldn't say no, and was asked outright, does it cause autism?

Does it cause autism?

He wouldn't say. Total deflection at all points. I mean, it's pretty crazy stuff. That's Kennedy. And you know, I could go on for two segments on that one. How about cash Ptel with the FBI. Now, for years he's been a maga flamethrower social media right wing shows. He called the service Howard's in uniform and violated the chain

That's really what I meant. And he has called for.

Going after people quote in the media criminally or civilly. He said, no, no, it was only a partial quotation, I'm not going to take retribution against those people at all. And he said he will specifically go after people that were against Trump specifically, Well, not really, Senator Sheldon White House, Democrat, this is a quote. There is an unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nomination today and what he's actually done and said in real lif life.

How is she going to oversee US intelligence? Right?

Republicans kept nailing her on her praise of Edward Snowden, who leaked this trove of classified and top secret information and he fled to Russia before getting arrested. She described him as a brave whistleblower. These were secrets, and she didn't disown any of this. She wouldn't call him a trader. She only said he broke the law and the import and the information that he revealed was important, I mean

Back on that. Okay, we'll see what happens.

So this is KFI AM six point forty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.