Three train wrecks and a mid-air collision

Scene along Potomac just after air crash

The most exhausting thing you could do today was pick up the remote control and push the little red button and turn on the TV and watch the news. The entire day in Washington D.C. was a disaster. In one Senate hearing room, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. answered questions in pursuit of being confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). A friend emailed me during the hearing and said he “highly suspects too much acid” in Kennedy’s past.

That’s one lens that would have been useful to view the Kennedy testimony. Kennedy is, of course, the millionaire anti-vaxxer who almost singlehandedly caused the deaths of dozens of children on the island of Samoa by pushing his anti-vax message on people skittish about vaccinating their children against measles after two children had died having been vaccinated against the disease with an improperly mixed batch of the MMR vaccine in 2018. Eighty-three people died from measles when an outbreak hit in 2019 after Kennedy had pushed his anti-vax message on the islanders. Sixty-one were under the age of four years. After the deaths of unvaccinated children, Kennedy, who founded and chaired the ironically titled Children’s Health Defense, blamed the deaths on poverty and malnutrition.

Kennedy had real problems answering questions about Medicare and Medicaid, the two national health insurance plans he would run as part of his duties overseeing HHS. Questioned by Democrats on the panel, Kennedy confused the two programs, claiming that Medicaid was “fully funded by the federal government” when in fact it is funded jointly by the feds and the states. Medicare is the program that is funded by payroll taxes paid into federal coffers over the lifetimes of people eligible for the program.

Kennedy could not give an accurate description of the differences between Medicare Parts A, B, and C. He said Part A was “mainly for primary care physicians,” when in fact Part A pays for hospitalization. He said Part B is “for physicians and doctors,” as if there is a difference between the two. In fact, Part B pays for a range of health services, including doctor visits, home health care, medical supplies and services such as rehabilitation after surgeries. When asked about Part C, which includes private Medicare Advantage programs, Kennedy rhetorically threw up his hands and said Part C provided “the full menu of all the services – A, B, C and D.” Train wreck number one.

Train wreck number two was the appearance of Tulsi Gabbard before the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking to be confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard, who has echoed Putin’s talking points and blamed the war in Ukraine on NATO expansion, did not explain the reasoning behind her statements about Ukraine other than to claim she is not “Putin’s puppet.” She refused to say that Edward Snowden committed treason when he turned over highly sensitive information about U.S. intelligence gathering to journalists. Snowden’s leaks of intelligence secrets led to the jailing and deaths of foreign nationals working for U.S. intelligence agencies. Gabbard would only concede that Snowden “broke the law and released this information in a way that he should not have,” as if there is another way that top-secrets can be shared with people who are not cleared to receive it.

Gabbard was questioned about her highly publicized trip to Syria to meet with Bashar al Assad at a time when he was gassing and bombing his own citizens. She answered that “I have no love for Assad or any dictator,” presumably not including the one who appointed this unqualified cultist and conspiracy theorist to the highest position in the U.S. intelligence services.

And then there was train wreck number three, featuring the man who has never taken responsibility for anything in his life. Donald Trump appeared at a press conference in the White House this morning. Trump, who oversees the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the Department of Transportation – all of which will be involved in the investigation of the mid-air crash in Washington D.C. last night -- blamed the collision of an American Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter on Biden and Obama and DEI. Asked by a reporter if he had any evidence that DEI hiring practices had led to the mid-air crash, Trump replied, “I have common sense, okay? Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

Trump teed off on former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster – now he’s just got a good line of bullshit.” CNN, which had a reporter in the White House press room, described Trump’s attack on Buttigieg this way: “It was a remarkable moment, with television broadcasts showing a split-screen of the recovery effort on the Potomac only miles away from the White House, as Trump spoke.”

Trump then launched full-on racist mode, performing out loud and in public for his MAGA faithful. He recalled seeing a story that claimed people in the FAA had “determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans.” Trump’s statement was false.

Late today, Trump signed a new executive order on DEI and the FAA. “This review shall include a systematic assessment of any deterioration in hiring standards and aviation safety standards and protocols during the Biden administration,” the memo stated without providing evidence of any such Biden “protocols.” The memo goes on to claim that the Biden administration “egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.” This statement was also false.

Language regarding people with disabilities has been in FAA regulations since 2013 and was in force throughout Trump’s first administration. ABC News reported this evening that a former FAA official said that “DEI and any similar programs do not apply to air traffic control hiring, though -- no one is given preferential treatment for race, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation.”

Another FAA official, Chris Wilbanks, the deputy vice president of safety and technical training, told ABC News that “Applicants must pass a medical exam, an aptitude test and a psychological test that is more stringent than that required of a pilot.” Wilbanks went on to tell ABC News that in 2022, there were 57,000 applicants to be Air Traffic Controllers (ATC). Of that number, only 2,400 passed the qualifications to go to the ATC Academy. Wilbanks said that only a thousand candidates make it through the first day of the academy. Seventy-two percent graduate from the ATC academy, and about 60 percent finish the training to become an Air Traffic Controller, which lasts three to four years from the date a candidate is first hired.

I haven’t seen this in any of the reporting about the collision of the Army Blackhawk helicopter and the American Airlines jet, but I think the accident may end up being blamed on the Army pilots wearing helmets with night vision goggles as they flew along the edge of the Potomac River. Night vision goggles amplify ambient visible light and near-infrared light into images that can be seen by the person wearing the goggles. An excess of ambient light, such as that of a city, may interfere with the production of visible images by the night vision goggles. In addition, night vision goggles produce a tunnel effect that blocks out much of peripheral vision of the wearer. One of the last transmissions from the Air Traffic Controller asked the helicopter pilots if they could see the American Airlines jet: “PAT25, do you have the CRJ in sight?” PAT25 was the callsign of the Blackhawk. CRJ is an air traffic abbreviation for “Commercial Regional Jet.” The last transmission to the Blackhawk ordered the helicopter to avoid the jet by turning behind it: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.”

Every accident involving the deaths of innocent civilians is a tragedy. It isn’t every day that the tragedy involves more than a jet aircraft and a helicopter to include those who will doubtlessly lose their lives if the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard are confirmed to their posts, along with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who joined his master, Donald Trump, at the White House podium today to blame the accident, which involved a helicopter over which Hegseth had command, on two previous presidents and DEI hiring practices.

The entirety of the incoming Trump administration is an accident in progress. That an actual air traffic accident occurred during the first 11 days of Trump’s rule was as predictable as the bright orange makeup he wore for the cameras this morning.