272,752 views Jun 11, 2025 Some More News! – Full EpisodesHi. High-profile crashes and fired FAA employees led us to wonder… is it still okay to fly? Short answer: Yes with a but. Long answer: Watch the video.
Look at all this. We have lights and a
backdrop and everything. And here’s some more news. Mankind has mastered the power of flight. Wow! Flying machines, can you believe it? I know we’ve all been dreaming of reaching the clouds ever since going on the Delta Dreamflight ride at Disney, but I mean, gee whiz, we did it! We’re flying! – [Announcer] On January 29th
at Reagan National Airport, an army Blackhawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines regional jet over the Potomac River, killing all 67 people
aboard both aircraft. – The wing of an American Airlines plane struck another plane on
the taxiway this afternoon. – Big delays at Newark
Liberty International Airport continued today after
another radar outage. – [Crash Victim] Our plane
crashed, it’s upside down. – [Reporter] Images of the
aftermath show the plane on its top on the tarmac. Its wings and tail ripped off and landing gear pointed towards the sky – Sort of, sorry, we’re flying sort of. Boy, there sure have been a
lot of plane accidents lately. Is that good? Do people like that? The problem seems primarily, but not exclusively related
to air traffic control. Even as we were writing this, we got news about Newark
Airport losing their radar at least four times, which
I’m pretty sure is terrifying. That airport appears to be
the number one destination for air travel anxiety right now. In fact, according to one poll, 65% of Americans were
more nervous about flying due to these recent crashes and issues. Unfortunately, people sort
of, kind of need to fly. Some of you are watching this
at the airport right now, or not, probably not, but in case you are for some reason watching this
in the airport right now, let’s answer a very basic and
pressing question for you. over 1,100 aviation accidents each year over the last decade, and very few of them
involved commercial aircraft. Considering that there
are over 45,000 flights that the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic organization
monitors each day, it’s downright amazing how few
crashes there are in general. A Bureau of Transportation
Statistics report said that between 2013 and 2022, there had only been 12
total fatalities recorded from US passenger airlines. By comparison, throughout
that same timeframe, there were about 5,000
deaths by choking per year. So this means statistically
it’s safer to ride in the plane than it is to eat the airline food. Am I right folks? Oh gosh. Rim shot. We hate all food. If we were to expand the stats globally, it’s even more encouraging. A 2024 safety report from the International
Air Transport Association calculated one airplane accident
for every 880,000 flights. So that seven fatal accidents out of 40.6 million flights last year, or nearly twice as safe
as it was a decade ago. As a comparison, the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration estimates that over 39,000 people
died in traffic accidents in the same year. Not that life should
be seen as a statistic. Were all aiming to get
those deaths down to zero, but frankly, it seems like the dangers of commercial airline travel
have been a bit overblown and oversold. It’s the Chris Pratt of fears. Like we don’t have the exact data, but more people die in the
airport than on the plane, meaning that you sitting in
the airport watching this are more likely to have your
throat slashed in 3, 2, 1. Anyway, no, it is not
more unsafe to fly now. If you’re at the airport or going to fly soon, you
can now shut off this video. Go on. It’s okay. Okay, now that those
people are gone or dead, let’s do the actual episode. (engine whooshing) It should be noted that even
the doomiest exploration of air travel is greatly
exacerbated by our media landscape, which more than ever is
fundamentally designed for sensationalism. I can’t even imagine the AI slop images of flaming plane crashes
being whipped up on X. Maybe Grok is more levelheaded when it’s not doubting the Holocaust. I don’t know. This is all to say that plane safety is on
everyone’s minds right now, and so naturally the media is
going to glom onto that fear. They are going to over report or run ambiguous headlines like this one about a mid-air collision in Arizona. That headline fails to
mention that the crash was between two small planes, one of which was from a flight school. But with all that said, it’s not like people have
zero reason to be scared to fly right now, after all the year kicked off with our new-old president
promising to gut regulations and agencies, followed
by the DC Potomac crash that killed 67 passengers. That crash was the first major
commercial airplane crash in the United States in 16 years. And while Trump wasn’t really
to blame for that crash, there was an opportunity
for this new-old president to use this tragedy as an
opportunity to lead the country and comfort Americans by
showing an understanding of the problem and presenting
immediate solutions. However, – 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. – Ah yes, who can forget Bush’s
historic speech after 9/11? Check out these articles
I printed from the web. So of course, Trump and
other right wing ghouls used this tragedy to make unfounded claims against DEI like they’ve
been doing for years now. Instead of having anything serious to say, they looked a terrified country in the eye and just blamed minorities. The people they just happened
to be blaming for everything and everyone knew they
were going to do this. Like of course they were going to do this. Specifically, the charge is that Joe Biden and Obama had specific
DEI air traffic quotas that booted other qualified
candidates, but hey, but it’s not about race. – And this isn’t about Black people. A lot of people hear DEI, hear Black. No, he is trying to set quotas for people who are deaf to get jobs, people who are dwarves to get jobs, people with transgender
issues to get jobs. See, it’s a totally
different kind of bigotry. They’re not a one hit wonder.
They can hate other things. Also, in case you are wondering, 78% of air traffic controllers are men and 71% identify as white. Those Obama era hiring changes were to provide a broader
opportunity for diverse groups and ultimately had mixed results and were reversed back in 2016, meaning that they have nothing to do with the current situation. This is all to say that no,
DEI doesn’t factor into this, and so it’s hard to feel safe
when the people in charge of protecting us seem to have
no idea what the problem is and are in fact blaming a
completely unrelated thing. It’s like if your doctor blamed
headaches on the Babadook, you would not feel confident that your headaches would be solved or you’d feel way more scared
of the Babadook, I guess. So that’s actually good. You should be. So what is actually the problem or what are the risks
with air flight right now? We could ask the FAA Safety Review Board, which in 2023 stated
that our current level of safety is compromised and unsustainable due
to outdated technology, inconsistent funding and short-staffed air
traffic control towers. Coincidentally, or rather
not at all coincidentally, the air traffic control tower on the day of the Potomac crash was understaffed. But don’t worry or rather worry because it’s not just that one airport, understaffing is an American
problem, like hoagie sweats. The New York Times reported that virtually every single
air traffic control tower is understaffed and has
outdated faulty equipment like that original restaurant in The Bear. This caused the skeleton crews
of air traffic controllers to suffer mental duress, stress and overwork long hours to do the jobs of multiple people at
once, like in The Bear, with many of them turning to drugs or alcohol to cope like in The Bear. One Texas air traffic
controllers said that there was so little attention and funding that he had to
bring light bulbs from home to replace broken ones at work. And working lights, well,
those seem important. To help prevent even
more potential crashes, a new ground-based system
was invented in 2017 to help alert air traffic controllers about imminent collisions
on or near the runway, which sounds neat, except
notice the word invented and not implemented. That second word would
cost money, you see? And so as of 2023, only 43 out of 500 airports in the
nation had such systems. Jesus Christ on a jet pack, that’s just not enough airports, folks. Maybe we can get one of those jet packs that Jesus is hogging. Selfish Jesus, let’s get ’em. Anyway, you get it. Air traffic control is
kind of what we need to not have plane crashes and we haven’t been properly funding them and therefore not updating or maintaining their equipment or staff, to the point that the US
Transportation Secretary said this the other week: – We do try to buy
replacement parts on eBay for this really old equipment. Sometimes we can’t even find it on eBay, so we’re trying to use 3D printing. – Is that the guy from Real World: Boston? Man, Kameelah must be pissed.
Those two never got along. So yeah, no money, outdated equipment, can’t even afford a real
Secretary of Transportation. Had to get some TV guy on the cheap. This problem has been a long time coming, spanning multiple administrations and is now coming to a
climax during the worst one. Newark airport, as I mentioned,
has been plagued with delays and blackouts as they
struggle to fix the issue. We’re getting stories
of air traffic employees just sitting there and hoping that the radios will come back on lest two planes collide into each other. Really can’t stress enough how little we want this to be happening. And not just we, the regular folk, a lot of politicians also fly commercial, not all, but a lot of them. Some of them fly first class, our treat, so you’d think they would be
very concerned considering how often they have to travel
around for rallies and Cancun and second White House down in Florida. So why is this so broken? The answer won’t surprise you and can best be explained
by a recent disaster. Because it turns out that
while flying is safe, it is actually less safe, specifically at Ronald Reagan,
Washington National Airport, the location of that
deadly mid-air collision that shocked the country. While everything we’ve already said applies to every airport, there are safety issues that
are specifically troublesome and unique only to that airport,
the Ronald Reagan airport. Such a perfect name, can’t
believe that’s the name. You see along with commercial flights, Reagan airport conducts military
and government operations and has three intersecting runways that make the surrounding
airspace trickier to navigate than most other airports. While the Potomac crash is understandably the
most reported incident at that airport, between 2021 and 2024, the Ronnie Regs reported
over 15,000 near miss events. Here’s one. – [Reporter] The FAA, now looking into yet another close call, this time at Reagan
National Airport in DC. An Orlando bound Southwest flight and a Boston bound JetBlue
flight nearly collided Thursday, – [Pilot] We were cleared
to cross runway four. – [Announcer] The confusion after the JetBlue flight
was cleared for takeoff, but moments before another
air traffic controller cleared a Southwest plane
to cross the same of runway. – That news report was
from less than a year before the Potomac crash. So it seems like considering how uniquely unsafe this airport is, they would be extra careful there, right? And don’t get me wrong, we should be safe on a plane
no matter where it’s landing, but according to my middle
school civics teacher, not everyone’s apparently, God, but according to mine,
Washington DC is where many of our state representatives and federal government officials
meet up to do law stuff and you know, unlaw stuff. And as I pointed out,
they often fly commercial. And so not only is flying
becoming less safe, but flying at the airport
they specifically use. Is anyone concerned? Yes, actually, people were concerned. Here’s one. – But I rise to address
the one piece of it where I am not supportive and that is the mandate that
the Senate committee version contains to add five slots or 10 flights to one
of the most delay prone and congested airports
in the United States, Reagan National Airport,
otherwise known as DCA. But it just stands to reason that if it’s already the busiest
runway in the United States and it’s already one of the
most delayed airports in the US and it’s already near
the lead in cancellations and needs of flights to loop around, it is a problem waiting to happen. – That’s Senator Tim Kaine, less than a year before that big crash, citing that specific near miss from the news report we showed. He’s speaking out against a provision in the FAA reauthorization Act of 2024, which would specifically
add 10 new flights to Ronald Reagan Washington
National Airport. That’s right, they
wanted to add new flights to the already dangerous airport. You would think they would
realize how stupid that is and yet that provision would remain, the bill would be passed and
Biden would sign it into law. Why? Why would these politicians
add more flights to their airport thus
making it more dangerous? Less than a year before, people like Tim Kaine
would be proven right? Because those new flights
would make it easier for them to travel without any stopovers. Really? The Senate added a provision specifically creating new flights to cities where they specifically needed to go. They didn’t even hide this fact. Here’s the least surprising supporter of this provision stating his case. – Senator Ted Cruz, pushing for direct
flights from San Antonio to the Ronald Reagan National Airport – On the merits, this
should be an easy decision. San Antonio deserves a direct
flight to Washington Reagan. San Antonio is the seventh
largest city in America. Every day there’s between 150 and 200 flights already from
San Antonio to DC Reagan, but now they have to connect
through other cities. – Oh, Ted, it was always
you, my favorite Ted. I love how he’s trying to frame it like he’s pushing
this on merit for the city and then just starts complaining
about connecting flights at the end because he is just clearly sick of having to layover in Charlotte. Just do a layover, Ted. Not worth dying over, you know, Ted. It should be noted that
it wasn’t just Tim Kaine and some other senators
warning about this. The airport didn’t want more flights. The FAA didn’t want more flights. You know, who did want the flights? Delta Airlines who happened
to be donating to one of the top sponsors of the provision. Wah-wah, everyone else
warned them not to do this and they did it anyway
and then people died because of that darn DEI. Okay, look, are the
House of Representatives and the Senate responsible
for the tragic deaths of the 67 people in that collision? Well, who can say? Not me for legal reasons among others, but I will make an unrelated Y shape with my fingers, maybe even this. But did they, at the very
least, increase the odds of it happening because
they were either bribed or didn’t want to be
bothered with layovers and decided that their
convenience outweighed our safety? Again, who can say? You tell me. Actually don’t, don’t “at” me. I get enough earnest Bluesky
replies to rhetorical questions as it is. Also, yes, they did that. And again, as I keep saying, these people also use that airport. Even if they fly private, one
imagines this affects them. They are risking everyone’s lives for this really short term benefit, despite everyone warning them not to. What a broken way of thinking. This is dog logic,
except dogs are lovable. This is also a microcosm of
everything our government does concerning air traffic safety. So after the break, we’re
gonna talk about just that. But for now, feel free to
unbuckle and move around the cabin and enjoy these ads. Ads clear for takeoff. Wait, don’t unbuckle, we’re we gonna take off soon. Don’t. No. Stay in your seats. Friends, you know as well
as I do, how hard it can be I’m okay. Itchy. We were talking about
flying, which is safe but could get unsafe if the clowns in Congress have anything to say about it. Those clowns, who are those clowns? What are clowns? Are they supposed to be
mutants or something? Like I get that it’s
makeup, but makeup of what? Before the break, we were talking about how a lot of politicians seem
to have a very self-serving and short-term brain when it comes to ensuring the very basic things we need for a lot of stuff, but very clearly when
it comes to air travel. Our government’s relationship with the FAA really speaks to a core problem
that’s existed for decades, which is America’s constant and degrading battle with itself like a man whose hand is possessed. And not just any man, Brisco County, Jr. So for example, we keep
mentioning the very pressing issue of staffing shortages and to their credit, that FAA
Reauthorization Act of 2024, along with helping Ted Cruz get home, added funds to hire 3000
more air traffic controllers to meet demand. Unfortunately for America, an
election happened after that. I’m not gonna get into
it, have Grok bing it for you if you’re interested. But the point is that Trump and Elon almost immediately
did the opposite of hiring new FAA workers, otherwise known as firing them, almost exactly the same
time as that Potomac crash. For the record, we’re not talking about air traffic controllers themselves, but their support staff. This includes people who evaluate and prepare flight paths,
folks who maintain data and support logistics, employees who ensure everything
follows environmental laws and regulations and workers who sweep up and ensure that you don’t
need to go grab light bulbs for work. And that’s remarkable for
a lot of reasons actually, because it’s not just
that it’s extremely stupid and unsafe, which it is, but it’s also really inefficient. See, as you can imagine, training new air traffic
controllers is very intensive, time consuming and expensive. It takes up to five years of training and only 60% of trainees get certified. After all, they are being trusted
with the lives of millions of civilians each day. And now imagine that you cut
all of their support staff and presumably make all
these heavily trained, best of the best pick up the slack while feeling extremely
demoralized in the process. That doesn’t boost efficiency, does it? It seems like the opposite of that, almost like they don’t actually care about government
efficiency for some reason. This is also part of a larger issue that I’m gonna call the
yo-yoing of America. It seems like every four to eight years we suddenly
change our minds about stuff. It’s weird. One of those things being the FAA. This seemingly began
back when Ronald Reagan broke the Air Traffic Controller’s Union by just firing them all. We covered that in a previous episode along with the movie Plane. Remember Plane, there’s a sequel called
Ship that’s coming up. So we’ll get into that in
a future episode maybe. But for this episode,
Reagan started the issue and since then the FAA has been bunted between the two parties,
like a hot potato, becoming more and more
understaffed as the years went by due to new austerity measures,
government spending bills, government shutdowns, and
the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s like how Sesame
Street keeps getting passed around streaming services. Their fate is constantly ambiguous, which can’t possibly be good for morale. Why do you think Elmo’s on so many benzos? So yeah, for years the FAA was dealing with a constant barrage of start-stopping, including three government
shutdowns in the last decade. Of course they are struggling
to hire and maintain staff. And then this thing came along. – The chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chain saw! Aah! – We love him. Wait, sorry, nobody loves him. So during Doge’s great
purge of federal layoffs for no good reason, hundreds of FAA support staff
positions were chainsawed at the exact same time we
were learning about their lack of funding and staffing. And this really shows the disconnect between the broad talking
points of conservatives and the practical application of them. Like the party is all
about small government right until they realize they
need FEMA to help their state. Sean Duffy, the Duffers, has
been telling anyone who listens that the FAA is old and outdated and needs funding and staff. And yet back in 2019, he himself
voted against FAA spending during his congressional term. Bad move Sean, you’ve
been voted off the island. Is that what they did on Road Rules? Sachet away, Duffy. Point is, it’s money. The FAA needs money. Give Sean Duffy money, I guess. But this cycle of yes money, no money has created a Mobious
landing strip of turds that continues to create a
culture of overworked, tired, and drunk air traffic controllers, simply trying to maintain while their job crumbles around them. And while our politicians
keep changing their minds every four to eight years about this and everything else. Again, it’s America’s constant and degrading battle with itself. And the FAA is just one example of a really important institution or policy that we should just
support regardless of party. Just like how we should support our allies in the world so that we can be trusted. It would be weird to suddenly
turn against, I don’t know, Canada just because a new
guy’s in charge, right? And yet America has become
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when it comes to nearly everything. And nobody wants to hang out
with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, let alone live inside of them. Now Frankenstein, that’s
the I’d get inside, wear ’em like a mech suit, man. I swear flying is
statistically safe though. Remember when I said it was safe? That’s still true, for now. Oh, also remember that Boeing stuff? – Well problems continue to
mount for US Aerospace company, Boeing, after another string of international safety incidents. – So sorry, we should talk about that too. It might not seem directly
related to the FAA problems, but it kind of is because safety issues aren’t
just outside of the plane. Sometimes problems burst in
or in some cases blow out. In October, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610
crash landed in Indonesia killing 189 people. And then, an Ethiopian
Airline flight crashed, killing 157 people five months later. Both flights were on a Boeing 737 Max. So what caused this? Could it be a commonly overlooked screw, a bolt, a design flaw the
size of a womp rat back home? Did a Scottish man forget to
input the numbers in time? Was it gremlins? Were Boeing 737s just
BlueChew for gremlins? Did they serve a gremlin, a Biscoff cookie after midnight mid air between time zones? Well, if they were to
pinpoint a specific problem, it would be that the crashed
737s had a new flight system that relied on a single sensor but had no backup if it failed,
it was a computer issue. After that first crash, an
analysis from the FAA found that if there wasn’t a
software update to the 737 Max, then a crash would happen
once every two years. And yet, these planes would
only be grounded in spring of the following year
after that second crash, which finally prompted an investigation by the US House Transportation
Committee in May of 2019. That’s right, the first plane crashed and they figured out the problem but didn’t do anything
until another crash. Meanwhile, Indonesian officials found that the crashes were ultimately
caused by a combination of faulty assumptions of Boeing engineers, lack of transparency
from Boeing’s management and the FAA not sufficiently
overseeing Boeing’s operations. To sum it up, it was laziness. The worst of all gremlins aside from that vegetable one, disgusting. After this discovery,
Boeing crossed their hearts and pinky promised to do
better by tossing out the CEO, but not before giving him a
$62 million golden parachute because, well, it’s Boeing,
you’re gonna need a parachute. Eventually the 737 Max planes were updated and got FAA approval to
return to flight in 2020. Meanwhile, the company battled lawsuit after lawsuit for lying to
investors, safety regulators and others in the first place. Seems like they got off light considering they kind
of killed people there. But after some settlements, payouts and pending charges by the DOJ, it seemed like Boeing’s
PR troubles took off and shut the door behind them until it was forcibly reopened in 2024 when that door blew off during
an Alaskan Airlines flight. This lack of quality control refueled the fire against Boeing
as well as, you guessed it, causing right-wing pundits
to freak out about DEI. – As we speak, the Justice
Department is going to court to demand that the DEI that is
used in the selection process to appoint an independent
monitor to oversee Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer. The job of this independent
monitor is to make sure that Boeing stops making planes
that fall apart in the sky or just completely fall outta the sky. In other words, the Biden harassment DOJ
is fighting to ensure that the second largest
commercial jet manufacturer in the world is supervised by a DEI hire. – This might take some unpacking,
but what the Daily Wire and Matt Walsh are complaining about is that the DOJ had some diversity policies when choosing the people to oversee Boeing and were defending themselves in court to keep those policies. The Daily Wire is
specifically framing this with the headline, Planes
Are Falling From The Sky And The DOJs Priority Is DEI. But if you read the (beep) actual story that the Daily wire links to, you’ll find that for one,
those DEI policies were placed during woke Trump’s first woke term. And two, the DOJ isn’t the
one making a stink of this. It was a Federalist Society
judge named Reed O’Connor who found this language and is challenging it as a way to inject the DEI culture war garbage into something that has
nothing to do with it, but to hear Matt Walsh say it. – So it’s not injecting
a culture war when Boeing and the federal government
both decide to, you know, begin with this DEI
insanity in the first place. But it is a culture war when a judge asks if we’re hiring the most
qualified people to make sure that more planes don’t crash
themselves into the ocean. – Yes, Matt, yes it is
injecting culture war when a judge butts into
some 4 year old DOJ order and digs out DEI wording because that’s the current right wing fad. Yes, yes, it’s you Matt,
who’s injecting race and culture war into everything. You are correct. Like holy (beep) (beep), what does DEI have to do
with the problems at Boeing? The four missing bolts that secured the emergency
doors were made of metal, not members of the Burger King Kids Club. Do you remember Wheels? They called them Wheels because I guess his entire
identity was his wheelchair. Very inclusive. Anyway, no, again, can’t stress
enough how unserious it is to blame plane crashes
on (beep) diversity. In a sane world, you’d be laughed out of
any room you said that in. I shouldn’t even need to
address or explain this. I’m so tired. I’m the tired gremlin. So Boeing, we’re talking about Boeing. What happened to Boeing? After all, there was a long time where Boeing was the top tier
when it came to aviation. One of the big reasons there
was a lack of competition. Any costs for new amenities and refined safety features added to the plane would just be added to ticket prices without worry. Thank you monopolies. But as soon as airline regulation relaxed and competition grew, that’s when troubles started to emerge. Boeing needed to cut costs and outsource work in
order to stay competitive, you know, instead of trying. The downfall came when it purchased airplane
manufacturer McDonnall Douglas to consolidate their market share. Even though Boeing
bought McDonnall Douglas, executives of McDonnall
Douglas had larger shares and thus became the new leaders of Boeing. And these new board members decided to change the company
culture when new CEO, Harry Stonecipher, an actual person and not a super villain of archeology, somehow reportedly told Boeing workers to quit behaving like a family
and become more like a team. If you don’t perform, you
don’t stay on the team. You get it, it’s a Zaslav sitch. This combination football
coach meets Ebenezer Scrooge not only killed morale, but had the company redirect its focus from creating better planes
to creating cheaper ones. Instead of retiring old designs, they would simply recycle them and try to squeeze in more passengers, just readjusting old models instead of making new innovations, until it ultimately led to the Max. No really, a plane called Max. What is it with these
guys and the word Max? And just like HBO Max, aka
Max, aka HBO Max again, innovation, completely stagnated as did any quality control
leading to those insufficiencies of the MCAS sensor systems that caused the crashes in 2018 and 2019. And of course, they also treated their
own people like (beep) and risked their lives too. For example, by forcing employees to fly faulty unsafe
planes from South Carolina to their other plant in Washington
to save money on repairs and avoid the mechanic’s union. This incredibly dick
move, understandably led to several whistleblowers emerging to blow their whistles hard, loud, and full of spittle about
Boeing’s greedy negligence and garbage management. One of these whistleblowers
was John Barnett, who worked at Boeing for 32 years. Prior to retirement, Barnett was the quality control engineer for the 787 Dreamliner
plane in South Carolina and raised concerns over the plane’s oxygen
bottles not working, and the fact that the
planes were being made with substandard scrap parts. He then took Boeing to court when they allegedly
retaliated against him. Then this happened. – John Barnett walked into my office and told me about what was going on and I asked him, I said,
“Do you have documents?” And he said, “Actually, I do.” He said, “I’ve got
thousands of documents.” – [Reporter] Kirkwood says, Barnett had more than 3,000
internal documents, emails, and photos from Boeing to
support his whistleblower claim. John Barnett was scheduled
to complete his final day of depositions on March 9th of this year. – And I tried calling John
to see if he needed a ride and you know, let him know I
could pick him up at the hotel and I got no answer. And when I got to the
deposition at about 10 o’clock, he didn’t show up – [Reporter] He drove
to John Barnett’s hotel and learned the 62-year-old
was dead inside his truck with what police said was a
self-inflicted gunshot wound. – Now I don’t wanna make
light of this man’s death, I don’t want to be a conspiracy guy, I don’t wanna exploit fears,
but everyone was thinking it, so let’s do a segment called
Hey, did Boeing kill that guy? So yeah, it seems pretty
convenient for a man in the middle of passionately testifying
against a large corporation to just up and kill himself
before his final court showdown. But Barnett’s family did say that he suffered from PTSD,
panic attacks, anxiety and depression due to
Boeing’s treatment of him. So they do hold Boeing responsible
for his death indirectly. And if Boeing did indeed kill Barnett in order to encourage other
whistleblowers to keep quiet, that backfired tenfold and inspired more
whistleblowers to step forward. So did Boeing kill that guy? Well, according to his
family, yeah, kind of just not in the way we were all thinking where they hired Stanley
Tucci to take him out. So officially, no, but you know, kind of. Please don’t kill me, Boeing. This has been our segment, Hey, did Boeing kill that guy? Any who, flying, still safe. It should be noted that in spite of all of the valid safety concerns,
there have been thousands of flights by 737 Max
planes happening daily without incident. It’s safe. Don’t worry, it’s safe for now because there’s still episode left. You might notice that both Boeing and our federal government
had the same problem, cost cutting. And so after the break, we will finally marry corporate neglect and government neglect to bring you the exciting
future of flight, or should I say XFlight. Stay tuned, or should I say XTuned? I shouldn’t have said that. – Hello again, remember me? We were talking about airline safety and how the Republicans love
to cut money to the FAA, despite them desperately needing money. And how that is exactly the same thinking behind Boeing’s downfall as well. And in both cases, that led to
a sad and dwindling workforce and numerous crashes and problems. And yet, no lesson was learned. In both cases, the GOP blamed DEI and everyone in charge
continued to push budget cuts because conservatives are a
hammer that sees every problem as a nail and then (beep) on
the nail and then eats the nail and then (beep) out the nail. And it makes you wonder what exactly is the GOP
solution to these problems? They are after all, in charge. So after years of complaining about DEI, what are they actually planning to do? Well, for starters, transportation secretary Sean Duffy wants to fast track new recruits
by lowering the steps to getting hired from eight down to five and increasing recruitment pay for air traffic control workers from $17 to nearly $23 an hour. In terms of the radar issues, as we noted, he has pointed to a lot
of outdated technology and is now asking for a
butt ton of money upfront in order to fix that and build a new air traffic
control system by 2028. Why does he want all that money upfront? Let’s ask him. – So to do it in three or four years, we need all of the money upfront, right? One of the problems in the past is when you give small tranches
of money, year over year, politics change, leadership
changes, presidents change, interest changes, and it never gets built. – Oh my god, Sean Duffy is right. (vomiting) I don’t know, God, what’s happening? Did I die? Is Sean Duffy
the hero of this story? No, no, no. That’s too far. That can’t be true. I don’t want to live in that world. I hate that world. So, okay, Sean Duffy, who
was right the one time, wants to pay for something,
but will he get to? That’s certainly a good question because Duffs isn’t the only cool guy proposing solutions for air travel. There is of course Elon Musk who wants his Starlink
technology to be utilized by the FAA claiming that the
FAA’s technology is unsafe. I mean, Elon is an
expert on unsafe things, so that checks out. So obvious conflicts of interest aside, would Starlink fix the
problems at the FAA? Seems like, no, but let’s ask Duffy, – Elon Musk has hinted that
Starlink is the solution. Is that in?
- It’s not. (vomiting) – Would you stop doing that Duffy? Gosh, my body can’t handle
all this agreeing with you. Can we get like a pallet cleanser of Sean Duffy being as wrong
as anyone could possibly be? – Maybe get to another one. I mean look at Gabby Giffords. – You can. – Look at Gabby Giffords. – Yeah. - The Marxist who took her life, a leftist guy. – Shooter wasn’t a Marxist,
Giffords didn’t die. Great job. Thank you. Ah, I really needed that. Man, I just can’t believe
this is where we’ve landed. Plane pun. Great, we are back on track. Alright, anyway, I guess this all scans. Only Elon Musk can make Sean
Duffy seem like the good guy. And despite Duffer’s terse rejection, Musk is worming his way into the FAA, whether or not they want it, having his SpaceX
flunkies install Starlink in various airports. It should be noted that the FAA actually awarded Verizon a contract
to do that, not Starlink. And so Elon Musk is literally
just intruding on them, much like he’s intruded on all of us. After all, the FAA has
been a real Grimes to Musk in the past over multiple
violations of license agreements. So while Duffy hopes to
fast track the hiring of FAA employees, it’s actually been Musk who is injecting his own
people in there instead. Not in the interest of safety of course, but just to enrich and help himself. And in fact, this has reportedly
caused blowups between Musk and Duffy during cabinet meetings. Duffy so seems to be going rogue on this, that during one of these blowups, Trump told him that he needs to hire air traffic controllers from MIT and they all need to be geniuses. But shortly after that, Duffy
released a recruitment poster for air traffic controllers reading: “No college degree required.” These spats, especially with Musk, are understandable considering that Duffy is the guy actually in charge and Musk is just the dude
who bankrolled the president. My god, how am I on
Sean Duffy’s side here? I hate this. And it seems like at least at the moment, Elon is winning due to
an unimaginable glitch, the billionaire that owns a space company is now running the show at the agency that’s supposed to regulate him. And Duffy, bless his stupid heart, had clearly been told to play ball. – I wanna make sure that we have some of the brightest minds in the country come and look at the systems that the FAA uses to make sure we upgrade and
upgrade to the right technology and upgrade at the right speed. So SpaceX, of course, we’re
gonna have SpaceX engineers come and look at the FAA. – Duffy, no, we loved you. So fun detail, in that Fox News interview, Duff also goes off on the California high speed rail project, the thing that Musk
reportedly derailed on purpose and is now trying to kill for good. Derail, train pun. Anyway, (beep) wild that a guy who owns a car company is allowed
to defund a train project. Seems like he should go to forever jail. Point is, when it comes
to fixing our airlines, there are two trains of thought. On one side you have people like Duffy saying that we need to fund the FAA and pay air traffic
controllers a living wage. And on the other side you
have people like Elon Musk who thinks the answer is to cut jobs and funding, gut regulations and then replace everything
with a company that he happens to own that also has an
extremely bad track record with safety because he doesn’t
actually care about people or safety and is just a
sociopath who wants money. Now both sides have merit, but if you look closely, you might notice that one is a little bit
better than the other. Unfortunately, it seems like
Elon’s method is being favored, probably because it requires zero effort from the government. The GOP loves it when they
can just privatize something after all. And their Elon is reaching his hand out. Do we have a clip of Elon
Musk reaching his handout? (crowd cheering) There it is. Nevermind that the cars, he
makes literally fall apart and have the highest fatal accident rate. He’s there and he’s easy. He’s like that ex-lover
that you keep going back to even when you know you shouldn’t. The GOP knows somewhere deep inside that they simply have
to pay for something. But geez, there’s Elon. Maybe they can just get Elon to do it. Look at him over there with
his little Nazi salute. So asking one more
time, is it safe to fly? Yeah, right now it’s still safe to fly. It’s also fun, especially
when you’re drunk. But if we continue to prioritize
billionaires over safety, it won’t be. And what makes this whole
conversation so frustrating is that we all need to fly, or rather, a lot of us need to for business or to visit family or for our amateur wrestling careers. No matter how dangerous planes get, some of us will still
have to step onto them, including the lawmakers who have the power to
regulate and fund them and yet still fail to. It really shows you how
strong the sickness is when politicians literally
vote against their own safety to save a buck, make a
buck or back party lines because while we need it, we
technically don’t need-need it. You see, that puts it in
this capitalist gray area where so many other things exist. That magical realm where
private companies are allowed to provide a service that
will never go out of business because it’s actually a necessity. And so those companies are
allowed to lobby and conspire and extort us for whatever they want. The one bit of safety we have is the FAA. So perhaps we shouldn’t also
privatize that, you know? Perhaps we just have to fund it. That’s it. We all need it. It’s like our highways or water pipes or all those other things we
definitely fund adequately. So let’s fund it. Sean Duffy for president, that’s the conclusion
to this for sure, right? Emperor Duffy. And we did it. It’s safe to say that we, Some More News, are the only comedy show to
notably tackle airline safety. Don’t look that up. It
is just us. Just Cody. – [Director] Good. I think that worked. – That was good. Okay. So, all right, done with the rehearsal, so let’s do it for real. Oh hello, welcome to our news show or guy at News Desk Hour or whatever. Look at all this. We have lights and a
backdrop and everything. And here’s some more news. But I mean, gee whiz, we did it. We’re flying! And then we do a clip and then we’re gonna come back to it. I don’t want to, can we just use the rehearsal that we, – [Director] Oh no, we
have to do the whole thing. – I wasn’t rolling for it. – It was good though. – [Director] It was good,
but it was a good rehearsal. – Well, can we use the secret
camera that I installed? That was always filming, so we, yeah, secret camera.
Get the world’s news at https://ground.news/SMN to compare coverage and see through biased coverage. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through our link. Hosted by Cody Johnston Executive Producer – Katy Stoll Directed by Will Gordh Written by Erik Barnes Produced by Jonathan Harris Edited by Gregg Meller Post-Production Supervisor / Motion Graphics & VFX – John Conway Researcher – Marco Siler-Gonzales Graphics by Clint DeNisco Head Writer – David Christopher Bell PATREON: / somemorenews MERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.com YOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: / @smn #somemorenews#AirTravel#doge Get 15% off your first set of sheets at http://bollandbranch.com/morenews Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never. Support American family farms and join the Moink Moovement today at http://Moinkbox.com/MORENEWS RIGHT NOW and get FREE wings FOR LIFE Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code MoreNews at http://shopmando.com! #mandopod You can get 50% off a new SimpliSafe system with professional monitoring and your first month free at https://SimpliSafe.com/morenews (60-day satisfaction guarantee or your money back.) Chapters: 0:00 – Introduction 2:09 – Is it safe to fly right now? 6:02 – Yep. Trump is trying to blame DEI 8:29 – The Actual Problems With Flying 23:15 – It’s inefficient to fire everyone 26:20 – The Yo-Yo’ing Effect 29:47 – BOO-eing 46:32 – Duffy Vs Musk: For the Fight of Flights
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