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We have another stunning near miss airplane crash, this one at Chicago Midway Airport. I have the video here. Southwest Airlines jet aborted landing at Chicago Midway. As a private plane, you will see here come in and cross the center Runway, unauthorized to do so. We've heard the air traffic control audio. This jet that you see crossing the Runway and the Southwest airplane aborts the landing was told to cross the left Runway, but to hold short of the center Runway. The private jet did not do that. It crossed the center Runway. And we have yet another one of these incidents. Now, there are two things that are at the same time true. On the one hand, this is not an isolated event. It's part of another disturbing trend of these near miss incidents that we are seeing. At the same time, I've been inundated with messages from pilots and aviation experts and concerned citizens saying, you know, David, these near miss incidents have nothing to do with Donald Trump.
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We have the air traffic control audio. The air traffic controllers told the private jet do not cross the center Runway and the private jet cross the center Runway. It has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump. And I would generally agree, and I've gotten emails from pilots that say aviation safety is complex, but it is not tied to recent policy changes. And I would agree that it is very complex. The reason that the conversation about Trump and Doge keeps coming up when we see these incidents is that the FAA and the ntsb, which investigates these, these incidents, are stretched very thin. Investigating these incidents in the middle of this backdrop of staffing cuts and threats to lay people off in mass form from Trump and from Musk can't possibly be helping the situation. And it's a reminder, we certainly, even if you don't blame Trump for, you know, this jet crossing the Runway, which I don't.
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Unknown A
If what we are seeing are these incidents, and the backdrop is cutting faa, cutting ntsb, cutting ATC, and giving Elon a contract for Starlink satellites, that is a problem. The Trump administration, under this guise of eliminating fraud, waste and abuse, has laid off about 400 employees at the Federal Aviation Administration. That includes people directly supporting safety inspectors directly involved in airport operations. These aren't paper pushers, okay? They, these are the people who maintain the infrastructure that keep the skies safe. And so when Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says anything related to critical safety is not affected, I don't believe it. Because we know the folks that have been laid off. When you cut support staff to the critical safety people, you overburden everybody who's, who's there and you increase the risk. Of errors and oversights. It's like removing the pit crew from a race car team and saying, we have not taken any equipment away from the driver.
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Unknown A
The driver still has all of the technical stuff and has as many practice hours as that. Okay, but you've removed the pit crew. And so that's a problem. Now, who's leading the charge? It's Musk. It's the guy who's running the Department of Government Efficiency. And while Musk Space X has vested interest in airspace operations, just got a contract. We talked about it at the top of the show. He's influencing policy that could compromise aviation safety. And it's a conflict of interest that should be obvious to anybody. So the cuts are part of a broader agenda to shrink government at the expense of safety in many different areas. So to people who see this, and they say this particular jet crossing the Runway has nothing to do with Trump, I'm with you. But it's essential to see the bigger picture. And the staffing cuts under the current administration weaken the foundation of aviation safety infrastructure.
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And when you systematically dismantle the support systems that keep the skies safe, these incidents become more likely. It shouldn't be a political pawn to keep the skies safe. And when you see an incident like this and you say, okay, if anything, we just need more safety individuals or more training or more resources or whatever the case may be, you might say, well, we're fine where we are, or we need more cutting and cutting haphazardly. The way that Trump and Musk have been doing is the wrong direction. So you don't have to blame Trump for this incident to realize that the direction he's going is very much the wrong one. Well, I wrote a book.
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Unknown B
After a long journey and a ton of work, I am really thrilled with how it turned out, and I hope you'll read it. The book is called the Echo Machine, and in a nutshell, it looks at how American politics got so broken, who has already figured out solutions, and how we can try to fix it and stop the terror of Trump for the next four years. With Trump winning this election, the Echo Machine couldn't be more relevant. Not only a warning about how we got here, but also about what might be coming and how to prevent the worst outcomes. We've got to stay engaged. We need a plan, and that's what the book is about. There's a belief out there that unless you have corporate media behind you, you can't have a successful political book launch, that it's not possible. I think we can prove that wrong?
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Order the Echo Machine today at David pakman.com/echo on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Audible, Kindle, anywhere that books, e books and audio books are sold. You can also call any local bookstore and say, please order me the Echo Machine by David Pakman.
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Wherever you get the book, you'll get.
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The free preorder perks, including the signed book plate. Head to David pakman.com/free book stuff after ordering.