Following this week’s tragedy in the skies over Washington’s Reagan National Airport—the collision of American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita and a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter—the search for what caused the crash that killed everyone on board was launched within hours.
President Trump hit social media to request prayers for those killed, and Thursday morning he personally addressed the nation from the White House briefing room; he was accompanied by his new Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Trump promised an aggressive pursuit of what happened “because over the years I’ve watched things like this where they always say they’re investigating and then three years later they announce it.” The President pledged answers will be forthcoming as soon as humanly possible.
On the Salem Media Group news program THIS WEEK ON CAPITOL HILL with Tony Perkins, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared that “Under these tragic circumstances, we’re all still reeling from this on Capitol Hill. We’re all looking for answers and to insure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
Noting that he and other members on the House and Senate regularly fly into D.C. on the same route as that American Airlines commuter plane, Johnson added: “It would be a tragedy if it took place anywhere in our country, but certainly this one really has the attention of lawmakers and policy makers.”
In the immediate aftermath of this week’s crash, some pundits suggested without any research or common sense that officials should either decrease the amount of air traffic at Washington Reagan National Airport or possibly even close it altogether…a suggestion Speaker Johnson calls “absurd. Reagan is at the heart of the center of the nation’s capital and we have to keep it open and active.”
Another THIS WEEK guest—retired Brigadier General John Teichert—says the midair crash Wednesday evening was obviously due to some sort of breakdown of communication…possibly between both aircraft and the Reagan air traffic control tower but also visually between the commuter plane and the Army helicopter.
Every military crew that flies training missions in the D.C. area is specially trained and qualified to do so, General Teichert noted. The helicopters may be on routine training missions or, on occasion, transportation of distinguished visitors…but in either case, they take into account the congestion in the Reagan airspace as well as the national security aspects of the D.C. metro area. Hopefully the “black box” recorders recovered from the icy Potomac waters will reveal what led to the tragic collision.
Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry—himself a retired general—added his voice to the nation’s sorrow over this incident. “We have great people on the ground and in these aircraft—whether it was in the commuter flight, or the Blackhawk or whether it was in air traffic control. We have multiple safeguards and redundancies, but there can be multiple points of failure and if they happen at the same time, this is what can occur, so we’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”
Echoing President Trump’s no-nonsense approach to seeking answers, Perry added: “We’ve got to take a closer look at our air traffic control system. We’re using antiquated equipment and we’re down literally thousands of controllers which puts high stress on the ones that remain.” Perry pledged that the Congress will fully discharge responsibilities it has under the Constitution and “make sure that all the truth comes out regardless of whether it makes any agency look bad.”
That may send shudders up the spines of Washington bureaucrats, but it is precisely what Americans voted for last November when they gave the GOP control of the House and Senate…and returned Donald J. Trump to the White House as our 47th President.
The week ended—unfortunately on multiple levels—with a second airplane crash: a Lear jet plunged outside Philadelphia’s Roosevelt Mall, exploding in a giant fireball which showered airplane parts and flaming jet fuel across a neighborhood full of row houses. This breaking news story occurred during MSNBC’s “Reid Out” hosted by the comically inept Joy Reid…whose lack of brainpower is eclipsed only by her haircolor, which in an average week morphs from black to yellow then into greenish hues in the linear equivalent of TV’s version of Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Instead of ordering her to take the night off, MSNBC management decided this clod could somehow anchor coverage a major unfolding national news story. This led to such comedy highlights as Joy snarkily suggesting that although the FAA had released that the Lear jet had two people aboard, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy must have been wrong wrong on X when he revealed the plane actually carried six since—she bloviated—Duffy “has only been on the job for a week” and “his previous experience was only as a Congressman.” Call me naive, but given Duffy’s predecessor as Transportation Secretary was a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana best known as “Pothole Pete,” I’m confident Sean Duffy is a vast improvement. (Later in her “analysis” Joy Reid interviewed MSNBC weekend host Ali Velshi…best known for his “Velshi’s Banned Book Club” and for whining incessantly about the time he was hit with a rubber bullet during a riot by George Floyd supporters. SPOILER ALERT: Joy will win zero Edward R. Murrow awards for her small markety “coverage.”)
Unlike during the mercifully ended Biden years, solid grownups are now in charge once again in America. We grieve for the victims of this week’s air tragedies and pray for their families, but we also are bolstered in the knowledge that their loss will not be swept under the rug and—with President Trump, Mike Johnson, Sean Duffy and other serious leaders guiding America—will actually spur concrete action that ultimately will make all of us safer in the future.
Tom Tradup is VP/News & Talk Programming for Dallas-based Salem Radio Network. He also serves as Executive Producer of THIS WEEK ON CAPITOL HILL with Tony Perkins…heard on leading radio stations nationwide weekends and broadcast at 10AM Eastern time Saturdays on the Salem News Channel.