How FlyDubai Flight Averted Crash After Co-Pilot Stabbing; Are DHS’s Pro-Trump ‘PSAs’ Legal?

0:00Well, I mean, they said that Diddy's life is basically like a party, but obviously he's behind bars, so that is not the case. But what we do know is that Diddy is not sitting in his cell having to stare at blank walls. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugin. It sounds like a spa, but we got drugs, we got Hennessy, we got special meals, a massage, even a cell phone, watching a documentary or two. So that is the life of Sean Diddy Combs, who has been living in federal prison, according to NBC News reporting. So what is his team saying about this? And what does this say actually about the prison system overall?

0:44Plus, the White House has a new PSA out, but it looks a heck of a lot like a Trump campaign ad. And who's paying for it? It may actually be you. Up first, though. So passengers from Fly Dubai, flight FC-1073, have landed in Tel Aviv after a harrowing incident this morning. The flight from Dubai was a very common one for the first two hours. And when we arrived at the Jordanian border, suddenly the aircraft dropped massive, massive turbulence for 20, 30 seconds. and then balance, and then once again drop for 10 seconds and balance again. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot and then appeared to try and crash the plane.

1:32But there are still a ton of questions about the motive. Why this one pilot did what he did. So for that, I want to bring in NBC News international correspondent, Matt Bradley, who's on the ground for us in Israel. Hi, Matt. Hey. Matt, you've been outside Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. It is where this Fly Dubai flight finally landed after diverting to Saudi. What more do we know about what actually took place aboard that plane? Well, what we're hearing now, and actually the latest information we're getting, is from the sort of hero, the guy who is credited with having subdued the attacker charged into the cockpit.

2:13and he told Benjamin Netanyahu a couple of things, and this was all broadcast. And it looks as though, obviously, this was an extremely dangerous situation. He said to Netanyahu that the badly injured pilot still managed to muster the strength to open the cockpit door. And that's what allowed passengers and crew to rush in and subdue that attacker, who also happened to be, according to Netanyahu, the co-pilot. How did they land the plane in Saudi? Who landed it? Well, it just so happens that there managed to be a couple of alternate pilots, not necessarily alternate, but people who were pilots who were probably being ferried from one city to another for Fly Dubai.

2:51Those pilots were the ones who assumed the controls. So that was pretty lucky that those guys happened to be on board and were able to land the flight. Because otherwise, the pilots were one was the perpetrator and the other one, of course, was badly, badly made. What's the current condition? Do you know about of the pilot that was stabbed? We don't know. It sounds as though he was in critical condition when he left the flight. We haven't heard any updates on his status, except that he is in a hospital in Saudi Arabia. From what we saw in the videos, from what we heard, it looked like there was blood everywhere.

3:20This does indicate that he probably was very, very badly injured. And we heard that from some of the passengers, too. And the man alleged to have carried out the attack, where is he now? Well, we understand from Benjamin Netanyahu, who just spoke, saying that it sounds like he's in custody, but with Saudi officials. So it doesn't sound like he's necessarily in Israel, of course. The Israeli officials haven't gotten their hands on him. But again, we're still trying to clarify exactly what's going to happen. All of this could change within the next couple of hours. I think the astounding thing to me about this story, Matt, is first of all, that it happened.

3:52Secondly, while it was happening, this plane dropped around 14 ,000 or so feet before it was then subsequently secured once again. I know a lot of passengers have now landed in Tel Aviv and you had an opportunity to speak to them. What did they tell you about what was going through their minds when this was happening? And what more they saw? Well, I mean, the first thing that everybody said was they were confused. They didn't know what was going on. They were terrified because of the way in which the plane plummeted to the ground, toward the ground. Like two rows for us, a mother with two children.

4:28One of them like six-year-olds and the other was four years old. They were scared. and the mother didn't have any explanation for the children. Like, what do they say to them? Like, two children sitting there, scared as hell, and the mother doesn't even know what to tell them. No one knows everything. They did not get the sense and did not know what had happened, whether it was still ongoing, or whether they were going to see another attack. So that really did, that confusion added to a lot of that panic. I mean, if you can imagine, Yasmin, I've never been on a plane that has plummeted that quickly.

5:00The passengers we spoke with just described it as absolute sheer terror. Every single one of the people that I spoke with said they thought they were going to die. When I was plummeting down and then throughout the rest of the flight, we were just, we didn't know what was going to happen. And that was definitely an option. You know, this is happening at a really tense time in the region. As you and I both know, we have talked about this so many times at the ongoing war with Iran, with the conflicts with Gaza and the West Bank, between Israel and the Palestinians. We could go on and on as to what is happening in that region.

5:33And there's not official diplomatic ties between Saudi and Israel. So what is the cooperation looking like? Because this plane took off from the UAE, it diverted to Saudi, and then subsequently landed in Tel Aviv. Yeah, I mean, you know, only a generation ago, only a couple of years ago for Israelis, that would be a nightmare. First of all, the idea of flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv or vice versa is a novelty for Israelis. and one that might actually now that we've seen this happen cause a lot of Israelis to be frightened of going to Dubai which is an Arab country and was until very recently a sworn enemy of the Israelis.

6:11The Saudis on the other hand are still technically sworn enemies of the Israelis but we've been seeing for the past couple of years efforts to try to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. They're trying to get Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel. That didn't happen and in fact that was one of the goals of the hamas attackers on october 7th of 2023 to try to stop that normalization so in a way this israeli flight now approaching the three year anniversary of october 7th landing or mostly israelis on board landing in saudi arabia it really just goes to show that three years after october 7th and despite all of the condemnation that we've heard throughout the arab world against israel and its actions in the gaza strip and elsewhere, that there are some reasons for hope, reasons for diplomacy.

7:00We saw that image of a woman who was being treated by a Saudi woman in a full niqab in the airport in Saudi Arabia. This just goes to show that in many ways, despite how tense and how divided this region is, there are these moments like this that tend to kind of eclipse any talk of division and actually kind of brings people together. What is the Israeli government doing when it comes to investigating this incident and also security in the region considering this incident and the fact that October 7th's anniversary is around the corner? Well, we know that they're launching an investigation into the incident, but we haven't heard any details beyond that.

7:42And I got to tell you, Yasmin, this is only a couple of hours old, so we can't expect them to have done all that much up until now. The last that I heard was that the Israeli officials aren't ruling out terrorism. I heard this from a source in the IDF. But everything is changing moment to moment, so we don't know whether this would be an official terrorist investigation. It seems highly likely that this is going to be investigated as a terrorist action, particularly given the political climate surrounding what happened that's been here for the past couple of years, the style of the attack, and the nationalities of those involved, which we don't know quite yet.

8:16That will certainly give us some clues and some hints into the motive, which should be coming clear every time soon, because the fact is everybody has survived. So we have witnesses, we have the victims, we have the perpetrators. All of them are waiting to be spoken to by the police. Matt Bradley, thank you. Thank you. All right. We're going to take a very quick break, but when we come back, there are some new White House PSAs, that is, public service announcements, that look a lot like Trump campaign ads. And then a question about who's actually financing them. But first, while you're waiting, do us a favor, jot down some things that you love about this podcast, then leave them in a review, and maybe I'll read them on the air.

8:59I'll see you on the other side.

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10:35And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So the Trump administration has been rolling out a series of videos that they're calling public service announcements that look, though, and sound a lot like political ads. One that came out over the weekend was almost identical to this ad from the president's 2024 campaign. So here is that 2024 ad. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media. And we will liberate America from these villains once and for all. And then here's the new video. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.

11:15We will rout the fake news media and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all. They are almost identical. The main difference is the text at the end of the new ad that says paid for by the U.S. government. So how was this administration able to use taxpayer money to produce these ads? and where is the budget actually coming from? For this, I want to bring in NBC News senior Homeland Security correspondent, Julia Ainsley. Hi, Julia. Hi, yes. Thanks for having me. It's good to have you. Okay, so the White House has been saying that these ads are not political, right? We just played these ads back to back, one from 2024, one from recently.

11:58You have been digging into the financing of these recent ads. What are you finding out? Well, what I found out is that this came from a big slush fund that Trump got pushed through about a year ago in the one big, beautiful bill. And that was supposed to give DHS a lot of money to do more border enforcement, something that a lot of Trump supporters are 100 percent behind. For many of them, it's the reason why they voted for him. But instead of that money going to Customs and Border Protection, they actually dipped into that pot to pay for these ads. Now, it's not unheard of for DHS to run ads.

12:36They ran ads trying to convince immigrants to go home, self-deportation. They somehow could explain that that stayed in the same vein as national security, as the immigration mission that they were assigned to be carrying out. But this ad, I mean, you just heard the content of it, basically pits Trump against communism. Really, it's a stretch to say that this money is being spent in the way that Congress appropriated it to be spent when they passed that one big, beautiful bill for CBP back in July of last year. So how are they able to do this? Like, how are they able to use CBP funds for this ad?

13:10Well, a lot of people are saying that they're not allowed. I mean, it was a shock at first that this was taxpayer money. And then we just learned yesterday that it was Customs and Border Protection money. And so right now, what DHS is telling me in a statement is that they followed all the rules in terms of allocations and contracts. This is totally legal. But there are Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, especially those who appropriate specifically to DHS who said, no, when this money was appropriated and Congress has the ability to say how money is spent in the executive branch, this was not the purpose.

13:43And so they are raising alarm bells about this right now. If we can take a step back for a moment, like how does this ad that we heard, that sounds very political, how does this ad compare to other PSAs from other administrations? Well, I mean, I even think back just a year ago to this administration, And this is an ad that caught a lot of heat at the time when you saw Kristi Noem riding on a horse out in the Great Plains of the American West, children carrying American flags and shots of immigrants who really just looked like shady characters on a street corner. As she said that President Trump was cleaning up the streets, deporting illegal immigrants, and that we were going to that any immigrant who's in this country illegally should just go home and that they would help them do so.

14:28So that ad caught a lot of heat because Kristi Noem used$220 million essentially to do her own campaigning. It made her look really good. And she got a lot of criticism for that in Congress. But legally, it wasn't challenged, although it is still the subject of a DHS inspector general investigation. But we didn't see anyone say necessarily that it was outside of the bounds of DHS. It was outside of the bounds of the way that money had been allocated, although perhaps we'll hear something later from the inspector general. But in this case, it's such a spin from the way this was pulled. It's almost as if they could have pulled this from any agency.

15:05The White House is calling these ads, you know, they're unapologetically patriotic. They're educational. They're reminding Americans to love their country. Do we know if the president was kind of intimately involved in shaping these ads and disseminating these ads and making sure they got out there and the way in which they were communicated? I don't know how closely he was involved, but it certainly fits with the rhetoric that we see from Trump, both when he's stumping for candidates right now who are running and midtermers people who he's endorsing, as well as the kind of rhetoric that he's using on True Social as he's attacking candidates on the left.

15:41As far as that idea of convincing Americans to love their country, this is when we get into the P word. Is it propaganda? And that is why there are strict campaign finance laws in this country. that in order to run a campaign ad for a candidate, no matter what ideals you espouse in that ad, it is supposed to be drawn on through money that is specifically fundraised for political purposes, whether that be for a candidate or whether that be for the Republican National Committee. That money is always pulled aside from what taxpayers do in order to keep the federal government running. And by the way, you have Democrats expectedly coming out and saying this is, in fact, propaganda like Chuck Schumer.

16:19But you've also spoken to Republicans who are also looking at these ads and saying this is not looking right, i.e. CBP shouldn't necessarily be funding these political ads. Yeah, I mean, we saw Senator John Thune, a Republican, raising concerns about this, that this is not what he wanted CBP money to be spent on. And yes, I'm speaking to sources who remain unnamed because they want to keep their jobs in this administration that say that this was a decision that was made by a small number of people and that there were people who basically should have had a say in how this money was spent. But instead, this was made at a high level.

16:57But also in a statement from DHS to NBC News, they said that everyone was informed of this decision. I'm reading into that to ask, does informed also mean consulted? Did everyone have a say who signed off on this? Are they just told this is what's happening? Because I think that's the real question. Was this coming from the White House or did DHS really get a say in this? And so far, DHS has not responded to whether or not people were actually given a say in the matter. Who makes the decision as to whether or not these are political ads or PSAs? Like, now that there's a controversy swirling around these ads.

17:30And if they figure out that, in fact, these are political ads, what does that mean going forward? I think it's a matter of whether or not that gets litigated. You know, if there is someone in a court to say that this was a violation of laws that are put in place to keep taxpayer money from going toward campaigns or going towards propaganda, then they're going to have to peel into this and to look at it, possibly do a discovery and try to understand the communications that happened inside how these decisions were made. But I have to say, I think the reason why we're talking about this is because it's kind of just one step further.

18:03But President Trump has always been walking this fine line when it comes to, you know, really endorsing himself or trying to espouse his American values that he talks about. And so I think this may be a place where he's crossed the line. And that's where we're even seeing some Republicans come out and talk about it. It's also something that if Democrats take the House, we're likely to see possibly come up and be discussed in front of Congress. in the next term if they decide to hold hearings about this. But at the moment, it's really kind of just this open question of something people are talking about on the Hill or at DHS or at the White House.

18:41And the Trump administration is digging in and saying that they had every right to spend this money this way. Julie Ainsley, thank you. Thanks, Yas. All right, up next, a look inside Diddy's prison life, which includes cell phone access, Hennessy, massages. sounds surprisingly kind of good. That's after a break. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. It's destroying athlete, creator, and YouTube Maxer. YouTube Premium enhances how I use YouTube with awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite training videos before I hit the gym. So no Wi-Fi doesn't turn leg day into loading day.

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20:42And we are back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So federal prison is not supposed to be like a spa day. But we have some exclusive NBC News reporting that shows that being behind bars has not stopped Sean Diddy Combs from having a pretty lavish lifestyle. So I want to bring in NBC News Entertainment correspondent, Chloe Malas, who's got some exclusive reporting on this. Whoa. So you broke this story wide open. And we're talking Hennessy, massages, special meals, cell phones, a tablet. Yeah. This doesn't sound like prison to me. Sounds like his old life. Yeah. So Combs has figured out a way to get members of his team to get money to inmates, okay, so that they can carry out his day-to-day tasks.

21:34So Diddy has people making his bed, making meals for him, cleaning his bathroom. And it's not like a private bathroom, but cleaning the toilet before he goes and sits down on it, being a lookout for him while he's using this contraband cell phone. And, you know, clearly people need money, right, to buy things at the commissary, right, to buy snacks and to buy toiletry products and to buy different things. So obviously there are people in there willing to sort of be like his personal assistant, if you will. And, yes, the massages. He is also having an inmate, one that we know of, provide massages to him.

22:17And he pays that person to do that. You know this because you spoke to four individuals who spent time at Fort Dix with Diddy, right? Yes. How do they communicate Diddy's kind of mood is while in prison, these four guys that you spoke to, these four individuals? Well, I mean, they said that Diddy's life is basically like a party, but obviously he's behind bars, so that is not the case. But what we do know is that Diddy is not sitting in his cell having to stare at blank walls. We know that he has access to a cell phone and that he's actually able to call family members and call people and, you know, ex-girlfriends and that he's on Instagram.

22:58We have found the Instagram account that he uses. It doesn't have a profile photo, but he does follow family members of his and his own publicist follows that account. Has he posted on this? He doesn't post on it, but he uses it to stay connected, to see what people are up to, right? So he's on Instagram. He has a tablet that all of the inmates have. It's to read financial literacy documents. It's different reading materials. But have you ever heard of like a jailbreak a tablet? So somebody - No, Chloe, we have not heard of that. So somebody was able, and it's pretty common, I've learned, after talking to these sources, where you have people on the inside that are good with technology.

23:39And they're able to get through the, I guess, firewall of the internet. It's kind of like having a VPN, honestly, when you're overseas and there's like an authoritarian regime blocking you from accessing certain websites. Hey, I guess so. And so he's able to watch TV shows and movies. He watched the documentary that 50 Cent made about him. And 50 Cent thought that was quite hilarious and posted about it on Instagram last night and posted that part of our digital story. And then he posted the entire NBC News TV package. Did these sources tell you about Diddy's reaction to the documentary that 50 Cent made?

24:16No. They didn't say what he thought. But they did say, you know, that he is communicating on these cell phones. And sometimes he switches cell phones. And some of these inmates are looking out for him to make sure that guards aren't coming. But it turns out that you can also rent a cell phone if you can't afford to buy one in prison. So it's pretty fascinating that this is not just Diddy that has access to a cell phone. It's others. It's many others. And so you got to wonder, are these prison systems just so overly tapped and extended that it's hard for them to micromanage every aspect? And if things are calm and not violent, perhaps maybe they turn the other way.

25:00I'm not saying that that's the case. According to the Bureau of Prisons, they wrote a very strong statement to us about how they take this very seriously, but that they don't comment on any one incarcerated individual. So they're not going to say anything specifically about Diddy. But this is really serious to have a phone. And we have that video of him on his cell phone, that exclusive video. To me, that is one of the most incredible pieces of reporting that we got. What's Diddy's people telling you? Diddy's people said in a statement that this is just the mundane life of a prisoner and he's focused on his appeal.

25:30He was supposed to get out a few weeks early. I'm wondering if this news breaking is going to change any of that. Our story absolutely cannot be good for him. There are a million different things that could happen. The Bureau of Prisons can launch an investigation and then that could result, depending on what they find, in Diddy losing good time. So instead of getting out earlier, like we saw his release date moved up, he could get time added. He could be put in something called the Special Housing Unit, also known as the SHU, which is more commonly known as solitary confinement for several weeks or longer.

26:08He could lose some of his privileges, like visits from family members, access to email, being able to shop at the commissary. You know, on a more serious note, though, I mean, those things are all serious repercussions. But because it's a standalone federal crime, if this were to be prosecuted independently outside of the Bureau of Prisons, Diddy could face up to a year of a separate sentence behind bars. Because of this. Because of just the cell phone. Wow. If anybody decided to prosecute that. Chloe Malas, thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. That is going to do it for us. Here's the scoop from NBC News.

26:51I'm Yasmin Basugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard and you saw, subscribe, Revegan your podcasts. And you can also subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Inside Scoop. It is a deeper dive on the main stories of the day that comes out every weeknight straight to your inbox. You can sign up for The Inside Scoop as part of our paid subscription at NBCNews.com. We'll see you tomorrow.

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