Fatal Mistake Rocks Trump Admin After Deadly Disaster

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1:30Michael Popok:Maybe Donald Trump's secretary of transportation should worry less about how people dress when they fly airplanes and more about airplanes crashing out of the sky into fire trucks. We had another air disaster today on Donald Trump and Sean Duffy's watch, this time at LaGuardia Airport. For an administration that literally, ominously kicked off with an air disaster where 67 people died, where American Airlines Flight 5342 crashed into or was crashed into by a Black Hawk helicopter, you would think this administration would make as part of its major part of its agenda. and its budget and its priorities, making air safety, air travel safe for people, passengers, for cargo, for commerce, for hospitality and leisure, and for the employees of the airline.

2:27Michael Popok:And yet Donald Trump has found a way to waste, waste taxpayer dollars into the hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars since he's been in office. Just to put it in perspective, If he only spent one-tenth, one-tenth of what he is spending Donald Trump in Iran to bomb his way to popularity, he would have a totally revamped, overhauled air traffic system, including new technology not dating back to the 1970s, and a properly funded federal aviation agency. But Donald Trump doesn't want that. He'd rather tolerate, obviously, the death of human beings in America rather than put his money into the proper priorities.

3:12Michael Popok:And Sean Duffy should worry less as the inexperienced, overmatched head of the Department of Transportation about whether I'm wearing my Lululemon or a pajama to the airport and worry more about the safety of the planes and the passengers. I'm Michael Popak. You're on Midas Touch Network. and legal AF. Full disclosure, I represent the family of one of the victims in the Flight 5342 disaster, the American Airlines disaster. So when I woke up this morning to find that Air Canada, upon its descent and landing into LaGuardia Airport, one of the three major airports in the New York metropolitan region responsible for a quarter of our economy, that it crashed into a fire truck because of a, well, I'm not blaming, I'm not the NTSB.

4:02Michael Popok:I haven't done the investigation, but apparently because of mistakes made by the air traffic controller, all I have to think of is yet another, this makes six in total of air disasters on Donald Trump's watch. He doesn't care about the American people. He doesn't care about our safety. You're here on Midas Touch, we do. Hit the free subscribe button here and on Legal AF YouTube. All right, let's talk about what just happened and why this would be a wake-up call, a sixth one, for any other administration, but one that is so distracted and so, what's the word I'm looking for? Bonkers. I mean, the administration is being run by the mad president, right?

4:43Michael Popok:The descent into madness is obvious. I'll be talking about in another video later today about the 25th Amendment, and Donald Trump's called to have a third term while we watch his erratic behavior in Iran, lurching from diplomacy to no diplomacy, to going it alone, to threatening war crimes against the Iranian civilian population, to withdrawing that. I mean, just crazy stuff. While he's doing all that, he's asking for$200 billion from Congress to fund his war, his popularity campaign. It would cost reasonable estimates. It would cost us, American taxpayers, just$20 billion to redo the entire air traffic safety system.

5:31Michael Popok:One-tenth of what he's already or about to spend in Iran, 10 % of what he brought in on his tariffs, and yet he refuses to do it. funding for the FAA is flat or defunded. He wanted to fire air traffic controllers after the last disaster, around the last disaster, the one that started his administration off, the American Airlines disaster over the Potomac, right in his backyard. What did he do? He fired 400 people in their cost-cutting moves at the FAA. How's that going so far? And Sean Duffy, just because he was on MTV Road Rules and also in real world and met his wife on Fox on MTV, does not make him qualified to be the Department of Transportation head.

6:26Michael Popok:Pete Buttigieg got a lot of grief from the Republicans, but planes weren't falling out of the sky. He had a proper focus on priorities related to air safety. Sean Duffy, what's his focus? Here's his Kristi Noem moment. Kristi Noem spent$200 million horseback at Mount Rushmore trying to promote the Department of Homeland Security. Sean Duffy spent millions of dollars on public service announcements telling people that they need to stop wearing comfortable clothes when they fly. Is that what happened? Would that have kept the two pilots safe that died in the Air Canada flight in the last 24 hours?

7:04Michael Popok:This shows you where their priorities are. Play Sean Duffy. I think, again, I call this just maybe dressing with some respect. whether it's a pair of jeans and a decent shirt. I would encourage people to maybe dress a little better, which encourages us to maybe behave all a little better. Let's try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport. I think that's positive. If we can help someone as we're getting on the aircraft that might need some help putting their bag in the overhead bin and you're a little stronger, a little buffer, you've been lifting, You know, stand up and, you know, offer to grab that bag and put it up for someone who's having a more difficult time.

7:47Common courtesy and civility, I think, is going to work well.

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9:13Michael Popok:That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's Upwork.com. Upwork.com. Sean Duffy's going to have a lot of explaining to do when he testifies before the House in Senate oversight committees, in which he will be dragged in, kicking and screaming now, off of this disaster. This administration is priority-less. It is run by a demented, deranged president whose only policy considerations are wasting our time and our money going after his political targets and political critics and enemies, going after the media, and starting wars to distract from his scandals and lack of popularity at home.

10:02Michael Popok:And that makes you and me unsafe and not secure. I never thought I'd be talking about a Republican administration that could care not a whit for public safety. They used to campaign on crime and crime fighting and public safety. Now they don't give a crap. If they did, you would see it. Budget bills that become law represent the policy priorities of an administration. This policy, this administration related to transportation, flat or defunded. No money devoted to technology updates. I'm not trying to scare the crap out of you, but most of the technology that the FAA and air traffic controllers are using date back to the 70s and 80s.

10:49Michael Popok:Yes, forget about artificial intelligence. They're still using note cards and index cards to keep track of flights. Oh, yes. And remember when all the publicity, when Elon Musk took over ahead of Doge, he's Mr. Technology. He runs Tesla and puts rockets when they don't blow up on the launch pad into space. He was going to revamp the Federal Aviation Agency and the air traffic controller system and all the antiquated technology. And then he disappeared. And so did also the focus there. Now, if I were lobbyists for the industry and I owned an airline, one of the major regional or commuter airlines, cargo airlines, FedEx, UPS, I would be banging down the door of my congressman and senator or congressperson and senator demanding that there be new funding to make air safety a priority, to make air travel.

11:56Michael Popok:Safe. For passengers who are there for leisure, that means the hospitality and travel and leisure component of our economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars, they're there for business. That means our main commercial service economy, manufacturing economy. Cargo is moved, as we know, and packages are moved. That's our GDP and our economy. And then the safety of the people that work in the industry, from the cockpit all the way back, including people like my client, the family of flight attendant who died on the American Airlines flight back in January of 2025. Oh, what an ominous kickoff for the administration.

12:43Michael Popok:Any other reasonable and rational person who ran the administration, like Donald Trump, having that happen on like the first days of his being in office would have used that to pick up the clarion call to revamp air travel and make it his number one priority or one of his top five priorities. The opposite for Donald Trump. He hoped the news cycle would move on and we'd forget about it. We don't forget about it. We don't forget about the families. We're actively right now litigating against the government on behalf of families and for the people, the 67 people that died on that American Airlines flight.

13:21Michael Popok:The pilots who died last night crashing into a fire truck will have claims, as will the 150 people or so who were injured. Just to show you, this isn't isolated. Within hours of that disaster at LaGuardia, the other major airport in the tri-state area, Newark Airport in New Jersey, had to shut down one of its air traffic control towers because of smoke. It was like on fire, or electrical fire. They had to move to another tower. We just had an air traffic controller in Newark who had to go on disability because of his post-traumatic distress disorder for dealing with air traffic in that area. And he declared, don't fly into Newark.

14:07Michael Popok:And yet disaster after disaster after disaster. So if I were the lobbyist working for the airline, I'd be demanding that money, Maybe they even put in some of their own. Go into air travel. Or people are going to stop using air as a method of transportation. And maybe Sean Duffy should care less about whether somebody's wearing their pajamas or say please and thank you. Because that's not going to keep them safe. That doesn't do a darn thing, you know, as they're crashing into the ceiling of the plane. You know, as it loses altitude. that, you know, oh, but I'm okay now. I'm wearing my button-down Oxford shirt.

14:47Michael Popok:This will protect me. Thank you, Sean. Are you effing kidding me? Wake up, Trump administration. And this is what happens when you have an incompetent, not qualified person running a major agency like transportation in Sean Duffy. And no, Fox did not prepare him as a commentator nor his relationship with Rachel Duffy who used to be on Real World or him doing road rules. None of that prepared him for this major task. We knew that on day one of the disaster of this administration. Let's start getting competent people running agencies, the best and the brightest. The problem is the best and the brightest don't want to work for Donald Trump because they see him, that he's mad as a hatter.

15:39Michael Popok:He's bonkers. I'll continue to follow it here. Midas Touch, a Legal AF YouTube channel, a Legal AF the podcast, a Legal AF Substack. Join our ecosystem. Become a member. Become a subscriber. Till my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it. Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well.

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