Meet the Press NOW — January 31

Foreign. Welcome to MEET THE press. Now. I'm Kristen Welker in Washington, where we are following new developments in the investigation into Wednesday's tragic mid air collision that killed all 67 people aboard a passenger jet and a military Blackhawk helicopter.

Amid the aftermath of the incident, the FAA today implemented new helicopter restrictions in the D.C. area, which comes as we are getting a look at new footage of the moment the crash happened, which we should warn you may be disturbing. This video shows the moment of impact as the American Eagle jet on approach to Reagan National Airport collided with an Army Blackhawk helicopter, sending them both plunging into the icy Potomac River. NBC News has learned that investigators are now looking into whether the helicopter was flying at too high of an altitude.

They won't know for sure until they recover the helicopter's black box data record. The NTSB so far has recovered the black boxes from the passenger jet, but is waiting on assistance and expertise from the military to recover the helicopters. In addition, a source familiar with the investigation tells NBC News an air traffic control supervisor at the airport left their shift early, leaving one controller handling both airline and helicopter traffic at the airport, which is shorthanded but acceptable under FAA guidelines. This afternoon, local authorities gave an update on the recovery process, including a difficult and delicate effort of retrieving the remains.

We've identified 41. We have recovered 41 sets of remains, and 28 of those victims have been positively identified. And as of 6am this morning, next to 10 notifications have been made to 18 families. Authorities say they expect to recover all of the victims, but they don't have an estimate on how long that will take.

It comes as the White House is facing renewed scrutiny over the president's handling of the crisis after he baselessly speculated that the crash was the fault of diversity initiatives at the faa. The president yesterday signed a memo ordering an investigation and hiring decisions and safety protocol at the faa. At today's White House briefing, press Secretary Caroline Levitt backed up the president's claims about diversity hiring at the FAA despite no evidence linking it to the collision. When you are flying on an airplane with your loved ones, which every one of us in this room has, do you pray that your plane lands safely and gets you to your destination, or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color?

Think we all know the answer to that question. And as President Trump said yesterday, it's common sense. Now, it is worth noting that President Trump himself said at yesterday's press conference that he was not aware of any link between diversity programs and the crash The Washington Post reports today that a diversity hiring initiative excoriated by the president yesterday was actually launched during his first term. The FAA has had a shortage of air traffic controllers for years, but there are no indications the agency bent their strict safety and qualification standards for new hires.

I do want to bring in our NBC News team reporters to start us off. Aaron Gloughlin is on the banks of the Potomac in Virginia. Garrett Haig is outside the White House, and Courtney Cubey has the very latest from the Pentagon. Aaron, I want to start with you.

What's the very latest on the investigation that you are learning at this hour? We're now hearing from my colleague Peter Alexander that they are now in the process of pulling some of the wreckage from the Potomac River. We understand the wreckage to to be the Blackhawk helicopter, which is very much a focus of this investigation. As you mentioned, Kristen, NTSB is looking into the possibility that the Blackhawk was simply flying too high.

And to know for sure they want to recover the black box. They have yet to do that from the Blackhawk helicopter, but they have managed to recover two black boxes from the jet that was involved. And the reason this is critical is because transponder information that was being emitted from the Blackhawk indicated that perhaps the helicopter was flying anywhere from 350 to 400ft over the Potomac river, which is too high. That's well above the standard of 200ft.

The issue with that transponder information that's been broadcast on websites such as Flightradar24 is that they only capture that information about every six seconds. So it's possible that that information changes, which is why authorities are really focused on trying to recover that black box in question to get a clear picture of the altitude, which is of course, you know, source of this investigation as the NTSB is looking at problem. Cause we are expecting an NTSC presser later today. Yeah, we will be watching that very closely.

Aaron, let's talk about another part of the investigation, the staffing at Air Traffic Control. Of course, there are questions about whether one person may have left early, leaving one person in charge of basically monitoring the skies for helicopters and commercial aircraft. What can you tell us about that part of the investigation? Yeah, this is another factor that the NTSB is believed to be looking at.

A preliminary report from the FAA seen by a source told NBC News that there was indication that the supervisor inside the airport's control tower allowed one of the controllers to leave their shift early. And that's potentially significant because generally in these scenarios there are two Controllers within an air traffic control tower. One dedicated helicopter traffic, the other dedicated to plane traffic. And by allowing one of those controllers to leave early, that means that one controller was in charge of both the helicopter traffic and the plane traffic.

Now, under FAA regulations, that is allowed, nevertheless, will be another thing that the NTSB is looking at going forward because remember, they're not only going to be looking at the probable cause of this crash, but also recommendations for the future. And Aaron, we're also learning about some new restrictions on helicopter travel over the Potomac. What can you tell us there? Yeah, that's right.

They have today announced that they're going to no longer be allowing, at least indefinitely, helicopter traffic, two routes along the Potomac and around Reagan National Airport due to safety issues. Lots of questions outstanding about the volume of helicopter traffic congestion around the airport. In general, about 100 helicopters travel around the airport on any given day. And this is already a very congested airport.

Some 15 million passengers, some 25 million passengers, rather 50 million passengers are expected to be traveling through Reagan National Airport. But that has been far exceeded in recent years. Up to 25 million passengers passing through the Reagan National Airport on any given day. So, you know, congestion, helicopter traffic, staffing issues, all of that are going to be heavily scrutinized by the NTSC investigators going forward.

All right, Aaron, thank you so much for your reporting here. Let me head over to you, the White House, the President speaking as we are having this conversation. He's in the Oval Office. He's apparently signing more executive orders.

What can you tell us about that? Yeah, because I'm honoring these comments VR producer who is inside the room as the president signed these orders and he's talking again about the crash, really doubling down on his role as kind of observer in chief. We continue to complain about the helicopter having been too high in the sky on the night of the crash and suggesting without again providing any evidence there were somehow Biden policies here that caused this. He said all because of weak rules in the Biden administration.

And he's expressing, as he did yesterday in the briefing room, his frustration with reports that he says take too long. The criticism that has been levied against him up until now and perhaps is still valid is that he is getting ahead of the investigators, getting ahead of the ntsb, which has a very sort of strict policy for how they release information about an investigation. It's not at all clear that the president is privy to any unique information or more up to date investigation than we've gotten. The ntsb, who pushed their briefing back until later today.

But he continues to believe this is about this helicopter being too high in the sky, regulations being too weak, he says, and other mistakes were made. So I suppose we'll find out earlier today whether there's sort of new specific data to back up those claims from the president or not. Gary, as you have said, as we talked about, this is the first real crisis that President Trump has had to grapple with since taking office for a second time. What has the reaction been on Capitol Hill and beyond to how he is handling this crisis so far?

Well, look, in official Washington, I think there's a good deal of frustration about the way he's handling it. Inserting himself into it, both in terms of just being the spokesperson for the investigation, to a certain extent, politicizing the issue while there are still bodies in the water has been a complaint of Democrats and even some Republicans and, you know, sort of making this about Biden policies that in some cases were policies or about Pete Buttigieg in particular. Yesterday struck many people in Washington as tonally off. But the Trump White House would say this is part of what people like about President Trump.

He leads from the front. They say he doesn't act like a traditional politician and he tells it like he sees it. Those were tributes he had during the campaign, during his first presidency. They say this is what the American people want to see from their leader.

Garrett, if I can ask you to stick around, we're going to bring you back after we get the video of the president speaking the Oval Office. We'll play that for audience. We'll have you do some analysis with us. So stick around for a few more minutes if you can.

Court, let me go over to you at the Pentagon, which I know mourning the loss of their colleagues as we have this conversation. The Pentagon facing questions about the helicopter's path and altitude. As you heard Aaron laying out, what can you tell us about that piece of the investigation? Court?

I mean, I think the two things are going to end up being the most telling and maybe the most critical pieces of information, information that we know about at this point to this investigation will be the exact altitude that the helicopter was flying at and what the communications between the helicopter and the air traffic control tower were Exactly. Especially in those last few minutes. Was there a direction by ATC for the helicopter to fly higher than what is mandated for them to fly in that area, which is 200ft or below in altitude? We got, as Garrett was just mentioning, we had a true social from President Trump where he said the blackout was Flying too high by a lot.

It was far above the 200 foot limit. Officials here are not confirming that to be the case, frankly. They're asking us to wait for the investigation and for the black box to be recovered so that the specifics, the details, the facts can come out. But the reality, Kristen, we heard from the President yesterday in the White House briefing room.

We heard from Defense. Now we have this in writing from the President. They have, in each case they have spoken about this being an elevation issue. In terms, in terms of the aircraft.

We usually say altitude, but they call it elevation. But you know, at the end of the day it's the same thing. They've spoken about this being some kind of an issue with the helicopter and the altitude at which it was flying. So.

But right now, officials here in the Pentagon and the military are asking us just to wait for the investigation to actually get the facts. And part of that is going to be recovering the black box from the helicopter. Are they confident they will be able to recover the black box? Is there a time frame for that, Courtney?

No, they're confident. I think right now they're focused on as far as the helicopter goes, the two main lines of effort are the black box and then recovering the two soldiers who are still inside. Their understanding is that the way that the helicopter is in the water, the pressure from the water, it's just, it's a little difficult right now for them to get it out. But I will say we've been asking military officials just about every single hour and there is confidence that they will to get recover their soldiers and get the black box.

Still absolutely heartbreaking to hear that part of it. Courtney, what do we know about the identities of the individuals in the helicopter? Yeah, so the army did release the names and identities of two of the soldiers who were killed in this tragic crash. One is Staff Sergeant Ryan Austin o' Hara from Georgia.

He is believed to be deceased pending positive identification. Also Chief Warrant Officer 2, Andrew Lloyd Eves of Maryland. He has not been recovered. So he's one of the two soldiers who remains are still inside the helicopter at this point.

But Kristen, the third soldier is not being identified still at this point. That is at the request of her family. We do know that this third soldier is a woman. She's one of the only woman on this crew for this flight.

But we know, according to army officials that her family has requested not to put out her name or a photo of her. At this point, they are not saying why that is. They're giving the family some privacy Here the reality is the Department of Defense has a very specific policy on how the things go when someone is killed in uniform in any kind of situation, whether training or combat, there's a very specific policy and 24 hour timeline for when they put out the names and the identities of these individuals. In this case, the way that they are frankly circumventing that process is the fact that her remains still are inside that helicopter.

Because of the nature of this crash, she may need to be identified with DNA or with further identification. So right now the army is classifying her as Dust one, duties as whereabouts unknown. The policy is different for someone who is Dust one. They do not have to be identified.

So it's just a. It's unclear at this point if the army will actually release her name. Again, at this point, they're trying to follow the family's wishes. So much information about such an absolutely heartbreaking story.

Courtney, thank you so much for your great reporting. Really appreciate it. Joining me now is aviation expert Keith McCahey is also bringing us his perspective as a helicopter who has flown into Reagan national more than a thousand times. Thank you so much for joining us.

We really appreciate it. Well, thank you very much for having me. I want to start by playing some of the new images that we have of the actual collision. Again, this is disturbing.

So I want to warn our viewers, when you look at the new footage, and of course there have been. And there you see it right there, Mr. McKay, of course there have been a lot of questions about whether that Black Hawk helicopter was flying too high. You see both of the aircraft going into the water.

What do you make and what do you glean from this footage? Well, we learned one thing positively and that's that the helicopter goes at the exact altitude of the airplane. It'll be easy to determine that by block boxes in the airplane. You are correct.

The maximum altitude for a helicopter going down the prescribed routes on the east side of the Potomac river, it is 200ft. That's called a hard deck. They can't penetrate this hard deck. We know that the airplane was probably in the 400 foot range.

We've heard now that the helicopter was tracked being over the 200 foot magnet. And we also have learned that the helicopter is very likely about a half a mile out of position. So these things will all be investigated. Now, the controller that was allowed to leave before his shift had expired was working both only helicopters and the replacement worked.

Helicopters and airplanes. However, I don't see any evidence to indicate that the controller that replaced them was working the accident airplane. We think that the controller that was working the helicopter was different from the airplane controller. We don't think that the airplane pilot was able to hear the transmissions of the helicopter, but that remains to be seen and it will be found out in the investigation.

So just to be clear and to put a fine point on it, do you have concerns when you hear that the one person left early, could that have contributed to this horrific incident? Well, we can make the argument that if they were there, they would have been on the radio and talked to the helicopter and airplane at the same time. But actually, we had a supervisor give him permission to leave. And I'm sure that he didn't think that anything dangerous was going on.

But the manning of the tower was any worse than it normally was. We know that the tower there is normally understaffed. They're always short people. So that's what most ATC facilities a problem just having enough qualified people to do the job all the time.

But I don't think we can blame that. Okay. And there are now some new helicopter restrictions over the Potomac. There's been a lot of discussion about just how busy the air traffic is at Reagan National Airport.

Can you give us your sense of how busy it is? Paint a picture for us. Is that one of your concerns? Yeah.

Well, let's describe the situation there. The Potomac river, of course, divides Washington, D.C. from Virginia. It flows between the two municipalities.

The Washington National Airport, the Reagan Airport, is on the west side river and the city on the east side. The capital is probably less than two miles from the river. So everything is very close proximity. If you're going up the Potomac river north past the airport, the first thing you'll see on the left side is a Pentagon.

So everything there is really tied together tightly. The area is always sensitive. So as pilots, we have to generally reduce our engine power after taking off for a period of time to keep the noise footprints down. And the aircraft that are circumnavigating the airspace will need to get controller permission as well.

The whole Washington area is extremely limited as far as the ability of an airplane to fly how he wants. Everything's really well controlled. Well, I know this is an investigation that is still very much in its early days. We really appreciate you, Keith McKay, for joining us and giving us your insights.

Thank you so very much. Well, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. We appreciate you being here.

We are following the crash investigation closely and we'll bring you any major updates as we get them. Coming up, racing for a trade war. The Trump administration reforming today its plans to hike tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, our three biggest trading partners. That starts tomorrow.

Stay with us. We'll delve into all of it. You're watching the press now. Turning now to President Trump's plan to impose potentially sweeping tariffs on imports from America's three biggest trading partners starting tomorrow.

Just moments ago, the president took questions from reporters in the Oval Office during a signing of executive order saying nothing can be done by China, Mexico or Canada to stop these tariffs. It all comes as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this afternoon that Canada is prepared for a, quote, forceful and immediate response. The president of Mexico also saying they are prepared. Joining now is NBC News senior White House respondent Garrett Hake.

Garrett, thank you for sticking around for doing double duty today. So we are waiting for this playback of what we just heard from the president in the Oval Office. We're gonna bring that to viewers as soon as they hit play there at the White House. But break down basically what we heard from the president.

He's saying these tariffs are not negotiating tactics. They are going into effect tomorrow. What are you hearing? That's right.

He says they will be levied on top of tariffs that already exist. And Chris, and this is notable part because we've seen pushback already from the president of Mexico, from Justin Trudeau in Canada suggesting they believe that these were negotiating tactics, that these were things that could eventually talk Trump out of or get him to possibly delay warning that they would be disruptive to the US Economy. Trump shrugs off those concerns in the Oval Office today, saying that he still believes that tariffs will make America more powerful, more wealthy in the future. He said there may be temporary short term disruptions and people will understand that.

I think this is gonna be the core of where this goes and the criticism that may come in the future. I don't get too ahead of events here, but if you're Talking about putting 25 tariffs on Canada and Mexico, two of our biggest trading partners, 10% on China, you're really going to significantly affect the cost that the American people pay. Now, the White House is arguing this won't affect inflation because I think it can be offset elsewhere. And maybe that's true, but costs will absolutely go up.

Now, the president also in this meeting, and it's not entirely clear to me the specifics here, suggested that oil imports from Canada and Mexico might not be taxed. And that's what tariff is at as high a rate as what he's saying. Otherwise it might be lower something like 10. Why is that important?

Of the oil that the United States imports, about half of it comes from Canada. And not to be too geeky about this, the refineries that we have in this country can't just switch and say, all right, well, the Canadian oil is expensive. Now we'll go to oil from somewhere else. This is all sort of a chemical process.

It's very specific. What does that all mean? If the cost to bring in Canadian oil goes up, the cost to buy gas essentially in this country will almost certainly go up as well. So after a campaign that was hinged on, it's not the single most important issue, certainly one of the most important issues on rising prices and fears of inflation.

Here you have an action from the president that will almost certainly, if enacted the way that he describes, raise costs for American consumers. Garrett, we welcome all of your geekiness here. Thank you for that. Let's go over to Brian Chung now.

Brian, I should just again remind our viewers we are going to play that video from President Trump who was signing some executive orders, taking questions from reporters. We'll do that as soon as we get it. So if I cut you off, Brian, it's not personal, but give us pick up where Garrett left off. I mean, this critical question, are prices going to go up for consumers?

Because economists of all strikes say that's what tariffs do. That's the impact that they have. Ultimately, companies have to jack up their prices and consumers wind up paying more. Yeah.

And you know, I think you already nicely kind of set the stage there when it comes to the impacts of raising the cost for businesses to bring in items from other countries, namely our major trading partners in the form of Mexico, Canada and also China. But I think we can look at the economists and see exactly what they've already projected after a Trump campaign that, to be fair, has been telegraphing the intention to do these 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, as well as 10% on China for some time. So if you take a look at some of the projections from Goldman Sachs, for example, they say that this will lead to inflation in those respective countries as well. So it will raise prices in Canada by about 0.4% by at least 2%.

And then in Mexico, it raises prices by 2.5%. And then here in the United States, you have ey Parthenon projecting that will be an increase of 0.4% in inflation. So there is no scenario that I have seen from economists that have the ability to model this out that shows that prices would decline. I want to point out that those projections don't necessarily include the nuance of the gas and oil prices that you were just discussing dissecting with Garrett right there.

But when it comes to gas prices, that is the thing that most Americans who as they went to the polls in November had top of mind, those are the prices that they are most familiar with because they drive past them on a daily basis to fill up their gas on a weekly basis. So I think that's going to be the thing that people will notice almost immediately if those oil tariffs come to passage again. Could be a separate process, maybe just weeks in that person. Brian, it's such an important point.

Just zooming out a little bit. I mean, President Trump got elected in part because he promised to bring down prices. We all know it's actually very hard for the president to bring down prices because he doesn't have direct control over prices. But Brian explained to people why, why that process is so hard is of course, something that President Biden spent a lot of time talking about as well.

Yeah, well, look, when it comes to inflation, it is unequivocally a fact that prices have gone up dramatically in this country in the post pandemic period. I think the challenge is decoupling the reasons for why certain prices, which we happen to notice the most have gone up. Eggs have been the talking point. Let's just fix it over the past few weeks and they have gone up.

They've gone up by 20% over the last year. But the challenge with eggs is that the same reason for why egg prices are going up are not the same reason why rent prices going up are not the same reason why oil prices might be going up. And that's because when it comes to eggs is because of an avian flu that has wiped out millions of birds, forcing farms in some cases to kill the entirety of the herds that they have on their farms. Who those chickens would otherwise be producing the eggs that would make those prices lower.

Now, is that something that the administration or the Federal Reserve or any economist could address immediately? Not necessarily, unless you magically find a million birds. But those are the prices that people feel things again, they see them so frequently. Now, when it comes to the overall picture, you have the Federal Reserve that has been lowering interest rates in the last year.

Just this Wednesday, they opted not to do anything with interest rates to kind of navigate the uncertainty around tariffs as one of the factors. But look, when it comes to inflation coming down, it's already on a yearly basis, much lower than it was in 2020. Two, but those price increases are still uncomfortable for a lot of Americans that still feel the pinch. Garrett, we have about 30 seconds.

It's always possible he does wind up negotiating, renegotiating that trade deal that he negotiated during his first term. Right. Just about 20 seconds now. I think it's absolutely possible, probably bordering, unlikely.

Certainly the presidents of the President of Mexico, the Prime Minister, Canada are going to want to see that happen, especially if that's the only way to get out from underneath new tariffs. But it's also, I think, an acknowledgment whether the President wants to frame it this way or not, Chris, of flaws in that original agreement. All right, Garrett, Brian, thanks so much for hanging out to help us dissect all of this. And again, just moments from now, we are going to hear from President Trump in the Oval Office.

Here's the President. Anything China, Canada and Mexico can do tonight to forestall your implementation of terrorists tomorrow? No, nothing. Not right now.

No. Not a negotiating tool. No, it's not. No, it's a pure economic.

We have big deficits with, as you know, with all three of them. And in one case, they're sending massive amounts of fentanyl, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year with the fentanyl. And in the other two cases, they're making it possible for this poison to get in, number one. And number two, we have big deficits and it's something we're doing and we'll will possibly very substantially increase it or not.

We'll see how it is. But it's, it's a lot of money coming to the United States. As you know, we have about a 200 billion dollar deficit with, with the candidate getting close to 200 billion dollars. It's, they've treated us very unfairly.

And I say, why should we be subsidizing Canada? You know, it's wonderful. I have so many friends in Canada. It's a great place.

Is there a concession you're looking for, sir? No, we're not looking for a concession. And we'll just see what happens. We'll see what happens with Mexico.

It's the same thing. We have a $250 billion deficit and we have a lot of people coming into the border. And now we've largely stopped that, but we stopped it ourselves. I think they've done a fantastic job.

You see, the numbers have dropped almost zero. But we've suffered under the past administration for years and years. We've suffered with millions of criminals coming into our country. Criminals, people from jails, from all over the world come through Mexico, and they come through Canada, too.

A lot of them come through Canada. A lot of fentanyl comes through Canada. And China makes the fentanyl. China makes the fentanyl, gives it to Mexico, puts it through Canada, puts it through different places, mostly Mexico, but also a lot through Canada.

And so all three haven't treated us very well. Can I ask you about India? What did you talk about? And do you think you need to ban more of the chips that are selling to China?

Great. Gentlemen. And I haven't met him. He's the biggest in the world in terms of chips.

And I can't say what's going to happen. We had meetings, good meeting. But eventually we're going to put tariffs on chips. We're going to put tariffs on oil and gas.

That'll happen fairly soon, I think around the 18th of February. And we're going to put a lot of tariffs on steel. We already have tariffs on steel, and we've saved our steel industry. But that was relatively small compared to what it'll be.

But we're going to be putting tariffs on steel and aluminum and ultimately copper. Copper will take a little bit longer, and that'll happen pretty quickly. I mean, it'll be a great boost for our steel industry. It'll make our steel industry very strong.

If I didn't put the tariffs on years ago on steel, which actually Biden left because it was so much money that they couldn't do anything about it, we would have lost. We would have one steel mill in this country if I didn't do that. We saved the steel industry. So it's an honor to do it.

And I think the people that love me most in the whole world are people that make steel. But we're going to be putting sometime this month, next month, we're going to be putting tariffs on steel and Wilbur. And we'll give an announcement as to what the exact date is. But it'll be a tremendous amount of money for our country.

A tremendous amount. These are big numbers. And in addition to that, and you see the power of the tariff. I mean, the tariff is good.

And nobody can compete with us because we have by far the biggest piggy bank. And so that'll take place very quickly. But also we'll be doing pharmaceuticals. And to bring our industry back, we want to bring pharmaceuticals back to the country.

And the way we bring it back to the country is by putting up a wall. And the wall is a tariff wall. We were the richest country in the world. We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913.

That's when we had. We were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept. And, you know, how did that work out?

It's fine. I mean, it's okay. But we've been very much better. So we'll be doing pharmaceuticals, importantly, in drugs, medicines, etc.

All forms of medicine and pharmaceuticals. And we'll be doing very importantly, steel. And we'll also be doing chips and things associated with chips. So what do you plan on talking with the Japanese Prime Minister about next Friday when you all meet?

Well, he's coming in next week. I don't know he has. For a meeting. And I have great respect for Japan.

I like Japan. Prime Minister Ravi was a very close friend of mine. What happened to him was so sad. One of the saddest days.

But they're coming in to speak to me. Alaforto. Mr. President, on the crash, do you have any concerns that your commentary about things you have described as common sense or your observations could in any way interfere with the thorough investigation of the crash?

No, I think they'll do an investigation. It'll probably come out the way I said it. I'd like to put it up front. I'm so tired of listening to things happen to our country.

And then people say, we'll do an investigation. Three years later, they come out with a report that nobody looks at, especially not in all cases. Can you do that? But in this case, you had a helicopter that was.

The Black Hawk was too high. It was above the 200 limit by double. Shouldn't have been there. And there were some other mistakes made too, and I pointed them out also.

I was right on it. But they'll still do an investigation, just to check it out. Opining about the army and the conduct of that aircraft. When you are commander in chief and these are the people who report to you, and there's an investigation on that.

This was all caused by bad rules, regulations and other things by Biden, the Biden administration. And when you look at the way they ran things, in fact, if you look, we hired. One of the first things I told them to do is get talented people in those. In those beautiful towers overlooking runways.

You better get them in their fs, because we don't have people there that are qualified. And you knew that because planes were landing very, very late. They were circling all over the place. We had people that didn't know what the hell they were doing.

And so there are planes in the air everywhere. And there are other Air trafficking companies. We have to have the best people, the smartest people, the sharpest people, as control tower experts. And that's what they have to be.

They have to be experts, and they have to be very smart. And we didn't have our best. And if you read the quote that I read yesterday at the news conference, it talked about people that were psychologically injured were okay, and people that had lots of problems were okay. I'd read it again if you'd like me to, but I don't think I have to concern, though, sir, with planes in the air all around the country, people relying on that as safety.

Are you suggesting there's an ongoing risk? No, I think there's very little risk, but I think that we have to make sure that this never happens again. Very, very little risk, and we're taking actions that this can't happen again. The helicopter, as you know, was out of its own, shouldn't have been out of its own.

It was at the same height as the airplane. Now. The airplane was coming down on its track. It was perfect.

It was in perfect shape coming down, and something was in its way. You can't let that happen, and it won't be happening again. And this was all because of weak rules in the Biden administration, and we're just not going to let that kind of thing happen again and again. I could wait and I could give a report in two years, like they always do.

And sometimes it's obvious, in this case to be. It was very obvious, and I think I've been proven. Proven to be very correct. Yeah, I expect a lot of good things from all meetings.

I expect good things. Marco Rubio, as you know, is going to make a tour of various countries in South America. He's going to be meeting in Panama, where Panama treated us very badly. They gave him, rather foolishly, a thing called the Panama Canal.

The most expensive project we ever built. Look at today's number, most expensive ever built. We lost 38,000 men. In that case, all men just have all men.

38,000 to the mosquito, to malaria and various other problems that you get from jungles. It was a tremendously costly event. We built the Panama Canal 110 years ago. Think of it, the most expensive development we ever did.

And really one of the wonders of the world. One of the great wonders of the world. We didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And Panama's been ripping down all the China language signs.

They've been working like mad to try, but about 70% of the signs were up and they were written in Chinese, and it's not the deal. So we're going to take it back. They've already offered to do many things, but. But we think it's appropriate that we take it back.

They totally violated the agreement. We have an agreement. They violated the agreement. And Marco Rubio is going over there to talk to the.

To the gentleman that's in charge for Jordan and Egypt to be taking in Palestinians when they reject the idea. And the Palestinians who are living now in Egypt will take people. Yeah, people from Gaza, and I think Egypt will take them also. I mean, I heard somebody say they're not going to, but I think they will.

I feel confident they will. Mr. President, will you. Will tomorrow's tariffs include oil?

Will tomorrow's tariffs be included? I'm probably going to reduce the tariff a little bit on that, but they're going to bring it down to 10% on the oil. So it's 25% on the cannabis on top of whatever may be existing. To the Maduro administration.

No, we want to do something with Venezuela. I've been a very big opponent of Venezuela and Maduro. They've treated us not so good, but they've treated more importantly than Venezuelan people very badly. We have tremendous Venezuelan population.

I got 92% of the vote of the Venezuelan vote. Now we want to see what we can do to get people back in their homeland, safe and free and all. He's meeting with a lot of different people. But we're.

We are for the people of Venezuela. We're for the people. Venezuelan Americans. If you look at it, we have them all in Florida, right around the Corral area.

That's where eventually they call it Little Venezuela. Right. And they voted for close to 100%. So we'll see what we can just straighten out the situation in Venezuela.

Venezuela is. Has been very unfortunate. I was very surprised when I saw that Biden agreed to buy a lot of oil from Venezuela because Venezuela was just about finished the dictator. And when that happened, it brought it back to life.

You know, Biden went out and they. They buy millions of barrels of oil. I said, what's that all about? So we're not gonna let that stupid stuff happen.

So we'll see what happens. We're not happy with Venezuela. We don't like the way they've treated the Venezuelans at all. Words or messages that government websites will be shut down this evening to scrub them up.

DEI content. Can you confirm? Government websites we shut down this evening to scrub them with DEI content. Can you confirm whether that's accurate?

I don't know. It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. DEI is. Would have ruined our country, and now it's dead.

I think DEI is dead. So they want to scrub the website. That's okay with me, but I can't tell you. I guess probably certain people handle it certain ways, but then he was very happy about it.

The military, the real leaders, the real generals in the military, they're very happy about it. Doug is very happy about it. He's got a big, big group of people that are gonna be working for him, are really starting right now, just got signed up, and they're very happy about it. He had a lot of dei.

Everybody did, but he's not been a fan. It was really hurting our country badly. It's costing a lot of money to see the kind of money we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars for nonsense. Now we have our country back.

Now our country is back. And it's a nice thing to say. I've never seen such love. I've never had anything like it.

I've never seen anything like it. People are coming up, sir. Thank you for bringing our country back. We're losing our country, and I think we're stronger now than we've been in many, many decades.

Well, we'll be speaking. We'll be speaking, and I think we'll perhaps do something that'll be significant. We want to end that war. That war would have never started when I was president, and we want to end that war.

That war is a horrible war. Millions of young people have been killed, mostly on the lines now, mostly at soldiers. But the cities have been largely destroyed. Many of them, they're like demolition sites, but the soldiers are just shooting at each other.

It's a very flat land. I said this the last time. Very, very flat land. The only place that the bullet stops is when it hits a person.

And they hit a lot of people. They hit a lot of soldiers on both sides. You know, I think Russia would probably say close to 800,000 in Ukraine, 6 or 700,000. And it's just a senseless situation, and it's got to stop.

So whatever I can do to stop it. And we are having discussions. Yes, ongoing. All rescheduled and ongoing.

Already talking. So you've already spoken to Vladimir Putin? I want to say that, but we are having very serious discussions. The reason you don't want to.

We are. I just don't want to say that. We're having very serious discussions. About that, we're trying to get it ended with Russia.

Here at the Department of Justice and the FBI, there are a number of high level people who are being asked to resign or are being told they are going to be fired. Did you specifically request any actions at the Bureau or DOJ with respect to those employees? No, but we have some very bad people over there. It was weaponized at a level that nobody's ever seen before.

They came after a lot of people like me, but they came after a lot of people. No, I wasn't involved in it. I'll have to see what is exactly going on after this is finished. But if they fired some people over there, that's a good thing because they were very bad.

They were very corrupt people. Very corrupt. And they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization they used to. They used the Justice Department to go after their political opponent, which in itself is illegal.

And obviously it didn't work. What does that mean? Well, you're asking me a question I'm sure you didn't hear. Am I going to impose tariffs on the European Union?

You want the truthful answer or should I give you a political answer? Absolutely. The European Union has treated us so terribly. You promised Americans to try to reduce costs of so many of the products.

That would be tariffs when they come into the country. The outgoing country is not paying the tariff. The buyers in the United States pay that, and then that's cast on consumers at those distances sometimes. How would you expect to have prices come down if you have such a broad plan for tariffs?

And what do you say to voters who want to see you reduce everyday costs? Well, let me just tell you that I got elected for a lot of reasons. Number one was the border. Number two was inflation because I had almost no inflation, and yet I charged hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs to countries.

And to think of it, I had almost no inflation and took in $600 billion of money from other countries. And tariffs don't cause inflation. They cause success, cause big success. So whatever great success, there could be some temporary short term disruption and people will understand that.

I had that money, negotiated some of the good deals for the farmers. And unfortunately, those deals have been led astray by Biden and his people because they didn't enforce the deals. We have a deal with China, which is phenomenal for the farmers, but it was nobody to enforce it in the Biden administration. They let them get away with murder.

So that's another thing we're going to be bringing. They committed to buying $50 billion worth of phone product. And they did it when I was president. As soon as I left, they stopped doing it because there was nobody in Biden to enforce it.

But the tariffs are going to make us very rich and very strong, and we're going to treat other countries very fairly. But if you think about it, other countries charge us tariffs, we don't charge them tariffs. And it's about time that that changes. So are you concerned about the market reaction around tariffs?

No, no tariffs. The word tariff is a very misunderstood word. Know, I don't. You've heard me say.

I say it kiddingly, but it's one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary, really is. And we've been taking advantage of because others have charged US VATs. As an example, the European Union charges us 20% plus plus of attacks full of VAT tax. Very similar.

And it cost us an absolute fortune. We are treated so badly. They don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products. Essentially, they don't take almost anything.

And we have a tremendous deficit with the European Union. So we'll be doing something very substantial with the European Union. We're going to bring the level up to where it should be. If you think of the European Union, then you go to NATO.

It's largely the same group of countries. Until I came along, I mean, we were paying almost 100% of NATO only to get bad trade deals. And now it's been evened out. But very unfair having to do it was evened out pretty good, actually.

I did a good job. They paid $440 billion. If you look at the Secretary General's report, and he was here recently and he said that. He said, one of the most amazing things I've ever seen is what President Trump was able to do with these countries of Europe, which he was in charge of them, but he couldn't get him to pay.

I went over, I said, you got to pay. If you don't pay, we're not going to protect you. It's very simple, but very unfair with Ukraine because we're in for $300 billion plus and they're in probably for 100 million. There's a $200 million difference and they need it more than we do.

We have an ocean in between. They don't. And so they're going to have to step it up a little bit with efforts to reduce the federal workforce, whether it's offering a what we call the buyout package or other efforts, give any concerns that there will be employees, broadly across the federal government who might take that up. And they're a part of the many different ways the agencies protect the public, from food inspections to water safety to everybody's replaceable, and we'll get very good people to replace it.

If it turns out to be more than we thought. It could be a lot, it could be a little. We don't know. But we'd love to have them leave.

We're trying to remember this. We want them to go into the private sector. It's our dream to have everybody almost working in the private sector, not in the public sector. We have many people.

Very few people came to work. They were. It started more or less with COVID but actually even before COVID but it started with the COVID They didn't come back. And then Biden let them get away with murder and they.

We had federal workforce like 4% coming into the office, and that just doesn't work. You know, people can say it does, but it doesn't work. You have to be unified in a group in the office. It's just.

It was crazy. You don't know what they're doing. And then at some point, we may ask them to certify that they didn't have two jobs, meaning were they really getting a check from us, the government, and then were they also working a second job and a third job and, you know, one government done? And many of them will say that they did, you know, which is.

Which is not legal, but it's a problem. It's a problem. No, we want to get that out. We want to clean it out.

You know, people have been trying to reduce federal government now for 40 years, 45 years, and they have been able to do it. And this is a way of doing it, I think, very nicely. Instead of a buyout. I think we're treating people very good.

But people don't come to the office. They won't have a job starting on that very special day. So we'll see how that works out. I mean, nobody knows how that's going to turn out.

Everybody might show up to the office, and maybe a large number won't show up. But if they don't show up, we've accomplished a very serious goal. We're trying to reduce government. Does Mr.

Musk or any of those associated with your doge effort, do they have any direct access through the government systems to how money is dispersed? No. Nothing? No, they are.

This has nothing to do also with the federal cutting and with this federal cutting. This is very separate. This is. If you don't show up, you don't get paid.

But, Doge, I think great progress has been made. We're talking about cutting over a trillion dollars of waste. Talking about waste. We're not talking about.

We're going to love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. We're not going to do anything with that other than if we can find some abuse or waste, we'll do something. But the people will be affected. It'll only be more effective and better.

And our country, as our country gets richer, the people in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, those people are going to be more secure. If Biden had gotten elected, Social Security was going to fail, because the country was failing, was going to fail. The country was going to fail, and therefore the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all of the other things that you may get would not be able to be paid. Our country is getting very strong, and you see it.

I think more progress has been made in the last two or three weeks than it's been made in the last four years. I think not only has more progress been made in the last four years, it's deep progress. We went way backward as a country in so many different ways, from woke to all of the other things that took place that were so bad. You look at Afghanistan, how embarrassing that was.

I think Afghanistan really started the problem with Russia and Ukraine. When Putin looked over and saw how incompetently that was handled. I was getting out, but I was gonna keep Bagram. Right now China has Bagram.

I was gonna keep one of the biggest air bases in the world. They left it, but I was other than Bagram, I was gonna get out. I wasn't keeping Bagram for Afghanistan. I was keeping it for China because it's one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons, and we were keeping it.

So we have a lot of great things happening in our country, and we appreciate that you're here. And I'm really thrilled about Doug, and I'm really thrilled about his friend Chris Wright, who's a legend in the oil business. Right. They keep telling me, Catherine, he's like a legend, that he's a legend, too, in a lot of businesses.

And we have an amazing group of people working with us. There's a man behind me who became a tremendous success. He was not. Was not a wealthy man.

He didn't start off a wealthy man, and he ended up a wealthy man. And, you know, that's a great talent, and he's willing to sacrifice so much and to put it to work for our country. Watch the job he does on the interior, but in particular on really making our country very, very wealthy by utilizing it properly and at the same time environmentally does it very he's very much an environmentalist. He's going to do it very carefully and very painstakingly.

Good. But you just watch what happens. And working with the Department of Energy where his compatriot, his friend and also considered the most talented man in the oil business, is the head of the Department of Energy, they work together. It's almost like a partnership.

It really is a partnership. And watch what that does for our country. It'll be a fantastic thing to see. Thank you very much, everybody.

You are listening there to President Trump taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office, including our colleague Kelly o' Donnell there with a number of questions. Just a couple of key takeaways that our Garrett Hake is still with me to break down what we just heard. He doubled down on his decision to impose tariffs, that he wouldn't rule out tariffs against the European Union. But he defended imposing tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China, which will be going into effect, he said, as soon as he announces it this weekend.

Also defending his handling of the horrific crash here in Washington, his baseless claims that somehow diversity programs may have played a role. Again saying no, he's not aware of a direct link, but defending his response broadly. Also saying he wasn't tuned into the decision to potentially purge some of those who work at the FBI, but saying they're very bad people who work there. So he'll get briefed on that after he said he finishes his remarks to reporters saying it would be fine with him if diversity programs, so called diversity and equity inclusion programs, are removed from government websites.

And then notably saying that we'll be speaking when asked whether he had spoken to Vladimir Putin, saying that perhaps something significant could happen. We want to end the war, he says. So a number of headlines there, Garrett. Let's start on that last one with Russia and Ukraine.

I thought that was a very notable headline. Kelly o' Donnell pressing him repeatedly. Have you spoken, Vladimir Putin? Why don't you want to say?

He wouldn't say whether they've spoken, but making it very clear that this is a key priority. Yeah. And president's position for months now on Putin neither confirming or denying any conversation. The Kremlin has long denied that they've spoken, I think since Trump left office after his first term.

I think it's the Kremlin's position on this. But it's very clear from the context around that, the way that he talks about it, there has been clearly some government level or sort of middleman level outreach here between the United States and Russia. The president has sort of shifted his tone on Russia in the last couple of weeks. During the campaign, we talked about how Putin and Zelensky both had to give if there was any peace, and he said that there would be peace on day one.

The metric he's not missed entirely. But he started to say recently that Zelensky is ready to make a deal and then Putin needs to be willing to come to the table. Putin needs to be willing to make a deal. I don't know whether there's been of sort of actual change behind the scenes in the posture with Putin or the prospects of there being a meeting between the president and Putin or has a trilateral meeting between all three leaders or whether this is just a big tease.

But it's at least that from the president suggesting that there could be something more in the works here, which is something he's wanted to do for quite some time. All right, Garrett Haig, thank you for sticking with us for the hour. We very much appreciate it. We will be back Monday with more Me, the Press now.

And if it's Sunday, it's me, the press on your local NBC news station. I'll have exclusive interviews with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Senators Mark Kelly and Eric Schmidt. The news continues with Alison Barbour in for Hallie Jackson right now. I'm Craig no.

Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way, too.

Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges, their stories are funny and why can't it? So I hope you'll join me each week. Who knows, you might just come away with your own Glass Apple. Search Glass Apple with Craig Melford From Today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.