Tonight on 360, another Oval Office ambush. First, it was Zelensky. Now, President Trump confronts South Africa's president, his facts, however, don't add up. We're keeping him honest.
Also tonight, the trouble in our skies turns out Newark Airport isn't alone. Old technology, stressed out controllers, and close calls in the air. New reporting appears to be a nationwide problem. And later, the guy who hated his job quit and is now sailing the high seas by himself.
We check in with Oliver Widger, who's solo voyages being followed by people around the world. Good evening, thanks for joining us. We begin tonight, keeping him honest with the President and United States, confronting the President of South Africa, making a string of false accusations about that country with cameras rolling and the whole world watching. The meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa started amicably enough with President Trump praising South African golfers and President Ramaphosa talking about the coffee table book on the sport that he brought as a gift.
Then, after a reporter's question about the administration making White Afrikaans the only refugees allowed into the country since taking office while moving to deport Haitians and Venezuelans, to name two, the president was off and running. A lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa, and that's really the purpose of the meeting, and we'll see how that turns out. But we have many people that feel they're being persecuted, and they're coming to the United States. So we take from many locations, if we feel there's persecution or genocide going on.
Well, the point of fact, in taking office, the Trump administration has halted refugees from coming into the United States. He signed an executive order effectively shutting down the refugee program, even though there were people who had been approved in the prior administration who actually had face persecution and were about to come here. They were stopped by this administration. Now, as far as we can tell, no black Africans have been given refugee status since inauguration day, and the only people being allowed in.
And the only Africans whose entrance is actually being expedited by the administration are white, white South Africans. The first ones who arrived, you see them there, were recently welcomed at Dallas Airport by senior officials from the State Department, Department of Homeland Security. This afternoon, the White House President Trump dimmed the lights and played a video which made the case that white Africans and South African are the victims of genocide. Part of the video showed crowd shouting, kill the boars, which is another word for white farmers who descended from the country's original colonists, most of whom were of Dutch descent.
And the people shouting it were led by a left-wing extremist who's not actually part of the South African government. He was expelled from President Ramaphosa's party more than a decade ago. Another portion of the clip showed crosses and mounds lining the road, which President Trump described this way. This is very bad.
These are the burial sites, right here. Burial sites, over a thousand of white farmers, and those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is a cross, and there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers, and it's a terrible site.
I've never seen anything like it. Both sides of the road give crosses. Those people are all killed. President Ramaphosa, who had sat silently through the video, had a question afterwards.
Have they told you where that is, Mr. President? I'd like to go away. That is because this I've never seen.
I'm going to send to South Africa this week. Keep it honest, it's entirely possible he knows the answer to that, which is that this purported burial ground is not a burial ground. The crosses are in fact symbolic, part of a protest against the murder of farmers, yes, but not burial sites, those are not graves. Now, crime has been a huge problem in South African.
It's been a problem for decades, and I'm not talking about the crimes of the white Afro-Conner apartheid regime, which were horrific. I'm talking about robberies and murder and assaults. According to the most recent South African official data, there were nearly 20,000 murders from April of 2024 through December 2024. Of that number, just 36 or about 0.2% were linked in any way to farms or smaller agricultural holdings.
Of those, 36 only seven of those were farmers. The others were farm workers. Now, South Africa doesn't break down these crime stats by race, but farm workers tend to be black in South Africa. In any event, according to official stats, the number of former murders is a tiny percentage of the overall murder rate.
And what's more, those who studied the problem say the motive for most is robbery, not necessarily political or racial. And finally, none of this, according to the UN and others, is in any way meets the definition of genocide, which is what the President has called it before. This is what he sent just last week. It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place.
And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me. Well, interestingly, today, when asked the President seemed uncertain about calling it genocide. That's a very small word.
I'm wondering if you can meet up your mind as to whether you believe that it's a crime, not reasonable. That was a telling of crime. Why did the President of the world sit here today? Well, I haven't made up my mind to hate to see it from the standpoint of South Africa, but also I'm trying to save lives.
Now, perhaps he just hedged a little out of politeness or musing out loud, which he does at times, but as we mentioned, he certainly leveled the genocide accusation before. Again, farmers are being killed, a small number. It's tragic. Any murder is, but it is not genocide.
And while the law was passed inside Africa, allowing for confiscation of land that was stolen from black, South Africans under apartheid, it also allows for judicial review. And according to the South African government, so far, no land has been seized yet. In his first term, in office, Mr. Trump wants to ask why there wasn't more immigration from places like Norway instead of what he termed shithole countries.
He now seems to be answering that question with more than just talk. Joining us now is New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. She's also seen a political analyst and author of Confidence Man, The Making of Donald Trump, and The Breaking of America, who was best-selling hardcover and a student in paperback. So Maggie, was this clearly was planned out, clearly had this film ready, not sure exactly where it came from.
Do you know how long this was in the making for? I think quite a while, Anderson, although I don't know the specifics on how long this video has been in the works, but certainly the confrontation that Trump initiated in the Oval Office has been on his mind and some of his aides' mind for some time. Now, that video, as you noted, not just played lights dimmed, but the White House Twitter account or X account, I believe, pushed it out almost immediately after this meeting. So this is something that Trump wants attention on, and I'm sure he's very happy that there's a lot of news coverage of it now, but regardless of what his desire is, as you said, the facts of what he was lecturing the South African President about sitting there in the Oval Office just are not the case.
It does not, as you say, mean that there are not murders taking place of some white farmers, and that that is always a tragedy when somebody is murdered, but the crime rate. And people were saying this to him in the meeting. Crime is bad across the board. It's not just white farmers.
There's also rapes, there's also murders, there's robberies, and that is what they were hoping to have the attention on, not what Trump wanted to talk about. It's remarkable to me that, you know, South African delegation brought South African golfers, hoping that that would somehow make the President's give him something to talk about or make him comfortable. I guess there was a billionaire, white South African billionaire there, who tried to impress upon the President. In fact, there is not a genocide going on there.
It didn't seem to ultimately obviously have the effect. Where does this go from here? I mean, there were other meetings, and Elon Musk was in the office. But also, when he heard the President at one point say, Elon Musk wanted this.
Right. A couple, I mean, look, we've seen Elon Musk talking about this on X for some time. President Trump was talking about this with people in his first term. He would talk about it with AIDS in a number of meetings.
It just didn't become the topic that it has now or the call is that it has now for him. You are correct that despite the fact that he had a pretty lecturing and angry tone with a lot of the black officials who were talking, it was when that white billionaire executive was talking to him. That was the first moment that Trump really calmed down. Trump had gotten very riled up at the very beginning of the questions being asked when he was asked about the Qatari jet that the Pentagon is accepting to be converted to a new Air Force One.
And he just sort of was off to the races after that. That was the one time that he got calmer, but you're right. He clearly didn't accept what he was being told, which was just factual information. We are seeing him increasingly trying to say that something, and he has a long history of saying things that are not true.
But in this case, in recent days on other matters, he is saying things such as the idea that a braggogarcia who was sent to El Salvador that he actually had MS-13 tattooed those letters and numbers on his hand. He did not Trump held up a doctor picture that was used in this case. He is using a video that the President of South Africa is saying, you know, what is this? This is not anything I've ever seen.
And Trump would not accept it. I just want to ask you about your new reporting. A top aide to the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was seeking to rewrite an intelligence assessment relating to gangs in Venezuela. Can you just talk about that?
Because it's really extraordinary. Yeah, it relates to the same issue here, which is that Trump wants certain facts to go in a certain direction. There was a request from the White House to intelligence officials back in February about looking for information related to this Venezuelan gang that they wanted to have established the idea that the Venezuelan government was controlling this gang. And crimes that was committing in the United States, that assessment did not suggest that the Venezuelan government is controlling that gang.
The President still signed the Alien Enemies Act, an invocation of it, allowing the removal of alleged members of these gangs to El Salvador. Those flights have obviously become very controversial. My colleagues learned that this assessment contradicted what the President had said. After that initial story came out, this official Joe Kent, who's a top advisor at Tulsi Gabbard asked for a second assessment, asked for it to be rethought.
And another assessment was produced. It confirmed, essentially, with the earlier assessment, had said before that one was produced, Kent still asked for parts of it to be rewritten and some additional analysis to happen so that it didn't get used against Tulsi Gabbard and the President. So, look, his allies of this advisor, Joe Kent, say he was simply looking for information. Other people question whether this is injecting politics into security assessments and intelligence assessments.
Maggie Hibber, thanks very much. Appreciate it. Join us now. Join us, John Eligod.
Join us for the Bureau Chief. The New York Times, who's in the Oval Office today for the meeting. Also, Cornelle William Brooks, Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and former President CEO of the NAACP. John, what was it like in the room?
What's been the reaction from South African delegation? Did they expect this? They certainly thought that something could happen, but I think the way it happened is that everyone got off guard. I was standing right next to the screen to the big TV screen when they turned it on.
And I remember when they turned around, I was the President, I was the President, I was the President, I was the President, I was the President, I was the President, I was the President, I was the President, he turned to Trump, and he tried to say something. And Trump really brushed his hand off and pointed toward the screen, and I was looking at Ernie Ells, he had his hands on his hips, just looking totally dejected. And the other guy was just looking at the ground, so they were all pretty flabbergasted, because I think they expected maybe they would be attacked, but to have this big production put on, I think that was really surprising. You're the South African Bureau Chief, I was in Nairobi this weekend, but people in Kenya were stunned that this is happening, that the white Afrikaners are the only refugees getting into the United States.
What is the response in South Africa itself to this? Well, I think by and large a lot of people are upset about it, because they feel like when you look at the history of the country, when you look at the President of the country, all the stats and data indicate that, you know, obviously, there were, it was Black South Africans who were born to apartheid, and in the post-apartheid era, it's Black South Africans who continued to struggle in almost every economic measure. If you look at crime and look at violence, it's Black South Africans who were bearing the brunt of being killed. And so a lot of them look at it as sort of a slap in the face and sort of an insult that white Afrikaners would be the ones who would be singled out for special treatments when they're going through their own very difficult times.
Professor Brooks, I mean, what message do you think it sends to America in the world when the white US President lectures a Black South African President on television about a genocide of which is not happening in South Africa? It sends a message that the President is continuing to rewrite history and in so doing also dramatically and disastrously impact the President. So in other words, what we had in the White House today was a cinematic ambush, if you will, and in anything but diplomatic attack. And this is written, this is if you will, of 110 years ago when President Woodrow Wilson showed a film called The Birth of a Nation, which was a film that glorified the Klan.
So here we have this film today, which is an attempt to rewrite history and adversely impact the President. And so the country should be horrified because President Trump is literally using both racism, anti-Black racism, and xenophobia, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee hate to not only divide the country, but divide the globe. And Wood has been made bad and terrible in this country. He's globalizing and exporting in ways that are detrimental to the interests of the United States.
And Anderson, note that South Africa is a very important trading partner, a very strategic ally in the region, and the Commander-in-Chief is doing anything but being a good commandment in chief. John, I mean, the US has cut off for an A2 South Africa. So this is not just something that has no ramifications. The White House, John, sent out a press release tonight citing a number of articles that says back up the President's claims.
Your byline is on one of those articles. It's from 2023. It's titled Kill the Boer, Song, Fuel, Backlash in South Africa and the US. They're citing the piece, even though you write in that story, that they are citing the President Trump and others, quote, have seized on attacks on white farmers to make the false claim that there have been mass killings.
Yeah, that article, that's the song that's been around since the apartheid era, Shrugalays. It was born out of apartheid at a time when the Black South Africans were fighting a brutal regime. And basically what South Africa and courts have found, they did it at one point in time that it was hate speech, but later it was found that the essence of the song would not actually incite people to violence. And what many of supporters of the song argue is that you can't point to that song actually leading to violence, but of course, I should say the political party that President Obama posted belongs to the African National Congress, they have distanced themselves from the song.
So the song is very provocative, and for many people they think it's inappropriate to say, but overall it's been found that it's not an incitement to any sort of mass violence or mass killings. John Elgog, Cornelian Brooks, thank you so much. Coming up next is Maggie Heron mentioned a moment ago. It's official.
The Pentagon says it has accepted that 747 from Qatar. The latest on that as well as my conversation with Solar Raul Salar, Alder Wijer, with his first destination just over the horizon and a boat ready for some rest and repair. The boat is constantly in a volatile place. It's like almost as bad as being in space, you know what I mean?
Like as far as how volatile the ocean is. One day you're negotiating with suppliers. The next, you're installing a shelf in the back room. Running a business means moving in many directions all the time.
TD's new small business banking accounts are built for how your business moves. It's how we're making banking more human. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life Podcast.
Over half of adults over 65 are living with multiple chronic diseases. Many of them are on four or five different medications. They're living alone. Sometimes the screen is the only voice they hear all day.
So it's understandable to me, but I also am concerned because what this does is it prouts out opportunity for real life connection, for exercise, for time and nature. I'm going to be talking with board certified psychiatrist Dr. Sue Varma. She's going to help us understand what is driving this, what to look for, if you're starting to worry about someone else's screen usage in your own life.
60% of the time the phone usage is positive when it has to do with photo sharing, video sharing and keeping in contact with people. Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now. Rever you get your podcasts. Breaking news now, Capitol Hill in a phrase, we are going to vote tonight.
That's what House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise said after he and House Speaker Johnson and other House Republicans came out of our White House meeting with the president. They came, some of them have their arms twisted on massive tax and spending bail, which the president badly wants, but which the nonpartisan congressional budget office says could add nearly $4 trillion to the national debt. As Monteraj was at the Capitol tonight, looking at how this may play out in the hours ahead. How soon could the vote happen?
Yeah, it could happen. Probably overnight. Probably either in the early morning hours Anderson or maybe pushed into sometime mid-morning tomorrow. That's probably the most likely scenario.
But there is growing confidence among the Republican leadership and the White House that ultimately after painstaking negotiations in an intense pressure campaign that those holdouts, particularly on the conservative side, will fall in line behind this bill to get it out of this bitterly divided House Republican conference. Now, there's been a division between the more moderate members and conservative members for weeks. And the moderate members seem to be generally okay after some deal cutting, whether some key tax issues yesterday, but there's still some angst among the moderate members over what we expect to be changes to this bill, and dealing with how green energy tax credits are expected to be phased out, as opposed to be quicker than what a lot of them want, because their districts and jobs and their districts could be impacted. And then folks on the right, those conservatives who have been demanding deeper spending cuts far more than what the moderates have been willing to go, they're not going to get nearly as much as what they had anticipated, what they had been demanding.
Now, at the White House, whether today we're told by the speaker himself that Trump indicated that he could take some actions by executive order to potentially placate some of their concerns about provisions that were not getting in the bill. We don't have the details on that yet, but perhaps that would be one way of winning over some of the more moderate conservative members. But Anderson, along with the conservatives, are the ones who are railing about the debt and deficit. The fact that this could lead to about $3.8 trillion to deficit over the next.
Several years, but they may ultimately fall in line after this pressure campaign by the White House, realizing that they didn't get what they want, or they're doing what their president wants. Thank you very much. We'll continue to follow that tonight. Breaking news on the story we first reported last night now.
A federal judge saying today that the Trump administration unquestionably violated a court order when it tried to transfer migrant detainees to various nationalities to war towards South Sudan. Federal District Court Judge Brian Murphy was responding to a fast-moving immigration enforcement action that involves deporting migrants to a third country that's not their own move. The judge previously said required due process. At a press conference today, DHS officials distributed a list of the eight people on the flight who have criminal records with convictions ranging from murder to sexual assault.
The administration maintains the detainees have been given due process and told the judge to stay out of it. Homeland Security officials have not shared the whereabouts of the flights that took off yesterday, but according to two people familiar who spoke to the New York Times, it's landed for now in the East African country of Djibouti, joining me now as New York Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman, who sits on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. So what can Judge Murphy actually do at this point? If the administration isn't going to obey his order, where does it actually leave the rule of law?
Well, he will have to hold the administration in contempt of court, and he'll have to escalate the penalties if they don't comply with his order. Interestingly, Anderson, in this bill that the Republicans are trying to ram through in the dead of night, there is a clause, there's a section of the bill that will make it harder for federal courts to enforce contempt orders. So Congress is literally making it easier for the Trump administration to violate court orders, which they are increasingly doing with more aggression and more brazenness. The judge isn't saying that these people should be released.
The judge is just saying that they need to have due process. Is this due process? No, according to the judge, it's not. And by the way, that's what all the courts have been saying.
That's what the Supreme Court said in Kilmar El-Brigogarcia, 9-0, that they simply need to have due process to ensure that the law is being followed. I have no idea who they are. The judge doesn't know who they are. His point is not that they shouldn't be deported.
His point is solely that he issued an order saying, do not send anyone to a different country than their country of origin without giving them due process. And in the dead of night, once again, the Trump administration whisked these people off in violation of the court order. All anybody is talking about here is due process. That is a fundamental right in this country, and it is bestowed upon any person that is in this country.
And for some reason, Donald Trump and the Trump administration do not think that due process applies if you are here without documents and through a legal entry. That's just false. And ultimately, the Supreme Court is going to have to lay down the hammer, and my House Republican and Senate Republican colleagues are going to have to speak up for the rule of law. I want to ask you about the news that Pentagon has officially accepted that Qatari 747 to be the next Air Force One.
The President has asked about it in the Oval Office today when he was with South Africa's President. I just want to play that. What are you talking about? What are you talking about in this point?
You know, what does this have to do with the Qatar jet? They're giving the United States Air Force a jet, okay? And it's a great thing. You're a disgrace.
No more questions from you. I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you a plane. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would tell you. So this is happening.
America is accepting the Qatari plane. The President is going to take it, I guess, for his library afterward, which isn't even billed when he leaves office. Are you surprised this is actually happening now? And how long do you think he will actually wait for this plane to be retrofitted so that it would pass a security muster?
Well, I'm not surprised it's happening. Donald Trump doesn't think that the Constitution applies to him. But in this case, the Constitution is so clear. The Foreign and Maluments Clause says that no country can give a gift to the United States, to a President of the United States.
Now he's claiming, oh, this is the Air Force, not himself personally. But remember, Henderson, the President of the United States at the time got permission from Congress, which is what's required for the Constitution under the Constitution, to accept the Statue of Liberty, which there's no question the Statue of Liberty was not going to be for his personal use. So this is a long history of foreign gifts having to be approved by Congress. And the reason is quite simple, because we have to make sure that there is no foreign influence through bribes, through gifts, through transactions, such as this one.
And this needs to come before Congress, and my congressional Republican colleagues need to, once and for all, stand up for Article I authority that Congress has to approve such a gift and not just continue to roll over and allow their power to be usurped by Donald Trump. Congressman Goldman, thanks for your time today. Coming up next week, more breaking news. One of Shonda de Combs' former assistants said on the witness stand, what a psychologist said about why former girlfriend Cassie Ventura may have felt trapped in their relationship.
Plus new details, including other insider arrests in the New Orleans jailbreak with five escaped inmates still at large. Former assistant to Sean Combs was on the stand when court ended for the day in the rapper's federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial. The assistant, whose name is George Kaplan, is expected to continue testifying tomorrow. Earlier today, he invokes his Fifth Amendment right-side potential self-incrimination, but was given immunity.
Also on the stand today, a psychologist who testified about abusive relationships and trauma. Joining us now is seen an anchor and chief legal analyst, Laura Coates, who was at the courtroom today. So let's talk about Kaplan and why he was compelled to testify. Well, he was concerned that the statements he might give, whether it was about providing drugs, I'm sure, or about anything related to the inner circle of Diddy, would incriminate him.
Remember, the whole premise of the prosecution's case is there's a big enterprise in the inner circle, trusted advisors, assistants, high-level employees, and also bodyguards are all part of this conspiracy under Rico to engage in and facilitate sex trafficking and prostitution. So he was probably rightly concerned to think, I don't want to say anything like that. Maybe he'd been given immunity long ago. Not likely, because it's not as clear that they ever had any intention of indicting anyone else.
You can actually charge someone, Rico by conspiracy, and not charge the co-conspirators. And so there was a psychologist on the stand today who was considered a blind expert. What does that mean? A very important person, a blind expert is also known as a subject matter expert.
Their whole role is essentially, I know nothing about these specific people in this case, but I know generally about the academia, the research, the different categories of information that might help the jury understand testimony. So she did not know Diddy, did not interview him, did not interview him, did not interview him. That became a little bit of a point of contention where the defense on cross-examination thought, well, it's very convenient. You know a great deal about every analogy that was raised or every instance, mostly that Cassie Vintour spoke about, whether it be in the fetal position or property being taken away.
But ultimately, her role here was to answer this question that seems to be, perhaps on people's mind, why would somebody who has been abused this experience? Why would they remain in an abusive relationship? And she tries to answer that through coping mechanisms, the idea of love bombing and the honeymoon period, also a trauma bond among other things. And Kid Cuddy, the rapper, is expected to testify.
He had been in a relationship with Cassie Vintour. This is important because he was somebody who she dated and incurred the wrath of Sean Diddy Combs when he threatened to blow up his car, threatened to harm them, not by his own hands, but by someone else. This goes into the story of how Diddy may have been able to maneuver and have at the helm this entire regal enterprise with the goal towards violence and force to keep her in a relationship. A lot more look forward to talking about.
Tomorrow, more cooks, thanks very much. Don't miss Laura's Special Additional Works Live, Lempiam Eastern, Tonight Focus on the Combs Trial. We're going to have more breaking news to women arrested in connection with that New Orleans jailbreak, both on suspicion of being accessories after the fact, one for allegedly transporting two escapees to multiple locations, another led to a bit of contact with an escaped inmate who was later captured. Five of the 10 prisoners who escaped last week are still on the loose.
Shall we now see an chief law enforcement intelligence analyst John Miller? How big of a break could those arrests be? Well, the arrests of, they're five down five to go, but the arrests of two civilians, not escapees, but two people who were basically charged with harbors. They're charged with harboring a fugitive aiding and abetting in their escape by bringing them clothes, food, giving them rides.
That's a step. It's also a message to others who are out there who might be helping them. Anderson, what we see here though is nobody's gotten very far away, which means they're relying on their support systems within their own neighborhoods, which is why they're getting caught at a pretty fast rate. Multiple law enforcement agencies are dealing with the fallout of the jailbreak.
Well, that's right. And you know, it's interesting because the sheriff runs the jail. The New Orleans Police Department has nothing to do with the sheriff. And there's the district attorney who's in the midst of prosecuting all of these people in very serious crimes, murder, attempted murder, assaults.
The sheriff is saying that the district attorney's office hasn't been prosecuting them when they assault staff. The district attorney has said that's because the sheriff hasn't turned over the evidence, so the finger pointing has already started. One other key development from yesterday there was, one jail employee arrested, two suspended. He was charged with actually turning off the water so that they could break through the walls after they ripped the toilet away without causing a flood and being detected.
His attorney has said he did that because there was a leak in another cell, but police say when they interviewed him, he confessed to doing it because they threatened to stab him if he didn't. And is it clear how long the inmates were working on this plan, on actually doing the break through and everything? It's not clear exactly how long, but it's clear that it was long enough because they had to get the cutting equipment to solve through the rebar. They had to figure out that there would be the hole behind the toilet and the way out from there.
And they had to do something perhaps that caused the people who were supposed to be watching the screens to not be watching the screens. And one person who did see the escape who worked in the jail, not reporting it. So it seems like while one staff member has been charged, I'm told by my sources, they expect that there will be other arrests of people who worked in the jail for being in some level in on this. I don't know if there's any more than one thing for us tonight.
Black Screen, Silent Radio, and Near Miss is a scene in investigation, finds air traffic control outages, aren't isolated to Newark, Liberty, International Airport, and go back years in several locations. And later, we'll check with the guy who hated his corporate job and did what many, Dream of, he quit, bought a boat and is sailing alone with his rescue cat for Hawaii. It's not just Newark, Newark, Liberty, International Airport, a scene in investigation found that reports of radar and communication outages at dozens of air traffic control facilities around the country in recent years. And that includes screens going black, radios going silent, and in one incident, controllers described losing all contact with pilots as two planes were on a collision course resulting in a narrow miss.
We're now from our aviation correspondent, Pete Montine. Newark air traffic control meltdowns are only the latest in a litany of equipment failures at aging federal aviation administration facilities nationwide. A CNN investigation found dozens of reports submitted by air traffic controllers and pilots over the last three years, along with more than a thousand FAA alerts of equipment issues, painting a picture of dangerous outages that are far more common than previously known. Dave Riley worked as an air traffic controller at three different FAA facilities before retiring in 2020.
It becomes so routine that it feels like it's every day that there's some sort of equipment issue. CNN uncovered in 2023, a controller at the Tampa approach control facility reported the degradation of radio equipment to the point that a commercial flight and a cargo plane ended up on a collision course at the same altitude. I frantically attempted to reach aircraft X to issue a turn. The controller wrote, If we could somehow acquire equipment that worked reliably, particularly frequencies that would really assist in the success of separating aircraft, the reports are compiled independently by NASA, though incidents are unverified and not always investigated by the FAA.
Those reports just get filed and they just sit there. A CNN analysis of the FAA's own advisories warned of radars or radio frequencies being out of service or facing issues once nearly every other day last year. In a statement, the FAA admitted our system is outdated and showing its age. A problem acknowledged by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as the Trump administration is calling for a nationwide overhaul of the air traffic control system.
Nick Daniels heads the union of controllers. Most Americans today walk around with more computing power in their pocket than air traffic controllers have at the ready. This will continue happening in more and more facilities around the country impacting more airports and the time for action is now. CNN also found a report of a September 2021 failure of radio and radar at the Busy Miami Center facility as weather was rolling in.
If these type of events happen once, it's one too many. The controller wrote in the NASA database. When the very same scenario occurred in February of this year, a controller wrote, this is a systemic issue and we don't even have a backup system in place. The controller said we are running normal operations pretending everything is okay and it's not.
This is a very unsafe operation. The communication is really disturbing. What should the flying public think about all this? The bottom line here is that these failures will mean delays.
The FAA said in a response to a reporting that when these equipment issues happen, the agency has no choice but to slow flights in order to keep things safe, which is really not good news for travelers. With a summer rush about the start, the TSA just said it will screen about 18 million people at airports nationwide over the next week. Just today, the heads of nine US airlines wrote an open letter to Congress pleading with them to fund the air traffic control upgrades that the Trump administration wants. And how much would all that cost?
The upgrades? The big thing here that the Trump administration wants is not only replacing old copper wiring with fiber optic cable at 4,600 facilities nationwide but also upgrading 600 radars building six new air traffic control centers. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, calls it a bold and aggressive plan that he says can be accomplished in two to three years. Although we will see some have said that it would take much longer.
Alright, P.M. Thanks very much. Next update on the man who ditched his job and set sail for Hawaii with his rescue cap. It sounds corny, but the only regret I have is not doing it sooner.
Like if I started doing this when I initially had the thought to do it, which was three years ago, I could already be, you know, I might have already been all the way around the world by now. An update now on the man who quit his job liquidated his 401k and bought a sailboat. He's on the first leg of his journey to sail around the world with his rescue cat, Phoenix, and he's been posting videos on Instagram to a growing legion of followers. It all started with this video he posted online about how much he hated his old job.
I'm a corporate guy. I absolutely hate this life, this kind of life, this lifestyle. So I'm taking this video now because I'm going to just start logging everything about this journey. Maybe at some point my brother will put a movie together.
But yeah, I'm going to buy a sailboat and I'm going to sail around the world. And that's what he's doing left from Oregon tonight. He's nearing his first destination of Hawaii. Oliver Wijer wins again, joins me from the Pacific Ocean.
So how close are you to Hawaii now? I think I'm like under 400 miles now. Maybe something like that. I'm starting pretty close though.
I'm flying. I've been watching you on Instagram and I was worried about you earlier this week. It seems like you started to take on water, not like a huge amount of water, but what happened? The thing in the back started getting loose and water was coming in.
Yes, that's my hydrovane. So that's how the boat's nearing right now. So it's like a secondary rudder. Even right now you're not outside.
I understand it's pretty windy. I can see the thing above you is kind of rocking back and forth. You're now rocking back and forth. Yeah, always.
It's 100% of the time we were rocking back and forth. Sometimes more than others. But right now we're going pretty fast. Do you know what you're going to do once you get to Hawaii?
Or I know you're going to keep on going. What would be the next destination? I'm going to take a month and chill out for a minute and snorkel. And then I need to do some big repairs to the boat.
And then I need to do some big upgrades to the boat. So I'm going to do that. And then I want to explore the Hawaiian Islands and kind of just do that for a bit. And then I think the appropriate window for me to leave.
So from there I go to French Polynesia. Have you had any regrets? I mean, we played the video earlier of you deciding, you know, it's announcing that you hated your job and you're going to quit and you're going to do this. You came up with this idea.
You've done it. You're about to make it to Hawaii. Any regrets at this point? No, I mean, it sounds corny, I guess.
But the only regret I have is not doing it sooner. Like if I started doing this when I initially had the thought to do it, which is three years ago, I could already be, who knows? I might have already been all the way around the world by now. And be doing it again, you know?
I don't know. And everybody dreams about doing this. I'm just wondering, how's the reality versus the dream? I was pretty realistic as far as like how it is a constant, incredible amount of work.
Like the boat is constantly trying to dissolve being in salt water. And it doesn't sound like a man's will amount of work. What was that? That doesn't sound great.
The boat is trying to dissolve. Yeah, it's in a volatile place. How's your cat Phoenix doing? The reason I'm sitting like this is because I can't get her moved.
I don't have the courage to get her to move. It's too hard, but she is just sitting right here. She's good. You don't want to move her.
She's the actual captain of your boat? She is the boss. She's in charge. It's her world.
I'm just living in it. And do you have people who are going to welcome you in Hawaii? I mean, you must have some followers there at this point. From what I've been told, there's going to be a lot of people like Reet Me, which is cool.
What is, what do other people watching this and that kind of have similar dreams to you or hate their jobs and dream of doing something like this? What's your advice? The hardest part is taking the leap and going for it. And like when I discovered, I don't know how to put it into words really.
In my head, I'm a poet. The words never come out. But I get my advice would be like, there's a point where there's no return where you're all in. You have to recognize what that point is.
And then do everything you can across that point. And then once you've crossed that point, everything after that is, you just game on. And I think the fear of everything that happens after you're at that point is what prevents people from crossing that point. And so don't think about the fear.
Just focus on crossing the point or no return. That's what I would recommend. If you're looking to chase your dream. Yeah, sorry.
No, no, sorry. I love that. Oliver, and I'm rooting for you. And I can't wait to see you hitting.
We're not hitting, but getting to Hawaii. Yeah. Thank you. Anderson, I appreciate that.
All right. I'll, I'll, we'll keep following you. Keep talking. I'll see you soon.
All right, man. All right. Take care. All right.
Take care. Programming note before we hand things over to the source, George Clooney, starring in Broadway's Good Night and Good Luck, presented live on CNN in the first of its kind broadcast. It's going to air Saturday, June 7th at 7pm on CNN, streaming on CNN.com. The news continues to the source with Kale Collins.
Starts now. See you tomorrow. From the descendants of history makers involved in the Louisiana purchase to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, discover the untold stories of American expansion in the CNN original series this land, premiering June 7th on CNN. Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper.
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