Trump’s FBI Pick Refuses to Answer Perhaps the Biggest Question of All

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s choice to run the FBI, pointedly refused to answer a question at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday about using the bureau to go after the president’s enemies.

Senator Cory Booker directly asked Patel about his past statements in which he pledged to shut down the FBI Hoover building and “replace it with a mausoleum of the Deep State,” noting that Patel had plans to remove specific people from the FBI by bringing in political appointees to an apolitical agency.

Booker’s question was interrupted by Senator Chuck Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, who then asked Patel if he would like to answer Booker’s question, or “move on.”

“We can move on,” Patel replied.

Patel likely refused to acknowledge Booker’s question because the New Jersey senator had a point. The nominee compiled a “Deep State” enemies list in his 2022 book Government Gangsters, and would want employees loyal to him to carry out retribution. Fellow administration nominee Pam Bondi, Trump’s choice for attorney general, backed Patel in her own confirmation hearings and implicitly acknowledged his list.

With the previous FBI director (and Trump appointee) Christopher Wray resigning last month, it would seem that Patel has a clear path to take over the bureau and begin going after Trump’s enemies. But not only does he have to be confirmed first, he also would have to fight allegations of malicious prosecution thanks to his preemptive list. Can Trump and Patel overcome the Senate and the courts?

Donald Trump is suggesting that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are responsible for the deadly plane crash near Washington, D.C., that is believed to have taken the lives of 67 people.

The president made the troubling claim at a press conference Thursday morning—even as he immediately admitted he had zero evidence.

“The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. Can you imagine?

“Hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism, all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country,” the president continued on, reading an FAA diversity program that existed under his own first administration.

Trump immediately made the conversation about DEI rather than focusing on what specific errors occurred or even waiting for a single shred of evidence to support his ludicrous claims to come out. It became overwhelmingly evident that Trump will lean on his DEI boogeyman as a scapegoat for anything that goes wrong with any federal agency during his term.

“We don’t even yet know the names of the 67 people who were killed, and you’re blaming Democrats and DEI policies and air traffic control, and seemingly the member of the U.S. military who was flying that Black Hawk helicopter,” CNN’s Kaitlin Collins said to Trump. “Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of the investigation right now?”

“No, I don’t think so at all.… The names of the people, you mean the names of the people on the plane … you think that’s gonna make a difference?” the president replied.

Trump was again pressed on his claims that DEI caused this fatal crash.

“I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash,” another reporter asked.

“Because I have common sense, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t,” Trump replied. He then alleged that he was going to fix this issue in 2020 if the election hadn’t been “stolen” from him, as he is still convinced.

This statement places people of color, people with disabilities, and anyone who doesn’t fit into MAGA’s vision for America firmly into the crosshairs of the Trump administration. It’s a dark moment in time when our president is trying to convince us that DEI caused all of this, rather than simply honoring the memories of those lost in this horrific accident and committing to taking the proper next steps.

Robert F. Kennedy’s virulent vaccine conspiracies got some members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, emotional on Thursday, with New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan arguing that Kennedy’s parroting of debunked theories wasn’t just harming people with autism but paralyzing the entire country’s scientific progress.

“The problem with this witness’s responses on the autism cause and its relationship to vaccines, is because he’s relitigating and churning settled science,” Hassan stressed, raising her voice. “So we can’t go forward and find out what the cause of autism is and treat these kids and help these families.”

Hassan, who herself has a disabled son and who successfully made autism research a federal priority in 2024, told Kennedy that the study that first linked vaccines to the neurodevelopmental disorder “rocked” her world.

“Like every mother, I worried about whether vaccines had done something to my son. And you know what? It was a tiny study of about 12 kids, and in time, the scientific community studied, and studied, and studied, and found that it was wrong. And the journal retracted the study because sometimes science is wrong, we make progress. We build on the work and we become more successful,” she said.

“And when you continue to sow doubt about settled science, it makes it impossible for us to move forward,” Hassan said. “So that’s what the problem is here. It’s the relitigating, and rehashing, and continuing to sow doubt so that we can’t move forward. And it freezes us in place.”

A disclosure form filed for Kennedy’s nomination revealed that the outspoken vaccine critic had made a business out of his extreme public health stances, pulling in roughly $10 million over the last year related to dividends from his vaccine lawsuits, anti-vaxx speaking fees, and leading Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit dedicated to spreading misinformation about vaccine efficacy.

Kennedy’s history in public health is questionable at best. His stances, which include unscientific beliefs that AIDS is not caused by HIV and that a large number of vaccines should be stripped from the market, could have major impacts on the agency designed to protect America’s health, especially as bird flu outbreaks dot the country.

In December, Trump announced that Kennedy would spend his time at the top of HHS researching the already thoroughly debunked conspiracy that ties vaccine usage to increased autism rates.

And Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracies aren’t just easily refutable, anti-vax hogwash—they’ve caused legitimate, real-world harm. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on the Pacific islands of Samoa in 2019, Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, sending the nation’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that was declared eliminated by the United States in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

Donald Trump is claiming that diversity, equity, and inclusion is to blame for the deadly collision of a passenger plane and a military helicopter in the Washington, D.C., area.

During a news conference Thursday, Trump cited a “big push to put diversity into the [Federal Aviation Administration]’s program,” which he insisted happened before his second term began.

“The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website,” Trump said, citing an “article.” 

The article is likely this one published by Fox News in January 2024, which reported on an FAA policy to place a “special emphasis in recruitment and hiring” on people with “targeted disabilities” that included “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

In a sense, Trump was right: That language did predate his second term. It first appeared on the FAA’s website in 2013, according to Snopes. So it was still in place during Trump’s first term. 

On Tuesday, the Trump administration had released materials targeting disabled employees at the FAA, directing the agency “to immediately return to non-discriminatory, merit-based hiring” and stop its DEI initiatives. Still, according to the president, DEI was to blame for the deadly incident that happened the next day.

Trump also scrapped all Department of Homeland Security advisory committees in a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security,” and fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.

Republican lawmakers armed with limited information were quick to play the blame game too. Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo spoke to some Republican lawmakers who cast responsibility for the deadly incident on anyone, or anything, but their own party or its leader. 

“You hate to jump to any conclusions,” Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles said, before openly speculating about possible conclusions. 

“Human error?” Ogles mused. “Was it some sort of equipment failure? Did DEI play a role in this type of thing?” 

Ogles encouraged examining the incident with “eyes wide open,” but clearly his eyes are focused away from one group in particular. 

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson also got a chance to guess, after Bartiromo described an expert blaming the Federal Aviation Agency and air traffic control.

“I’m not exactly sure what caused this, what it was, purely the air traffic control system, but I know it’s completely antiquated, it needs to be upgraded; we’ve known about this for years and quite honestly, administrations haven’t done anything about it,” Johnson said.

He added that there was an opportunity for “someone like Elon Musk” to “really modernize things.”

As part of his push to “modernize things,” shadow president Elon Musk demanded that FAA chief Michael Whitaker quit, because he was angry that Whitaker wanted SpaceX  to pay fines for failing to follow its license requirements during two SpaceX launches. Whitaker resigned less than two weeks ago.

Trump’s freshly appointed transportation secretary is doing a terrible job of inspiring confidence in his abilities, following the devastating aircraft collision at Ronald Reagan National airport near Washington, D.C.

A U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger plane carrying 64 people collided late Wednesday night, leaving no survivors and giving the Trump administration its first aviation crisis.

Sean Duffy, the former reality TV star turned transportation secretary, was asked Thursday morning about how normal it was for military helicopters and other aircraft to get clearance to cross a potentially busy flight path.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail about the information we have from the FAA, but obviously it is not standard to have aircraft collide. I want to be clear on that.”

Duffy was quickly lambasted for stating the painfully obvious.

“I’m starting to think the guy from MTV’s The Real World and Road Rules All Stars might not have a lot of expertise in transportation issues, particularly aviation safety,” one X user wrote.

“Just imagine if Pete Buttigieg said this,” said another, in reference to Biden’s transportation secretary.

The administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, Michael Whitaker, resigned from his position on January 20 after repeated demands from Elon Musk that he quit, leaving the agency without a Senate-confirmed leader during a major crisis in the wake of the D.C. plane crash.

Musk called for Whitaker’s resignation in September after the FAA chief proposed fining Musk’s company SpaceX over $600,000 in civil penalties for failing to follow license requirements during two launches in 2023. Whitaker told a congressional panel at the time that fines were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.”

The tech CEO and fascism enthusiast repeatedly attacked Whitaker from his X account, claiming in one post that the FAA was “harassing SpaceX.” Musk also replied to an X poster who said the FAA “should not exist” and attacked Whitaker for preventing his goal of colonizing Mars.

“The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” Musk posted in a reply to Australian YouTuber Marcus House.

FAA administrators typically serve for a five-year term, but Whitaker only served for one year, replacing Trump appointee Stephen Dickson in 2022. Whitaker had been confirmed by a bipartisan 98–0 Senate vote in October 2023.

On Wednesday, a commercial American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter above Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., killing everyone on board both aircraft.

Since January 20, the head of the FAA has been deputy FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau, who was only sworn in last week, giving him a stiff learning curve early on the job.

When Whitaker announced in December that he would resign, he told FAA staff in an email, “The United States is the safest and most complex airspace in the world, and that is because of your commitment to the safety of the flying public.” Wednesday’s disaster will certainly raise questions as to whether something went wrong in air safety protocols and whether disruption at the agency contributed to the crash.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appearance Thursday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) sparked a terse discussion of vaccine safety, pushing at least one Republican to set the record straight on the genuine science behind the jab.

Opting to lecture rather than question Kennedy over the course of several minutes, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul—an ophthalmologist—claimed that it’s unclear what the root of conditions such as autism or schizophrenia are, and that they, by all means, could be caused by vaccines.

“There isn’t proof that the vaccines cause it, that’s true,” Paul said. “But we don’t know what causes it yet. So shouldn’t we be at least open-minded? We take 72 vaccines. Could it be?”

He also went on to point his finger at the hepatitis B vaccine, claiming that a jab to prevent the sexually transmitted illness shouldn’t be required for infants.

“I waited on the hepatitis B vaccine until my kids went to school. Does that make me a horrible person?” Paul said. “Is there science to say you shouldn’t do it? Probably not but it’s my kid.”

But that prompted Senator Bill Cassidy, the committee chair, to jump in with the facts on the deadly and incurable disease.

“For the record, if a child is born to a hepatitis B mother, that child may have a 95 percent chance of becoming a chronic carrier,” the Louisiana Republican, a physician, said.

“And we vaccinate those people, nobody is against that,” interjected Paul. “That’s a very small percentage—95 percent of children don’t have a hepatitis B mom, and could they wait a while?”

“Again, for the record, if a mother’s hepatitis B status is known, then that can be delayed. But the problem is that a significant percentage of the time, the mother’s status is not known. If she’s positive, a vaccine on day one of life prevents chronic hepatitis B 95 percent of the time,” Cassidy retorted.

“So it really depends on the knowledge of the mother’s hepatitis B status, and when they used to just ‘okay we know the mother’s status,’ there were mothers who snuck through whose status was unknown,” Cassidy continued. “For the record, there is an absolute rationale for that.”

A crash between a U.S. Military Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger plane late Wednesday elicited the first rift between official White House messaging and Donald Trump’s personal tirades.

Shortly after the accident occurred, the White House issued an official statement from Trump, projecting a restrained and presidential image of the MAGA leader, shaped with authority and sincerity of tone. It was, by all accounts, remarkably similar to an official release by any other executive branch leader.

“I have been fully briefed on the terrible accident which just took place at Reagan National Airport,” Trump’s statement on official White House letterhead read. “May God Bless their souls. Thank you for the incredible work being done by our first responders. I am monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise.”

But just a couple of hours later, a more familiar and uncensored version of Trump was back online with a flurry of questions that only stoked the confusing situation.

“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,” the forty-seventh president wrote on Truth Social overnight. “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”

That was, obviously, not kosher with the White House. Shortly afterward, Trump shared the White House version of the post on his page as well.

The pair of aircraft collided just outside of Reagan National Airport just outside of Washington. The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet operated by a subsidiary of American Airlines, was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members at the time of the crash, according to American Airlines CEO Robert Isom.

Critics have pointed to an executive order–initiated federal hiring freeze as a potential tension point for the Federal Aviation Administration, at a time when the vast majority of the country’s air traffic control sites are understaffed.

It is currently not clear whether the FAA was directly affected by the order, which provided allowances for roles described as “public safety professionals.”

After marketing himself as the peacemaker president, Donald Trump sure seems set on starting some new wars. 

During an interview on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime Wednesday night, Trump’s unqualified Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke about the president’s outlandish designs to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal—leaving the door open for military intervention in both cases.  

“Is the Defense Department ready for Panama, because it seems like Panama is not really playing ball?” Watters asked. “Do you have a message for the Panamanians?”

“We’ll see,” Hegseth replied. “The president has been clear about the fact that there’s a neutrality treaty as it pertains to the Panama Canal, and if they don’t allow for free and unfettered access that can’t be shut down by other countries, then we have the right—we retain the right—to do what is necessary to make sure there is free navigation in the Panama Canal.

“President Trump has said that will be the case. The Defense Department is prepared—so I don’t want to get ahead of what we may or may not do. Strategic uncertainty is an important thing,” Hegseth said. “But we will have freedom of navigation in the Panama Canal, whether that involves the Defense Department or not.”

As Hegseth spoke, the Fox News chyron read, “‘All Options on the Table’ to Take Panama Canal.”

Hegseth had a similarly vague answer when asked about Trump’s plans for Greenland, but this one was so effusive about the president that it ended up just sounding like nonsense.

“We’re hearing rumors that Denmark’s now spending $2 billion on additional defense and France is considering sending troops,” Watters said. “Are our allies really going to do that?”

“I don’t think so, Jesse,” Hegseth said. “The president recognizes how strategically significant Greenland is, even if other people didn’t for a very long time! So now, those countries who were supposed to be charged with protecting it, making sure Chinese interests aren’t there, are suddenly flocking of interest because President Trump, as he has across the globe, has reshaped the game. 

“So, we’ll end up seeing what happens there. We understand how critical it is to the Arctic, how much the Chinese would love access to the minerals. So, stand by to stand by. We’re watching it, and we’ll see what happens.”

During his confirmation hearing earlier this month, when asked whether he would follow Trump’s outlandish orders to invade Greenland or Panama, Hegseth replied, “I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful commander,” and declined to give details on “what orders the president would give to me in any context.”

“That sounds to me that you would contemplate such an order to basically invade Greenland, and take over the Panama Canal,” replied Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii. 

Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order that would defund schools that teach kids about “critical race theory” or gender.

The executive order “prohibits federal funding of the indoctrination of children which includes radical gender ideology and critical race theory in the classroom.” 

“On day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” Trump said on the campaign trail.  

Critical race theory is a basic historical analysis of the social dynamics of this country, and has been part of educational curriculums for years. Republicans have recently latched on to it as a touchstone in their culture war, alleging that it only serves to make white students feel sad and uncomfortable when presented with facts.

It is unclear how the Education Department will go about determining which public schools are CRT schools and which aren’t. 

Trump also goes after gender in his order, stating that local and federal officials should “file actions against teachers and school officials who sexually exploit minors or practice medicine without a license through ‘social transition’ practices.” 

The president has ordered all this before his education secretary and former WWE executive, Linda McMahon, has even had a confirmation hearing.