Welcome, it is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Nice to have you with us on this Friday morning,

and Senator, we've got a lot to talk about, including the tragedy that happened. You were right

there in Washington when all this was unfolding with this helicopter and airplane colliding at

Reagan National Airport. Well, it was truly a tragic and horrific accident,

and it cost the lives of 67 souls. The commercial airliner from American Airlines flying

from Wichita, Kansas to Washington, D.C., Reagan Airport had 60 passengers on it and four crew members.

And then an Army Blackhawk helicopter had three soldiers on it,

bringing the total death toll to 67.

The two collided just before 9 p.m. on Wednesday night.

They collided as the American Airlines airliner was landing at

D.C. Reagan Airport. And I'll tell you today, so you and I are recording this Thursday night,

today I spent a lot of the day dealing with the aftermath of this. So as you know know, I'm the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

It has jurisdiction over all of aviation.

And so today I hosted briefings from the FAA and the NTSB, the National Traffic Safety Board.

And we were heard from, they were bipartisan briefings.

I had senators, both Republicans and Democrats, that participated, and we got briefings, the NTSB, which is the as I said the National Transportation Safety Board

does investigations whenever there's a serious accident whenever there's an accident an aviation accident

whenever there's a rail accident they do investigations and and so we heard from them. Now, as of Thursday, the NTSB had over a

dozen investigators on the ground. And listen, in the wake of an accident, you've got to actually

see what happened. You've got to investigate and discover the facts, discover the evidence.

In this instance,

we know that the American Airlines flight was coming in. It was initially on runway 1 at Reagan Airport,

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