FlyDubai Midair Attack, Trump Midterm Campaigning, Hegseth Reshaping Military

Good morning, a quick note before we get started. Today marks one year since federal funding for public media ended. Here at NPR we are proud to continue to work to uphold your First Amendment rights. And your support empowers us to continue to stand up for those rights. It really takes all of us to protect the future of public media. You can join the community that makes this work possible at donate.npr.org and thank you. A flight bound for Israel was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after a fight in a cockpit. Israeli officials say one pilot stabbed the other and tried to crash the plane. But why? I mean, Martinez, that is Michelle Martin and this is a first from NPR News. President Trump promised to campaign in the toughest midterm races. Today he's going to Oklahoma. The state where his party dominates, would he help or hurt Republicans in the real battle around states? And defense secretary Pete Hegs says he wants to cut even more generals and animals. He told junior officers he's remaking the military around what he calls a warrior ethos. What does his leadership purge mean for a military already seven months into a war with Iran? Say with us we'll give you news you need to start your day. Passengers on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv are describing what happened on board a fly Dubai airplane that caused them to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. The plane signaled a distress call on Wednesday after one of the pilots apparently stabbed the other pilot and seen be trying to crash the plane with everyone on board. Many of the passengers were Israelis and officials in Israel are calling it an attempted terrorist attack, although the motive is still unknown. NPR's cat lost her for us with us now from Tel Aviv. Good morning cat. Hey, good morning. It sounds like a really harrowing situation on that plane. What can you tell us? So yeah, like you said, the plane was operated by fly Dubai. That's an airline based in the UAE. There's still a lot we don't know, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put out a statement after speaking with some of the passengers who told him that the plane went into a spin and began to plunge as one of the pilots was trying to sabotage the aircraft systems after stabbing his co-pilot. He said some passengers sprang into action and were able to enter the cockpit after the pilot who was stabbed unlocked the cockpit door during the attack. Those passengers managed to subdue the attacker. Israeli officials released a video of Netanyahu talking to one of those passengers, a man named Yaneev Hayun. Once he landed back in Israel, Hayun's clothes were still covered in blood in the video. He described how he put the attacker in a chokehold and pulled the plane's controls up to try to write it. Hayun says he's a plumber, but he thought to do that after seeing it in a TV show. He also said that there happened to be another flight crew on the plane who jumped in to help land it. That's incredible. Yeah. You were at the airport until Aviv last night as the passengers arrived there. What was that like? Yeah, it was really hectic. The arrivals area was filled with journalists and family members. The passengers slowly emerged dragging their suitcases behind them, some were crying, some smiling, looking relieved, and some just looked really tired. There were also quite a few families with children. I talked to one passenger named Danzel or he was traveling with his wife and two small children on the flight. He confirmed a lot of what Netanyahu said, but he saw three other passengers throw themselves on that co-pilot who was attacking his colleague and capture him. And he said he was trying to just distract his son during the incident to tell him that what was happening wasn't normal. I told him that it's something that happened like once in 25 years. That seemed like the overwhelming feeling from people just happy to have two feet back on solid ground. Yeah, I hear people singing in the background, I think, to welcome people back. Do we know anything about the co-pilot who carried out this attack? We don't know much. Both the pilot and the co-pilot are alive. They're being interviewed by investigators in Saudi Arabia. The UAE has also opened an investigation and Netanyahu has said Israel will be involved. The pilot who was stabbed is from India, both Netanyahu and India's prime minister have commended him, and the co-pilot who did the attacking is from Oman. It's still unclear if he was acting alone. And what's been the response in Israel to all of this? This is the top story here with the four passengers who enter the cockpit being hailed as heroes, who save the lives of 175 people on board according to Israeli officials. It comes at a particularly political time here in Israel as national elections which will determine whether Netanyahu remains prime minister, or less than a month away. He's been campaigning on this idea that he alone can protect Israelis from the threats that Israel faces. So this incident on the plane will almost certainly be a talking point in the coming weeks. That is NPR's Cat Longstaff in Tel Aviv. Cat, thank you. Thank you. President Trump promised earlier this month that he would campaign to support Republicans in 35 of the most competitive races. I'm going to go to every one of those 35 places, and we're going to see if we can get everyone elected. However, instead of going to battleground states, such as New Hampshire, Maine, or Michigan, Trump is first heading today to the more reliably red state of Oklahoma. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonia's will be traveling with their president, but he's stopped by to talk to us first. Morning, Franco. How are you? Why, Oklahoma? Well, I mean, in some ways, it's just likely knocking some rust off and workshopping his campaign speech in front of a more friendly environment before heading to other states. I mean, it's certainly a place where he can get an enthusiastic response to this week's announcements. For example, a $15 billion steel plan being built in Iowa, as well as a $54 billion investment by South Korea into a project to export natural gas from Alaska. And both of those are battleground states. Now, Alex Conan, a Republican strategist who worked in the George W. Bush White House told me that the trip to Oklahoma, and then actually to Alabama next, reminds him of the 2006 midterms when Bush campaigned almost exclusively in red states. You can't go to a district or a state where there's just as many Democrats as Republicans or where there's a lot of independent voters because you're going to do more harm than good when your favorite building numbers are this low. And that's because in a swing state, Trump's as likely, and perhaps more likely to stir up Democrats and independent voters who are not happy with him to go out and vote against Republicans. Now, we mentioned that Oklahoma is comfortably red, but could this also be about making sure it stays that way? I mean, sort of stabilizing the bases, it were. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Trump endorsed the Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazie for example, and he barely won his primary. This is partly making sure that his supporters show up. Trump supporters, the challenge that Republicans have long had and we've talked about this is turning out low propensity voters when Trump is not on the ballot. And this trip to Oklahoma and Alabama is part of an effort to make sure those voters do come out next month for the midterms. But Trump's message to the base has been, and we know we've heard him say this explicitly, to pretend that he is on the ballot. But isn't that a risky message considering how poorly he's doing in the polls? Yeah, but I'm not really sure Republicans have much of a choice. I mean, there is no question that some Republicans are trying to distance themselves as we saw many skip the midterm convention. But I was talking with John McHenry, a veteran Republican pollster, and he told me that Trump is so tied to the Republican Party right now that lawmakers really have to tread carefully. And the thing that we've learned over the last couple of years is that it's impossible to run away from the president. This president has a way of throwing his arms around you and you can't turn too far away from President Trump without turning off his voters. So what is the White House or the Republican National Committee which is helping to lead the campaign? What do they have to say about this? Yeah, and RNC official who ask for anonymity because are not authorized to speak publicly told me the president is holding Israeli in Durant, Oklahoma, at least in part because it's also near the Texas border and the Dallas-Fort Worth media market. The idea is to help turn out base voters in Texas as well. Now that goes for Alabama. Also, the visit to Mobile, Alabama is near Florida's Panhandle. And they assured me that Trump will later visit battleground states like Florida, like Texas, Ohio, and also Michigan. That is, White House correspondent Franco Ordenius Franco, thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to continue thinning the ranks of generals and add most even as the war with Iran continues. Yeah, that is way told hundreds of junior military leaders in a speech Wednesday at Quantico in Virginia, leading into culture war flashpoints. Hegseth says he has revived a warrior ephos in the military. The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in with testosterone testing on top. Here to tell us more is NPR's Quill Lawrence, Quill Good Morning. Good morning. So what exactly does Hegseth want to do with the military leadership? Well, he says he's cut 10% of these flag officers already and it would like to try to reach 20%, and he smiled when he said in the past year these generals or admirals who disagreed with him aren't there anymore. It's pretty unusual Hegseth has been reaching way down into the promotion list to prevent some kernels from becoming generals and just not giving any explanation. You know, some of these generals were highly regarded. I mean, they had vocal support from Democrats and Republicans. And so this has been controversial. So is it the number of positions he's cutting [BLANK_AUDIO] subject to or who he seems to be going after. No, I mean, a lot of people agree that there might be some bloat at the top of the military ranks. But it's these inferred reasons or lack of any explanation for the names that he is cutting. Air Force General C.Q. Brown, Army General Randy George and Kristana Hugh were widely considered among the best. And he's fired a number of senior black and female officers. And Hexeth has implied in the past that women or non-white generals are D.E.I. hires. He said in his speech that recruitment is up, although that often has a lot to do with the economy as much as anything else. Did he have anything else to say about the war with Iran? We said Iran's conventional forces are destroyed and so is their nuclear program. He spent just as much time railing against the press corps for reporting things like low morale on these long deployments to Iran and damage to bases overseas depleted munitions stocks. Here's what he said. The press is, of course, important. But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they're undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason. Actually. It's worth noting that the Pentagon hasn't had a news briefing since May, which is also very unusual. Nothing like this during 20 years of sometimes very intense war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it's also unusual, though I think we're getting used to it, it's just how partisan this speech was to a military that really prides itself on avoiding politics. And I'll just note here that he seems to be objecting to reporting that is true. Did he have anything to say about actual Pentagon policy? Yes. He said he's going to elevate the Chaplain Corps and he said that faith was a core strength of the U.S. military. And this week he also was announcing that he's going to be cutting civilian tenure track jobs at the U.S. military academies, or within his idea of focusing on lethality. But he also announced a new relationship with five colleges, including one historically black college, to help promote military enlistment. But the biggest news is that creation of a four-star command of autonomous warfare, essentially a drone command, and a project to study innovations on the battlefield, much of which we've seen in Ukraine, and also an effort to disrupt and supercharge the Pentagon's really glacial procurement process. And that is going to involve a couple of names you'll recognize, Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, and then two tech billionaires, Palmer Lucky and Elon Musk, who led the President's project Doge to reform U.S. government spending last year. And that's up first for Thursday, October 1st, I'm Michelle Martin. I mean Martinez, today's episode of Up First, was edited by Tina Kriah, Rebecca Metzler, Andrew Sussman, Mohammed Alvardc, and Alice Wolfley, who's produced by Ziyat Butch and Nia Dubas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hines and Stacey Abbott, our technical director, is Carly Strange, and our deputy executive producer is Kelly Dickens. Join us again tomorrow.