You just watched a scuffle between a United Airlines worker and
a professional football player by the name of Brendan Langley at the Newark airport.
Now, Langley currently plays for
the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League.
And to be quite honest with you,
there's still too few details to really fully comprehend what happened here.
But let me share what we know right now.
So, first off, who hit who first, and what caused this?
Based on the video evidence we have and more could come out in the future,
I wanna make sure that you're aware of that.
It looks like the United Airline worker is the one who struck Langley first and
we have a screenshot of that moment.
Again, this could have been a video taken out of context.
Maybe there's more context that will be informed about later.
But the worker appears to be the one who slaps Langley first, and Langley appears
to be defending himself and that's what he also claimed on social media later.
Now, Langley was arrested on a simple assault charge according to TMZ.
The fight reportedly started when the employee asked Langley to give
up a wheelchair that Langley had been using to push his luggage.
So he was advised to use a luggage cart which costs $5 to use.
I don't know why he didn't just do that, but I can tell you for
sure that if I were the United worker, I would not then proceed
to assault someone over their refusal to use the proper receptacle for luggage.
>> Yeah, so this one is really hard because we don't have
the beginning of the fight.
So we're just guessing, right?
But the context clues are, the football player seems like he's
trying to walk away at least in this second half of that, right?
And then the worker comes and slaps him across the face, and
then he hit him a couple of times and the guy falls over.
But we don't know what happened in the beginning, but also listening to their
quotes, to be fair, the employee here, I have not seen anything from him.
But the football player, I did see his quotes and
he is super adamant that he did not start the fight.
And I don't know, it would seem believable, we're guessing here.
But either way, whoever started the fight is wrong and if you started that fight,
I don't care what else happened to you.
>> So, and by the way, if Langley isn't doing the right thing and
he's using a wheelchair that obviously disabled travelers are gonna need,
it's okay to be upset about that.
Get security involved, don't start slapping people or
throwing punches or anything like that.
And by the way, the United worker has been fired,
he is not facing assault charges even though Langley is.
Now let's get to Langley's tweet.
He says, it's crazy how much you can get assaulted by an actual airline
employee and defend yourself.
But media will run the narrative that they want to,
this is the problem in our society today, shaking my head.
Don't believe everything you read.
TMZ to be honest, this is bad of y'all taking another man's pain as a joke.
So he quote tweeted the TMZ report on this.
And so again, as Cenk said, he's adamant that he didn't start this.
He was defending himself based on the video we have,
that's what appears to be the case.
But again, for the billionth time we need more context.
>> And why is the media in his opinion smearing him here?
It's the same thing we talked about in almost every story,
whether it's political or not political.
The media wants headlines and they want a certain point of view.
So why does TMZ wanna pick a side?
Because it's more scandalous if the famous football player is the one that's
committing the assault.
So that's an easy headline gets you a lot of clicks, right?
>> Yeah, that's true.
And look, we all have our biases, right?
So, this story was going viral recently.
It was pitched for the show yesterday, but we had no context yesterday and
my bias is in favor of the worker.
So if we had covered it yesterday,
I would have defended the worker without knowing the full context, right?
By the way, even today, we don't know the full context but at least we have
more details on what transpired in regard to the issue that sparked the altercation.
>> Yeah, and the most important part is, we tell you what we know,
we don't hide some of the evidence to make it seem like, that's so
scandalous, that's so interesting, etc.
And the job of TMZ is to cover celebrities and partly to get him in trouble.
So that's what they did here.
And then Langley is like, wait a minute, that's not even true.
And by the way, we keep calling him famous but, I mean he was NFL player for
like three minutes.
Yeah, but he's not a relevant stuff.
He wasn't a star player.
Let's put it that way.
I'm not trying to diss him.
>> He's gonna be tweeting about you next.
>> Okay, that's fine, that's fair.
And maybe, I don't know I missed his career.
But my point is like,
they'll do it to anyone as long as they can call it football player and
a former NFL player goes wild at the airport, who cares about context.
They're just trying to get clicks.
We try really hard to give you all the context and facts that we know.
>> Okay, this is a little bit of an aside, but I just gotta say it.
I'm so sick of airports charging us for literally everything, right?
Like $5 for the luggage thing, why?
They'll nickel and dime you like crazy, anything.
What's next?
You gonna charge us for toilet paper in the bathrooms?
I don't wanna give them any ideas, but I would not be surprised at this point.
>> Yes, some airlines are charging you for carry-ons and I forget the exact term,
but it's something along the lines of planned misery.
>> Yes.
>> This is an actual thing that airlines do, where they think if we can create
enough misery for the passenger, they'll pay to relieve some of that misery.
>> To be less miserable.
So if you have a lot of luggage, a lot of heavy luggage and you would need help or
something to help you move it around.
Well, exactly, it's disgusting.
Now there's another twist to this story that I did not expect and
it involves Alec Baldwin.
So Alec Baldwin commented on this story, I think look, especially if you're a public
figure, maybe weigh like we were careful in covering it.
But Alec Baldwin was like, no, I know who's guilty.
I'm gonna share my thoughts.
So he did it in the form of a comment on this video on Instagram saying,
the guy working at the airport is the victim, he came to work to do a job.
People come to work with the expectation of safety, even civility.
This a hole, who hit the guy should be put on a no fly list.
But Alec, you don't know all the details and even like what we do have right now,
which is that video, clearly shows the worker slapping Langley in the face first.
>> Yeah, I don't think it's that clear because they were already fighting.
The slap across the face is the second round of the fight in a sense, right?
But clearly he doesn't have enough information.
By the way, if it turns out we find the beginning of the video or
we get the more evidence, we'll come back and tell you, if it stop,
then don't hate on the worker and by the way, don't hate on the worker.
Anyway, they had a fight, there's consequences on one guy's fired, the other
guy's facing charges and we know who should actually figure it out the cops.
And if Langley started it, then he should be arrested.
If he didn't start it, he shouldn't be arrested.
And if the United Airlines workers started it,
he should be arrested on top of being fired.
It's not that hard.
And obviously, there's the irony of Alec Baldwin complaining about workplace
violence and it was an accident, really was for Alec Baldwin.
But also beyond that irony, Alec Baldwin has an unbelievable temper.
And so for him to say, can you believe somebody got mad at work, really?
>> One of the first stories that TYT, like one of the first stories,
I remember TYT covering when I first started working here,
was Alec Baldwin's story where he had left voice messages for his daughter.
>> Yeah and look Alec, I agree with Alec Baldwin's politics and so
I like generally what he says, but he's known for having a temper.
So, anyways, I just think it's a bit ironic to say the least.
>> And calculated misery is what you were referring to with the airlines.