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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Trump blames diversity hiring as probe into midair collision begins

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27 days ago
20250130
President Donald Trump speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Donald Trump speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Jacquelyn Martin

As the na­tion reeled from the dead­liest Amer­i­can avi­a­tion dis­as­ter in more than two decades, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Thurs­day base­less­ly blamed di­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tives for un­der­min­ing air safe­ty and ques­tioned the ac­tions of a U.S. Army he­li­copter pi­lot in­volved in the midair col­li­sion with a com­mer­cial air­lin­er.

Six­ty-sev­en peo­ple are be­lieved to have died in the Wednes­day evening crash, which oc­curred while a flight from Wi­chi­ta, Kansas, was land­ing at Wash­ing­ton Rea­gan Na­tion­al Air­port. As Trump spoke, the fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion was just be­gin­ning and first re­spon­ders were still work­ing to re­cov­er bod­ies from the Po­tomac Riv­er.

Of­fi­cials have not yet to for­mal­ly es­tab­lish the caus­es of the col­li­sion, and Trump him­self ac­knowl­edged that it was too soon to draw con­clu­sions as he en­cour­aged the coun­try to pray for the vic­tims. But he quick­ly moved to en­gage in spec­u­la­tion and po­lit­i­cal at­tacks, at a mo­ment when Amer­i­cans tra­di­tion­al­ly look to the pres­i­den­cy for com­fort, as­sur­ance and facts.

“Some re­al­ly bad things hap­pened and some things hap­pened that shouldn’t have hap­pened,” the Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent said from the White House brief­ing room, just over three miles or five kilo­me­ters from the scene of the dis­as­ter.

Trump blamed for­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s ad­min­is­tra­tion for en­cour­ag­ing the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion to re­cruit work­ers “who suf­fer se­vere in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, psy­chi­atric prob­lems and oth­er men­tal and phys­i­cal con­di­tions un­der a di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion hir­ing ini­tia­tive.” He added that the pro­gram al­lowed for the hir­ing of peo­ple with hear­ing and vi­sion is­sues as well as paral­y­sis, epilep­sy and “dwarfism.”

Trump did not share any ev­i­dence that un­qual­i­fied peo­ple were be­ing put in crit­i­cal po­si­tions like air traf­fic con­trol, and he ac­knowl­edged that there was as yet no in­di­ca­tion that air traf­fic con­trollers at Rea­gan Na­tion­al Air­port made any mis­takes.

Asked why he was blam­ing di­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tives, Trump said, “be­cause I have com­mon sense, and un­for­tu­nate­ly a lot of peo­ple don’t.”

Trump said air traf­fic con­trollers need­ed to be bril­liant to en­sure safe­ty.

“They have to be tal­ent­ed, nat­u­ral­ly tal­ent­ed ge­nius­es,” he said. “You can’t have reg­u­lar peo­ple do­ing their job.”

Trump com­plained specif­i­cal­ly about Pe­te Buttigieg, who was Biden’s trans­porta­tion sec­re­tary and was a con­tender to chal­lenge Trump for the White House in 2020, call­ing him “a dis­as­ter.”

“He’s run it right in­to the ground with his di­ver­si­ty,” Trump said, adding pro­fan­i­ty to his de­scrip­tion of Buttigieg.

Buttigieg re­spond­ed in a post on X, call­ing Trump’s com­ments “de­spi­ca­ble.”

“As fam­i­lies grieve, Trump should be lead­ing, not ly­ing,” he added.

As if to un­der­score Trump’s point, the White House in­vit­ed re­porters in­to the Oval Of­fice to watch him sign an­oth­er ex­ec­u­tive or­der that of­fi­cials said would stop “woke poli­cies” in fed­er­al avi­a­tion. Trump had al­ready signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der end­ing di­ver­si­ty ini­tia­tives at the FAA last week.

“We want the most com­pe­tent peo­ple,” Trump said. “We don’t care what race they are.”

The plane crash was the first ma­jor dis­as­ter of Trump’s new term, and his re­sponse evoked his fre­quent — and con­tro­ver­sial — brief­in­gs on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. His han­dling of the pan­dem­ic helped sour vot­ers on him as he failed to win re­elec­tion in 2020.

Af­ter telling the fam­i­lies of the dead that “our hearts are shat­tered along­side yours” and lead­ing a mo­ment of si­lence, Trump pro­ceed­ed to spec­u­late about what had oc­curred. “We do not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opin­ions,” he said.

Trump won­dered if the he­li­copter pi­lot was wear­ing nightvi­sion gog­gles, de­clared that “you had a pi­lot prob­lem” and that the he­li­copter was “go­ing at an an­gle that was un­be­liev­ably bad.” He ques­tioned why the Army pi­lot didn’t change course, say­ing that “you can stop a he­li­copter very quick­ly.”

He al­so mused about the air traf­fic con­trollers, say­ing of the two air­craft, “for what­ev­er rea­son they were at the same el­e­va­tion,” adding “they should have been at a dif­fer­ent height.”

Even as Trump rushed to pub­licly pon­der rea­sons for the crash, the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board was more cir­cum­spect as it be­gins ex­am­in­ing what hap­pened.

“We look at facts, on our in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and that will take some time,” said Jen­nifer Home­ndy, the board’s chair.

De­moc­rats crit­i­cized Trump’s re­marks on Thurs­day.

“It’s one thing for in­ter­net pun­dits to spew off con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, it’s an­oth­er for the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” said Sen­ate De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance, Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Sean Duffy and De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth all lined up be­hind Trump to praise his lead­er­ship and echo his con­cerns about di­ver­si­ty pro­grams and hir­ing.

“When you don’t have the best stan­dards in who you’re hir­ing, it means on the one hand, you’re not get­ting the best peo­ple in gov­ern­ment,” Vance said, “But on the oth­er hand, it puts stress­es on the peo­ple who are al­ready there.”

Trump made a point to tell Duffy, who was sworn in on Tues­day as Buttigieg’s re­place­ment, “It’s not your fault.” Duffy took the White House podi­um along­side Trump and de­clared, “When Amer­i­cans take off in air­planes, they should ex­pect to land at their des­ti­na­tion.” Duffy added, “We will not ac­cept ex­cus­es.”

Fed­er­al of­fi­cials have been rais­ing con­cerns about an over­taxed and un­der­staffed air traf­fic con­trol sys­tem for years, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter a se­ries of close calls be­tween planes at U.S. air­ports. They have cit­ed is­sues with com­pet­i­tive pay, long hours, in­ten­sive train­ing and manda­to­ry re­tire­ments for con­tribut­ing to the staffing short­ages.

“While these events are in­cred­i­bly rare, our safe­ty sys­tem is show­ing clear signs of strain that we can­not ig­nore,” Home­ndy told law­mak­ers in 2023. Avi­a­tion ex­perts is­sued a re­port around the same time say­ing that the FAA needs bet­ter staffing, equip­ment and tech­nol­o­gy.

WASH­ING­TON (AP)


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