Donald Trump has been slammed by American citizens after he used the plane crash in Washington DC to attack his political enemies.
On Wednesday, Jan. 29, an American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided midair with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying 3 people.
Officials said all 67 people in both aircraft died in the crash on Wednesday night. By late Thursday morning, multiple bodies had been retrieved from the Potomac River.
Speaking hours after the crash, Trump said Democrats were responsible for declining standards in air traffic control and that the disaster “could have been” caused by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at the Federal Aviation Administration.
Trump turned a press conference into a rant against DEI.
The president was backed by the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, who said “We can only accept the best and the brightest” in positions affecting passenger safety.
Also, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said: “The era of DEI is gone at the defense department and we need the best and brightest.”
Then came the vice president, JD Vance, who claimed, “We want to hire the best people … actually competent enough to do the job.”
Vance also claimed, without offering evidence, that hundreds had sued the US government because “they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin”.
Trump claimed that “very powerful tests” for competence in air traffic control were “terminated” by Joe Biden. He also claimed that when he was president between 2017 and 2021 the US “had a much higher standard [in air traffic control] than anybody else”.
Asked about his claim that DEI is a cause of the crash, Trump said: “It just could have been.”
Asked how he could so quickly decide diversity was to blame, Trump said: “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”
Trump also mused about possible errors by the helicopter pilot.
This angered Americans and they took to X to call Trump a national disgrace, causing the hashtag “Trump is a national disgrace” to trend.
Since returning to the White House earlier this month, Trump has made attacks on DEI policies in the federal government a central and performative part of his rush of hardline executive orders.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Jan. 30, he blamed the plane crash on the DEI policies that allow the hiring of people with disabilities.
He quoted from “various articles [that] appeared prior to my entering office”.
“And here’s one,” Trump said. “‘The FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.’ That is amazing. And then it says FAA … says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce, [they] said, ‘They want them in, and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers.’ I don’t think so. This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program.”
Trump continued: “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress where you have many, many planes coming into one target, and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it.”
Asked if he would “fire some of the diversity hires in federal government”, Trump said: “I would say yes. If we find that people aren’t mentally competent … these are not people who should be doing these particular jobs.”
Below is a video of Trump blaming the plane crash on Democrats.
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