After tragic D.C. plane crash, Trump baselessly blames diversity programs
Following a startling aviation accident involving a commercial airplane and a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter that occurred on Jan. 29 over the Potomac River, President Donald Trump and members of his administration were quick to baselessly blame diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as a possible catalyst for the crash.
At a bizarre press conference addressing the incident on Thursday, Trump falsely claimed that he had changed aviation hiring and safety protocol in his first term.
“I changed the Obama standards [for U.S. aviation systems] from very mediocre at best to extraordinary. And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before,” Trump said. “Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”
He then pointed toward initiatives by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to hire air traffic control candidates with disabilities being partially responsible for the deaths of 67 people.
“Hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism — all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country," Trump said, quoting from dry, bureaucratic FAA documents. Left out: the FAA requires such potential hires to meet specific medical standards and be cleared by a surgeon.
Additionally, the program, formulated by the Obama administration in 2013, was left in place by Trump during his first term. “FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” a 2019 bulletin by the agency reads.
But when asked by a reporter how he could specifically blame DEI for the crash, which is the deadliest U.S. aviation accident since 9/11, the president replied: "Because I have common sense."
The president’s lackeys — like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance — then arrived to back Trump’s assertions.
"The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department and we need the best and brightest — whether it's in our air traffic control or whether it's in our generals, or whether it's throughout government," Hegseth said. Meanwhile, Vance alluded to a lawsuit, Brigida v. U.S. Department of Transportation, organized in 2019 by the conservative law firm Mountain State Legal Foundation. The plaintiff in the ongoing case accused the Obama administration of engaging in discrimination when considering air traffic control candidates.
“The FAA purged its system of thousands of previously-qualified, ready-to-hire applicants simply because they did not fit the right biographical profile,” the firm argued.
Karoline Leavitt, the president's press secretary, was quick to back up her boss. "When you are flying on an airplane … Do you pray that your plane lands safely and gets you to your destination, or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color?"
Democrats jumped the baseless speculation.
“They blame DEI for wildfires. They blame DEI for everything, every bit of harm that we experienced, that they have been an architect of, they’re the only ones they don’t hold accountable, and they’re the ones sowing this division,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said in an interview with Boston Public Radio.
And while last week Trump did fire the Transportation Security Administration, the entirety of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee and 100 top FAA security officials, those decisions are too recent to have a policy impact, according to experts.
While the exact nature of the crash is still under investigation, the explanation is more likely a systemic one. According to a 2023 investigation by The New York Times, many involved in the aviation industry were concerned about how often near-crashes were occurring. While 2009 was the last time a commercial airline accident resulted in fatalities, insiders have been flagging potential strains on safety protocol for some time.
“As of [May 2023], only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet targets set by the F.A.A. and the union representing controllers,” according to the Times.
“Many controllers are required to work six-day weeks and a schedule so fatiguing that multiple federal agencies have warned that it can impede controllers’ abilities to do their jobs properly.”