President Trump on Thursday blamed diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and Democrats for the deadly plane crash in Washington, saying unqualified individuals were put into critical aviation safety positions.
Mr. Trump said the “horrible” policies of Presidents Biden and Obama played a role when an Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet near Reagan National Airport. He called the incident a “tragedy of terrible proportions” and confirmed there were no survivors. There were 60 passengers and four crew members aboard the plane, and three soldiers on the Black Hawk helicopter.
“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” Mr. Trump said in his first second-term appearance in the White House press briefing room.
He said he brought the standards up when he took office for the first time in 2016, but President Biden “changed them back to lower than ever before.”
“I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level.”
When reporters asked what evidence he had to connect the crash to DEI initiatives, the president said it was “common sense.”
“It just could have been. We had a much higher standard than anybody else and there are things where you have to go by brain power,” he said.
Mr. Trump said his first administration used “very powerful tests” to determine they were hiring what deemed to be the best people, but those tests were eliminated by the Biden administration. Mr. Trump did not say which tests he was referring to.
When asked if blaming the crash on DEI was getting ahead of the investigation, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think so.”
The president mentioned his recent executive order for the Federal Aviation Administration to end any hiring based on DEI standards, instead using merit-based hiring.
He said it restored “the highest standards of air traffic controllers” and that his administration would “set the highest possible bar for aviation safety.”
“We have to have our smartest people,” the president said. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are, what matters is intellect, talent.”
SEE ALSO: FLASHBACK: FAA turned away qualified air traffic controllers based solely on race
He mentioned the DEI hiring initiatives that the FAA had in place, quoting from the website:
“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” he said. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism,” and then Mr. Trump interjected his own interpretation: “All qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway.”
He also criticized Pete Buttigieg, who ran the Transportation Department from 2021 to 2025 in the Biden administration.
“You know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation? He’s a disaster,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Buttigieg hit back at Mr. Trump in an X post.
“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch,” Mr. Buttigieg wrote.
“President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe,” he said. “Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
Newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reiterated the president’s message against DEI in the FAA.
“When we deal with safety, we can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety that impact the lives of our loved ones, our family members,” Mr. Duffy said.
He said they will work to “get to the bottom of this investigation … as quickly as possible.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth admitted that a “mistake was made” by the military, calling it a “routine annual retraining of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government missions.”
“The military does dangerous things. It does routine things on a regular basis,” Mr. Hegseth said. “Tragically last night a mistake was made.”
“And I think the president is right. There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DOD and Army level. Army CID is on the ground investigating, top-tier aviation assets inside the DOD are investigating, to get to the bottom of it so it does not happen again, because it’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said, before going on to say “the era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department.”
Mr. Trump signed an executive order earlier this week that bans DEI initiatives in the military.
Vice President J.D. Vance said that “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, but on the other hand, it puts stresses on the people who are already there.”
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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