During his news conference on Wednesday night’s deadly plane crash in Washington D.C., President Donald Trump unleashed fury on the Biden administration for using DEI to lower the standards of the The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Air Traffic Control radar reportedly displayed a “collision alert” in the moments before the crash. A collision alert is meant draw heightened attention from the controllers to potential risks.
“The FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring plan says diversity is integral to ensuring safe and efficient travel,” Trump complained. “A group within the FAA determined the workforce was too white. They actually came out with a directive saying it’s too white.”
The president reminded reporters that one of the first things he did when he returned to office was sign an executive order to restore high standards for U.S. air traffic controllers under the FAA.
“We will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety. Doesn’t matter what they look like,” he said. “They have to be talented. We’ll restore faith in American air travel.”
Trump began the presser with a moment of silence for the 64 people who were on the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Potomac River. He then said, “the work has now shifted to a recovery mission.”
“Sadly, there are no survivors,” the president said, calling the catastrophe a “dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history, and a tragedy of terrible proportions.”
The PSA Airlines-operated American Airlines aircraft was flying from Wichita to National Airport with 60 passengers and four crew members when it collided with a Blackhawk helicopter on a training flight with three service members on board.
Among the passengers on the plane were a group of competitive figure skaters and their companions from the U.S. and Russia, including retired champions, athletic coaches and family members, according to reports.
The U.S. Figure Skating Championships, considered the most prestigious annual event on the American figure skating calendar, concluded in Wichita on Sunday.
Additionally, four D.C.-area steamfitters were aboard the flight Wednesday night, according to a statement from the United Association of Union Plumbers, Pipefitters and Steamfitters Local 602.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said during a Thursday morning news briefing that the captain of the plane had six years of flying experience with American Airlines subsidiary PSA Airlines, and the first officer had “almost three years.”
“These are experienced pilots,” Isom told reporters at at Reagan National Airport. “Again, standard approach.”
During his news conference, Thursday, Trump said his administration will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety.
Trump drew attention to various articles on the Biden regime’s DEI push that appeared in the news just prior to him taking office.
“A group within the FAA determined that the workforce was too white, then they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately,” the president stated.
Reading from a January 14 Fox News article, Trump said: “the FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.”
“That is amazing,” the president added. “And then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce.”
The FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring initiative was spelled out on the agency’s website: “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring. They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
“And they want them in. And they can be air traffic controllers,” Trump continued incredulously. “I don’t think so. That was, a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program.”
The president also called out Pete Buttigieg, saying he had a “good line of bullsh-t”
“The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg. A real winner,” Trump said. “That guy’s a real winner. Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation? He’s a disaster—he’s just got a good line of bullshit.”
Trump added that Buttigieg ran the “FAA right into the ground with his diversity.”
Last April, nearly 1,000 air traffic controller applicants sued Biden’s FAA in a class action lawsuit alleging they were turned away solely based on their race.
Appearing alongside President Trump at Thursday’s press conference were Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Duffy outlined the “whole of government response” to the crash and committed to “get to the bottom of this investigation—not in three years, not in four years, but as quickly as possible.”
“What happened yesterday shouldn’t have happened. It should not have happened,” Duffy said. “And when Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination.”
Hegseth echoed the president in saying that the collision was the result of human error.
“Last night, a mistake was made—some kind of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DoD and Army level,” he told reporters, adding that the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division was already on the ground investigating with “top tier aviation assets inside the DoD” to “get to the bottom of it so it does not happen again because it’s absolutely unacceptable.”
“We will have the best and brightest in every position possible,” Hegseth continued. “As [Trump] said in inaugural, it is colorblind and merit based—the best leaders possible, whether it’s flying Blackhawk helicopters, flying airplanes, leading platoons, or in government.”
“The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department and we need the best and brightest whether it’s in air traffic control, whether it’s in our generals, or whether it’s in our government,” the Defense Secretary added.
Vance reiterated the president’s anti-DEI message, saying: “When you don’t have the best standards in who you are 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. We want to hire the best people.”
How did we ever get away from the best for the job, particularly where errors have consequences? It would appear that airy-fairyism of various sorts was allowed to metastasize in the academic for far too long; it became a virulent plague that then escaped from the lab. And DIE and such have the sort of surface appeal that keeps communism alive no matter how thoroughly discredited.
It is a constant source of amazement to me that people have bought into the whole diversity argument as presented by the Left. There is strength in diversity…of thought, of opinion ( the one type of diversity they want nothing to do with); all the other stuff is just virtue- signalling crap. I don’t care what the (fill in the professional occupation) looks like --I want to know that they are the most qualified, dedicated individual available for the job
If the military wishes to practice they should do so only with their own and not with citizens who never volunteered to be put into harms way. And don’t anyone say that citizens were not in harm’s way because the evidence that they were was this very crash. DEI may be or may not be part of this tragedy but it is “common sense” to always hire only the best to prevent situations where failure will result in death and/or morbidity with no possibility of a “do over”.
Why on earth did the helo gain altitude well above its prescribed route???