As officials are still trying to piece together what led to the deadly midair collision between a commercial jet and an Army helicopter in the nation’s capital, president Donald Trump is already pointing the finger at his favorite punching bags, if not grasping at straws. And you guessed it: he’s blaming woke.
In a Thursday speech that was supposed to be addressing the tragedy — the worst US air disaster in over 23 years — Trump launched into a bizarre rant about why his administration wasn’t to blame, taking potshots at everything “DEI” under the sun, including, for some reason, dwarfism.
The way Trump sees it, it’s the Federal Aviation Administration’s DEI hiring policies, which he claims were instituted under former President Biden, that the public should be outraged at.
“The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems,” Trump claimed, as quoted by Daily Kos. “The FAA’s website states they include hearing vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”
On Wednesday night, an American Eagle flight struck an Army Blackhawk helicopter in midair as the plane was coming in to land at Reagan National Airport in Washington DC, killing all 67 people onboard both craft, officials said.
It’s the deadliest US air disaster since 265 people were killed when an American Airlines jet crashed shortly after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in 2001.
How such a collision could happen in one of the most tightly regulated patches of airspace in the world is unclear. But when asked if diversity hiring among aviation regulators was to blame, Trump refused to rule out the possibility, despite a complete lack of evidence.
“It just could have been,” Trump said, as quoted by NBC News.
Pressed on whether it was too early to link DEI practices with the disaster, Trump responded, per NBC: “I have common sense, OK?”
Blaming minorities is a staple of Trump’s playbook, so we won’t belabor the point. What’s really worth highlighting is how quickly aviation authorities descended into chaos immediately after Trump took office.
On the day of his inauguration, FAA administrator Michael Whitaker stepped down after months of pressure from the president’s “First Buddy” Elon Musk, with a replacement yet to be appointed.
More directly, Trump passed an executive order freezing all new hires of already chronically understaffed air traffic controllers, fired the head of the Transportation Security Administration, and completely cleared out a key aviation safety group at the Department of Homeland Security.
While you could debate how much of an impact Trump’s changes could’ve had after barely a week in office, it’s certainly more substantive to scrutinize his policies than baselessly blaming minorities.
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