President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted former President Joe Biden and Democratic diversity measures after a midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter above Washington, D.C., the night before.
Trump, speaking at the White House, claimed that policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, “could have been” to blame for the collision, the deadliest U.S. plane crash since November 2001.
But Trump did not provide evidence that DEI efforts had anything to do with the crash, and criticized a reporter who asked if he was getting ahead of the investigation into how it happened.
Pressed on how he could connect the collision to DEI, Trump said, “Because I have common sense, OK?”
While Trump initially struck a somber tone, offering condolences to the victims and their families, he quickly pivoted to well-worn attacks on his political enemies.
Trump at the press briefing also said he was appointing Christopher Rocheleau as “acting commissioner” of the Federal Aviation Administration.
At the time of the incident, the FAA did not have a permanent head. The agency’s former administrator, Mike Whitaker, stepped down on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. Rocheleau had been serving as the FAA’s deputy administrator since Jan. 21.
No one survived the crash, which occurred shortly before 9 p.m. ET Wednesday night, officials said.
There were 64 people on board the airplane, which collided with the helicopter as it prepared to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Three soldiers were on board the helicopter.
The response has switched from a rescue mission to a recovery operation, as hundreds of first responders scour the Potomac River, where both aircraft landed after the collision.
D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said that at least 28 bodies have been recovered so far.
At the White House, Trump began by asking for a moment of silence for the 67 victims.
“Today, we are all heartbroken,” he said.
But less than two minutes later, Trump started attacking his predecessors, Biden and former President Barack Obama.
He claimed that after taking office for the first time in 2017, “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 claimed. “Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”
Trump then read from articles critical of diversity efforts at the FAA. He also highlighted language from the agency’s website about the government placing special emphasis on hiring people with “targeted disabilities,” including partial paralysis, severe intellectual disability and psychiatric disability.
But that language has been on the FAA’s website since at least 2013, according to the internet archive website the Wayback Machine. It remained up on the FAA site throughout Trump’s entire first administration.
Trump last week signed a presidential memo aiming to end what the White House called “Biden DEI hiring programs.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth both took turns at the lectern to praise Trump for his handling of the crash and echo his comments that the government should hire based on “merit” and not diversity.
“The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department,” Hegseth said.
Trump also attacked Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s Transportation secretary, calling him a “disaster” who has “just got a good line of bulls—.”
Buttigieg quickly hit back, calling Trump’s comments “despicable.”
“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg said in an X post.
“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,” his post said. “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.”
“Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again,” Buttigieg said.
Despite his criticisms of past administrations’ aviation policies, Trump said, “Flying is very safe.”
“We have the safest flying anywhere in the world, and we’ll keep it that way,” he said.
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