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United States President Donald Trump has blamed diversity requirements at the Federal Aviation Administration and his two Democratic predecessors for the midair collision over the Potomac River on Wednesday night, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax.
Trump cited no evidence that diversity programmes had anything to do with the fatal accident, which killed 67 people, and even admitted when pressed that the investigation had only just begun.
Moments later, he blamed the pilots of the Army helicopter that appeared to fly into a passenger jet while it was on final approach to Reagan National Airport, across the river from the capital.
But he quickly returned to the theme that diversity goals that he said were created by President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, had created unsafe skies, implying that those moves had to have contributed to the disaster.
According to the New York Times, Trump’s instant focus on diversity reflected his instinct to frame major events through his political or ideological lens, whether the facts fit or not.
It is something he has done before: After a terrorist attack in New Orleans a month ago, he blamed illegal immigration, even though the attacker was a US citizen born in Texas. When wildfires erupted in California, he blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water management policies, without any evidence that a different approach would have made a difference in the firefighting effort.
But his unproven accusation about the air controllers came just hours into the first disaster-management challenge of his new term in office. It quickly became a demonstration of both his political style and his instincts, and at moments resembled his series of news conferences, in the same briefing room, as Covid-19 spread across the country: a mix of accusations about the cause and prescriptions for how to proceed, often detached from facts and analysis.
He began in the tradition of other presidents who had to console a shocked nation, as Ronald Reagan did after the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 or George W. Bush after the Columbia broke apart on re-entry to the atmosphere in 2003.
Trump asked for a moment of silence to remember the victims, and told their families that “we’re here for you to wipe away the tears and to offer you our devotion, our love and our support,” regardless of party divisions.
But within minutes, he launched into a series of accusations, linking his long-running complaints about hiring practices to the disaster that unfolded on a clear night over the Potomac.
When a reporter challenged the president on how he could say that diversity hiring was to blame for the crash even though basic facts about the midair collision were still being sought by investigators, he said: “I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people to do this.”
“For some jobs — and not only this but air traffic controllers — they have to be at the highest level of genius,” he said.Tap Here for the Full Story
