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‘He is not well’: Local Dems react to Trump blaming DEI for plane crash
Without evidence, President Trump blamed diversity requirements for the crash. An uproar followed.
Local Democrats have plenty of experience responding to wild claims and chaotic press conferences held by President Donald Trump. But his decision to immediately blame diversity requirements for the worst U.S. aviation disaster in years, even as bodies were still being identified and debris being cleaned up, seemed to strike a particular nerve with Democratic lawmakers from New England.
Sixty-seven people died Wednesday night when an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet collided over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan National Airport. Among them were two teenage ice skaters, their mothers, and two coaches from The Skating Club of Boston.
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“He’s not well,” Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont said of Trump in a video posted to social media Thursday. “We have got to stop normalizing this. This is not what presidents do, this is not what leaders do.”
“I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first,” Trump told reporters Thursday. He cited no specific evidence that diversity requirements played a role in the crash.
He referenced longstanding Federal Aviation Administration practices to include people with disabilities in recruitment. As early as 2013, and throughout Trump’s first term, the FAA website included language about putting a “special emphasis” on hiring people with “targeted disabilities” like “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
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The FAA’s Diversity and Inclusion pages made no mention of air traffic controllers or other specific positions that people with these disabilities would be recruited for. Air traffic controllers must meet high standards for physical and mental health.
Moreover, the FAA actually launched “a pilot program to help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations” during Trump’s first term.
The FAA appeared to be without a top official at the time of the crash. Michael Whitaker, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to be FAA administrator in 2023, resigned the day of Trump’s inauguration earlier this month. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close advisor to Trump, called for Whitaker to resign last September. Trump assigned a new acting administrator to lead the FAA Thursday.
Staffing was “not normal” at the traffic control tower that was handling the two aircraft Wednesday night, according to a preliminary FAA safety report obtained by The New York Times. One controller was advising both helicopters and planes in the airspace around Reagan Airport, the Times reported. This is normally something done by two people.
The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation and treating the situation as an “all-hands-on-deck event.“
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“Trump’s ridiculous blaming of last night’s tragic crash on FAA diversity policies is disgusting and a distraction. Let’s let the expert investigators do their work,” Sen. Ed Markey said.
Rep. Lori Trahan called Trump’s comments “disgusting.”
“What a betrayal,” Rep. Katherine Clark said of Trump’s comments.
Trump took the opportunity presented by this incident to “not to display leadership and empathy, but to craft a speculative narrative that conveniently fits his political agenda,” Rep. Seth Moulton said.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley said that Trump is a “reckless, lawless, dangerous man” who ignored his responsibility to comfort grieving families in the immediate aftermath of tragedy.
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