This morning, President Donald Trump held a press briefing on the matter of the catastrophic and deadly D.C. air crash, in which he took aim at mentally and physically disabled workers and appeared to openly blame disabled workers for the fatal tragedy.
The US was left stunned and heartbroken after a Black Hawk Army Helicopter collided with an American Airlines flight with over 60 people aboard near Ronald Reagan National Airport at 8:48 pm Wednesday night.
64 people were on the American Airlines flight and 3 people were aboard the Black Hawk Army Helicopter. There were no survivors.
After initially reacting to the crash with a barrage of unceremonious social media posts, Trump took to his press briefing this morning where he wasted no time in laying the blame at the feet of people and policies that he’s deemed his enemies — including his predecessors Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama. However, he took specific aim at policies that were designed to recruit and hire individuals with mental and physical disabilities, despite the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration conducted very similar initiatives during Trump’s first presidential term and even launched a program in 2019 when Trump was firmly in office that was meant to enroll up to 20 people with disabilities in training for careers in air traffic operations.
Speaking to reporters in his presser this morning, Trump said, “I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse, so, as you know, last week, long before the crash, I signed an executive order restoring our highest standards for air traffic controllers and other important jobs throughout the country. So it was very interesting, about a week ago, almost upon entering office, I signed something last week that was an executive order, very powerful, on restoring the highest standards of air traffic controllers and others.”
“By the way, and my administration will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety,” he continued to rant. “We have to have our smartest people. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. It matters – intellect, talent, the word talent, you have to be talented, naturally talented geniuses. You can’t have regular people doing that job, they won’t be able to do it.”
The President appeared to reference a Fox News article that has since been dubbed as misleading, that blamed the infamous January 2024 incident where an Alaska Airlines flight that saw a Boeing 737 Max 9 lose a plug door mid-flight on then-transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s FAA emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion standards. It has since been proven that those policies predated Buttigieg’s tenure and were, in no way, related to the Alaskan Airlines incident.
“I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office, and here’s one the FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities,” Trump continued on in his presser rant this morning. “That is amazing, and then it says, FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in and they want them. They can be air traffic controllers, I don’t think so. This was in Jan. 14, [2024], so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program. Then another article, the Federal Aviation Administration. This was before I got to office recently, second term. The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. Can you imagine?”
The POTUS then resorted to using profanity to attack Buttigieg, who served as the Biden-era Transportation Secretary until last week.
“The initiative is part of the FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring plan, which says diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel – I don’t think so, I don’t think so,” Donald raged. “I think it’s just the opposite. the FAA website shows that the agency’s guidance on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23 of [2022]. They wanted to make it even more so, and then I came in and I assumed maybe this is the reason the FAA, which is overseen by secretary Pete Buttigieg, a real winner. That’s the 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 was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullsh*t. The Department of Transportation, his government agency charged with regulating civil aviation while he runs it, 45,000 people, and he’s run it right into the ground with his diversity, so I had to say that it’s terrible.”
You can watch the clip of the press briefing here:
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0