Donald Trump stood before the White House press room cameras on Thursday to perform a traditional presidential duty – consoler-in-chief during a time of tragedy.
He said the country was in mourning, shared his condolences during “an hour of anguish” and paid tribute to first responders and the victims.
Then he sharply pivoted – providing yet another reminder of how his new presidency is going to be very different.
It will be combative. It will be unscripted. And it will be quick to point the finger of blame.
“We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas,” he said.
He then speculated that lowered standards of hiring for air traffic controllers in the Federal Aviation Administration during the Joe Biden and Barack Obama presidencies may have been a factor in the disaster.
Trump and his fellow Republicans have regularly attacked “diversity, equity and inclusion” programmes in the federal government.
His team has made undoing such programmes a core part of their first days in office, saying they have divided Americans and weakened the country.
And less than 24 hours after the first major US air disaster in more than a decade, Trump – along with his secretaries of transportation and defence, and his vice-president – took turns hammering their point, even as they provided no evidence that federal hiring practices had any connection to this particular crash.
Asked by a reporter how he could blame diversity programmes for the crash when the investigation had only just begun, the president responded: “Because I have common sense.”
At other moments, he acknowledged there was no confirmed cause, saying “it’s all under investigation”.
Trump said the hiring guidance for the FAA’s diversity and inclusion programme included preference for those with disabilities involving “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism”.
An archived version of a website for the FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring programme that appears to have been taken down in December included a similar list. The agency was seeking people with “targeted disabilities” that the federal government was prioritising for recruitment at the time.
But it’s unclear how that drive to make recruitment more diverse may have impacted the ranks of air traffic controllers, who President Trump said needed to all be “naturally talented geniuses”. The FAA has more than 35,000 employees, only a fraction of which perform that role.
In response to criticisms over diversity hiring practices last year, the agency released a statement asserting that all new hires must meet “rigorous qualifications” that “vary by position”.
The agency has faced criticism over a longstanding shortage of air traffic controllers, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic caused massive disruptions in commercial air travel.
Reports suggest that staffing levels at Reagan airport on Wednesday night may have been compromised.
In his remarks, Trump specifically blamed Biden administration Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whom he described with an obscenity and said had ran the department “into the ground”.
Buttigieg defended his record on social media, calling Trump’s comments “despicable”. “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” he said.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also criticised Trump’s comments.
“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracies, it’s another for the President of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered,” Schumer said.
Once he departed from his prepared remarks, however, speculation was what President Trump seemed most interested in offering.
Along with his condemnation of DEI policies, he offered extended discussion of the angles and elevation at which the two aircraft were flying, the weather conditions on Wednesday night, the temperature of the Potomac and the behaviour of the Army helicopter.
“We had a situation where we had a helicopter that had an ability to stop,” he said. “For some reason, it just kept going.”
But on Thursday evening, the White House doubled down on blaming his predecessor and DEI policies. The president signed a memorandum to end diversity efforts in the aviation sector and to review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the Biden administration. He also signed an executive order to appoint a new head of the FAA.
Two things were very clear from Trump’s remarks on Thursday.
The first is that his eagerness to inject himself into a major news story is undiminished in his new term. And the second is that in his view it is never too soon to inject politics into national tragedy – and use it to attack opponents and advance his agenda.
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