President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted former President Joe Biden and DEI policies after a midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter above Washington, D.C., the previous night.
Trump claimed at a White House news conference that policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion “could have been” to blame for the collision, the deadliest U.S. plane crash since November 2001.
But Trump did not give any evidence that DEI efforts caused the crash or were related to it.
And he 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?”
Trump initially struck a somber tone at the news conference, offering condolences to the victims and their families.
But he quickly pivoted to well-worn attacks on his political enemies and DEI programs.
The crash occurred shortly before 9 p.m. ET Wednesday, as the American Airlines jet was descending to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The Army helicopter struck the plane at about 400 feet over the Potomac River, and both aircraft fell into the icy water.
The crash killed all 64 people on board the airplane and the three soldiers on the helicopter.
Hundreds of first responders scoured the river for victims Thursday. John Donnelly, chief of the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services, said at least 28 bodies have been recovered so far.
At the White House, Trump began by asking for a moment of silence for the victims.
“Today, we are all heartbroken,” he said.
But less than two minutes later, Trump started attacking his Democratic predecessors, Biden and former President Barack Obama.
Trump 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 Federal Aviation Administration.
He also highlighted language from the FAA’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 website since at least 2013 — a time period that includes Trump’s entire first White House term — according to the internet archive website the Wayback Machine.
Trump last week signed a presidential memo aiming to end what the White House called “Biden DEI hiring programs.”
Later Thursday, Trump signed another memo directing an “immediate” evaluation of aviation safety in light of what a White House aide called “the Biden administration’s DEI and woke policies.”
At the White House news conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both took turns at the lectern to praise Trump for his handling of the crash and to 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,” he wrote. “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.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., condemned Trump for his remarks.
“As bodies are still being pulled from the Potomac, Donald Trump and his grossly incompetent administration are blaming this deadly crash on minorities and white women,” Omar wrote in a post on the social media site Bluesky.
“This is disgusting, racist and sexist. Their reckless actions have consequences and they should be held accountable,” the lawmaker wrote.
Despite his criticisms of past administrations’ aviation policies, Trump said Thursday, “Flying is very safe.”
“We have the safest flying anywhere in the world, and we’ll keep it that way,” he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the crash investigation, which also will include the FAA, American Airlines and others.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said in a staff note Thursday that the NTSB “leads the investigation of aviation accidents.”
“The NTSB will be the sole source of truth going forward, and accuracy is of the utmost importance,” Isom said.
Trump said at the White House that he was appointing Christopher Rocheleau as “acting commissioner” of the Federal Aviation Administration. Rocheleau had been serving as the FAA’s deputy administrator since Jan. 21.
At the time of the crash, the FAA did not have a permanent head. Former FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker stepped down Jan. 20, the day Trump took office.
— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Leslie Josephs