President Donald Trump sparked confusion and anger when he blamed “DEI” for a plane crash in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday that killed more than 60 people.
In a White House briefing the day after an American Airlines flight collided with a military helicopter over the nation’s capital, Trump said diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives “could have been” behind on the tragedy.
“You have to go by brainpower, you have to go by psychological quality,” Trump said. “And [former President Joe] Biden went by a standard that’s the exact opposite… Certainly, for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest.”
The claim drew instant condemnation from aviation experts and lawmakers who ripped the suggestion that air traffic controllers weren’t qualified for their jobs.
“Only a f**king monster would say this as bodies are being recovered,” Robert Garcia, a Democrat on the House Aviation Subcommittee, responded in a post to X.
CNN aviation correspondent and pilot Pete Muntean similarly condemned Trump’s “unhinged” connection between DEI and the deadly crash. In an interview with newscaster Pamela Brown, Muntean said he “put [his] head in [his] hands” when he heard Trump’s suggestion.
“What he has said is not only unprofessional, unpresidential, inconsiderate of the status of this investigation, but frankly it is just unhinged that he could even say with any sort of certainty that diversity, equity and inclusion policies had any part to play in this accident,” Muntean said.
The flight instructor and subject matter expert noted that knee-jerk reactions about the cause of the crash are unhelpful.
“This is something that investigators will really need to pick apart piece by piece, and that is going to take some really significant time,” Muntean said. “We’re barely even 12 hours after this crash and he is saying with a lot of certainty that the blame is on DEI.”
Diversity initiatives weren’t the only place the president laid blame. Trump also claimed that former Biden admin Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg had “run [the department] right into the ground with his diversity.”
Buttigieg called Trump’s suggestion that his department prioritized any standard over safety “despicable.”
“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” Buttigieg wrote on X. “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.”
The ex-transport boss pointed out that a Trump order from earlier this month could be more to blame than equity initiatives.
“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,” Buttigieg added. The FAA did not have a director at the time of the crash, as former head Michael Whitaker resigned under pressure from Trump associates.
