Last night, we saw the first fatal crash of a US airliner since 2009, as a military helicopter collided with an American Eagle jet that was on final approach to Washington National Airport (DCA). This horrible tragedy claimed 67 lives, and an investigation is being performed into what happened.
Even before all the bodies have been recovered, President Trump has already come to a conclusion, and is assigning blame for the incident. His evidence? “Common sense.”
President Trump holds press briefing about crash
A few hours ago, President Trump held a press briefing about the tragedy that occurred last night. Typically, these press conferences provide a summary of the facts that are known, share condolences for the families of those who lost their lives, and take basic questions.
Aviation accident investigations take a long time, because it’s important to get the facts right, rather than rush to conclusions. However, during this briefing, President Trump revealed that he has already concluded what has happened. During his press conference, he blamed the accident on DEI and “Democrats” (including Biden, Obama, and Buttigieg).
He went on to attack air traffic controllers, even though we don’t yet know to what extent (if any) air traffic controllers played a role in this. But he stated that he changed air traffic control standards during his first term from “very mediocre at best to extraordinary,” and hired only people of “the highest aptitude, they have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people.”
He also questioned how something like this could happen, saying things like “I can’t imagine that people with 20/20 vision can’t see what’s happening out there,” and that the American Eagle pilots were “doing everything right,” but “for some reason, you have a helicopter at the same height and going at an angle, it was unbelievably bad.”
You can watch the entire press conference, including questions, below.
During the question and answer session, he was asked if he’s getting ahead of the investigation by blaming it on DEI, to which he responded that he wasn’t. He was also asked how he can connect the crash to DEI, and he responded “because I have common sense.”
This is a gross politicization of a tragedy
It’s wrong to politicize a tragedy, and in something as complicated as an aviation disaster, it’s also important to let an investigation run its course before drawing any conclusions. Aviation is incredibly safe, even with tragedies like this.
Prior to this, US airlines carried well over 10 billion people across around 150 million flights without a fatal crash. That’s astonishingly impressive. Sometimes things go wrong, without it being the fault of any philosophy or political party.
Look, I want to come at this from a balanced perspective. Some people have been quick to rush and blame this tragedy on Trump, claiming that his air traffic controller hiring freeze (motivated by his dislike of DEI) is to blame. That’s not fair either, and I made that clear in a previous post. While that could have implications in the future, it doesn’t explain what happened here.
But it’s incredibly dismaying to see a president get up on stage after a tragedy and baselessly politicize it on the grounds of “common sense.” When someone automatically blames DEI for something, without an investigation having been performed, the intent is obvious — only women and minorities, and not white men, make mistakes.
Bottom line
Aviation globally is incredibly safe. When things do go wrong, it’s important for leaders to take these incidents seriously, and let the experts perform their investigation, before jumping to conclusions. President Trump held a press briefing about the horrible accident happened last night, and it was… not any of that. On both sides, it’s too early to jump to any conclusions, and certainly too early to politicize it.
Not to in any way minimize the tragedy of this accident, but we have to reflect on just how many people fly through US airspace every year, and the incredible safety with which airlines operate. If this is the way that the system operates with “mediocre” people who were hired under DEI, then we’re doing pretty well.
Like all accidents, we’ll hopefully learn some lessons from this, to prevent a similar accident in the future.
