After the tragic midair collision over the Potomac River which took 67 lives on Wednesday, President Trump said at a White House press conference, without evidence, that diversity efforts (DEI policy) at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were likely to blame for the tragedy.
[Trump prefaced his DEI insinuations by saying “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas. And I think we’ll probably state those opinions now.”]
Vice President JD Vance supported Trump’s theory at the same press conference. Vance said: “If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin.”
Note: The FAA’s former administrator Michael Whitaker, who resigned from his post on January 20, was the target of criticism from Trump donor Elon Musk, who complained about the agency imposing $600,000 in fines on his company SpaceX and wrote on X that Whitaker “needs to resign.”
He needs to resign https://t.co/pG8htfTYHb
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2024
After the press conference, Trump was asked by a journalist in the Oval Office if he was going to visit the crash site. According to a New York Times report, Trump replied, “I have a plan to visit — not the site,” and added, “You tell me, what’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”
Trump announced late Thursday, after the accident, the appointment of FAA veteran Christopher Rocheleau, as acting administrator of the agency.
Most recently the Chief Operating Officer of the National Business Aviation Association, Rocheleau spent “more than two decades” with the FAA, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce bio, and served as “an officer and special agent with the United States Air Force, retiring from the USAF Reserve in 2010 as a lieutenant colonel.”