WASHINGTON — With bodies still missing in the Potomac River, President Donald Trump on Thursday, with absolutely no evidence, basically blamed the fatal collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger plane on Democratic diversity policies, ex- Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Minutes after asking for a moment of silence for the 67 victims, Trump used the Wednesday night tragedy to attack air traffic controllers, in a move seemed calculated to justify his orders to shut down all diversity, equity and inclusion programs in federal government. At a White House briefing, Trump, without a shard of evidence, also accused the Army helicopter pilots of flying into the plane as it was approaching a runway at Reagan National Airport, which hugs the river near the District of Columbia.
Trump was speaking as investigators were still trying to retrieve evidence, less than a day after the crash. Nothing has been analyzed. Trump’s takeaway message was “it just could have been” that air traffic controllers and DEI policies were the problem. He later said he didn’t know if the air traffic controllers were at fault — but that was, at best, an aside.
“Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level,” Trump said, calling Buttigieg a “disaster” with “a good line of bullshit.”
Trump won. He is our president. Another president, Harry Truman, had a sign on his White House desk that said: “The Buck Stops Here.” This crash happened on Trump’s watch. It’s his problem.
After taking power on Jan. 20, one of the first acts of the Trump administration was to get rid of the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, composed of government, industry, and “civilians.” The group been working on safety issues for over 30 years.
We should worry that aviation security may be compromised under Trump, who cares little about facts.
What Trump did in making his crusade against DEI part of today’s storyline about the crash was corrosive, ignorant and obviously race-baiting in his dog whistles about who is really qualified to be an air traffic controller.
Enter a voice of sanity.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., briefed reporters shortly after Trump made his baseless accusations. A military pilot, Duckworth is incredibly qualified to dig into the causes of the accident. She is the ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee’s Aviation Safety, Operations and Innovation panel. And she is a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. As you probably know, Duckworth lost her legs while serving in Iraq when her helicopter was shot down.
“I’ve spent thousands of hours in a Black Hawk cockpit. I’ve flown in the evenings, I’ve flown at night. I’ve flown in all these different conditions. And so I just want to know that moving forward, my focus will be on doing everything possible to prevent another tragedy like this one, and that means that we have to get to the bottom of what happened here,” Duckworth said.
What Duckworth is doing is gathering information. Here are some of her questions — technical, not partisan, not political. Not twisted to advance an agenda. Investigators will get the answers — that is, if Trump and Elon Musk leave enough folks around to get the work done after they take a blow torch to the federal workforce.
What kind of collision avoidance equipment was the Black Hawk equipped with? What were the flight patterns of both the airplane and the helicopter? She’s asked for transcripts of all the air traffic conversations that were taking place, as well as the flight path of both aircraft in the minutes leading up to the impact.
I asked Duckworth about Trump’s blaming DEI for the crash.
“I have seen zero evidence to this point that’s to suggest that this collision had anything to do with DEI and speculation at this time is highly irresponsible,” Duckworth said, “and we need to get to the facts. One of the things that often happen when there is an aircraft mishap is that the people who are the most clueless, like President Trump, immediately blame the pilots. So let’s make it clear that we need to let the accident investigators do their jobs. Military pilots are some of the most highly trained air crew members in the world.”
She added: “Part of the job of pilot is to maintain their flight hours. And they were out there doing that. And so it’s highly irresponsible for the commander-in-chief to make these types of statements.”
