President Trump blamed diversity requirements at the Federal Aviation Administration and his two Democratic predecessors for the midair collision over the Potomac River on Wednesday night, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax.
Mr. Trump cited no evidence that diversity programs had anything to do with the fatal accident, which killed 67 people, and even admitted when pressed that the investigation had only just begun.
Moments later, he blamed the pilots of the Army helicopter that appeared to fly into a passenger jet while it was on final approach to Reagan National Airport, across the river from the capital. But he quickly returned to the theme that diversity goals that he said were created by President Barack Obama and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had created unsafe skies, implying that those moves had to have contributed to the disaster.
Mr. Trump’s instant focus on diversity reflected his instinct to frame major events through his political or ideological lens, whether the facts fit or not. It is something he has done before: After a terrorist attack in New Orleans a month ago, he blamed illegal immigration, even though the attacker was a U.S. citizen born in Texas. When wildfires erupted in California, he blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water management policies, without any evidence that a different approach would have made a difference in the firefighting effort.
But his unproven accusation about the air controllers came just hours into the first disaster-management challenge of his new term in office. It quickly became a demonstration of both his political style and his instincts, and at moments resembled his series of news conferences, in the same briefing room, as Covid-19 spread across the country: a mix of accusations about the cause and prescriptions for how to proceed, often detached from facts and analysis.
He began in the tradition of other presidents who had to console a shocked nation, as Ronald Reagan did after the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 or George W. Bush after the Columbia broke apart on re-entry to the atmosphere in 2003. Mr. Trump asked for a moment of silence to remember the victims, and told their families that “we’re here for you to wipe away the tears and to offer you our devotion, our love and our support,” regardless of party divisions.
But within minutes, he launched into a series of accusations, linking his long-running complaints about hiring practices to the disaster that unfolded on a clear night over the Potomac.
When a reporter challenged the president on how he could say that diversity hiring was to blame for the crash even though basic facts about the midair collision were still being sought by investigators, he said: “I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant to people do this.”
“For some jobs, we need the highest level of genius,” he said.
Of the F.A.A. under Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump said: “They actually came out with a directive, too white.” At another point he quoted from the website of the F.A.A., which he said indicated that the agency was looking to hire people with disabilities, including “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism,” and said that they “all qualified for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country.”
In fact, Mr. Trump was citing language about recruiting people with disabilities on the F.A.A.’s website that existed during his first administration. Veterans of the F.A.A. during that period said they did not know of any episodes in which D.E.I. recruiting standards had been identified as a cause or a contributor. Tennessee Garvey, a pilot and the chairman of the board of directors for the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, said that rigorous standards for hiring pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers were never relaxed just to meet diversity goals. Mr. Trump clearly disagrees, but was unable to cite an example on Thursday.
Without question, the interchanges between the air controllers, the plane and the helicopter will be at the center of the investigation. Among the questions that arose on Thursday was whether there were fewer than the usual number of controllers working at the time of the crash, leaving too great a burden on those managing the flights, and why the plane’s pilots were asked to change their approach from one of the main runways at the airport to one of its shorter ones.
But an audio recording of the air traffic controllers’ warnings to the helicopter just before the crash indicated that a controller first warned the helicopter to look for a Canadair Regional Jet and then told the helicopter pilot to go behind the jet as it was landing. That exchange will be part of the investigation.
Within hours of Mr. Trump’s statements, Democrats both criticized and mocked him. Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, noted that Congress had authorized more staff and training for the F.A.A. and that this was “now under threat by the Trump administration” as it looks to shrink the government.
“We cannot have leaders making detrimental, rash decisions to overhaul critical aspects of our national transportation network for the sake of irrelevant culture wars,” Mr. Welch said.
Mr. Trump appeared in the White House briefing room with Vice President JD Vance; the newly sworn-in transportation secretary, Sean Duffy; and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. All three began their comments by praising Mr. Trump’s leadership and repeating that they would eliminate diversity requirements and focus on competence.
Mr. Hegseth, aware that the investigation would focus heavily on the Army Blackhawk helicopter that he said was conducting an annual exercise on Wednesday evening, admitted that a “mistake was made.” But he immediately pivoted to support Mr. Trump, saying that the Defense Department would be “colorblind and merit-based” whether “it’s flying Blackhawks and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government.”
“The era of D.E.I. is gone at the Defense Department,” he continued, “and we need the best and brightest, whether it’s in our air traffic control or whether it’s in our generals.” It was notable in part because he had been a major critic of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charging last year that he was bringing woke culture to the Pentagon and should be removed.
Mr. Trump reserved his harshest criticism for the transportation secretary under Mr. Biden, Pete Buttigieg, accusing him of infusing diversity, equity and inclusion goals at the F.A.A.
Mr. Buttigieg responded on social media. “Despicable,” he wrote. “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. 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.”
Mr. Trump named a new acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration during the news conference: Chris Rocheleau, who spent two decades at the agency and, more recently, has been the chief executive of the National Business Aviation Association, which focuses on the nation’s elite fleet of corporate aircraft. Among other roles at the F.A.A., he had handled the agency’s emergency operations. But his selection underscores the fact that Mr. Trump had not appointed an acting head of the F.A.A. in the opening days of his presidency.
Mr. Rocheleau did not speak at the news conference, nor did the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, who was also in the room. The board will be responsible for the investigation into the causes of the disaster over the Potomac.
Mr. Trump made clear that he might not be willing to wait for investigative conclusions before coming to his own.
“We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas,” he said. He said that “over the year, I’ve watched as things like this happen and they say, ‘Well, we’re always investigating,’ and then the investigation three years later they announce that we think ‘we have some pretty good ideas.’”
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