As first responders work to recover bodies from the freezing waters of the Potomac, President Donald Trump, without evidence, suggested that diversity hiring and Democrats were at least partly responsible for Wednesday night’s mid-air collision that claimed over 60 lives. His politicized remarks from the podium on Thursday have sparked widespread outrage, compounding the grief of many Americans grappling with the nation’s first fatal aviation disaster since 2009. In addition to “DEI,” Trump also baselessly pointed fingers at former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

The NTSB has only just begun its investigation, which could take years to determine the cause of the deadly collision.

“Minutes after saying the airport collision shouldn’t be politicized, and that it should bring Americans together in common cause, Trump blames Democrats and DEI for the deadly incident,” The Wall Street Journal’s Alex Ward reported, which is in line with the paper’s reporting.

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“I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office,” CNN reported Trump said, at a press conference to address the horrific disaster that has shaken many Americans. “And here’s one, the FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce said ‘they want them in, and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so. This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program,” Trump said.

Q: Are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring?

Pres. Trump: It just could have been…you have to go by brain power. You have to go by psychological quality…these are very powerful tests that we put to use and they were terminated by Biden. pic.twitter.com/IpaxJ12IBm

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 30, 2025

Trump claimed that during his first administration, “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.” He also claimed that when he “left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before.”

“I put safety first, 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 alleged, NBC News reported, adding, “their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”

The President also lashed out at former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, calling him “a disaster,”

“He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit,” Trump announced live in-air, before alleging Secretary Buttigieg ran the Transportation Department “right into the ground with his diversity.”

President Donald Trump puts blame for the Reagan International Airport tragedy on Pete Buttigieg, who is not in office.

“He was a disaster of a mayor, he ran his city into the ground and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit.” pic.twitter.com/tflJhppjoY

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) January 30, 2025

Buttigieg quickly responded.

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“Despicable,” the former Transportation Secretary wrote on social media. “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. 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. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

The New York Times’ Peter Baker observed, “Trump’s move to blame the crash on diversity reflects his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political lens whether facts fit or not. After the terrorist attack in New Orleans, he blamed immigration even though the attacker was a US citizen born in Texas.”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis remarked, “The commander-in-chief should be offering condolences and competent solutions rather blaming women and people of color for everything that goes wrong. Racism and misogyny in response to a national tragedy.”

“This isn’t about making America great again,” commented Professor of Law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. “It makes me profoundly sad that an American tragedy, which requires investigation to assess the cause and prevent future accidents has been politicized & shoehorned into Trump’s anti-inclusion policy for anyone who isn’t a sis [sic] white christian nationalist male or supporter. It makes me sadder that so many people still don’t understand that he’s trying to drive wedges in between us to accumulate more power for himself.”

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison added, “Words can’t express my disgust. In a moment in which you should lead the nation in mourning and navigating a tragedy this heartless imbecile finds ways to divide.”

“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories, it’s another for the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered and families still being notified,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, as CBS News reported. “It just turns your stomach.”

Others pointed to a memo posted to the White House’s website, titled (in all-caps), “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ends DEI Madness And Restores Excellence And Safety Within The Federal Aviation Administration.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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As the nation begins to grapple with and mourn what reportedly are more than 60 deaths from a late Wednesday night mid-air collision over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, some are also grappling with the response from President Donald Trump.

“No one is believed to have survived the midair collision between an American Airlines jet plane and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter last night in the Washington, DC, area, the fire chief said Thursday. President Donald Trump is expected to address the tragedy this morning at the White House Briefing Room,” CNN reported.

The White House put out a statement from President Trump just before 11 PM Wednesday that read: “I have been fully briefed on the terrible accident which just took place at Reagan National Airport. May God Bless their souls. Thank you for the incredible work being done by our first responders. I am monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise.”

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But just after midnight, on his Truth Social website, Donald Trump shared this message.

“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”

Critics are blasting Trump for his Truth Social post.

HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte posted screenshots of both statements and commented: “What people in the WH want you to think the president thinks,” and, “What the president actually thinks.”

What people in the WH want you to think the president thinks:

What the president actually thinks: pic.twitter.com/rD7h05g8fR

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) January 30, 2025

“One of the paradoxes of Trump’s conception of the presidency: he somehow requires absolute and unchecked power, but also seems to think of himself as a passive, tut-tutting observer when the government over which he has that absolute power fails in any way,” observed New York Times opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen, in response to Trump’s social media post. Polgreen is a co-author of the recent Times piece, “Trump Is at His Absolute Worst in a Crisis.”

Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot and former Democratic political candidate responded to Trump’s remarks: “This is not what our president should be doing or saying right now.”

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“The President is asking rhetorical questions about what federal gov’t aircraft was doing, as if someone else should have the answers. This is his responsibility. If he doesn’t know the answers, it’s because he and his unqualified DoD & DoT appointees are incompetent,” declared attorney Max Kennerly.

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias added: “One of Trump’s weirdest bits from Covid was constantly acting like someone else was the president and he’s just a prominent guy raising questions about what the government is doing.”

Others pointed to Trump’s recent actions.

“First aviation disaster in US since 2009 and if it had been under Biden,” Moe Davis, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, attorney, educator, politician, and former administrative law judge wrote. He add that Trump “would yell incompetence and say wouldn’t happen if he was President.”

Davis also noted that the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was “pushed out” by Elon Musk, and that “Trump killed” the Aviation Safety Committee, “fired” the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and “froze air traffic control hiring.”

On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported, “The Federal Aviation Administration’s leader stepped down on Jan. 20, months after Elon Musk demanded that he quit,” and noted that the “move by Michael Whitaker means the FAA has no Senate-confirmed leader for one of the biggest crises in its history because he quit before Donald Trump took office.”

Back in September, Musk tweeted that Whitaker “needs to resign.”

According to the Associated Press, last week “President Donald Trump moved quickly to remake the Department of Homeland Security Tuesday, firing the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard before their terms are up and eliminated all the members of a key aviation security advisory group.”

The AP explained that the “aviation security committee, which was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, will technically continue to exist but it won’t have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports. Before Tuesday, the group included representatives of all the key groups in the industry — including the airlines and major unions — as well as members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing. The vast majority of the group’s recommendations were adopted over the years.”

Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband was killed in the bombing and served on the committee, told the AP, “I naively thought, ‘oh they’re not going to do anything in the new administration, to put security at risk — aviation security at risk.’ But I’m not so sure.”

Shannon Watts, a speaker, organizer, and anti-gun violence activist wrote: “Dems should call for immediate hearings on what caused tonight’s plane crash, including the impact of the removal of FAA safety protocols and personnel.”

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The White House is making clear that even though the Trump budget office has rescinded its highly confusing and controversial memo declaring a massive and widespread freeze on possibly trillions of federal funding dollars, the actual funding freeze itself is still in effect and will be “rigorously implemented.” The rescission of the memo reportedly was merely a tactic to “get around” a court injunction.

“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” wrote White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Wednesday afternoon, after celebrations from the left, believing the memo’s rescission meant the policy was also rescinded. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”

A federal court had placed a temporary, partial “stay,” or pause, on the OMB memo.

“This is just more confusion and chaos,” New York State Attorney General Letitia James said in response to Leavitt. “We will be in court this afternoon.”

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“On the White House rescinding the memo,” reported CBS News senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs, “aides say it is not an end to the intended freeze of federal funding that clashes with Trump’s worldviews. It’s meant to get around the court injunction.”

“Bingo,” U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), one of the more vocal critics of the Trump White House, responded. “Crisis is deepening, not abating. They are trying to ignore the court order.”

“The funding shutdown is still in place. They are just doing it without the piece of paper,” he added.

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) added, “So they reversed the memo and then sent out this? Chaos.”

Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich reported on the White House’s apparent reasoning, telling viewers Wednesday afternoon, “Karoline Leavitt said in the briefing that this [OMB memo] was targeted at things like the $50 million that went to, uh, she said, condoms in Gaza. Initiatives like that are still subject to  this freeze, anything that’s impacted by those executive orders, there were, I think, seven listed in the memo, but in the interim, the OMB has pulled back that memo itself, because that barred communication between OMB and agency heads and what, in fact, was impacted.”

The OMB memo specifically noted programs like the “Green New Deal” would be frozen, even though the Green New Deal was never fully passed or signed into law.

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The White House’s claims about $50 million being sent to Gaza for condoms — repeated on live television Wednesday afternoon by President Donald Trump in a signing ceremony of the Laken Riley Act — also appears to be false.

“According to a comprehensive report issued in September by the US Agency for International Development (USAid), not a penny of the $60.8m in contraceptive and condom shipments funded by the US in the past year went to Gaza,” The Guardian reported Tuesday. “In fact, the accounting shows, there were no condoms sent to any part of the Middle East, and just one small shipment, $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives, was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.”

“As Dan Evon of the non-profit News Literacy Project points out: ‘It’s also worth noting that this is not a Biden program. Trump, too, spent funds on sending contraceptives around the globe. In 2019, about $40m was spent on contraceptives by the Trump administration.’”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Heinrich: Levitt said in the briefing that this was targeted at things like the $50 million that went to condoms in Gaza. Initiatives like that are still subject to this freeze, pic.twitter.com/kWB3kuGFNR

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 29, 2025

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Image via Reuters