First responders were still recovering bodies from the Potomac River on Thursday when President Donald Trump told the nation that his predecessors, Democrats and diversity were to blame for Wednesday night’s fatal collision of an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger plane landing at Reagan National Airport.
Within five minutes of asking for a moment of silence for the victims, Trump pivoted to his political agenda, notably his promises to shrink the federal workforce and eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs from all agencies. The president told reporters he had seen no evidence to attribute the crash to changes in hiring standards for air traffic controllers.
“It just could have been,” he said. “Because I have common sense.”
National Transportation Safety Board officials said it is too early to draw conclusions about the causes of the crash, which appeared to have claimed all 67 lives on the two aircraft, authorities said. They have not yet recovered recording devices commonly known as black boxes from the aircraft.
“As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, whom Trump nominated to the board in 2018. Board members said they would file a preliminary report within 30 days.
Trump’s comments prompted rebukes from both Republicans and Democrats on Thursday, many of whom said the president was politicizing a tragedy and using it to further his agenda to reduce the federal workforce and end diversity programs.
“I would caution folks, especially my conservative friends on my side of the aisle, let’s hold off on all the finger-pointing,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), a member of the House Transportation Committee, said on CNN.
Trump made himself the face of the tragedy and the center of the story, as he did in his first term with daily briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, an impulse some advisers said did not always help him politically - but that he could not always resist.
Many presidents have faced the difficult task of consoling and uniting the nation after shocking tragedies, sometimes turning them into defining moments. Examples include Ronald Reagan’s response to the Challenger explosion in 1986, Bill Clinton’s remarks on the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995, George W. Bush’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Barack Obama’s reaction to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.
Trump has consistently rejected that role, instead inflaming divisions, as he did after the deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville in 2017 and his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has previously blamed diversity for problems ranging from inflation to weakening the military. Elon Musk and other Republican allies have suggested diversity as a contributor to Los Angeles’s wildfire response, the collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge, the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, and security failures leading to the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump.
“At these moments you’re supposed to take a solemn note of respect. That’s what we do in America when tragedy occurs,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said. “But Trump tried to use it as an opportunity to push the MAGA 2025 agenda in a nonsensical way.”
On Thursday, Trump said he consciously decided against a more measured approach. He said the absence of information from the preliminary investigation would not stop him from sharing his views.
“We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas,” he said. “And I think we’ll probably state those opinions now, because over the years I’ve watched as things like this happen and they say, ‘Well, we’re always investigating.’ ”
At turns, he raised the possibility of errors by air traffic control, managed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Army pilot, who was flying a routine training mission.
“Some really bad things happened and some things happened that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
But most of all, Trump pointed the finger at diversity programs under the Obama and Biden administrations that he targeted on Inauguration Day with several executive orders - but which he did not change in his first term. He read the headline of a 2024 Fox News article to take special aim at an FAA program to recruit people with disabilities such as missing extremities, paralysis, hearing and vision loss, epilepsy and severe intellectual disability. But Trump extended the program during his term to recruit for air traffic control.
Before being hired, air traffic controllers go through mental and physical testing so rigorous that few make it through the training. They have to pass an entrance exam, attend an academy, and achieve certification for every position they hold. Consideration for people with disabilities is a long-standing, government-wide policy that does not apply to hiring air traffic controllers, according to a former FAA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“We have to have our smartest people,” Trump said. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.”
Several members of Trump’s new Cabinet joined him in the White House briefing room to amplify his message blaming diversity for the disaster.
“We can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety,” Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said. “We are going to take responsibility at the Department of Transportation and the FAA to make sure we have the reforms that have been dictated by President Trump in place to make sure that these mistakes do not happen again and again.”
“It is color-blind and merit-based,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department,” he added, using an abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion. DEI programs consider race as well as gender, veteran status, disabilities and sexual orientation.
“They were turned away because of the color of their skin,” Vice President JD Vance said of air traffic controllers. “That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership.”
Trump used a profanity to criticize the Biden administration’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg responded on X calling the president’s appearance “despicable” and blamed him for removing top federal officials responsible for aviation safety.
“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) told reporters Thursday. “It’s another [for] the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered and families are still being notified. It just turns your stomach.”
Trump named as acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau, the chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association. The position was vacated on Jan. 20 by Michael Whitaker, who stepped down rather than complete his five-year term that would have ended in 2028. Whitaker drew bipartisan praise but was criticized by Trump donor and adviser Elon Musk after proposing fines for his SpaceX company.
Later Thursday, the president signed a memorandum to Duffy and Rocheleau directing an assessment of aviation safety. Staff secretary Will Scharf said the review would target “the damage done to aviation safety by the Biden administration’s DEI and woke policies.”
“And Obama,” Trump added. Asked again whether race or gender had played a role in the crash, he said: “It may have, I don’t know. Incompetence might have played a role.”
He said he was not concerned that his administration’s invitation for federal employees to resign could create staffing shortages at agencies like the FAA.
The president said his administration was in touch with governments of foreign nationals killed in the crash. He declined to say whether he had spoken to any families.
“I have a plan to visit, not the site because you tell me, what’s the site? The water? Want me to go swimming?” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “But I will be meeting with people that were very badly hurt, with their family members, obviously. But I’ll be meeting with some of the families.”
The Russian Embassy said it expects to receive information from the State Department about its citizens aboard the plane, who included figure skating champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov. The embassy thanked U.S. authorities for “constant contact” and willingness to help repatriate remains.
Trump said he had not spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the crash.
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Mariana Alfaro, Matt Viser, Kim Bellware, Ian Duncan and Natalia Abbakumova contributed to this report.