The deadliest aviation disaster in America since 2001 occurred in Washington DC Wednesday night (January 26). All 67 passengers and crew aboard the passenger jet and a military helicopter were killed when they collided and crashed into the Potomac River.
In the past when a
disaster like this occured the President would ask people to stay calm, not
jump to conclusions, and wait for more information.
Instead, President Trump, before any facts
were known, starts blaming everyone but himself. A little more than an hour
after the crash Trump posted on social media “…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!!!”
The next morning Trump told reporters that the problem was the
previous administrations’ (that of Obama and Biden) DEI (Diversity, Equity,
Inclusion) policies and lowering of safety standards. He said “I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the
Democrats put policy first. And they put politics at a level that nobody has
ever seen, because this was the lowest level…” He accused Pete Buttigieg,
the former transportation secretary under Biden, for running the Department of
Transportation very badly.
Buttigieg responded. “Despicable.
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.”
Buttigieg was referring to Trump’s elimination of the Aviation Security
Advisory Committee.
Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association, told CBS News that he stands behind “every highly skilled, highly trained air traffic controller that is out
there. It doesn’t matter their race, color, religion, you can know you are in
the best hands…”
Tennessee Garvey, chair of the Organization of Black Aerospace
Professionals, asserted that the rigorous standards for hiring pilots,
mechanics, and air traffic controllers were never relaxed to meet diversity
goals, and that recruiting standards had not been responsible for any air traffic
episodes. Trump has not provided any evidence to back up his claims to the contrary.
When asked by a reporter how he could be so sure, so quickly, that
DEI was a factor in the crash, Trump replied “Because I have common sense, ok? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”
Trump believes he is the world’s most
brilliant genius and an expert on every subject, and has no need for such
mundane things as facts. This reminds me of his ideas of injecting bleach to
cure COVID-19; “drill, Baby, drill” to lower energy costs; and turning on the
water faucet to fight the Los Angeles fires.
Some facts have come out since the crash. The tower at Ronald
Reagan Airport in Washington DC where the plane was headed, like most (90% in one report) air
traffic control facilities across the country, has been understaffed for years
due to employee turnover and budget cuts (likely due to Republican opposition
to fully fund the FAA). Some traffic controllers at Reagan Airport that day were handing
helicopters as well as the planes landing and departing, jobs which are usually
done by two controllers because the different aircraft use different radio
frequencies. Could that have been a factor??
During the Biden administration the Republican controlled Congress blocked funding for the hiring of 3,000 more controllers. And the immediate federal hiring freeze that Trump
put in place the first day (which applies to air traffic controllers) isn’t helping. And Thursday night Trump’s Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) made the situation worse. They sent out an email, 24 hours
after the crash, to every air traffic controller (among other civil servants)
encouraging them to resign immediately and take an early retirement. I’m sure there are no plans to
immediately replace them and if there has been a decades-long shortage there are
no qualified controllers to take their jobs. How is this making airports safer?
It also turned out that one of the helicopter pilots killed in
the crash was a woman, which fits right in with the Republican idea of DEI,
which is that every member of a minority – by race, sex, gender – is inherently
less qualified than a white male.
When this news came out the online vitriol shifted to the
helicopter pilots. The family of the female pilot have asked the Army not to
release her name due to concerns for their safety. Speaking of jumping to
conclusions, a rumor started that the female pilot was a transgender woman who
is a Black Hawk pilot. Her name and picture were soon posted all over X. The
soldier, Jo Ellis, posted a video of herself proving that she wasn’t the one killed, and
had this to say “I understand some people
have associated me with the crash in DC. The charge against me is false. It is
insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda.
They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this.”
We still don’t know what caused this crash but I have two
predictions – make that three:
1.
There will be more airport disasters in the next 4
years.
2.
Trump will continue to blame anyone but himself.
3.
His base will continue to believe every lie that he
utters.
Sources
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-30-2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/air-traffic-control-staffing-plane-crash.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/politics/trump-plane-crash-dei-faa-diversity.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/over-90-percent-u-s-airport-towers-understaffed-air-traffic-controllers-data-shows/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/30/trump-washington-dc-plane-crash-dei
Your predictions will most certainly come true
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