According to the latest available information, American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members when it collided midair with an Army helicopter, which was carrying three people, near Reagan Washington National Airport. The White House has since confirmed that there were no survivors. A recovery effort is ongoing in the Potomac River.
Basic human decency would suggest the immediate aftermath is a poor time for partisan politics and cheap shots. Indeed, all a president has to do in a situation like this is extend his sympathies, marshal available resources, and keep the public informed.
President Donald Trump, true to form, chose a different direction.
The first sign of trouble emerged shortly after midnight when the Republican published an odd statement to his social media platform, offering baseless speculation about what happened. “This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented,” Trump added. “NOT GOOD!!!”
As the morning progressed, the White House announced that the president would offer additional public remarks on the tragedy, which offered Trump an opportunity to do what he failed to do overnight. Instead, he made matters vastly worse. As NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump targeted former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in his remarks on the deadly D.C. plane crash, saying Biden’s “policy was horrible.”
To be sure, expectations were low ahead of the Republican’s public remarks on the disaster. Trump hasn’t exactly earned a reputation for excellence when it comes to post-tragedy responses.
But the incumbent president failed to clear a low bar.
“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary,” Trump said, without providing evidence or citing specific policy.
“And then when I 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,” he continued, adding, “their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”
Trump took an especially aggressive line toward Buttigieg, calling him “a disaster” who’s “got a good line of bulls—.”
Despite the inconvenient fact that the investigation is just getting started, and officials don’t yet know the cause of the crash, the president also felt comfortable sharing his assumptions about “a pilot problem” that Trump also chose to blame.
In case that weren’t quite enough, Trump also decided to point fingers at an “FAA diversity push” that “includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities that is amazing.”
Asked if the crash was caused by diversity hiring, the president said, “It just could have been.”
A reporter pressed Trump to explain how, exactly, he came to the conclusion that diversity had something to do with the crash. He replied, “Because I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”








