Trump, without citing evidence, attacks FAA DEI initiatives during DC crash briefing

President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration -- under Democratic presidents -- were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.

The air disaster occurred as an American Airlines passenger jet approaching Reagan Washington National Airport collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training flight.

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"I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen," Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room, referring to the policies, even as the investigation into what happened is just getting underway.

This is the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009, when 50 people died after a plane crashed while landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

"I had to say that it's terrible," he said, citing what he called a story about a group within the FAA that had "determined that the [FAA] workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration, just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans."

Trump then signed an executive order later Thursday that appointed Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year veteran of the FAA, as acting commissioner of the agency, which he had said he would do in the briefing. And he signed a second executive order "aimed at undoing all of that damage" caused by the "Biden administration's DEI and woke policies."

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"We want the most competent people. We don't care what race they are," the president said. "If they don't have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they're not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen."

When asked in the earlier briefing by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce whether he was saying the crash was the result of diversity hiring, Trump said, "we don't know" what caused the crash, adding investigators are still looking into that. "It just could have been. We have a high standard. We've had a higher, much higher standard than anybody else."

Even as he made unfounded claims about the FAA's diversity initiatives being a factor in the disaster, he then said the Army helicopter crew could be at fault -- and claimed he wasn't blaming the air traffic controller who communicated with the helicopter.

When asked how he could come to the conclusion that FAA diversity policies had something to do with the disaster, he said, "Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don't."

No determination of fault in the crash has been made, and the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation.

However, the NTSB declined to say whether DEI initiatives were a factor in the crash when asked by reporters later Thursday.

"As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment," NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. "So we will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. Again, we will look at the aircraft. We will look at the helicopter. We will look at the environment in which they were operating in. That is part of that is standard in any part of our investigation."

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In the White House briefing, several Cabinet officials spoke after Trump to address the crash, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying, "What happened yesterday shouldn't have happened."

"And when Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination," he added. "That didn't happen yesterday. That's not acceptable, and so we will not accept excuses. We will not accept passing the buck. 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."

However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while noting that a "mistake was made" in the crash, said the Department of Defense must be "colorblind and merit-based ... whether it's flying Black Hawks, and flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government."

"The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it's in our air traffic control or whether it's in our generals, or whether it's throughout government," he said.

Vice President J.D. Vance, too, alluded to DEI having a part in the crash, saying, "We want the best people at air traffic control."

"If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin," Vance said. "That policy ends under Donald Trump's leadership, because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry."

But when a reporter pressed Trump, saying that similar language on DEI policies existed on the FAA's website under Trump's entire first term, Trump shot back, "I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy and then Biden came in and he changed it. And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I said, a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence."

Trump said Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary in the Biden administration, "just got a good line of bulls---" and said he had "run [the Department of Transportation] right into the ground with his diversity."

"Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying," Buttigieg responded in a statement on X. "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."

Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly called Trump's comments "dangerous, racist, and ignorant."

"President Trump twisted a terrible tragedy -- while families are mourning their loved ones -- to insert his own political agenda and sow division," Kelly said in a statement. "This is not leadership. We need to investigate how this plane crash happened to give a sense of closure to grieving families and prevent future crashes.

"Trump would rather point fingers than look in the mirror and face the fact that he just cut a committee responsible for aviation security," she added. "The issue with our country is not its diversity. It's the lack of leadership in the White House and unqualified Cabinet. Trump's actions and words are dangerous, racist, and ignorant simply un-American."