President Donald Trump groused at Kaitlan Collins on Thursday after the CNN anchor pressed him on whether he was “getting ahead of the investigation” by baselessly blaming Democrats and diversity hiring initiatives for the deadly midair collision over Ronald Reagan National Airport.
During an off-the-rails White House press conference, the president repeatedly pointed the finger at DEI and his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, for the horrific tragedy that has likely left 67 people dead after an American Airlines passenger plane collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter.
“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 fumed at the top of the presser. He also claimed that the FAA hired people with “severe mental disabilities” under Biden. However, the FAA’s policies about hiring people with intellectual disabilities haven’t changed since 2013 — and were in effect during Trump’s first administration.
Meanwhile, with MAGA lawmakers already wondering what “role” DEI played in the accident, Trump repeatedly asserted without evidence that the Biden administration’s efforts to introduce more diversity into the workplace were directly responsible for the tragedy. “A group within the FAA determined the workforce was too white,” Trump declared at one point, quoting articles about the FAA’s diversity push before he took office. “They actually came out with a directive saying it’s too white.”
“If you go to some of the headlines over the past ten years, many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers but turned away because of the color of their skin,” Vice President JD Vance added. “That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership. Safety is the first priority of our aviation industry.”
Once the president took questions, however, reporters asked him to provide proof of his claims that diversity in the workplace was behind the crash, only for Trump to say: “It just could have been.” He would also insist it was merely “common sense.”
Eventually, Collins – who serves as CNN’s chief White House correspondent as well as a primetime host – asked if the president was over his skis by broadly blaming previous administrations and non-white pilots or air traffic controllers for the accident.
“We do not yet know the names of the 67 people who were killed, and you are blaming Democrats and DEI policies and air traffic controllers and seemingly a member of the military who was flying that Black Hawk helicopter,” she noted. “Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of the investigation right now?”
Having labeled CNN “fake news” for years and recently celebrated longtime antagonist Jim Acosta’s departure from the network, Trump took the opportunity to lash out at Collins – whom he’s previously described as a “nasty person.”
“No, I don’t think so at all,” he responded, wondering what difference the “names of the people on the plane” made to his claims.
“Does it comfort their family to hear you blaming DEI policies?” Collins retorted.
“They are a group of people that have lost their lives,” Trump continued. “If you want a list of the names we can give you that – we’ll be giving that very soon. And in coordination with American Airlines, we’re in coordination very strongly, obviously, with the military. But I think that’s not a very smart question.”
As the CNN anchor attempted to interject and ask about Trump “blaming air traffic controllers,” the president snarked that he was “surprised” by her question. This prompted snickers from other administration officials before he moved on to another reporter.
In the meantime, as Trump blames his predecessors and minority hires, liberals and progressives have pointed out that the crash comes a week after Trump ordered hiring freezes across the federal government and changes to the FAA’s hiring policies, which he boasted would restore “excellence and safety” at the agency.
Additionally, while Democrats warned about “Trump’s dangerous freeze of air traffic control hiring,” the president fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard and gutted a key aviation security advisory group. On top of that, representatives for the federal air traffic controllers union worried before the crash that the hiring freezes, key resignations and efforts to push out existing federal employees “could seriously endanger public safety.”
