Trump Is Now Blaming People With Disabilities for D.C. Plane Crash
Republicans are blaming everyone but themselves.

Donald Trump is claiming that diversity, equity, and inclusion is to blame for the deadly collision of a passenger plane and a military helicopter in the Washington, D.C., area.
During a news conference Thursday, Trump cited a âbig push to put diversity into the [Federal Aviation Administration]âs program,â which he insisted happened before his second term began.
âThe FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agencyâs website,â Trump said, citing an âarticle.â
The article is likely this one published by Fox News in January 2024, which reported on an FAA policy to place a âspecial emphasis in recruitment and hiringâ on people with âtargeted disabilitiesâ that included âhearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.â
In a sense, Trump was right: That language did predate his second term. It first appeared on the FAAâs website in 2013, according to Snopes. So it was still in place during Trumpâs first term.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration had released materials targeting disabled employees at the FAA, directing the agency âto immediately return to non-discriminatory, merit-based hiringâ and stop its DEI initiatives. Still, according to the president, DEI was to blame for the deadly incident that happened the next day.
Trump also scrapped all Department of Homeland Security advisory committees in a âcommitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security,â and fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.
Republican lawmakers armed with limited information were quick to play the blame game too. Fox Newsâs Maria Bartiromo spoke to some Republican lawmakers who cast responsibility for the deadly incident on anyone, or anything, but their own party or its leader.
âYou hate to jump to any conclusions,â Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles said, before openly speculating about possible conclusions.
âHuman error?â Ogles mused. âWas it some sort of equipment failure? Did DEI play a role in this type of thing?â
Ogles encouraged examining the incident with âeyes wide open,â but clearly his eyes are focused away from one group in particular.
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson also got a chance to guess, after Bartiromo described an expert blaming the Federal Aviation Agency and air traffic control.
âIâm not exactly sure what caused this, what it was, purely the air traffic control system, but I know itâs completely antiquated, it needs to be upgraded; weâve known about this for years and quite honestly, administrations havenât done anything about it,â Johnson said.
He added that there was an opportunity for âsomeone like Elon Muskâ to âreally modernize things.â
As part of his push to âmodernize things,â shadow president Elon Musk demanded that FAA chief Michael Whitaker quit, because he was angry that Whitaker wanted SpaceX to pay fines for failing to follow its license requirements during two SpaceX launches. Whitaker resigned less than two weeks ago.