Trump on Plane Crash Tragedy

Never Missing an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity.

President Trump spoke briefly to the nation following the tragic plane crash that took the lives of sixty-seven men, women, and children this week.

It was a time for the nation’s leader to offer words of both sorrow and solace. President Trump, however, never one to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, instead chose the occasion to politicize the tragedy with a tasteless ad hominem suggesting, without a shred of evidence, that the nation’s and, more particularly, the FAA’s diversity programs were responsible for the accident.

When a journalist in attendance asked what evidence there was to blame federal diversity programs for the tragedy, President Trump answered that his “common sense” informed him that federal diversity programs (DEI) were the culprit, thereby demonstrating a remarkable lack of, well, common sense.

Common sense suggests that politicians, especially those within the White House, would be well advised to await the findings of the investigations now underway before pontificating and seizing the opportunity to use the tragedy to make premature, tasteless, and unfounded political points. The father of the pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the tragic accident said any attempt to blame the crash on "DEI" only added to the family's grief. He said no one in the Army lands a spot on a Black Hawk without being qualified.

At first blush, the catastrophic accident seems inexplicable. The video of the accident, which America has repeatedly watched on television, seems to confirm that the American Airlines plane was on track to touch down in a matter of seconds when the helicopter collided with it. Early reports suggest the helicopter may have been flying too high an altitude. Still, a final determination of what went so wrong must await the completion of the federal investigation, which is now in progress.

"We do not know what led to this crash,” President Trump said, but “we have some very strong opinions and ideas." Then, without offering any evidence, he speculated that lowered hiring standards for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration during the Joe Biden and Barack Obama presidencies may have been a factor in the disaster. One wonders who the “we” with those very strong opinions and ideas might be. Perhaps those in the Trump administration who constitute the “we” should identify themselves so that the country could learn of any evidence that suggests that the government’s DEI programs may have caused the tragic accident.

Republican Sam Graves of Missouri, who oversees the Federal Aviation Administration in the House of Representatives, quickly countered Trump’s inference that DEI programs may have been responsible for the accident. “Diversity initiatives at the FAA had nothing to do with the crash between the commercial airliner and the Army helicopter that killed 67 people earlier this week,” he said in an interview with Politico.

“I don’t think DEI had anything to do with this particular accident,” Graves said. “We have dozens and dozens and dozens of helicopter flights up and down the Potomac and the Anacostia [rivers] every day, and they interact with those airline flights coming in and out. We have to find out what exactly happened…These are very experienced pilots, too. We need to get the facts first before we go running off and trying to fix problems that maybe aren't problems to begin with."

This was Representative Graves's polite way of admonishing the President of the United States to stop acting half-cocked and making unfounded and highly partisan political points at the expense of the men and women who keep our airways safe.

Representative Graves wasn’t the only Republican admonishing President Trump not to use the tragedy to score political points. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina warned, "It seems a bit early to me when I think that statement was made before we even have a flight data recorder." The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) issued a joint statement calling Trump's comments "irresponsible, disparaging, and wrong.” AAPD President Maria Town warned, "The president is deliberately spreading falsehoods to demonize the quarter of American adults who live with disabilities rather than directing federal resources towards ensuring such a devastating tragedy never happens again."

Most Presidents of the United States, indeed, most citizens of our country, understand that there are times for partisanship and times when the imperative should be to at least try to unite the nation during a time of grief. Sadly, however, those traits that might demonstrate at least a modicum of sound judgment and sensitivity were remarkably absent when the President stood at the podium at the White House to comment on the tragedy that unfolded at Reagan National Airport last Wednesday. American families were grieving. Sixty-seven souls were tragically lost, among them fourteen young figure skaters and their coaches.

President Trump, never one to shy away from burnishing his credentials for being all-knowing, had this to say about the tragic collision between the Blackhawk helicopter and American Eagle Airlines flight 5342.

President Trump: "Again, you could have slowed down the helicopter substantially; you could have stopped the helicopter. You could have gone up, you could have gone down. You could have gone straight up, straight down, you could have turned – you could have done a million different maneuvers. For some reason, it just kept going and then made a slight turn at the very end, and there was by that time it was too late. They shouldn't have been at the same height, because if it wasn't the same height, you could have gone under it or over it, and nobody realized or they didn't say that it's at the same height. It would still wouldn't have been great, but you would have missed it by quite a bit. It could have been 1,000 feet higher or 200 feet lower, but it was exactly at the same height, and somebody should have been able to point that out."

Ecclesiastes 3:7 teaches that there is a time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silent, and a time to speak.

“…a time to keep silent and a time to speak.”

Please share our weekly commentary with others.

Of Thee I Sing 1776. Subscribe here:

https://oftheeising1776.substack.com/subscribe

Recent podcasts have featured my commentary on Liz Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” as well as my commentaries regarding:

U.S. Representative Jim Jordan,

Brian Kemp and Those Republicans of Georgia,

The Trump Indictments,

The Fox Corp Settlement,

The CNN Trump Town Hall,

The Hunter Biden plea deal,

The New American Cult of Personality,

and my interviews with William Bratton, Retired Chief of Police in New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston;

Rikki Klieman, Attorney, Network News Analyst, and best-selling author;

John Thoresen, Executive Director, Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center;

Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry and founder of the Institute for Political Innovation;

Jazz artist Ann Hampton Callaway;

Outlander author Diana Gabaldon;

AI Data Scientist Lawrence Kite;

Ryan Clancy, Chief Strategist of No Labels;

Former Senator Barbara Boxer;

Former Senator Joe Lieberman;

and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.

Novels by Hal Gershowitz