Kaitlan Collins presses Trump after he blames Biden and DEI for plane collision

Washington (CNN) — In the first national tragedy of his second term in the White House, President Donald Trump wasted no time Thursday baselessly blaming Democrats and diversity initiatives in the federal government for the midair collision that killed 67 people over the Potomac River.

The investigation is in its earliest stages, but Trump’s speculation was not.

“I have common sense, OK?” Trump said when pressed what evidence he had to give credence to the blame he piled on the Biden and Obama administrations. “Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

It was the first time since returning to power that Trump stood in the White House briefing room to address the nation. He called the moment “an hour of anguish for our nation,” but he abruptly pivoted to a familiar script that played out during his first four years in office.

Shortly after the president declared there were “no survivors,” he pointed the finger of blame to his old political rivals, suggesting diversity initiatives led to lax aviation standards that contributed to the crash. Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy echoed his view.

“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” Trump said. “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary, you remember that. Only the highest aptitude, they have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people, were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers.”

He also blasted former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who served as the only openly gay member of the Biden cabinet, sarcastically calling him “a real winner.”

“Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation?” Trump said. “He’s a disaster. He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster – now he’s just got a good line of bulls**t.”

It was a remarkable moment, with television broadcasts showing a split-screen of the recovery effort on the Potomac only miles away from the White House, as Trump spoke. Not long after he left the briefing room, Buttigieg replied on social media.

“President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA,” Buttigieg wrote. “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.”

Trump has taken Washington by storm with a dizzying flurry of executive actions and orders during the first 11 days of his presidency, reflecting an air that both he and his advisers are far more familiar with the workings of government than the chaotic opening of his first term.

Yet he made clear on Thursday that even as commander-in-chief, he has no plans to soften much of the bluster than was the anthem of his first term. He berated reporters in the briefing room and set off on a course of speculation and judgment.

He appeared to place blame for the midair collision on “very late” warnings from air traffic control and the soldiers flying the US Army Black Hawk helicopter, who, he said, “should have seen where they were going.”

“The analysis was, it was based on vision,” Trump said, when asked about his sense of who is at fault. “You had a lot of people that saw what was happening. You had some people that knew what was happening. There was some warnings, but the warnings were given very, very late.”

Trump did not specify which people he was referring to but seemed to be referring to air traffic control. He also questioned the helicopter’s elevation at the time of the crash.

The president’s comments come in spite of the fact that no investigation has yet placed blame for the crash on air traffic controllers who were working Wednesday night. It’s also not clear whose administration hired the controllers involved.

“When I arrived in 2016, I made that change very early on, because I always felt this was a job that, and other jobs too, but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence, and we didn’t really have that,” Trump said. “And we had it. And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before.”

Trump issued a presidential memorandum later on Thursday directing a review of aviation policies and what the White House referred to as “the damage done” to aviation safety under the Biden administration. The memo specifically calls for a thorough reassessment of the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) hiring practices implemented during the previous administration.

“Elevating competence over everything else, instead of the DEI policies that were pursued by the Biden administration,” Trump said. “And Obama, yes. But Biden, much worse,” Trump quickly added.

The investigation into one of the nation’s deadliest aviation disasters in modern history is only now beginning. The federal authorities tasked with conducting the probe are part of the very government workforce that Trump is seeking to remake.

The briefing on Thursday seem to put a new spin on the sign that once adorned President Harry Truman’s desk: Instead of the buck stopping with the president, he was instead first to assign blame.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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