Trump’s Plane Crash Response Is as Cheap as You’d Expect
Why would a complete lack of evidence get in the way of a good scapegoat?
THERE ARE PLENTY OF REASONABLE, nuanced, principled criticisms of DEI programs, and we at The Bulwark have made a lot of them.
But the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that Donald Trump and JD Vance advanced at their press briefing Thursday—which was nominally in response to the tragic mid-air collision over the Potomac River Wednesday night—is foolish on its own terms.
Trump took to the White House press room ostensibly to express grief for the dozens of dead and sympathy for their loved ones. But he also used the occasion to blame the tragedy on hiring practices that allegedly valued diversity over merit. He was asked how he knew diversity initiatives at the FAA had anything to do with the crash. “Because I have common sense and unfortunately a lot of people don’t,” he explained.
Vance, in his characteristic manner—simultaneously underbaked and overly lawyerly—joined the chorus. The vice president explained, “When you don’t have the best standards in who you’re hiring, it means on the one hand, you’re not getting the best people in government. But on the other hand, it puts stresses on the people who are already there.”
Trump didn’t just go after diversity in the abstract. He singled out former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—the first openly gay cabinet secretary confirmed by the Senate—calling him a “disaster” and adding, “He’s just got a good line of bullshit.”
It wasn’t clear if Trump’s attacks on DEI referred specifically to Buttigieg or to the FAA workforce more generally. Either way, Buttigieg wasn’t having it:
Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. 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.
Some DEI programs are ham-fisted and, frankly, stupid and self defeating. But there is also no evidence at all that the program had any role to play in the crash. And insisting it did is disrespectful of the FAA, the victims of the crash, and their families.
It also belies the fact that sometimes what Trump et al. see as instruments of social engineering are actually recruitment tools. This is almost certainly the case in the military, which has a hard enough time convincing people to sign up as is. The MAGAs seem not to have realized that making the military seem welcoming to women or LGBT people might be more about the numbers than about “cultural Marxism,” whatever that is.
Let’s do a thought experiment about air traffic controllers, whom Trump and Vance imply are hired not based on their abilities but on diversity quotas. Do you know any air traffic controllers? Chances are you don’t, because there are only 14,000 of them in the country. Have you ever met a kid whose dream was to grow up to be an air traffic controller? Do we think there’s a long line of people just waiting for an air traffic controller spot to open up? To the contrary: There’s a shortage.
So the issue here has nothing to do with unqualified people being hired or promoted based on criteria other than merit. The issue is encouraging more people to want these jobs in the first place. And making high-stress environments—like the military or a control tower—seem welcoming might help with that. Assigning them blame for a deadly, horrifying crash—and doing so with no evidence—may make it harder to recruit.
Again, it’s too early to determine if the air traffic controllers were at fault at all. This is why we have investigations. But Trump’s and Vance’s feelings—and their appetite to score political points and put accountability on anyone but themselves—don’t seem to care about the facts.
