Last night an American Airlines jet with 64 people aboard, including a number of ice skaters and their coaches, collided with a US Army helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington D.C., moments before the plane was due to land at the Reagan National Airport just south of Washington D.C. Late last night and this morning TV watchers saw a video clip from someone who’d captured the collision. The plane on a glide path from the right, as this map shows; the military helicopter flying in from the left, and an explosion. Both aircraft landed in the river, the plane broken into pieces and the helicopter upside-down. It was quickly established that there were no survivors. When I saw the updates this morning, I predicted that Trump would blame Biden. I was right, but not completely right.
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The latest despicable display by the new administration is how, yet again, Trump and his minions blame everything bad that happens in the world the same set of people and ideas they don’t like. Without evidence of course. Textbook definition of prejudice. Pre-judgments regardless of facts. For everything that happens, like the plane crash last night in Washington DC, all they know is to invoke the usual suspects, the usual villains.
NY Times, 30 Jan 2025: How the Plane and Helicopter Collided in Washington: Maps and Graphics
An American Airlines jet and a U.S. Army helicopter plunged into the Potomac River after a midair collision Wednesday night near Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C. Officials said they believed none of the 64 people aboard the plane, or the three U.S. service members aboard the helicopter, survived the crash.
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NY Times, 30 Jan 2025: Trump Blames D.E.I. and Biden for Crash Under His Watch, subtitled “President Trump’s remarks, suggesting that diversity in hiring and other Biden administration policies somehow caused the disaster, reflected his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political or ideological lens.”
President Trump blamed diversity requirements at the Federal Aviation Administration and his two Democratic predecessors for the midair collision over the Potomac River on Wednesday night, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax.
Mr. Trump cited no evidence that diversity programs had anything to do with the fatal accident, which killed 67 people, and even admitted when pressed that the investigation had only just begun.
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Mr. Trump’s instant focus on diversity reflected his instinct to frame major events through his political or ideological lens, whether the facts fit or not. It is something he has done before: After a terrorist attack in New Orleans a month ago, he blamed illegal immigration, even though the attacker was a U.S. citizen born in Texas. When wildfires erupted in California, he blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water management policies, without any evidence that a different approach would have made a difference in the firefighting effort.
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NY Times and WaPo are criticized from the left for being too balanced, too mealy-mouthed. Online sites are usually more forthright, blunter.
Slate, Alexander Sammon, 30 Jan 2025: Trump’s Plane Crash Press Conference Was Unbelievably Vile, Even for Him
On Wednesday night, an American Airlines regional jet collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over D.C., en route to DCA airport. More than 60 people are feared dead in the crash, including passengers, crew, and service members aboard the helicopter, which would make it the deadliest aviation disaster in the United States in a quarter century.
It marks the first major crisis of the nascent Trump presidency, and one with particularly bad optics for the president. In his war with the administrative state and in his determination to gore federal spending, Trump had already fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard and gutted a key aviation safety advisory committee, all just 10 days before the crash. As the Daily Beast reported, Federal Aviation Administration head Michael Whitaker stepped down on Jan. 20, after Elon Musk, the spear tip of Trump’s “cost cutting” spree, demanded that he quit.
These last items immediately suggest a counter-narrative. The head of the FAA resigned/was fired at Musk’s behest; staffing was low; there was one guy doing two jobs when the crash occurred. Continuing:
Not surprisingly, Trump entered Thursday’s presser, his first public comments on the crash, raring to blame it on his enemies, real and imagined. Getting out in front of those facts, Trump called for a moment of silence, and then immediately began to assail Democrats, before essentially concluding that diverse hiring initiatives (“DEI”) were the real culprit to blame for this tragedy.
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“How could diversity have something to do with this crash?” asked one of the journalists in the press pool, after Trump returned to the podium. “Because I have common sense,” answered the president.
This is the MAGA common sense that people who are not white and not men are incompetent and cannot be trusted. They’re shamelessly naked in their bigotry.
Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic former transportation secretary, fired back immediately, tweeting:
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.
I’m surprised Trump didn’t manage to implicate immigrants into his blame-game.
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One more.
The Atlantic, David A. Graham, 30 Jan 2025: Donald Trump Is Just Watching This Crisis Unfold, subtitled “But he’s not taking charge.”
You might be forgiven for forgetting—ever so briefly—that Donald Trump is president of the United States. Sometimes it seems like he does, too.
In the middle of the night, as news about the plane crash at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport was breaking, Trump posted on Truth Social:
The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!
He raises some valid points—ones that many people might be wondering about themselves. The difference between them and him is that he is the leader of the federal government, able to marshal unparalleled resources to get answers about a horror that happened just two and a half miles from his home. He’s the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, and the crash involved an Army helicopter. But Trump isn’t really interested in doing things. Like Chauncey Gardiner, the simple-minded protagonist of Being There, he likes to watch.
And his toadies chimed in.
Vice President J. D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized diversity efforts from the lectern as well. (Trump also misrepresented Federal Aviation Administration programs.) Trump insisted that he wasn’t getting ahead of the investigation by speculating, and that he could tell diversity was to blame because of “common sense.”
Common sense, as I’ve noted before, is an expression of basic human intuitions and is usually wrong in the modern, complex society. In this case, it’s an excuse for racism, and for simple-minded thinking.
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No, perhaps this one is the most beautiful, especially in its last 5 minutes. It explores, it squirms, … and then it settles. Then reconsiders, and does it again. And then again. You feel you have to earn the calm ending.
