By April Ryan
NNPA Newswire
“We are dealing with a vicious adversary,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network, speaking of President Donald Trump and his hate diatribe the morning of Jan. 30. President Trump blamed DEI, the Obama and Biden administrations along with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for the deadly midair crash over the Potomac Jan. 29.
Sixty-seven people died after the accident between an American Airline plane and an Army helicopter. When asked why President Trump thought diversity had something to do with the crash, he said, “I have common sense and most people don’t.”
Rev. Sharpton, who is investigating the impact of the Trump anti-DEI efforts in retail, believes Trump is “obsessed with race” and he is a “raw, insensitive, uncaring man.”
Buttigieg, the former Transportation secretary, immediately went to social media, saying Trump “should be leading, not lying.” Buttigieg also fact-checked Trump, saying, “we grew Air Traffic Control and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.”
During Trump’s rant on DEI at the White House briefing room podium, he asserted, “The FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing…people with severe disabilities, the most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in…I don’t think so.” Trump went on to say the prior administrations felt those departments were “too White.”
According to reports FAA staffing has been an issue since Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025. Elon Musk, head of the White House Office of Government Efficiency, is reported to have asked the head of the FAA to resign. Secretary Anthony Foxx exclusively told this reporter after the Trump statements, “I would caution against any definitive conclusions until that work [investigation] is done by trained, experienced professionals.”
Foxx, who also worked as a transportation consultant in the Biden administration, admonished the Trump address saying, “There is no sugar-coating the tragic midair collision that occurred last night. In my experience, safety has always been the number one focus of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
Foxx says there is a safety mission to be completed after this tragedy. “There is a well-practiced root cause process that has been taken in the past. It should be used now with competent professionals. A comprehensive, fact-based investigation will answer the many questions we all have. It would also help guard against future accidents of this type,” according to the transportation expert.
Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet.
When it comes to the president’s corrosive comments, reaction has been swift from the civil rights community.
“The NAACP is disgusted by this display of unpresidential, divisive behavior,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson in a text message. “The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve.”
As Trump worked to distract with his words on DEI, the questions still abound as to what caused the deadly plane crash. Foxx, immediately following the fatal crash last night said. “My worst fear is that something happened with the avionics. I hope and expect that this is not the case. But most aircraft these days run in [on] a form of GPS. Could a warning system have failed? But then, how can two systems fail? That leads to some even more grave concerns about interference with the systems. There are many other potential causes.”
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