President Donald Trump didn’t mince words when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins challenged him with what he dismissed as a “not very smart question” during a White House briefing on the catastrophic midair collision at Reagan National Airport.
The tragedy—an unprecedented disaster involving an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter—claimed 67 lives, making it the deadliest U.S. air disaster since 2001. During the press conference, Collins pressed Trump on his comments linking the crash to Democrat-led policies, DEI initiatives, and air traffic control concerns. Trump, visibly unimpressed, pushed back sharply, arguing that “woke” policies in aviation and government mismanagement had weakened the nation’s air safety standards.
“You don’t even yet know the names of the 67 people who were killed,” Collins said. “And you are blaming Democrats and DEI policies and air traffic control and seemingly the member of the U.S. military who was flying that Black Hawk helicopter. Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of the investigation right now?” But the president was having none of that.
“No, I don’t think so at all,” he responded, per the video below. “I don’t think with the names of the people—you mean the names of the people that are on the plane—you think that’s going to make a difference? They are a group of people that have lost their lives. If you want a list of the names, we can give you that. We’ll be giving that very soon. We’re in coordination with American Airlines. We’re in coordination very strongly, obviously, with the military. But I think that’s not a very smart question. I’m surprised coming from you.”
“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” Trump also said during his briefing. “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. That was not so prior to getting there,” he continued.
“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. And we had it. And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before,” the president stated. “Their policy was horrible,” he added, “and their politics was even worse.”
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