Trump Takes Aim At Fallen Standards In Air Traffic Control In Post-Crash Briefing

President Donald Trump held a press conference Thursday morning after the crash between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight near Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., Wednesday night. After expressing the nation’s grief for those lost in the tragedy, the president denounced past Democratic administrations for weakening air traffic control standards.

“I speak to you this morning in an hour of anguish for our nation,” Trump began. “This was a dark and excruciating night in our capital and a tragedy of terrible proportions. We grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so sadly.”

After expressing sympathies for the victims, Trump stressed the need for stronger Federal Aviation Administration standards and took aim at Democratic administrations which he said had weakened them.

“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” he 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. That was not so, prior to getting there. 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,” Trump stated. “I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”

“I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office, and here’s one,” he said quoting  Fox News article from January 2024: “The FAA diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.”

The article stated:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which says “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.” The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.

“’The Initiative is part of the FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring plan,'” Trump quoted. “Think of that. ‘The initiative is part of the FAA’s diversity and inclusion hiring plan, which says diversity is integral to achieving FAS mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel.’ I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think it’s just the opposite.”

“The FAA website shows that the agency’s guidance on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23 of [2022]. They wanted to make it even more so,” he stated. “And then I came in, and I assume maybe this is the reason; the FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a real winner. The guy’s a real winner. You know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation. 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***. The Department of Transportation, his government agency charged with regulating civil aviation, well, he runs it —45,000 people — and he’s run it right into the ground with his diversity. So I had to say that it’s terrible.”

Given his criticism of the former Transportation Secretary, the president said in response to a question from Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan that it was helpful to have his new secretary confirmed the day before.

.@MaryMargOlohan: "Is it helpful to have your Secretary of Transportation confirmed, and does this intensify your interest in getting other nominees confirmed quickly as well?"@POTUS: "We want fast confirmations. And the Democrats are doing everything they can to delay them." pic.twitter.com/EOCBzqawxP

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 30, 2025

During his remarks, Trump hammered past administrations for maintaining that the FAA was “too white.”

“Then it’s a group within the FAA, another story determined that the workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately,” the president continued. “This was in the Obama administration just prior to my getting there — and we took care of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, we took care of everybody at levels that nobody has ever seen before. It’s one of the reasons I won. But they actually came out with a directive: too white. We want the people that are competent.”