There is a good reason why American commercial airliners have safely flown billions of miles since the last major tragedy. Every incident, near miss or accident is minutely investigated, without rushed conclusions, political bias or uninformed speculation. The result is an industry based on multiple layers of redundancy, faithfully followed safety protocols, pilot checklists and codes of practice that have made the unnatural business of humans taking to the skies safer than climbing into a car.
President Donald Trump, however, ignored all those principles when addressing the disaster in Washington’s crowded skies the night before, in one of the most staggering spectacles in the White House briefing room since his last term. In his first national crisis since reassuming the presidency, he put his political goals and need for adulation above the need to find untainted answers about the catastrophe and over the indescribable pain of victims’ families.
Trump’s approach highlighted his determination to break the mold of every other modern president and to prioritize what he called “common sense” over traditional expertise in government – to now include air accident investigations. But his appearance also underscored a fundamental question raised by his second term: whether his impulse to be a disrupter may sometimes be counterproductive and even jeopardize the well-being of Americans.
Trump blamed diversity hiring in the air traffic control industry for the crash and said it was due to former President Joe Biden’s policies. He profanely slandered the last administration’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg – a potential future Democratic presidential candidate. Trump did not provide evidence that diversity hiring practices had caused the crash, and his comments implied that only White males are suitable for keeping planes in the sky.
The president’s performance only succeeded in establishing immediate and baseless conclusions as to what caused the crash, added layers of speculation that will hamper public understanding of the investigation’s conclusions, and injected grieving family members immediately into the heat of a raging political controversy.
