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After the deadly collision between a passenger plane and a U.S. Army helicopter in Washington, D.C., politicians and political commentators were quick to cast blame. President Donald Trump suggested diversity initiatives within the Federal Aviation Administration were at fault for the crash, and his critics pointed to a hiring freeze that Trump instituted on Jan. 20.
But neither side has evidence that those actions contributed to the crash.
The midair collision on Jan. 29 near Reagan Washington National Airport left no survivors. A total of 67 people reportedly died — 64 who were on the plane coming from Wichita, Kansas, and three soldiers who were in the helicopter.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into what caused the crash. In a press conference on Jan. 30, leaders stressed that the case was just beginning, and they had no answers yet.
Trump Blames His Predecessors
At a press conference on Jan. 30, Trump told reporters, “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions.”
The president then went on to suggest that diversity hiring programs were to blame. He referred to a memo he signed on Jan. 21, eight days before the crash, titled “Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation.”
The memo incorrectly attributed a long-standing policy of the FAA only to former President Joe Biden’s administration, saying that “the prior administration sought to specifically recruit and hire individuals with serious infirmities that could impact the execution of their essential life-saving duties.”
At the press conference, Trump, again, made the same claim. He read aloud a headline that had been published by the New York Post and Fox News a year earlier. The headline said, “The FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.” The president added, “They can be air traffic controllers — I don’t think so.”
That story was published in January 2024, following an incident in Oregon when an emergency exit door flew off of a Boeing 737 while it was in flight. Trump wrongly indicated that the story was published in January 2025, weeks before he took office.
The Fox News story had linked to a page on the FAA website about diversity and inclusion initiatives that had been active since at least 2013, according to the Internet Archive, and as Snopes discovered last year. Notably, that page had also been active — and carried the same language — through Trump’s first administration.
“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,” Trump read at the press conference, adding: “I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think it’s just the opposite.”
Citing the FAA website, Trump said the federal government had identified certain disabilities “for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” saying they included “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis” and more. All of that language was on the FAA’s website during Trump’s first term.
The Washington Post Fact Checker also noted that during Trump’s first administration, in 2019, the FAA announced a new program “to help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations.”
In his Jan. 21 memo, however, the president said that “diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring … penalizes hard-working Americans who want to serve in the FAA but are unable to do so, as they lack a requisite disability or skin color.”
At the press conference, when a reporter asked Trump why he thought the reason for the crash was diversity among air traffic controllers, the president said, “Because I have common sense.”
Later on Jan. 30, a reporter asked if Trump was saying that “race or gender played a role in this tragedy.” Trump said: “It may have. I don’t know. Incompetence might have played a role. We’ll let you know that, but we want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are. We want the most competent people especially in those positions.”
Critics Blame Trump
Meanwhile, on social media, some critics of Trump are claiming or suggesting — also without proof — that he is the one responsible for the deadly crash.
An account belonging to Trill Clinton, whose bio says he worked for the Department of Housing and Urban and Development during the Obama administration, published a Jan. 30 post on X saying, “You dont get to: 1. Fire the head of the TSA, and the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. 2. Freeze hiring of all Air Traffic Controllers. 3. Fire 100 top FAA security officers. And then claim a plane crash a week later is ‘a tragic accident.’”
Sawyer Hackett, a democratic strategist and consultant, similarly wrote on X, “If a Democrat fired 100 FAA employees and put a freeze on hiring air traffic controllers 8 days before an airport plane crash, there would be a right-wing and media frenzy for weeks.” In another post, Hackett said, “The plane crash in DC was Trump’s fault.”
But there is no evidence that any recent executive actions taken by Trump played a role in the incident.
On his first day back in office as president, Trump did sign an executive order putting a temporary freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees.
“As part of this freeze, no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law,” the order said.
However, the order also said that the hiring freeze does not apply to “military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.” The White House told us in an email that the freeze did not apply to air traffic control specialists because of the public safety exemption. A spokesperson also said that no air traffic controllers were fired.
On Jan. 30, the New York Times, citing an internal FAA report on safety, reported that staffing at Reagan National Airport’s air traffic control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.” But an Associated Press source later contradicted that FAA report, telling the AP that staffing was normal the night of Jan. 29.
But the Reagan airport tower “has been understaffed for years” and “was nearly a third below targeted staff levels,” as of September 2023, the Times said in its report.
It’s also true that after he took office, Trump removed the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard and eliminated members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee — although it’s not clear that those decisions had a direct connection to the Jan. 29 crash, either.
In a story addressing claims that Trump is at fault, PolitiFact quoted Jim Cardoso, a former U.S. Air Force colonel and pilot who directs the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute, as saying that “the actions by President Trump would not have led to such an immediate impact.”
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