Police and coast guard boats are seen around a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, January 30, 2025, in Arlington, Va.
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has blamed diversity policies for the mid-air collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter over Washington that killed all 67 passengers.
Investigators have now recovered the flight data recorders from the airliner and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says it intends to issue a preliminary report on Wednesday’s accident in 30 days.
But during a press conference on Thursday, Mr Trump speculated, without evidence, that diversity policies may have been a factor in the crash at Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The president lashed out at his predecessor Joe Biden and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) efforts to increase diversity in the industry.
Even as he acknowledged that the cause of the crash was unknown, Mr Trump claimed that recruitment policies geared towards diversity had caused standards to slip.
He asserted that the FAA was “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative.”
Wednesday’s crash was the deadliest in the US since November 12 2001, when an American Airline flight slammed into a residential area of Belle Harbour, New York, just after take-off from the John F Kennedy airport, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.
