“He’s saying that because the FAA has hired women and Black people, that our nation’s safety is at risk. It’s kind of incredible that a president of the United States can say that. But let’s examine why he’s saying it. Why did he come out so quickly to try to attack women and Black people for ruining the FAA?” the Connecticut Democrat asked, referring to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“He did that because he is very vulnerable. He has some big questions to answer because the FAA has been in chaos, in crisis since he took over. Elon Musk, his co-president, forced out the FAA administrator, so for the last week, we have been leaderless at the FAA. We have had no one in charge of the FAA.”
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“Trump fired upon taking office the entire FAA Safety Advisory Board,” Murphy explained. “He spent the last week trying to push federal employees out the door, including people at the FAA, trying to bully them into accepting offers to resign. And so we got reports that the control tower was not normal on the night of the crash.”
“Well, that stands to reason, because the FAA has been in meltdown since Trump took over. He knows that he would have to answer for that, so instead of actually explaining why he left the FAA leaderless and without any direction, in chaos, he’s blaming Black people and blaming women who work at the FAA, without any evidence,” Murphy stated.
“Of course, he has no evidence that that’s true, because it’s not true, and, you know, who knows, let’s see what the real reason is here, but this could be a cover up,” Senator Murphy charged.
He went on to say that “what I know is not true, is that DEI and efforts to hire women or Black people or Latinos at the FAA had anything to do with that crash.”
“So, I just want the president to be held accountable for the fact that all of our federal agencies right now are a mess. Every day we are receiving calls from employees at our federal agencies, including the agencies that protect us, saying that everybody is in crisis, that they are looking over their shoulder, wondering whether they are going to be fired, wondering whether the programs that they are running are going to be cut off, and at some point he has to be held to account for the deliberate chaos that he is creating in our federal agencies.”
Citing information from a government report, The Washington Post on Thursday reported that “two people were handling the jobs of four among other colleagues inside National’s control tower at the time of the collision. The control tower staffing levels, the report concludes, were ‘not normal’ for the time of day or the amount of air traffic over D.C., where an average of more than 100 helicopters a day zip around and underneath arriving and departing airline flights.”
Trump fired the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and, gutted the entire Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which was formed “in 1989 after a terrorist attack on Pan Am flight 103.” It “provides advice to the TSA administrator on aviation security matters, including the development, refinement, and implementation of policies, programs, rulemaking, and security directives pertaining to aviation security,” according to its website.
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The Daily Beast reported that the head of the Federal Aviation Administration “stepped down on Jan. 20, months after Elon Musk demanded that he quit.”
Meanwhile, many across the nation have been shocked and aghast over Trump’s responses to the deadly collision of a regional commercial aircraft and an Army helicopter. While the White House issued a boilerplate statement two hours after the incident on Wednesday evening, Trump’s first personal remarks came via a social media post in which he appeared to blame the helicopter and the control tower for the crash.
But the shock continued Thursday, when, during a 35-minute press briefing, President Trump baselessly blamed the hiring practices of his two Democratic predecessors, suggesting FAA controllers might have been minorities and not competent, to which Senator Murphy alluded. Trump also falsely suggested the Biden administration hired people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities to be air traffic control operators—the people responsible for ensuring collisions do not happen.
Trump doubled down Thursday afternoon, signing a presidential memo again strongly suggesting diversity hiring practices were linked to the tragic collision.
