Trump politicizes air collision as black boxes recovered

Trump politicizes air collision as black boxes recovered

WASHINGTON
Trump politicizes air collision as black boxes recovered

Investigators have recovered the black boxes from a passenger plane that collided mid-air with a military helicopter over Washington's Potomac River, killing all 67 people, as rescuers pulled bodies from the freezing water.

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U.S. President Donald Trump launched a political attack blaming diversity and inclusion policies championed by his Democratic predecessors for causing the incident.

Trump's politicization of the tragedy came as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary that collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter late on Jan. 29.

According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred.

One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.

A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews to search for victims in the dark and cold.

The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.

Just 24 hours before the collision, another plane coming in to land at Reagan National had to make a second approach after a helicopter appeared near its flight path, The Washington Post and CNN reported, citing an audio recording from air traffic control.

Trump, who took office 10 days ago, turned a press conference on the disaster into a platform for his crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI, a series of often decades-old measures meant to combat racism and sexism across the United States.

Accusing his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama of having kept good employees out of the aviation agency in pursuit of DEI, he claimed: "They actually came out with a directive: 'too white.' And we want the people that are competent."

Trump aimed criticism directly at Biden's openly gay transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.

"He's run it right into the ground with his diversity," Trump said.

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The message was hammered home as Vice President JD Vance and new defense secretary Pete Hegseth took turns at the podium to repeat, without evidence, the hard-right theory that diversity measures keep capable Americans out of responsible jobs.

Asked again by reporters whether he was blaming workplace diversity for the crash, Trump answered: "It could have been."

 

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