The Media Research Center had been trying to blame the deadly plane crash outside Washington, D.C., on DEI initiatives, despite the complete lack of evidence to back it up. David Milliken tried to keep up that narrative in a Jan. 31 post:
Following the tragic mid-air collision at Reagan Washington National Airport, MSNBC seemed mostly concerned with its potential as fuel for demonizing President Trump. On Thursday’s episode of Chris Jansing Reports, Jansing dove directly into President Trump’s comments on the tragedy and took issue with him calling out the possible role DEI programs played, particularly their effort to hire people with “severe intellectual” and “psychiatric” disabilities. She even invited a former acting FAA administrator to shoot down Trump’s assertions, but he didn’t; because he oversaw them.
Standing near the accident scene, on the bank of the Potomac, Jansing huffed that “without evidence” Trump suggested “DEI policies from the previous Biden administration somehow played a role in the crash.”
She then cut to a video from the conference, in which Trump seemed to read from a New York Post article about how, “The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.”
That policy was indeed spelled out on the agency’s website, and, regardless of whether it was responsible for this particular accident, it was not exactly a policy to instill confidence in the current state of air travel in America.
Anyone who has actually flown a plane is acutely aware that when you take off or land, your life is in the hands of whoever is in that control tower. If there is reason to believe that the air traffic controller guiding your flight has a severe mental illness, or some sort of other severe impairment, that is, to say the least, not a comforting thought.
But Milliken offered no evidence that anyone with a “severe mental illness” was ever hired as an air traffic controller. But he still felt the need to serve up a fact-free lecture anyway:
Whether or not it was the best move for Trump to make those comments in that way at that time, it is hard to rationally argue with the point. What happened Wednesday was a terrible thing for a great many innocent people, and whatever caused it in this case, if we don’t want it to happen again, a serious reevaluation of FAA hiring policies would seem a very good idea. There are lots of great things that people with severe disabilities can do in this world, but in a reality where we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, responsibility for the safe operation of an airliner is not at the top of the list.
Alex Christy lashed out at commentator Jonathan Capehart for calling out Trump:
Capehart eventually focused on Trump’s press conference after the Army Black Hawk helicopter-civilian airliner crash as the main source of his indignation, “He does a — fine, he does a moment of silence, and then spends the next 25 minutes saying some of the most racist things I have ever heard come out of the White House, come out of the White House Press Briefing Room, come out of the mouth of the president of the United States, scapegoating anyone who isn’t white, Christian, male, straight, for problems in the country, and then deflecting blame onto past presidents, Democratic presidents.”
Tim Graham spent his Feb. 1 podcast complaining that the lack of evidence used by right-wingers to blame DEI was called out:
Speculation can be the opposite of information, but any breaking news event is going to be wallowing in it. A plane-helicopter crash that kills 67 over the nation’s capital is going to dominate many news cycles. The victims and their loved ones left behind deserve a nonpartisan, fact-based investigation of what happened. Our political system makes that difficult.
It would be nice if any blame games could be postponed until more information is known. Some Democrats on social media were blaming President Trump early on. The Democrats in the media were furious that Trump would hint that the Federal Aviation Administration’s crusade to water down hiring standards for air traffic controllers for DEI reasons “could have been” part of the problem.
The networks announced Trump claimed “without evidence” that DEI could be to blame. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins questioned him at the White House and then attacked him on her show. Jim Acosta would have loved to have his own primetime show to display his battles with Trump. This can leave the impression that it’s false to say the FAA was all about DEI — not just for race or gender, but to hire controllers who had a speech impediment or PTSD. The evidence there is voluminous. But ABC and CBS and CNN and the rest are fond of DEI, so that’s triggering.
Jorge Bonilla not only reported all the “without evidence” charges, he tweeted a clip from a 2014 hearing where liberal Democrat Sen. Patty Murray expressed concerns that the hiring process at FAA seemed to be devaluing training and focusing on a diverse labor force.
Milliken returned to complain some more that Trump was criticized:
On Thursday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, Stephanie Ruhle hosted a panel including Tim Miller of The Bulwark podcast, NBC senior national politics reporter Jonathan Allen, and New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. Ostensibly the topic of discussion was Wednesday night’s mid-air crash at Reagan National Airport, in which all 67 people on both aircraft perished, but in reality they just used the discussion as an opportunity to run rampant on President Trump, not even pretending to conceal their contempt or keeping up the flimsiest facade of civility.
Ruhle cut straight to the chase, raising the subject of the president’s remarks the day after the crash, “Investigations have barely begun, and this is what our president had to say. What do you think?”
“Yeah, he’s such a POS,” Miller responded:
[…]Baker picked up where the others left off, claiming he has “never seen a president like this,” and accusing Trump of having an “empathy gap,” being “much more comfortable being the blamer-in-chief than the consoler-in-chief,” and lacking “empathy,” “compassion,” and “concern for human suffering.”
When the conversation gets back around to Miller, he clarified, “I will just say — I disagree with Jon, I do think it’s necessary to call the president names because that’s all he does is call people names … He attacks everybody.”
At least, as these four rail against the sitting president on national television, call him ugly names, and viciously attack him personally, they are pretty transparent.
Clay Waters whined in a Feb. 3 post that a “prominently placed screed” in the New York Times “went beyond any justified criticism of Trump leaping to conclusions immediately after the D.C. airplane tragedy,” going on to play defense for Trump: “For the record, Trump wasn’t blaming “diversity” per se, but the aggressive, federally mandated moves of D.E.I. (diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives).” Seems like that’s a distinction without a difference.
Joseph Vazquez pretended that Trump had no racist intent whatsoever:
“As Trump Attacks Diversity, a Racist Undercurrent Surfaces,” read the race-baiting Feb. 3 headline from Times White House correspondent Erica Green that was framed as a news item.
Green seethed at Trump for connecting the previous administration’s obsession with putting wokeism ahead of competence in hiring to the horrific plane crash near Reagan National Airport. Green then twisted Trump’s words to screech “That’s racist!” at a strawman, following a typical media pattern. “The meaning behind his words was clear, that diversity equals incompetence. And for many historians, civil rights leaders, scholars and citizens, it was an unmistakable message of racism in plain sight at the highest levels of American government,” according to Green’s triggered screed.
Of course, “diversity equals incompetence” is not at all what Trump was saying. Rather, Trump was simply alluding to the common sense notion that the color of one’s skin should have no bearing on a government or company’s considerations of a candidate for their workforce in place of their merit and ability. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Then again, this is the same Green who went on a tear against supposedly racist “white parents” in 2021 for daring to take issue with their children being indoctrinated by activist educators with critical race theory (CRT) propaganda.
And right-wing anti-DEI and anti-CRT ranting is somehow not propaganda?
Houck used a Feb. 11 post to tout how at the right-wing Daily Caller, “our friends Amber Duke and Reagan Reese did a deep dive of nearly 2,400 words on the long, troubling history of close calls at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia across from Washington D.C. leading up to the deadly mid-air collision on January 29 that left 67 dead.” But those writers didn’t blame DEI once, which would seem to put the lie to Trump’s remarks.