close

Politics - News Analysis

Trump Lashes Out at CNN Reporter For Calling Him Out at Press Conference Over Blame Game After Deadly Air Crash

He's like a child.

By

There has never been a public figure as allergic to accountability or addicted to assigning blame as President Donald Trump. But even having known that fact for as long as we have, it was still hard to watch as he wasted zero time before pointing fingers at DEI hiring practices, the military, and even former President Joe Biden for the deadly collision of a commercial plane and an Army helicopter on Wednesday.

The reason it was so disappointing in this case is because it’s further proof that Trump doesn’t understand a very simple fact. Not every situation calls for outrage and blame. Sometimes when something bad happens, you should just take time to mourn and console victims before jumping headfirst into accusations and fury.

Sometimes, what people would like to see from a leader immediately following a tragedy is just a simple message of togetherness, like one former leader sent out following the crash:

Unfortunately, that guy’s not in charge. Instead, we have a guy whose immediate reaction was to question who was at fault. Over on Truth Social, Donald Trump launched into crazy talk about the details:

The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!

But it got worse. In his Thursday morning press conference, Trump went into specifics. He promptly blamed Biden, Obama, Pete Buttigieg, DEI and people with disabilities for the crash during rambling prepared remarks.

In one portion of his presser, he specified exactly which kinds of people he doesn’t think should be allowed to be air traffic controllers, implying that hiring these people is what caused the plane to crash:

After the presser, during the Q&A, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took the president to task over the things he’d said:

COLLINS: We don’t yet know the names of the 67 people were killed. And you are blaming Democrats and DEI policies, and air traffic control, and seemingly the member of the U.S. military who was flying that Black Hawk helicopter.

Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of the investigation right now?

TRUMP: I don’t think so at all. I don’t think with the names of the people. You mean the names of the people that are on the plane? You think that’s going to make a difference?

COLLINS: Does it comfort their family to hear you blaming DEI policies?

TRUMP: They are a group of people that have lost their lives. If you want a list of the names we can give you that we’ll be giving that very soon. And in coordination with American Airlines, we’re in coordination very strongly, obviously, with the military. But I think that’s not a very smart question.

COLLINS: But are you blaming air traffic controllers…

TRUMP: I’m surprised coming from you. Please. Please.

You’ll note that he never does answer the “not very smart” question, instead focusing on the names she mentioned, as though if there were a list of names out already, it would excuse the fact that he jumped on everything he could think of to blame for the disaster.

He interestingly did not mention that he’d just pushed out the FAA director at the behest of Elon Musk. He didn’t mention firing the head of the Coast Guard or the TSA. He didn’t even mention that he’d dismantled the Aviation Safety Committee.

All of those things have happened in the last week, since he became president for the second time.

Trump doesn’t take blame, though. He assigns it. And it’s always to the wrong people.

Andrew Simpson
meet the author

Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. A girlfriend, a dog, two cats, and two birds round out the equation, and in his spare time, Drewbear likes to imagine what it must be like to have spare time.

Comments

Comments are currently closed.

Recent Stories

Trending Stories