There seemed to be two President Donald Trumps in the immediate aftermath of the deadly collision between an American Airlines airplane and Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington.
The crash, which occurred over the Potomac River as the plane tried to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the helicopter was conducting a training mission, presents the first test of Trump’s nascent second administration after a record of uneven responses to tragedy during his first term.
As 67 families learned their loved ones, including 60 airline passengers, four crew members, and three military personnel, were victims of the crash, the White House portrayed Trump as a traditional, steady, and measured commander in chief on Wednesday before the president returned to the campaign-style, reality TV star politician, speculating about the cause of the incident hours after the explosion before delivering a free-wheeling press briefing on Thursday.
For Republican strategist John Feehery, Trump was merely “channeling the thoughts and concerns of the American people.”
“He asks probing questions,” Feehery told the Washington Examiner. “I think that is refreshing.”
But Republican strategist Doug Heye, a former communications director of the Republican National Committee disagreed, arguing that “ultimately his in-person statement is what mattered.”
“We’ve given up on Trump meeting the moment like Reagan’s Challenger speech, but that was next-level terrible,” Heye told the Washington Examiner.
Trump’s reaction “was not good,” John Pitney, a former Republican aide and now Claremont McKenna College politics professor, concurred, citing the president’s aspersions about the helicopter pilot and air traffic controllers.
“Trump publicly speculated about the causes of the crash, which was not helpful to the investigators or the families of the victims,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner.
Trump started his briefing with a moment of silence to commemorate the loss of life before his first appearance in the room of his second administration became a blame game. In doing so, the current president apportioned most of the responsibility to the policies of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden despite conceding, “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have strong opinions and ideas.”
“You must have only the highest standards to work in our aviation system,” Trump told reporters on Thursday morning. “I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put the policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”
When pressed for proof that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies were particularly problematic for the aviation industry and the reason for the accident, Trump repeatedly pointed to “common sense,” contending that “it just could have been.” The president then moderated his criticism somewhat during an executive action signing ceremony on Thursday afternoon.
“It may have. I don’t know. Incompetence might have played a role,” he said in the Oval Office when pushed on the role of race and gender.
During that event, Trump also quipped to a reporter who asked if he would visit the disaster site, “What’s the site? The water?”
But earlier in the briefing room, Trump singled out Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay confirmed Cabinet secretary, sarcastically as “a real winner.”
“Do you know how badly everything has run since he’s run the Department of Transportation?” he said. “He’s a disaster. He’s just got a good line of bulls***.”
Trump has a mixed record regarding his response to humanitarian disasters and is not above politicizing them, as evidenced by last week’s trip to California and North Carolina as the two states grapple with their respective recoveries from fires and floods. At the same time, he used the trip to demonstrate his capacity for empathy, a trait his critics claim he does not have.
During his first term, he was scrutinized for his reaction to, for example, Hurricane Maria, where his detractors have underscored how he tossed toilet paper rolls as if they were basketballs in Puerto Rico after the storm that killed more than 3,000 people. Simultaneously, he has been commended for the kindness he has shown victims of crime, especially so-called Angel Families who are victims of illegal immigrant crime.
Trump’s briefing on Thursday undermined what had been a professional communications strategy from the White House and his aides, including an initial statement that he had been “fully briefed” and was grateful to the first responders for their “incredible work” but would continue to “monitor the situation.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt even kept a previously arranged booking on Fox News as news reports emerged about the impact.
“This was not the planned topic of discussion for your program tonight,” Leavitt told host Sean Hannity. “But in light of this breaking news, I have called over to my counterparts at the White House and I can confirm that President Trump has been made aware of this situation.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a former congressman-turned-Fox News commentator who had been confirmed and sworn in earlier Wednesday, was at an early Thursday morning press conference with Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, in addition to Sens. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Jerry Moran (R-KS), both Kansas Republicans, where the flight had originated.
Another newly confirmed political appointee and Fox News anchor, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, recorded a video update, in which he sported rolled-up sleeves, that same morning.
Update on Guantanamo Bay Operations and @SecDef Hegseth Addresses Tragic Mishap Involving US Army Helicopter pic.twitter.com/80J5djB4oP
— Department of Defense
(@DeptofDefense) January 30, 2025
Hegseth and Duffy later accompanied Trump and Vice President JD Vance to the briefing, during which they, too, undercut DEI.
“When you don’t have the best standards in who you’re hiring, it means on the one hand, you’re not getting the best people in government,” Vance said. “But on the other hand, it puts stresses on the people who are already there.”
Hegseth added, “We will have the best and brightest in every position possible. … The era of DEI is gone.”
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Trump went on to sign an executive memorandum on Thursday afternoon directing Duffy and his new Federal Aviation Administration administrator, Christopher Rocheleau, the aviation government regulator, “to review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols” since 2021.
“The Obama Administration implemented a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude,” the memo stated. “The Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”
