‘Stomach-turning’: Democrats condemn Trump’s DEI claims after Washington plane crash

US political leaders clashed on Sunday over Donald Trump’s controversial comments on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs following last week’s aircraft collision over the Potomac river in Washington DC.

“The president weighing in while bodies were still being recovered, blaming this on DEI, and, when pressed, he has no evidence to suggest it, was absolutely stomach-turning,” Virginia senator Tim Kaine told CNN’s State of the Union.

Kaine said he had a suspicion that the president did not want to be asked questions about why he had “let” Elon Musk force the FAA administrator to resign and had scrapped an aviation safety advisory committee within the Department of Homeland Security before the crash occurred.

So, “he decided to have everybody chased down a rabbit hole of his DEI allegations with no evidence,” Kaine added, referring to Trump’s comments that diversity hiring had lowered standards at the FAA and had played a role in the crash that killed 67.

Trump’s war of DEI has become a signature of his first two weeks in office after he signed an executive order ending DEI offices and initiatives across the federal workforce, ended affirmative action enforcement for federal contractors, and ordered the cessation of “illegal preferences and discrimination”, consistent with enforcement of civil rights laws.

On Friday, Trump said an FAA commitment to hiring people with disabilities was “one reason why our Country WAS going to hell”.

But on Sunday, Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, told NBC’s Meet the Press that to say the crash “has to do with the person’s color of their skin or their gender, I think that’s just poor leadership. And especially at a time where any president is supposed to be the consoler in chief.”

As investigators work to establish the sequence of events that led to the mid-air collision, Kelly said: “It’s often not one thing that causes a major aviation accident like this.” Trump, he added, did not have “the appropriate information. And he clearly does not have the information in this case.”

JD Vance said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures, stood by Trump’s remarks linking DEI hiring practices to the crash. He said Trump was not “blaming anybody” in particular but that DEI practices had led to air traffic controller shortages.

“The president made very clear that he wasn’t blaming anybody, but he was being very explicit about the fact that DEI policies have led our air traffic controllers to be short-staffed. That is a scandal. Thankfully, it’s a scandal that the president has stopped,” Vance told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo.

Vance said it was important to “investigate everything”, adding: “But let’s just say the person at the controls didn’t have enough staffing around him or her because we were turning people away because of DEI reasons.”

“There is a very direct connection between the policies of the last administration and short-staffed air traffic controllers,” he added.

It has been reported that one air traffic controller was on duty at Reagan National airport when the crash occurred on Wednesday evening – and not two as typically on duty to direct airplanes and helicopters at that time.

US transportation secretary Sean Duffy told CNN that air traffic control staffing shortages dated to the Obama administration when “some DEI principles that were brought into air traffic control”.

But Duffy also pointed to new hiring under the previous Trump administration and the impact of the pandemic when graduate flight controllers could not get training in control towers. “We’re going to surge air traffic controllers,” he said

But Duffy declined to point to specific evidence to back up Trump’s DEI claims, but said the previous administration was “focused on changing the name from cockpit to flight deck, or notice to airmen, they want to change it to notice to air mission.

“Our mission since the start has been safety,” Duffy added. “When you don’t focus on safety and you focus on social justice or the environment, bad things happen … I don’t care your race, your religion, your color, your sex, your sexual preference. I don’t care about any of that. I just want the best and the brightest keeping Americans safe.”