If you’re able, please provide a direct connection between the policy described and the specific crash two nights ago. This should include a specific FAA employeee, and the role he/she played in this crash, and how their disability helped cause the crash.
If there is no evidence to support a specific DEI hire helping cause this specific crash, could you please let us know how is it that Trump “forgot” the policy he is blaming for the crash was in place while he was president. Has he explained why he did not do something while he was president, to deal with the very issue he wishes to blame for the crash?
Does he realize he’s blaming himself?
Trump hit out at diversity and inclusion initiatives while discussing Reagan National Airport collision that left as many as 67 dead.
www.newsweek.com
The FAA announced in April 2019 that it would launch a pilot program to help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations.
The FAA stated that those trained under the program would receive the same "rigorous consideration" in terms of aptitude, medical, and security qualifications as those doing standard air traffic controller job applications.
The FAA continued to promote the disability program in the final months of Trump's first term in office.
The policy of actively recruiting people with "severe" disabilities has also existed for more than a decade.
The list of disabilities mentioned in the January 2024 Fox News article and read by Trump on Thursday includes "hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism."
This exact wording has existed on the FAA website since at least February 2013, according to fact-checking website
Snopes. It remained on the site throughout Trump's first term.
Trump also suggested at the press conference that the program focused on hiring air traffic controllers, despite the FAA not stating this.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order initiating the "Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety" in the wake of the Reagan National Airport disaster, which includes implementing only merit-based hiring.
The order stated the Biden administration "egregiously rejected" merit-based hiring and specifically recruited individuals with "severe intellectual" disabilities in the FAA.
