President Donald Trump mourned the loss of the 67 lives in the U.S. Army Black Hawk collision with a passenger jet, but took direct aim at former President Joe Biden and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday morning.
While Trump admitted he does not “know that it’s necessarily the air traffic controllers’ fault,” he hit Buttigieg and Biden for lowering the standards he had put in place for air traffic controllers.
Buttigieg ran things “into the ground with his diversity,” Trump said, pulling no punches on Biden and his unwinding of the first Trump administration’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and ATC (air traffic control) standards and a federal DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) push.
Trump added some federal employees might be fired after the crash near Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., if they “aren’t mentally competent,” a claim he added to ATCs that were hired under lowered Biden standards,
“Sadly there are no survivors,” Trump said in a White House news conference that aired in full on Newsmax, announcing “an hour of anguish for our nation.”
“Our hearts are shattered alongside yours,” Trump said, addressing the victims’ families.
While saying the investigation is ongoing, Trump lamented American people need some “opinions” on what happened.
“We think we have some pretty good ideas” how this disaster occurred, Trump said, adding “we will state some personal opinions” on what happened, saying investigation details come too slowly.
Buttigieg was pointed at specifically for unwinding the first Trump administration standards for ATCs, claiming the transportation secretary thought the ATC workforce “was too white.”
Buttigieg “was a disaster,” Trump said, excoriating his longtime political rival as only having a “good line of bullsh*t.”
Both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted the height of the U.S. Army Black Hawk is the focus of the cause of the deadly collision.
“Tragically last night a mistake was made, and I think the president is right: There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating,” Hegseth said at the briefing.
Trump ostensibly cleared fault of the passenger airliner pilots, but pinned fault on the “a pilot problem” on the helicopter, because “it was very clear night,” and “it had the ability to turn”
“The helicopter had vision of the plane,” Trump added, but “for some reason there weren’t adjustments made,” and lamenting, “for some reason, it just kept going.”
“But one thing we do know, there was a lot of vision, and people should have been able to see that. At what point do you say, well, that plane’s getting a little bit close.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
