Trump Calls Out Pete Buttigieg’s ‘Bullsh*t’,’ Biden-Era DEI After Fatal American Airlines, Black Hawk Crash
WASHINGTON, DC – President Donald Trump slammed former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former President Joe Biden over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiated in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under the Biden administration following the horrific collision between a passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, DC, on Wednesday.
Trump addressed members of the media in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on Thursday, hours after the crash that left no survivors, killing 64 aboard American Airlines flight 5342 and 3 servicemembers aboard the Black Hawk.
Trump hammered Buttigieg, who oversaw the FAA as transportation secretary before Trump was sworn in as president just ten days ago.
“Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation? He’s a disaster,” Trump said. “He was a disaster as a mayor. He ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit.”
Trump said Buttigieg ran the Department of Transportation “right into the ground with his diversity.”
Trump highlighted a January 14 Fox News article titled “FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities,” detailing the FAA’s DEI push in the final days of the Biden administration.
Trump then paraphrased the subheading, “FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce,” contending that the Biden administration wanted to put DEI hires in the roles of “air traffic controllers.”
“This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program,” he said.
According to the Fox News article, which cited the Biden-era FAA website, individuals with a wide range of substantial disabilities were being targeted for FAA recruitment:
“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
Trump also had heavy criticism for Biden and former President Barack Obama, saying Obama’s standards for the FAA were “very mediocre” before he assumed office in 2017.
“I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary,” Trump said, adding:
You remember that. Only the highest aptitude–they have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people–were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers. That was not so prior to getting there. When I arrived in 2016 I made that change very early on because I always felt this was a job that, and other jobs too, but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence.
Trump then blasted Biden for bringing standards to what he says is a record low.
“And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before,” he added.
On his second day in office, Trump took executive action directing Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and now-acting FAA Commissioner Christopher Rocheleau—whose appointment he announced at the briefing—to return to “merit-based hiring” for all positions, including air traffic controllers.
“All so-called DEI initiatives, including all dangerous preferencing policies or practices, shall immediately be rescinded in favor of hiring, promoting, and otherwise treating employees on the basis of individual capability, competence, achievement, and dedication,” the memo reads in part.
The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the tragedy, as Breitbart News noted.
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