WASHINGTON — President Trump used a White House briefing about Wednesday night’s deadly collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter over the Potomac River to rail against the Obama and Biden administrations for allegedly lowering standards for air traffic controllers through diversity programs.

Trump acknowledged that he isn’t sure that efforts to diversify the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) caused the disaster that resulted in 64 deaths aboard the American Airlines flight landing at Reagan Washington National Airport and the deaths of three Army Black Hawk crew members.

“I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary. You remember that, only the highest aptitude, the highest intellect, and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers,” Trump told the White House press corps Thursday morning.

“And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level.”

Trump said Democratic administrations “put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program” and ripped former President Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as a “disaster” who had “a good line of bulls—” and ran the FAA “right into the ground with his diversity.”

“The FAA diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing,” Trump said while acknowledging at one point that he doesn’t know for a fact who exactly was responsible for the tragedy.

Thursday afternoon, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that diversity initiatives “may or may not have had to do” with the crash after signing a memorandum ordering an immediate assessment of aviation safety and the prioritization of “competence” in hiring.

At the earlier briefing, Trump scornfully read through a litany of reports on the FAA’s diversity policies.

“The FAA website states they include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism — all qualified for the position of a controller.”

“The FAA — another story — determined that the workforce was too white. They actually came out with a directive, too white, and we want the people that are competent,” he said.

“We’ll restore faith in American air travel, I’ll have more to say about that.”

Buttigieg returned fire after the briefing, tweeting: “Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. “

“President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA,” Buttigieg wrote. “One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

Trump signed orders shortly after starting his second term last Monday to do away with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across the federal government.

Air traffic controllers “have to be talented, naturally talented geniuses. You can’t have regular people doing that job,” the president said.

“Almost upon entering office, I signed something last week that was an executive order, a very powerful one, restoring the highest standards of air traffic controllers and others by the way.”

During the Q-and-A period, Trump acknowledged, “We don’t know, necessarily, that it was even the controller’s fault” and also blamed the Black Hawk helicopter’s crew for not spotting the plane, saying they “should have seen where they were going.”

“I have helicopters. You can stop a helicopter very quickly, you have the ability to go up or down and the ability to turn…. the helicopter had vision of the plane… and for some reason there were not adjustments made,” Trump said.

New York Times reporter David Sanger challenged the president’s criticism of FAA hiring policies, asking him “how you can come to the conclusion now that diversity had something to do with this crash.”

“Because I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t,” Trump clapped back.

“We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level. When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time and they’re all coming in different directions and you’re dealing with very high-level computer work,” Trump replied.

The president then veered back into blaming prior administrations, this time for using “companies that should not have been doing” work on FAA systems.

“We had an election that didn’t turn out the way it should have, but they didn’t build the systems properly. They spent a lot of money renovating the system, spending much more money than they would have spent if they bought a new system for air traffic controllers,” Trump said.

Trump also announced that he was naming Chris Rocheleau to be acting FAA administrator — replacing Michael Whitaker, who resigned on Jan. 20, reportedly at the urging of billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk. Rocheleau had been sworn in as the agency’s deputy administrator last week.

The president appeared with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Vice President JD Vance — who each gave brief remarks without taking questions.

Duffy said “We can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety that impact the lives of our loved ones. When Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at the destination. That didn’t happen.”522

Hegseth said “The military does dangerous things… on a regular basis. Tragically, last night a mistake was made… there was some sort of elevation issue.”

“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.”