XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.atheism, talk.politics.guns
XPost: or.politics

Trump will roast in Hell for this. The fat old senile sickly fuck will
be dead before he's 80.


Even as emergency responders were working to recover the remains of
passengers and crew members who died in the Jan. 29 midair collision near
the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, social media users,
especially critics of President Donald Trump, pointed to some of Trump’s policies as contributors to the crash.

“Just last week, Trump FIRED the heads of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Coast Guard, and disbanded the Aviation
Security Advisory Committee,” one X post read. The Associated Press
reported Jan. 21 that Trump fired those heads and removed all members of
the committee.

Another X post read, “On your 2ND DAY, you 1. Fired the head of the Transportation Security Administration, 2. Fired the entire Aviation
Security Advisory Committee, 3. Froze hiring of all Air Traffic
Controllers, 4. Fired 100 top FAA security officers.”

Trump in his first week in office did announce sweeping personnel
changes, including a hiring freeze. But aviation experts said there was
little that Trump did that could have precipitated the crash between a commercial jet from Wichita, Kansas, and a military Black Hawk
helicopter. There was simply too little time — less than 10 days after
Trump was sworn in — for any of his broadly worded executive orders to
have had an effect, experts said.


Although the Transportation Safety Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard
and the Aviation Security Advisory Committee all play roles in aviation
safety, “the actions by President Trump would not have led to such an
immediate impact,” said Jim Cardoso, a former U.S. Air Force colonel and
pilot who is now senior director of the University of South Florida’s
Global and National Security Institute.

“All the processes to control and deconflict air traffic in the D.C. area
have been well established for a long time,” Cardoso said. “The personnel involved in the accident — air crew from the two aircraft and the (air
traffic controllers) in place at the time of the accident — would
similarly not have been affected by” the recent policy changes in Trump’s executive orders since Jan. 20.

It’s also unwise to speculate on causes so soon after a crash, said John
Cox, a retired pilot who runs a St. Petersburg, Florida-based aviation
security consulting firm.

“At this point, we don’t know enough,” Cox said Jan. 30. Anyone who
argues that a specific factor caused the crash not even 24 hours after it happens is making an argument “without foundation,” he said.

Cox said the international standard for determining what caused a crash
“is not to speculate. You stay with the facts. The idea is that it’s more important to get the right answer than a politically motivated answer.”

The investigation into the collision will likely take months. For now,
here’s what we know about what actions Trump has taken related to
aviation and what effect, if any, they could have had on this crash.
What did Trump do regarding aviation?

In a Jan. 20 executive order, Trump enacted a hiring freeze on federal
civilian employees, stopping any open positions from being filled and any
new positions from being created.

However, this order exempted military personnel, positions “related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.” Air
traffic control would be exempted from the hiring freeze because of its
role in public safety, the White House told PolitiFact. The White House
also said that, unlike political appointees, air traffic controllers do
not change between administrations.

On Jan. 21, Trump signed the executive order, “Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation.” It eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, hiring
and directed the transportation secretary and the administrator of the
Federal Aviation Administration to “return to non-discriminatory, merit-
based hiring.”


It also ordered performance reviews for “individuals in critical safety positions.”

Speaking to reporters Jan. 30, Trump blamed FAA diversity and inclusion
hiring policies for the crash.

Cox said all the pilots and the air traffic controllers involved in the
Jan. 29 crash would, by definition, have undergone the required training requirements and “met the standards to be in that job” and any adherence
to DEI rules would not have changed that.

The New York Times reported Jan. 30 that staffing at the air traffic
control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration
safety report. The Reagan airport tower has been understaffed for years,
in part because of employee turnover and tight budgets, the Times
reported.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported Jan. 21 that Trump had fired TSA Administrator David Pekoske and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan.

However, the TSA’s safety responsibilities generally revolve around
security screening of passengers, cargo and aviation workers, not the
operation of planes. And the Coast Guard focuses on maritime security.

Trump also fired all members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee,
a group that includes representatives of private-sector aviation groups.
They advise the TSA administrator on aviation security. The group was
scheduled to meet Feb. 26; it usually meets four times a year.

An X post claimed that Trump fired 400 “senior officials” of the Federal Aviation Administration and 3,000 air traffic controllers eight days ago.
But this is unsubstantiated, and the White House told PolitiFact that no
air traffic controllers had been fired.

In May 2024, CNN reported that, based on FAA numbers, air traffic control stations were facing a shortage of 3,000 controllers, with concerns that
worker shortages were contributing to long shifts and exhaustion.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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