Trump press briefing, just now, on the air disaster.

 

Much of this was an attack on the FAA's diversity and inclusion hiring plan, "which says diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel":

I don't think so I don't think so. I think it's just the opposite.... The FAA which is overseen by secretary Pete Buttigieg, a real winner. That's guy's a real winner. Do you know how badly everything's run since he's run the Department of Transportation. He's a disaster. 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. The Department of Transportation, his government agency, charged with regulating civil aviation — well, he runs it, 45,000 people, and he's run it right into the ground with his diversity. So I had to say that it's terrible. Then it's a group within the FAA — another story — determined that the workforce was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama Administration, just prior to my getting there.... they actually came out with a directive — too white — and we want the people that are competent, but now we mourn and we pray....

ADDED: This reminds me of the Trump we saw during the Covid crisis. He just keeps going and going, as if he were talking with his advisers in a private room. It's so unfiltered. It's good to get more access to the President and to hear his thoughts, but the crash just happened, so many people died, and so many people are sensitive about the problems related to diversity. Why be so raw? Is he choosing to do this to us or can he just not help it?

We had a situation where you had a helicopter that had the ability to stop. I have helicopters. You can stop a helicopter very quickly. It had the ability to go up or down. It had the ability to turn, and the turn it made was not the correct turn. Obviously, it did somewhat the opposite of what it was told. We don't know that that would have been the difference because the timing was so tight.... There was so little time to think, but what you did have is you had vision. The helicopter had vision of the plane. Because you had vision of it all the way — perfect vision of it all the way from at Kennedy Center where the tape was taken, and for some reason there weren't adjustments made. Again you could have slowed down the helicopter substantially. You could have stopped the helicopter. You could have gone up you could have gone down. You could have gone straight up, straight down, you could have turned, you could have done a million different maneuvers for some reason it just kept going and then made a slight turn at the very end and it was by that time it was too late. They shouldn't have been at the same height because if it wasn't the same height you could have gone under it or over it and nobody realized or they didn't say that it's at the same height, at the same height, would it, would still,  wouldn't have been great but you would have missed it by quite a bit. Could have been 1,000 feet higher. It could have been 200 feet lower but it was exactly at the same height and somebody should have been able to point that out. So all of this is going to be studied but it just seems to me from couple couple words that I like to use, the words "common sense.".... You had a confluence of of bad decisions that were made and you have people that lost their lives — violently lost their lives...."

UPDATE: "An internal report suggested that the controller on duty the night of the accident was doing a job usually handled by two people" (NYT).