Trump and his new half-acre of rock-bottom hell
Attack on DEI as possible cause of deadly crash hit a new low in bigotry and arrogance
By Sam Bellamy
Once again, I’ve begun pondering whether I’ve ever walked this earth with anyone – aside from murderous dictators, serial killers or people who commit sexual assaults – more despicable than the cruel and ruinous man in the Oval Office. And I can’t even exclude him from the sexual assault category.
Earlier today, Trump found yet another new half-acre of rock-bottom hell to roam, declaring that the cause of the deadly American Airlines passenger plane and military helicopter crash outside D.C. this week may have been a person or people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
He didn’t specify which DEI category – people of color, women, gay, transgender, people with disabilities, or some other – was at a fault, but he offered a pretty clear suspicion.
“A group within the FAA determined that the workforce was too white, then they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately,” he said. “This was in the Obama administration.”
Ah. So, all Black Americans nationwide should hand in their resignations before the close of business? But that probably won’t be sufficient, given his animosity to anyone who isn’t a wealthy older heterosexual white Republican man or named Ivanka.
Trump had a couple of alternate theories that, I’m guessing, aren’t mutually exclusive.
He said – in a lie – that the Obama and Biden administration prioritized hiring people not only non-white people but people with severe intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems as air traffic controllers. “I don’t think so,” he said, making clear he rescued all of us from this DEI nonsense by signing an executive order banning it last week.
This particular lie popped up recently on Fox News and in the New York Post, apparently in a weak attempt to blame a fuselage problem on an Alaska Airlines flight on the failure of everyone, everywhere, to hire enough whip-smart white people to do things right.
The FAA responded to the lie with a terse message: “The FAA employs tens of thousands of people for a wide range of positions, from administrative roles to oversight and execution of critical safety functions. Like many large employers, the agency proactively seeks qualified candidates from as many sources as possible, all of whom must meet rigorous qualifications that of course will vary by position.”
So, yeah, the FAA hires people who fall into DEI categories who – holy white boy, Batman! – are actually judged qualified to do their particular positions. “How could that be,” millions of MAGAites who couldn’t make the grade exclaim, “colored people who know more about stuff than me? I do my own research!”
And, yes, the FAA sometimes hires people with intellectual disabilities but no, they’re not air traffic controllers.
And, by the way, the FAA’s very same hiring policy was in effect during the entirety of Trump’s first term, as multiple news organizations reported immediately after the press conference.
Trump’s other theory about the crash was that something was wrong with the pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter. FWB? Flying while black? “You had a pilot problem from the standpoint of the helicopter,” he said. “Because it was visual. It was a very clear night. It was cold and clear, as clear as could be.”
Trump offered his expert opinion: “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, obviously, and it did somewhat the opposite of what it was told.”
Vice President J.D. Vance was also present, along with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to bolster Trump’s revelation that, to use Hegseth’s term, the “best and brightest” people haven’t been running things since Trump left town post-riot. (The last time that “best and brightest” phrase was in fashion in D.C., we ended up deeper in the Vietnam War, so watch out, people.)
"If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years,” Vance said, “you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin.”
This also is – does it need to be said? – a lie.
Any possibility the crash had anything to do with a shortage of people on duty that night, a shortage noted in an internal FAA memo, according to The New York Times? Any chance it had to do with low morale brought on by Trump’s offer to pay federal workers through September if they quit now, or with Trump’s nominee for head of Office of Management and Budget saying his goal is to traumatize federal workers and make them so miserable they won’t want to show up in the morning?
Any chance we should wait until the investigators trained to investigate – presumably enough of them with the correct skin pigment – investigate?
Naw.
Soon, we’ll hear the culprit in the crash was a white Republican male-murdering Mexican transgender gay woman in a wheelchair in the country illegally and, of course, voting illegally, at least twice, for Democrats. Also, not sober, like the defense secretary is now, probably, maybe.
At the beginning of the news conference, Trump did offer his condolences to the families of those killed in the crash. "We're here for you to wipe away the tears and to offer you our devotion, our love and support,” he said.
He also acknowledged the cause of the crash is under investigation and no conclusions have been reached. "We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas," he said, before launching into opinions and ideas that sounded as if we all had rolled our most batshit, big-mouthed relatives into one human being, made him president and gave him a podium.
After the November election, pundits the world over have been looking for a black box that will tell us how we ended up with Trump again.
I’m at a loss. Every new day is another corridor in the nightmare, a new scene unfolding that makes no more sense than the last one around the corner. We watch, feeling helpless.
In some of the nightmares not starring Trump or people in red hats, I’ve had luck somehow wresting away enough control of the narrative to confront the malevolent, surreal force and make it all go away.
I’m not sure how we wrest away that control before the 2026 mid-terms, other than to continue to pressure Democrats to speak up more often and louder and to push Republicans to search for their missing spines as relentlessly as Trump’s rioters hunted for Mike Pence at the Capitol on Jan. 6th.
I’m still confident Darwin’s law will kick in eventually because Trump is too damned dumb to thrive. But how much damage he does before then is worrisome. He finds a new half-acre daily. And, alarmingly, it’s filling up with bigoted, willfully ignorant white people just like him.