Duckworth slams Trump for implying DEI initiatives caused D.C. plane crash; "How dare he?"
CHICAGO (CBS) -- As the investigation into a deadly plane crash in Washington, D.C., gets underway, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) criticized President Trump for seeming to blame the crash on federal diversity and inclusion initiatives.
"That's an attack on those pilots, and how dare he?" Duckworth told CBS News congressional correspondent Nikole Killion.
An American Airlines flight collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River while the jet was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport late Wednesday night, killing all 67 people on board the two aircraft.
The National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Defense all are part of the investigation.
Duckworth, the ranking Democratic member of the Aviation Safety Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, said the panel also will be looking into the crash.
"As someone who's flown a Black Hawk, I know what it's like to be in the cockpit. I've spent thousands of hours in a Black Hawk cockpit. I've flown in the evenings, I've flown at night, I've flown in all these different conditions," she said. "Moving forward, my focus will be on doing everything possible to prevent another tragedy like this one, and that means that we have to get to the bottom of what happened here."
The senator, who chaired the subcommittee while Democrats were in the majority in the Senate, is a retired Army National Guard officer who flew Black Hawk helicopters during the Iraq War. She received a briefing on the crash from the NTSB.
"My understanding is that the American Airlines flight was clared to land. So they had the right of way. They were cleared to land," Duckworth said. "The Black Hawk aircraft was told to pass behind the American Airlines flight, to look out for them, and the pilots in that aircraft did acknowledge that they were looking for the American Airlines flight."
Duckworth said, as the investigation into the crash continues, the subcommittee will be looking into what kind of collision avoidance equipment was on board the Black Hawk, the flight patterns of both aircraft, training records for the pilots and air traffic controllers, information from the aircrafts' flight data recorders, and transcripts of all air traffic control transmissions leading up to the crash.
"Now is not the time for speculation. We need to get to the facts," Duckworth said in a briefing with reporters Thursday afternoon.
Duckworth also blasted President Trump for blaming the crash on federal DEI initiatives, seeming to suggest that hires made based under diversity, equity, and inclusion policies played a role in the midair collision.
"One of the things that often happen when there is an aircraft mishap is that the people who are the most clueless, like President Trump, immediately blame the pilots. So let's make it clear that we need to let the accident investigators do their jobs," she said. "Military pilots are some of the most highly trained air crew members in the world."
Thursday morning, Trump also claimed, without evidence, that the FAA lowered safety standards under former President Biden, and that he increased safety standards for the aviation industry during his first term.
"I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first," Mr. Trump claimed.
Mr. Trump took aim at what he claimed was an "FAA diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities."
"That is amazing, and then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in, and they want them. They can be air traffic controllers. I don't think so," he added.
Duckworth called the president's claims "highly irresponsible."
"Diversity makes our country stronger, period," Duckworth said. "I have seen zero evidence to this point to suggest that this collision had anything to do with DEI, and speculation at this time is highly irresponsible, and we need to get to the facts."