US donald trump

Trump’s suggestion that diversity hiring may have played a role in the Washington DC air crash is a new low in an already ground-level record

America is still reeling in shock after the deadly air crash between a military helicopter and a passenger plane, which took the lives of all 67 passengers and crew aboard the two crafts.

At a time like this, the country looks to the President to remain calm and measured, to offer words of sympathy, to reassure people that thorough investigations will make sense of what happened so as to avoid a repeat. That’s not the role that Donald Trump has been filling.

He immediately fell into his default position of using it to trash his opponents, fuel conspiracies, and to make himself look better.

Journalists questioned his comments.

It will surely be no great shock to anyone to learn that Trump’s claims are utter bilge. The policies he cites don’t apply to air-traffic controllers, were in place before his first term and were left intact by him during that time. NBC’s Peter Alexander tried to remind the President of those facts.

There have, in fact, been credible suggestions that his own executive orders, firing and buy-out policies – enacted immediately after his inauguration – have at least contributed to instability in U.S. air safety, if not to this specific incident.

In response to his own inflammatory words, Trump signed a new executive order, effectively blaming Joe Biden for the crash and triggering an investigation into the previous administration’s policies.

Trump’s behaviour seems to have hit a new low in a crowded field of shameful episodes. Here’s what people have been saying.

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