Rep. Hakeem Jeffries rips Trump for 'peddling lies' about American 5342 crash

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Jan 31, 2025

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Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on Friday ripped President Trump for his evidence-free effort to blame the crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 on diversity initiatives.

The Democratic House Minority Leader in his weekly press conference called out Trump for claiming that so-called “DEI” efforts in hiring of air traffic controllers could have caused the crash, even though there’s no evidence that any control tower failure was to blame.

“There is not a scintilla of evidence that exists to suggest that women and people of color are to blame for the tragedy that took place,” Jeffries said. “And it was shameful.”

Jeffries trashed Trump and his allies for using the crash that killed 67 people near Reagan National Airport to score cheap political points.

“While people are suffering, extreme MAGA Republicans are peddling lies and attacking people of color and women without any basis whatsoever,” he said. “This is not America. The American people deserve better.”

Fellow Brooklyn Rep. Yvette Clarke, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, accused Trump of seeking to “capitalize on this tragedy by furthering his racist, insane agenda.”

The morning after the crash, Trump raged against so-called “DEI” measures and sought to point fingers at former President Biden and ex-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for the midair collision with an Army Black Hawk helicopter, despite his own admission that he has no evidence to back up his bile.

Trump initially suggested the unnamed air traffic controller handling the flight was to blame. He later shifted to questioning why the doomed Black Hawk pilot did not swerve to avoid the plane landing at one of the nation’s busiest airports late Wednesday.

On Friday, the commander-in-chief again seemed to blame the chopper pilot.

“The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it?”

The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration say don’t yet know what might have caused the crash.

The airplane’s black box has been recovered and should shed more light on the final moments of the otherwise unremarkable flight from Wichita, Kansas.

The FAA has indefinitely closed routes near Reagan National Airport to most helicopter traffic as the probe gets underway in earnest.

A preliminary FAA report noted that the control tower was short staffed at the time of the crash and one air traffic controller was handling both planes and helicopters, which would normally be tasks for two workers.

Rescue workers have already pulled more than 40 bodies from the icy waters of the Potomac River where the airplane and the helicopter both crashed after exploding in a fireball from the collision.