Fox’s Stuart Varney Pushes Back On Trump Claiming DEI Caused Deadly Crash, Asks If That Reassures the Public

Fox Business host Stuart Varney was taken aback by President Donald Trump’s press conference on Thursday, in which he blamed DEI hires for the deadly air crash over the Potomac River the night before. Varney pointed at an apparent contradiction in Trump’s remarks, noting that he blamed the air disaster on policies that are still in place while telling the public it was safe to fly.

“Well, that was I’m going to call, that was a sensational news conference given by the president in the wake of that deadly plane crash. The president came out and immediately blamed diversity,” Varney began soon after Trump finished, adding:

He blamed DEI and the diversity policies of the Aviation Administration for the blame here. He went out of his way to call Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, a disaster. He then said, look, he’d heard the tapes. The president had heard the tapes from the crash. He said the air traffic controller told the helicopter pilot to follow him in. That was to follow in a commercial jetliner. Then there was a crash. It seems there’s miscommunication.

And the president did seem to be blaming air traffic control for this tragedy. Michael Balboni, former New York Homeland Security adviser, joins me now. Did you get the same impression, Michael, that the president is blaming perhaps one specific air traffic controller?

“I think the president was dividing this analysis into a tactical analogy. What actually which is very refreshing for the American people to hear and is important given the sense of how busy and important the Washington, D.C. airport is, the number of flights that happened there,” Michael Balboni replied, adding:

You’ve got to reassure people that this is going to be looked at. But people are– he’s obviously he’s probably responding to folks from Democratic Party who are saying that it’s his fault that this happened. So now it’s time to talk about policy. But what’s really important here is to understand that pilot, helicopter pilots are taught to see and avoid. That is the whole training and the airport space, the space around the airport in Washington is a specially, highly regulated area.

You just don’t go in there without a lot of permissions and a lot of information. Obviously, there was a mistake. A big, big mistake when, in what the the altitude was and nobody noticed it or called it out or the fact that the pilot itself was not able to see what should have been seen.

“Okay. The president was asked specifically, should Americans now feel safe to fly? And he specifically said yes, even though he had criticized the institution, the Federal Aviation Administration, for its diversity policies, those policies are still in place,” Varney then noted and asked:

That personnel is still in place carrying through into the future. And yet the president says it’s okay, it’s okay. We are safe. Do you see a contradiction in that?

Watch the clip above.