JD Vance Doubles Down on Trump’s Claim DEI Could Be to Blame for DC Crash: ‘You’ve Got to Have the Right People in Air Traffic Control’

Vice President JD Vance told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo Sunday that culling air traffic controllers hired through diversity, equity, and inclusion programs would make the country’s skies safer.

Vance sat down on Sunday Morning Futures days after a military chopper carrying three US troops collided over Reagan airport in Washington last Wednesday with a passenger jet carrying 64 people. There were no survivors.

President Donald Trump was quick to float DEI initiatives as a culprit for the deaths while the NTSB was still conducting its preliminary investigation.

It was reported in the days after the tragedy that the air traffic control tower at the airport was short-staffed but little else was known as of Sunday about what caused the collision.

While addressing Bartiromo, Vance doubled down on Trump’s floating DEI as a potential factor in the crash.

“Our hearts go out to everybody who was affected by it,” Vance said. “I’ve actually made a couple of phone calls to the relatives of the deceased, to the people who lost their lives. And it’s just incredibly heartbreaking.” Vance said he wanted people to remember the “human tragedy” of the crash before he pivoted to DEI:

But but I do think that we also have to do a better job at the policy so that we make sure that aviation is as safe as it possibly can. Now, we haven’t had an aviation accident like this in about 15, 20 years. We want to make sure that we try to never have an aviation accident accident like this again, or at least make them as minimal as possible. And that does, I think, mean that we have to talk about the policies now. Here’s the specific way in which I think the policies of the last administration and the Obama administration contributed to where we are.

We have a massive shortage of air traffic controllers. And in fact, there have been a number of lawsuits from people who would like to become air traffic controllers against the Obama and Biden administrations, who basically said, we were told, not even to apply because of the color of our skin, because they were white people who wanted to be air traffic controllers. And under the regime of the Biden administration, they weren’t welcome. Well, what does that mean? Number one, it means that we don’t have the best and the brightest sometimes in these positions. But even more importantly than that, even when we do get really good people, they’re going to be way overstressed because they’re working long hours because air traffic controllers are short-staffed.

Vance said the country had adopted policies that told air traffic controllers “not to hire people because of the color of their skin, ” which he called a “scandal.”

Bartiromo noted Wednesday’s crash was the deadliest in decades — to which Vance replied by blaming DEI initiatives and hires directly.

“So, there are two big issues here. Number one, most importantly, again, you’ve got to have the right people in air traffic control. Air traffic control is short-staffed. And I think the elimination of DEI hires and DEI policies will allow us actually to hire the air traffic controllers that we need.”

Watch above via Fox News.