Beyond the Pale
The President's reaction is far worse than it originally appeared
This morning, I was pissed.
I was furious with the disgusting way our Dear Leader made this tragedy a political mess, and all about him and his grievances. I had no idea.
In the late morning, Trump gave a press conference in which he dispensed with any sympathy and thoughts for the victims very quickly, then descended into raving lunacy. Instead of reassuring the nation, he launched into bullshit accusations, claiming without a shred of evidence that the crash was due to policies from both the Biden and Obama administrations. He singled out former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and blamed “DEI” for the tragedy. He then turned the briefing over to his newly minted Fox News Dynamic Duo, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who each first sucked up to Trump by complimenting his “leadership” then each riffed on variations of Trump’s DEI theme.
“Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation?” Trump said. “He’s a disaster. He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster – now he’s just got a good line of bulls**t.” - Trump, speaking about former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg
It was cold, heartless, devoid of empathy for the families of the 67 people lost in the crash, and completely and totally irresponsible. There is a reason that professionals do not hazard guesses as to the cause of accidents like this: there is simply no way to know, this soon after the incident, what could have caused it.
Buttigieg wasted no time in responding, posting the following to TwitX:
If the press conference were the only thing that Trump pissed all over today, that would be bad enough. However, he was not done. Later in the afternoon he returned to the Oval Office where he made a production of issuing yet another Executive Order, this time replacing the head of the FAA, who had resigned on January 20th after being threatened by Shadow President Elon Musk. The order also “ended” DEI practices in the Aviation sector, which seems redundant since he already ended DEI throughout the government on day 1.
One would hope that, in time, the appropriate agencies (the FAA and NTSB) will be able to ascertain what went wrong to end the United States’ aviation industry’s 16 year safety streak. Thing is, they work for Trump now. And I have a sinking feeling that any report that we see may be tainted by his Sharpie.
Average White* Guy is a collection of thoughts from Marwan Saidi. It’s primarily a place for me to dump my thoughts in an effort to get them out of my head and give me some calm. It’s also a place where my friends and family can opt in to my neuroses so I can keep it out of other family gatherings. :)
* - I am Palestinian American, but you would probably not think that based on my appearance or (lack of) accent. For years I would check White on the race section of forms because there wasn’t an option that fit better.