section_path: Responses/Domestic
section_name: Domestic
paragraph_text: Domestic
  
  President Donald Trump was briefed on the collision shortly after. Shortly after midnight, he wrote on Truth Social questioning the actions of the air traffic controllers and asserting that the situation could have been prevented. He also criticized the helicopter crew for flying too high. Later that morning, Trump released a statement calling the crash a "terrible accident," thanking emergency responders and saying of the victims: "May God bless their souls."
  
  Trump alleged that the FAA's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals supported by former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama may have been partly to blame for the crash. A policy introduced in 2013 by the Obama administration's FAA that encouraged the hiring of minorities as air traffic controllers was continued by the first Trump administration's FAA. He harshly criticized former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, accusing him of infusing diversity at the FAA.
  
  Trump criticized the FAA for being open to hiring air traffic controllers with "hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism ". This was a policy introduced in 2019 by his own first administration's FAA, which announced a program to allow 20 people with "targeted disabilities" to train at air traffic control centers for air traffic operations careers. Several disabilities such as epilepsy, poor vision, and some mental disorders were still disqualifying for air traffic controller positions per FAA and OPM regulations on DEI hires.
  
  Trump said that he would meet with families of the victims, but rebuffed the idea of visiting the site of the accident after being pressed by reporters during a briefing, asking, "What's the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?"