Appallingly slanted reporting from the Guardian -- DC plane crash

[GeneralPeter]

This article describes Trump's theory that DEI had something to do with the crash using debunking words throughout. 'Baselessly', 'without providing evidence' etc etc.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/30/trump-washington-dc-plane-crash-dei

The thing is, this isn't 'baseless'.

The FAA has said that the tower was understaffed. We don't know if that was relevant or has not. We do know that FAA recruitment cratered because of a (very well-evidenced) extremely crude attempt at DEI. There is a long-running class action lawsuit that is on public record and not made up. The test really did award points for saying you had more Ds than Cs at school, for saying science was your weakest subject, etc etc and they did then give the answers to candidates of a particular race before the test.

Sometimes things that sound like loonish right-wing conspiracy theories actually turn out to be true. If you think I must be a right-wing loon, please read this thread first (and many others out there -- this is all public record in court documents and not denied by the FAA).

x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752091831095939471

You would not know any of this if you read the Guardian article. Their reporter must surely know this stuff. So it's another attempt to bury with slurs an ideologically inconvenient actual truth. We've seen this before with sex-based rights, and the Guardian should stop it.

(Obligatory: I'm not a Trump fan, think he is appalling in many respects, several of them disqualifying for the presidency. But while comment is free, facts should be sacred).

But what Trump said was baseless.

FAA recruitment policies, no matter how daft, will only be implicated if and when the investigation concluded that a) air traffic control was at fault and b) it was human error/incompetence.

Until then, we could look at any background information of any factor and blame that e.g. that the strongest predictor of a person carrying out extremist violence is US military service (START study) ergo the helicopter pilot did this deliberately.

Wait until the investigation has finished before leaping to conclusions.

It was an outrageous thing for Trump to say, even if for no other reason than you don't go speculating about these things, you wait for an investigation.

And I think Trump should be called out, he is a dangerous liar. He shouldn't be treated like a normal statesperson. That's how we got in this mess in the first place.

ATC will have strict requirements before you can do the job, they're not going to lower standards before allowing people to work in it because then people die. It is known to be extremely stressful, so it's not surprising if there are staff shortages.

I think we disagree on what baseless means. If the South Korean president had railed against the stupidity of putting airports next to migratory bird marshes and castigating his predecessors for it, before the full crash investigation was out, no newspaper would have described his blaming of birds as 'baseless'. Let alone a line like this: "He claimed, without providing evidence, that there was a concrete berm at the end of the runway."

Adding 'without providing evidence' to a provably true fact that the reporter must know is true is journalistic malpractice. Technically true but intended to deceive.

But it was baseless. We have no idea whetherATC was the cause of the crash let alone whether hiring practices contributed. The big problem we have with reporting is that this hasn’t been reported as the insane rambles of a complete lunatic who showed massive disrespect towards the families of those who were killed and is completely unfit to be president.

Absolutely nobody should be reporting this as Trump linking the crash toDEI.

The thing is, the Guardian have to back things up properly and state facts - so unlike Mumsnet you cannot use an X thread as evidence to back up wild claims.

Trump has not provided evidence, has he? So that is a fact.

Even if he was to say the tower was understaffed, he cannot at this point say that was related to the crash - no one can, it's only just happened.

It is baseless and without evidence though.
1.The hiring policy sounds very flawed.
2.The crash circumstances are not yet known.

Both things can be true. It is appalling for a man in his position to just opinionate like that. Highly irresponsible.

Imagine being a minority hire in that organisation and utterly blameless yet pointed at by the president as a likely cause.

It's way too early to know what caused the crash. That's why theories are baseless. Such a serious accident deserves the respect of restrained comments until as many facts as can be, have been gathered and analysed.

@Echobelly

they're not going to lower standards before allowing people to work in it because then people die.

You would think so, wouldn't you?

Did you read the thread I linked to though?They provably and deliberately did reduce the test standards and put in place a new test with almost random-seeming questions, to which some people were given the answers. This is not from Trump, this is from uncontested court documents.

Sometimes things that seem so actually stupid that they can't possibly be true do turn out to be.

There is a time to speak and a time to shut up - this is a time to do the latter. Let the families grieve and the formal investigation take place.

Oh, that does paint a different picture. It’s a shame trump is such an idiot he can’t articulate any of that in his press conference. There is clearly a lot that needs looking into in US air traffic control.

“The test really did award points for saying you had more Ds than Cs at school, for saying science was your weakest subject, etc etc ”

@GeneralPeter Can you show us where you read this?

It is baseless because we do not yet know if it was a mistake by ATC, the helicopter crew or the plane pilots. Or if there was an equipment failure, or a pilot had a heart attack etc.

It is prejudging what will be a careful and detailed investigation. And to do so means that this story will catch on and the investigation will be deemed a cover up if it finds, say, that the steering seized up on the helicopter or whatever. So it is irresponsible of any person in power to do this.

A lie can be halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on, and all that.

I don't exactly disagree. But if a president had gone on a rant about lax gun laws and terrible mental health support after a mass shooting, would the Guardian have reported it so scathingly? Should they?

If it isn’t baseless, what is the reason for the claim that DEI hiring policies were directly responsible for this crash, OP.
Trump himself claimed it was just common sense when asked directly by a journalist. Do you have more information?

But understaffed at the time of the crash cannot be currently linked to diversity and inclusion recruiting. He was using the deaths of a lot of people to push his political agenda, while bodies were still in the river and no investigation had begun.

I don’t have X so can’t read the thread. But is it a thread with people giving opinions? Or are there evidence based reports attached?

Trump just wants to blame blame blame.

Who knows what caused the accident. It could have been human error, it could have been mechanical failure. Maybe the pilot suffered a brain haemorrhage.

We just don't know. Therefore any speculation is unhelpful and baseless

Let the investigation finish first

The people hired still have to pass the same medical and aptitude tests as before though.

@Dolphinnoises

There's a good overview here. I was well aware of this far before Trump became president. He hasn't invented it.

www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview

Now just going to find the questions.

i don’t know about FAA recruitment assessment processes but I do know about assessment processes more broadly. It wouldn’t make sense to select staff with Ds over Cs but it might make sense to say D and above is acceptable because an A, B or C doesn’t predict better performance in the job than a D. And people from certain backgrounds might be more likely to score Ds than A, B and Cs and in setting the cut off at C you might be reducing the numbers of those groups without getting better candidates.

but in any case as has been pointed out above, even if the FAA had absolutely bonkers recruitment processes until we know the cause of the crash (eg could be mechanical failure) we have no idea if FAA DEI policies were in any way involved.

Also be very careful believing what you read on X.

Yes, if we knew there was mass murder but didn’t know the weapon.

This is the equivalent of “20 found dead at family ranch. President blames lax gun laws”’.
It could be poison, poisoned water, gas leak, stabbing… or guns. But you need to find out first.

"We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas"

He literally said himself that he had opinions and ideas but no knowledge what happened. So I think baseless is fair tbh.

This would have been a good opportunity for the journalist to have dug into the claims, looked at the evidence in the lawsuit etc. The Guardian seems to have forgotten that journalism is not just reporting what people say with a wash of ideological bias. You are actually supposed to interrogate their claims yourself and perhaps even do some investigation.

What are you on about?

The investigation is ongoing and no one, especially not a president, should be making this type of crass, baseless statements while families are grieving.

Opinions are not facts...