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).

@justteanbiscuits

In which case we're just repeating old ground.

I think his claims were broader, beyond this specific crash. I don't think they can be called baseless, even if you disagree with his take on it. That might just be how you and I interpret the word baseless.

The Guardian's claim that 'without providing evidence' is attached to a specific claim that is, uncontroversially, just true. That's either incredibly shoddy reporting or clear bias.

If I support the Heathrow third runway, that doesn't make claims of environmental harm baseless. If I oppose it, that doesn't make claims of economic benefit baseless. If the Guardian reports that Rachel Reeves claimed there is an airport at Heathrow "without providing evidence" that's just stupid. If the Guardian is in any doubt about whether there's an airport there, find out and tell us!

We don’t know if Trump is basing this on the large court case suggesting harmful recruiting practices, hot air and political expediency… or if, as president, he has access to information we do not have. It could be any of these. Hence to declare his pronouncement baseless is baseless.

Time might tell.

They do burgle houses though

The issue may be that the airliner was set up to land on the N/S runway and then with a wind change offered runway 33, basically towards the North West and probably positioning visually between the two.

Was it also required to lose height so as to be on profile when lined up for 33. Did the wind affect its course or track?

Some departures from Heathrow's southern runway taking off towards the east which need to turn to the west shortly after becoming airborne. I've read that the turn's radius is significantly larger where the easterly wind has a strong northerly component ie is from the north east.

Trump's claim that DEI hiring practices caused the crash is the baseless claim. It has no basis in reality, there is no evidence for it. You seem to be confusing the existence of DEI hiring practices (for which there is evidence) with those hiring practices having caused an air crash.

Duh 😆. That’s the point exactly. Well done. There’s been no investigation so any claims in either direction are baseless 🙈

Well that's fine then, lets keep the AK 47s and mass shootings because of only having a slight decrease in violent burglaries....which already happen and your chances of grabbing your own gun before you have been shot by an intruder in minimal if it is in a lock box as it should be.

I think the problem is we have media who are automatically reporting things the American president says as untrue unless they have immediately available data proving otherwise (and sometimes even then). Rather than assuming it is true unless they can prove otherwise. It is designed to undermine trust in Trump but will also undermine trust in America by other parties (countries, businesses) and in politicians generally.

Yes, let's follow that logic through and it might finally click. Every theory right now is baseless, because there has not been an investigation, thus we have no evidence yet, only theories. Thus Trump's speculation and mental gymnastics to blame DEI is baseless, cruel, hurtful and dangerous. So any media outlet that calls that out, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, is telling the truth.

Are you party to the same information as the President?

He was commenting, very specifically, on a tragedy that had just occurred. It would have been even more inappropriate of him to make mention of this in a "broader term" when he should have simply been sending his prayers to the victims and their loved ones.

What evidence did he produce that the air crash was caused by DEI? The Guardian is correct that there was, and is, no evidence that ANYTHING collected to DEI played a part in this?

I fail to understand the connection of your very random swerve to environmental impacts of a third runway at Heathrow. I can only think you are very confused - Rachel Reeves wouldn't need to provide evidence that Heathrow exists. But if there had been an air disaster and Rachel Reeves had said "it was because of the third runway at Heathrow" that would have been baseless if she didn't provide any evidence of it.

Even Trump has changed direction on the cause now.

Even people who worked for him called him a pathalogical liar. He literally couldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it, just search any fact checker service online over his Presidential career. He literally just riffs whatever conspiracy theory he read that day on Truth Social.

If that's aimed at me, I don't think you've read the linked piece, or my later posts. Very clearly not saying that DEI definitely caused this crash, DEI not the main target of my thread (Guardian ideological bias is), and plenty of evidence that FAA's DEI program was specifically problematic. This isn't about "did they have one" (plenty of ways of doing DEI that don't involve the kind of test rigging that seems to have happened here, and the issue is really about whether a line that can be drawn between the FAA's recruitment crisis and both the DEI programme and the fact that the tower was short-staffed (which may or may not have been a contributing factor in the crash)). Even on the link to the staffing crisis I’m not saying there 100% was definitely a causal chain, I’m saying there are pretty reasonable reasons to think there were, and not worthy of the scorn the Guardian smeared their article in.

That assumes Trump does not have any information you don’t have. He may not but it is quite likely he does. He will have had the names of the three people on the helicopter for starters. But even then, what is know from the court case provides a basis on which to form an opinion about the effectiveness of Air Traffic Control. So it is not baseless. You might disagree about his conclusion but that is different.

No, more likely to have caused short staffing is Trump sending out letters to a huge number of employees telling them to quit 🙄

Well on the basis there has been no investigation, no black boxes had been found at that point and we could be waiting months or years for the findings of the air crash investigators, he really did not have the evidence to make a link between the crash and DEI. Unless he is a super genius who can predict the outcome of a forensic investigation that could take years.

More likely he got it on Truth Social which is where he gets most of his ideas.

Does Trump even know the meaning of discreet - if there's 'something he knows' which posters on this thread don't know - he'll be right there sharing it irrespective of the consequences

See his pivot to now blaming the helicopters being at the wrong altitude

Military helicopter training has just been banned indefinitely from that crowded airspace - all but police and medical helicopters will now be out of the way of commercial airplanes

I think the runway change for the CRJ was simply due to occupancy requirements, e.g. make it easier for the Airbus behind to roll out, or even expedite taxi in (it happens), I haven’t heard it being attributed to any change in wind direction..

The track distance 01 verses 33 would be slightly different but wouldn’t change the vertical profile that much.

You’re right with your comments/the theory about some specific departures out of LHR where you fly a fixed angle of bank, OTOH a visual approach like the one at DCA is a different kettle of fish. There you’d expect the crew to use their piloting skills to vary bank as appropriate to achieve the centre line, rather than simply accept being blown wide - I’ve not so far heard anyone suggest the CRJ was wide in the turn or got blown too far down wind and that was a contributory factor but we’ll have to wait and see what the full report comes up with.

A conspiracy theory blog isn't proof of anything.

The discussion on a subreddit for pilots immediately after the crash was that the military helicopter pilot-in-training was supposed to pass behind the plane, but got confused about which plane he was instructed to follow, due to darkness, poor visibility and inexperience, and ended up passing directly in front of the plane, causing the crash. It'll be interesting to find out whether they were correct, but I suspect they were. Apparently pilots have been warning of the dangers of allowing military training in the airport space for years and there have been many near misses before this accident.

If you think the court papers (from the court legal repository website), the reporting at that blog, the dozens of other reports on this stretching back years are faked, it’s just possible you might be the conspiracy theorist.

The existence of the lawsuit is one thing the Guardian said was an un-evidenced assertion. That’s shockingly poor journalism.

There has not been an investigation into the cause of the crash. So whatever information he has is not sufficient to make claims about DEI. They haven't even got the black box yet so for all ANYONE knows it could have been an intentional act. It could have been equipment malfunction. All he will know over me is whether someone in the ATC or the pilot was a DEI hire but that does NOT mean that DEIi was the cause of the accident. I have no idea why that is so hard to understand.

I've been reading similar stuff elsewhere. There was a photo from a cockpit of one of the same type of helicopters and it's unbelievable how restricted the field of vision is in an upwards direction. The pilot who was talking said at night lights from buildings blur into plane lights.

Or even lights from two planes can appear to be one plane....which I can understand after seeing a similar effect with an approaching car and motorbike, the headlight of the motorbike lined up with the car lights and I had no idea there was a motorbike there.

Sounds most likely it will be a systemic failure of too many aircraft routinely allowed in too tight an area coupled with bad timing/luck over visibility and an understandable human error. Obviously people need to wait for the report and I wouldn't even be typing this if it wasn't for Trump starting the speculation and feeling the need to point out he may well not be correct.

You don't have to read the Guardian if you disagree with their position on this.