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).

Trump has been so unwise and reckless stating probable causes like this before a proper investigation has been concluded.

If the air traffic control tower was understaffed that is more likely to be a matter of under -resourcing or poor management; so why he is blaming diversity recruitment policies I do not know..

At a time when the poor souls on board have not even been fully identified, or claimed back by their families and when everyone is shocked, the President should be bringing people together and act as a steadying hand; instead he is stirring up unnecessary controversy and using people’s deaths as political power play. It’s contemptible.

Apart from anything else, he is totally misunderstanding the purpose of diversity training and recruitment policies. It’s nothing to do with picking someone off the street who is disabled or is from an ethnic minority and then recruiting and over- promoting them in to a position they can’t handle.

On the contrary, it’s about ensuring that individuals who have passed all of the relevant competency tests and training, are not held back by their disability or ethnic background. The emphasis being that they have the same skills, abilities and competencies as anyone else doing the same job and have been rigorously tested like everyone else.

Trump is despicable.

Skimming that article, it looks like the biographical questionnaire was taken after the “end of training” test ie everyone taking the questionnaire was already at the right technical standard.

Let me know if I have misunderstood.

ETA - I should not have called it an article. It’s a blog, by a law student. Article would imply editorial standards, and blogs do not (obviously some blogs are nonetheless very accurate)

Come on OP, if you can't see that he is using the crash for political gain without any actual evidence of what has led to the crash, then you need to have a word with yourself.

It's the same as if he had stepped up and said "well clearly the pilot of the helicopter was to blame as he had his lights out" or "the pilot of the airplane was to blame as he should have seen the helicopter". There may be some truth to it but no way to know until the investigation has progressed.

If he had said "we know there are a number of things that need to be looked at, it seems there was understaffing on the night, had been some issues around recruitment, the helicopter seems to have been in the dark and not showing on the tracker, there are often lots of helicopters right by the flight paths, so we need to give the team time to look at it all and understand what happened so we can make sure something like this can never happen again" then that would be fine.

But standing up and saying it's the fault of DEI when he has no evidence at this stage to support that assertion is just him being his usual twatty self.

If you believe this, that's up to you.

But his claim is currently baseless. The inquiry will give answers.

Easy to immediately rush to blame PoC- that's what his supporters want- before waiting for an investigation. Despicable dogwhistling.

But that is not comparable, there is research and evidence about patterns of behaviour and the relationship about gun availability and ownership, because they have happened frequently and repeatedly in v similar circumstances(now 1000s of times in the US).

At this moment any assertion of cause in this crash can only be speculation - baseless as there is no evidenced explanation has been put forward, as the unique circumstances are only now being investigated as PP have said.

Recourse to "common sense" as an argument is also daft as it effectively means "what I personally believe to be reasonable and correct" there is no universal definition or rationale as to what common sense is or what constitutes it. I for example think inclusion, equality and diversity are common sense ideas (and actually there is a fair bit of evidence that shows that they are, not least in business).

Sample of questions:

x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752197404768571629

Don't skim-read or you will assume many of the answers are the wrong way round from what they were actually selecting on.

Court documents are linked from the original site I posted.

This really is well-evidenced on public record.

This test's perniciousness was not just that it was a dumbing-down, but that the scoring was bizarre and then some groups were given the answers ahead of time.

It was very disconcerting watching the press conference live. So many journalists and elected city officials toadying up to him. Trump essentially bullying some journalists about whether they had asked a good or bad question. So many journalists afraid to confront him. Really unnerving.

The plane has just crashed, be reasonable.

If flying in America is that dangerous because of DEI, then why haven't they grounded every single plane?

Crash investigations take months. Was it wrong to report on the bird strike in Korea before we know if that was a causal factor? I think it's not wrong and should be done carefully. Was Trump careful? Of course not. But the Guardian is deliberately obfuscating.

"Said without evidence"? When something is true and well-evidenced public knowledge, those words are there simply to detract credibility.

I haven’t read the questions and don’t have time now. But I would also expect that the best person for an ATC job would need a heck of a lot of non academic skills. I have an excellent degree in a relevant subject and I would be shit at it.

Assimilating and then discarding (because planes have left your airspace) lots of information very quickly. Staying calm under pressure. Communicating briefly but clearly, often with people whose first language is not yours. Staying focussed for a full shift. Spatial awareness . And that’s all off the top of my head.

Quite.

@SheilaFentiman

You are right not to take the word of a blog online, without questioning.

Did you read the court documents linked?

This is not proof. The screen shots have no link to their marking scheme. A pressure group may well have been trying to get minorities represented, but that is a pressure group, not the hiring company. This is utterly unreliable evidence.

Not sure why you're only going after The Guardian for saying it when the BBC, CNN, and all the others are also saying it. Because it's true, there's no evidence of anything yet.

And turning a fatal crash into political point scoring is disgusting whatever you believe, especially when it's literally just happened. Trump is even blaming Obama as well, well he came after Obama so he could have changed anything he liked (and didn't).

Crash investigations take months

The recorders have been recovered and a preliminary report is expected within 30 days.

I don’t know the bird strike case, but if the crash was on land, I assume it was clear from early on that a bird strike brought down the plane (just as it was clear here that a collision brought down the craft)?

I don't think the blame here is being pointed at PoCs, but at the FAA and previous administration.

Trump is divisive and disgusting, using such an incident to push political unrest and back up his claims about race, disability etc.

Let’s hope, that coincidently, one of the ATC’s is not of, say, Mexican heritage. That would add to Trump’s BS.

Here you go OP, if you want to base your opinions on X content. Let me know how DEI is at play in the work of the air traffic controller. Is it because the air traffic controller was black? Gay? I'm not sure.

x.com/care2much18/status/1885051954729996543?s=46&t=vhYIYj2biHLinAZ7HlqYeg

Whether this is true or not, he's speaking without knowing the facts. It's simply too early to know. He's exploiting a tragedy and the grief of hundreds of people to take yet another pop at diversity. That alone is despicable.

Not just the Guardian, OP. The BBC are also reporting, 'Trump says, without evidence, that diversity policies were factor in DC plane crash.'

'And less than 24 hours after the first major US air disaster in more than a decade, Trump – along with his secretaries of transportation and defence, and his vice-president – took turns hammering their point, even as they provided no evidence that federal hiring practices had any connection to this particular crash.'

Remember, this is Trump who suggested ingesting disinfectant to combat COVID.

Court documents are here: drive.google.com/drive/folders/

it looks to be a fairly well researched and comprehensive piece of investigative journalism.

Actually the very earliest report from the FAA postulated that ATC understaffing was a contributory factor in the crash. So as awful as Trump is, he may not have been wholly wrong to mention the issues with staffing in that sector, and OP makes a fair point that the Guardian ought to report on it with less bias.

From what I can gather the plane was on a set path and couldn't deviate. The helicopter could pretty much do what it liked and was assumed to have looked (the flight deck even asked if he saw the plane). Far more likely to be a military mess up IMO.