It’s astounding that millions of people forgot what it was like in the first Trump term, the daily onslaught of incompetence, cruelty, bad policy, lies, bigotry, racism and hate. During the Biden administration, I could go weeks without thinking about the presidency, nor was I ever worried that President Biden would lose his temper and defund the government or fire every federal employee, or blame a plane crash on DEI. Apparently, that’s what millions of Americans wanted, so they’re getting what they asked for. So here we are… not even two full weeks into Donald Trump’s second term and his incompetence has already killed 67 people. 64 people died on the American Airlines plane, which crashed into a US Army blackhawk (with three people inside) over the Potomac. It’s actually looking more like the blackhawk crashed into the plane, btw. There are reportedly no survivors. It’s incredibly tragic and tributes and stories are coming in for the people who lost their lives.
On January 20, FAA administrator Michael Whitaker stepped down after Elon Musk demanded that he quit. Musk beefed with Whitaker because of the FAA’s oversight of Musk’s company, and Whitaker knew that he would be fired by Donald Trump anyway. Additionally, in the first 24 hours of the Trump presidency, Trump was already f–king with air traffic controllers and the FAA, and the effect was felt immediately – there was not adequate staffing at Reagan airport’s air-traffic-control station on the night of the crash.
Basically, it took everyone a matter of minutes to compile comprehensive evidence of why the Potomac plane crash was Donald Trump’s fault. Which is why he panicked, threw on some burnt sienna makeup and waddled to the White House press room for a press conference on Thursday. He immediately blamed the Potomac crash on… DEI, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. That’s their latest “racist dog-whistle.” Previously, everything was blamed on “woke” or “critical race theory” or “Obama’s birth certificate.” Trump also blamed President Biden for the crash too. After the press conference, Trump waddled back into the Oval Office and they set up a little play for him. They had him sign a document assigning blame for the crash on Joe Biden and DEI.
Insanity — Trump signs an order blaming Biden and DEI for flight dangers pic.twitter.com/rsrxItGEkP
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2025
Vance also tried to do clean-up on Trump’s DEI-caused-a-plane-crash mess, telling reporters that DEI is absolutely to blame here, because white people get so stressed out by the thought of Black people existing, they crash planes.
Vance is saying that even if no black people were involved in the crash, the stress of having to work with black people makes the white employees blameless https://t.co/PUjVcvhL6G
— vituperativeerb (@vituperativeerb) January 30, 2025
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- US President Donald Trump speaks about a collision involving an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter during a press briefing at the White House in Washington Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 30 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- US President Donald Trump speaks about a collision involving an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter during a press briefing at the White House in Washington Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 30 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- US President Donald Trump speaks about a collision involving an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on January 30, 2025. Credit: Yuri Gripas / Pool via CNP Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 30 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- US President Donald Trump speaks about a collision involving an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on January 30, 2025. Credit: Yuri Gripas / Pool via CNP Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 30 Jan 2025 Credit: POOL via CNP/INSTARimages.com
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- United States President Donald J Trump makes remarks on the aircraft crash at Reagan National Airport in the briefing room of the White House Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 30 Jan 2025 Credit: CNP/INSTARimages
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- United States President Donald J Trump makes remarks on the aircraft crash at Reagan National Airport in the briefing room of the White House Featuring: Donald J Trump Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 30 Jan 2025 Credit: CNP/INSTARimages
The lunatics are finning the asylum. Watching in horror from Canada as his hateful playbook creeps north into our country too.
I’m watching from Europe… He’s crazy, batsh*t crazy….
From what I’ve seen, since Trump’s inauguration, national support for the conservatives in Canada has been dropping and the liberals have been gaining more support. What’s also been hurting the conservatives is Elon’s boosting of Poilievre on Twitter. We’re not out of the woods by a long shot but there’s still a glimmer of hope!
What a mess. It’s clear to me that the Trump Administration is at fault for this. The main question is why was the Blackhawk there?
As I understand it, it is not unusual for helicopters to be in that airspace. Republicans in Congress have resisted every effort to divert some of the commercial traffic to Dulles because it would inconvenience them.
It’s the airplanes that shouldn’t be there. Reagan should have been shut down long ago. Locals use Dulles and Baltimore. And the military have to be there to protect the airspace from possible terrorist attacks and transport politicians and dignitaries.
Most people who live in the district use Reagan (I did during my time there). They keep adding flights, combined with all the military air traffic, so it’s like constant rush hour traffic in the skies.
TF? As a local, I do everything I possibly can to avoid BWI and IAD. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but I’ll take a layover before Dulles.
Respectfully, I think we need to wait for the results of the investigation. The early reports point to a myriad of factors at play.
I’m all for investigations.
But I’m going to jump to conclusion and say this isn’t Joe Biden’s fault and only MAGA low-Melanin Magic can find “evidence” to the contrary.
This is so obscene. We have to stop calling it DEI, btw. We should just acknowledge that these horrible Nazis are saying only white males are fit to perform jobs that require competence and responsibility. And they are doing this as they hire the most incompetent, dangerous, and deranged people they can find to run whatever is left of our government after they make it small enough to fit in a female womb. Now, they have demanded that top FBI leadership resign. What could possibly go wrong there? My guess is this is the political purge which precedes rounding up “the enemy within”. Goddess help us all!
Yes I’m gonna start calling it White Male Syndrome that they all suffer from. They believe only white males should have jobs. I read that the only way to get under a narcisist’s skin is to mock them. And now his cult is shouting DEI is to blame for everything just like him. The stupidity is mind boggling.
As the daughter of a narcissist, I will say that if you want to piss a narcissist off, mock them. If you want them to leave you alone, be as uninteresting as possible (gray rock).
A combination of the two — mocking them and shrugging at their insanity (observe and detach) — is the best way for us to proceed, which is why the “these guys are so WEIRD” direction that the Harris campaign took at the beginning was so effective. I will never forgive the stupid old school political consultants that steered her away from that.
When asked if he would go and visit the site of the crash, that scum sucker said “What am I gonna swim there?” No compassion and devoid of any humanity. I will never forgive this who voted for him and those who continue to defend this.
Those deaths are on his dead, he has blood on his hands and one day he will pay. In this life or the next.
He can probably see it from his balcony. He’s just too scared to get back in one of those helicopters he usually flies in all over DC to get anywhere.
I had that prickling “what does this remind me of” feeling when he said that, and then remembered it was Blake Lively talking about fans of her latest movie who were survivors of relationship violence. Ugh. People without empathy are the worst.
He’s already got the blood of hundreds of thousands because of his mishandling of Covid at the outset. How dumb are Americans that this was overlooked because Biden didn’t manage to make the world perfect after the mess he was given?
This loss of lives is all so tragic, and unnecessary — and then Felon47’s maladministration goes ahead to prove everyone that they have no idea about how things work IRL.
I didn’t expect anything but incoherent, disgusting blabber from the 🟠 one’s drug-addled brain, but blaming President Biden and DEI was a bit much.
What’s really enraging though: Vance with his racism, proudly worn on his sleeve, talking about hiring standards. He should know, because if not for Peter Thiel’s $$$, he wouldn’t have a job.
Wondering how Usha Vance is feeling in all this, the dark money must really be worth it.
And Vance got into Yale because of DEI!
And his Yale-JD wife is both a woman and has brown skin.
He also blamed Obama–don’t forget that.
Honestly, I’m less interested in blaming Trump for the plane crash than I am blaming him for his absolutely vile and unconscionable presser. It was a horrific tragedy and there’s still a lot of unknowns here so it feels a bit icky to jump to politicizing this. But what is absolutely, unequivocally apparent from his press conference (and what is obvious to C/Bers) is that this man is utterly devoid of integrity, compassion, personal responsibility, basic human kindness and honestly another other positive attribute we associate with good leadership.
I just cannot believe how stupid this country is for willfully putting this shitbag back in office.
@kitten: as people keep saying-cruelty is the point. this article, like so many others, says something like ‘don’t people remember what it was like?’. people do remember. they just don’t care. they just do not care about anything beyond their own nose. people are so excited about being able to say the n-word and doing the n-zi salute in public, they literally don’t care about anything else. they think they’re safe. and they are. until they’re not. and compared to what’s happened this last month, his first term was nothing.
white men finally figured out they weren’t the smartest people in the room, and the rest of us have been paying for it ever since.
Right. Trump and Musk have given them permission to embrace their worst instincts, mask off. I also see people on the left doing the same (shocking how many leftists use the r-word) and on one hand I get it: it’s tempting to speak their language in an attempt to level the same cruelty towards them. But folks need to fight that urge. Remember: they want us to become the same monsters they are because then they don’t have anyone holding them accountable. They want to be able to point to us and say “look, you’re just as awful as we are”. RESIST.
I’m sorry Kitten but if the r-word you are referring to is racist/m, I take great offense to you trying to put it in the same category as the n-word. The use of those words aren’t to degrade an entire race or group of people for looking differently from anyone else or even to stereotype them based on their skin color. There aren’t policies and practices in place to prevent them from achieving what all people are entitled to have in this life or to dehumanize them as not only less than someone of another race but also less than any other human. The words racism and racist are to describe a person for who they are and words or actions they freely express to dehumanize others who don’t look like them. No different than calling someone a murder when they kill someone or a rapist when they rape someone. We can’t allow the racists who believe the things that they believe to decide what we can’t call them because they don’t like the use of that word. My feeling is that if they dont like the word, then don’t be a racists… period. I won’t change calling them what they are and I refuse to be compared to them because I refuse to accept how they treat others. The two are not the same.
I’m pretty sure the r-word Kitten is referring to is r*tard.
His wife is as complicit as him. She’s clerked for Kavanaugh and Alito. Only the kids are innocent here.
No words. I just. These absolute ghouls. One more day left in January, I guess? My heart goes out to everyone affected by the plane crash.
These last two weeks seem like an eternity. I don’t know how we can stand four years of this.
I hear ya, Jais. Dark, dark, times.
Here is my sad attempt to cheer us up: his supporters might love his “policies”, but most of them don’t like the shit he did yesterday. They don’t like the angry, unhinged Trump who says infuriatingly stupid and divisive shit. I know it doesn’t change anything about our current circumstances or the next four years, but I DO hope he keeps reminding his supporters what a raging asshole he is–I want them to feel that shame.
First he has no policies. Just revenge. And his followers don’t care if he gives rambling incoherent speeches. What do you think he was doing while he was running? Trump won’t make it for four years. And Vance and his crew never expected him to. This is all to get Vance and the Freedom Caucus into power. They are pushing Trump to look demented. That way they can get rid of him easier. And then try to get rid of all elections. Keeping them in power.
.,.which is why I put policies in parenthesis.
Trump doesn’t need anyone to “push” him to look demented–he does that all on his own. He didn’t give a rambling speech yesterday–he lashed out with anger and divisiveness. He was defensive and demagogic and his supporters were all over social media acting outraged by his behavior.
And Vance will never have the political career Trump has had. He doesn’t have a personality–he’s not likable or charismatic–and the only remotely interesting thing about him was his backstory which he has effectively erased from his political persona.
INFURIATING and DISGUSTING.
God – they really are the WORST.
Why isn’t the media in those press briefings pushing back on his DEI comments? They ask him questions but they never call him out on the stupidity and danger of it. The media is having a field day hoping this will give them ratings because Trump is saying Trump things and they get to play aghast and shocked on those stupid pundit shows. Also, did anyone catch Hegseth at the same presser backing the burnt-faced dictator saying DEI is over and any openings at the DOD will be merit-based only. Is tragic irony lost on this ahole? He’s talking about merit-based??!!! Dude, you are NOT the one. Ugh. I can’t watch anymore of these press briefings.
One reporter did ask him for proof of his DEI comments and his reply was that he didn’t have proof but he did have common sense.
It turns out that all of the pilots were WHITE men, so so much for DEI. I haven’t seen any word of status of control tower guys, other than they were short-handed.
@WaterDragon I’ve heard the ATC discussions. All male. The only time a female is heard is after the crash when they still have planes taking off/landing and the ground controller (female) comes on and shuts the airport (grounds planes/prevents landings) so the emergency services of the airport (fire trucks etc) can cross the airport to attend the crash.
The pilot of the helicopter was female.
Some did and they won’t be invited back, trust.
Look, he’s an authoritarian, guys. We can’t expect the White House Press Corps to be full of smart journalists who are hellbent on holding him to account–this is not 2017. We need to support independent journalists who do the hard work and a lot of those folks will never be invited to Trump’s WH Press Corps for obvious reasons. The WH Press Corps will soon be stacked SOLELY with Trump sycophants: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/business/media/white-house-press-briefing-podcasters-influencers.html
He’s going to do his best to shut down every talking head, every journalist, and every news media organization that either holds him to account or paints him in an unfavorable light. He’ll threaten lawsuits against Maddow or Hayes or whoever and the network will have to decide whether it’s worth losing tens of millions of dollars to fight him or to just tamp down or censor what their news anchors say.
It’s the authoritarian playbook.
Co-sign @Kitten. It’s a high-wire act to push back & risk being banned. Recall in 2018 Jim Acosta’s WH press access was briefly pulled.
.
Also this week, the new press-sec introduced the designation of an entire row for *podcasters*.
Honestly, I wish I had just a smidge of the arrogance these terrible white guys have. From Trump on down, they’ve convinced that they’re the best, even in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary.
I’m very good at my job, but I sometimes worry I’m not good enough. Meanwhile, here’s a rich and narcissistic idiot ruling the free world, aided by dangerous mediocrities — a Confederacy of Dunces.
(Maddow did a comparison last night of the previous Defense Secretary Austin Lloyd’s resume and Hegseth’s. Shocker: The Black guy’s resume was in a different stratosphere.)
CNN is reporting the helicopter should have maneuvered out of the way. All this horror is on Trump’s watch and that document he signed has no weight. NTSB findings do. Sadly, Trump is going to try to force the investigators to blame Biden and DEI in their official report or be fired.
The problem with that is American Airlines is going to demand the report be published. So they don’t get sued. And it will show what happened. And you can’t prove DEI had anything to do with it. That’s just not logical.
I’ll bet that the mere presence of black BOXES in the cockpit was enough to make the pilots so anxious that they lost control. Or maybe they misheard it as “black foxes” and thought that Pam Grier was going to hijack the fucking flight. Makes sense.
We should probably rename Blackhawk helicopters. Just to be safe.
I know you’re joking, but the rampant racism of wide swathes of the general public — be it in the US or over here in Europe — is indeed disgusting.
The Black Hawks are being phased out, the successor has been in production since 2022.
Briefly setting aside the tragedy and sheer horror of this, it’s interesting watching them react TO something as until now they’ve been setting the tone/pace with all the cruel and ridiculous pronouncements. That was bad enough but now everyone is being reminded again that there is absolutely no competence or even basic humanity at the top of this administration.
This is a really good point. Their incompetence is definitely highlighted when they have to respond to events. His default response is to follow the DARVO playbook. And it shows his rear-end hanging out.
Straight out of Nazi playbook. Blame everything on “dei” (read: black people) to get the country to be apathetic or happy when they start to enact state sponsored violence against us. I am terrified.
So Trump cuts funding and jobs for Air Traffic Controllers and 2 Kansas Senators add another flight to an already incredibly busy airport that should have been shut down years ago, led to this series of mistakes that didn’t have to have to happen.
Because until something actually affects them. They don’t believe it can happen. It took people dying for them to realize it. How many more are going to have to die. For them to understand their jobs do affect people lives.
How many people died of covid on his watch as a result of his war on science and look where we are again. I don’t believe deaths will snap any of them out of it.
They are brainwashed and/or willfully ignorant as long as their issue is the focus of the draconian policies being implemented; be it for greed/power, anti-abortion, white supremacy, on and on and on – you name it.
My god, that top picture of him! He looks completely out of it. I have so much contempt for everyone who who voted for this heartless, wildly incompetent lunatic.
Donald looks like he’s deep into dementia. I think Elon & Stephen Miller can whip him up so he does his usual ranting & threatening, but he’s a husk. Look how vacant he looked while signing all those executive orders.
Stephen Miller looks sicker than Trump. He looks like an anemic vampire.
unfortunately, Vance, Musk, Peter Thiel (Musk’s bank roller) and the rest of the GOP really are no better Trump so even if Trump dies/Vance pushes him to resign, the GOP sold their souls for this power and they will drive this country into the ground regardless of who is at the helm
His comments were shocking but not surprising. We can always expect the worst to come out of his mouth. He’s straight up detestable. But can we talk about how he looked? My god. When he started the firings he should have started with his hair and makeup people.
If there is the teeniest tiniest silver lining from trumps reaction, it’s that I have seen quite a few Trump supporters turn against him on social media.
MC, I have seen the same thing that you have, that trump supporters are turning on him. Their voices are even louder today. I hope this will translate into votes against him in 2026.
Yeah same which is good and bad. Like, it’s good that they have buyer’s remorse, but it’s also fucking infuriating that they had complete amnesia about his first term–so much so that they voted for this insanity a second time.
i’ve been seeing similar stuff -trump supporters and voters being shocked about what they actually voted for. i just can’t get too excited about it because it’s too late to do anything about it, you know? i’m just in if for the irony and schadenfreude. and, as many others have mentioned, lions eating faces. so much of my natural empathy is just gone now. it’s a fundamental piece of myself that is just gone. i had a friend who said she felt bad and scared for a variety of people who stood up to trump this last election, including cheney (having the bulls eye over her face, etc.). and i’m like, i don’t even care. she’s one of the people who put him in power in the first place. she’s just like every other republican woman who think they’re an exception to this bs. at least she’s rich enough to afford security, unlike most of the people being targeted by this butt.
This article from NBCNews is so well-written. I think it’s exactly how Trump’s behavior should be covered by regular media in parallel to articles containing just the facts:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-national-mourning-airing-grievances-dei-rcna190002
That was surprisingly well-written. I enjoyed this shade:
Duffy — who does not have a background in transportation but gained fame as a reality-TV star before becoming a congressman from Wisconsin — just started as transportation secretary on Wednesday. He struggled through a separate Thursday-morning press briefing, telling reporters the obvious line, “It is not standard to have aircraft collide. I want to be clear on that.”
Me too! It was so thorough I heard sizzling sounds. I hope he keeps it up!
The contrast between Duffy and his intelligent and articulate predecessor Pete Buttigieg is so striking. Pete was also used as a whipping boy for this horrible tragedy. Trump’s response to it is truly appalling. If eyes are in fact the windows of the soul the photo at the top of the page confirms that he has no soul.
A tweet from January 2024 has been brought up over the past couple of days. Musk tweeted that it would take a plane crash that kills hundreds of people to reverse DEI. That is why Trump is blaming this in DEI.
Let’s issue a blanket GFY to him and everyone involved.
disgusting
disrespectful
He’s only two weeks in and already had blood on his hands. When I saw this, I was expecting the comments to be full of praise for him like they usually are, but was quite surprised that even the comments in the DM were outraged by what he said. I’m hoping that his white voters ,who thought he was only gonna target the lives on minorities, are waking up to the fact that this man’s incompetence could cost them their lives aswell.
I mean, DEI itself most benefits white women but the WW that voted for him are convinced that they got their jobs on merit and merit alone. *eyeroll*
The fun part for me is that I was in a meeting for people who are committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce when we heard about it. Luckily our meeting organizer reminded us to stay the course, after she gave us a moment to say our WTFs out loud.
This was clearly caused by TEI; Trump Era Incompetence
1000% I am going to steal that line: TEI; Trump Era Incompetence
Thank you, SpankyB!
You’re welcome! But I stole it from someone on Bluesky. lol
Please stop using Trump’s photo on the home-page list of stories. Thank you.
I enjoy seeing his face and posture. The unflattering unvarnished pictures Kaiser posts serve to show an aspect of his health that he and others around him work hard to conceal. Not to mention, undermine his vanity by showing true ugliness, inside and out, in every frame. Especially the header pictures! You see everything you need to see in that first glance, and Trump would hate it, and we need to know. I feel so grateful Kaiser sees his ugliness as surely as the rest of us do and never misses or holds back, as painful as it may be, she is providing unvarnished coverage as she should, top to bottom.
*throws hands in the air*
There is nothing we can do about this level of insanity, is there.
Shannon Watts from Mum’s Demand on 10 things we can do over the next 4 years: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFePRWWPlMo/?img_index=1
“…because white people get so stressed out by the thought of Black people existing, they crash planes.” Yep. With the way black people literally do nothing and we still get blamed for nonsense of the government, that sounds about right.
In all seriousness though, if this type of rhetoric of blaming minorities for every single thing that goes wrong in this country, things are going to get very ugly very fast.
There is a former military pilot that has a you tube channel. Hoover of Pilot Debrief. He covers aviation accidents. To show how accidents can be avoided in the future. I think he made some good observations about this accident.
To note, unlike the media that played the crash on a loop. Hoover never shows anything gory. He has more respect for human life than the news. And the reporter that asked the husband of the wife on the plane. To see her last text message. Should be fired. But I digress…
I think it was just tragic pilot error that relied too much on visuals. It seems like it was the Swiss cheese model. Too many things went wrong at once.
I’m sure we really won’t know for a long time. Since the FAA can take years to issue a report. But what I don’t think matters was the color or gender of anyone that lost their life that night.
So he goes into it much better than I can explain if you want to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzQe6W7vcu4&t=320s
That’s a great video by Hoover. Thanks for posting.
There are reports that the third pilot of the helicopter is female and her family is requesting her name be withheld because of the smears by the president
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281246/pentagon-jet-military-helicopter-collision
Wait, I thought liberals were the fragile snowflakes? So white male MAGA can’t function if they have to work NEAR someone who is not a white male MAGA. White male fragility is so stupid.
It is so obviously true you liberal virtual signaling weenies