Summary
After a mid-air collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Eagle flight near Washington, D.C., Trump speculated on Truth Social, questioning why the crash wasn’t avoided.
Billionaire Bill Ackman suggested terrorism, though the FBI found no evidence of criminal activity.
Officials confirmed 67 people were onboard but have not reported fatalities. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser urged patience as rescue efforts continue.
Trump’s comments have fueled conspiracy theories despite the lack of confirmed details.
Pasting my reply regarding Trumps comments from another thread:
The questions he’s asking aren’t wrong to ask. The real problem, IMO, is that he’s the president and can’t simply post those questions publicly. He’s an idiot, though, so this is what we get.
But seriously, he also asks why the Black Hawk pilot didn’t do ANYTHING to avoid a known flight path and I’ve asked the same thing.
As for Ackman: he’s just another idiot guessing.
Just based on my initial understanding of the situation, it looks like pilot error on the part of the helicopter. So, Trump’s not wrong; he’s just an asshole, and him injecting himself into this is counterproductive. Conspiracy theories relating to this is just…stupid.
Pilot error is a convenient way of ignoring the systemic causes of the crash.
Human error is almost never the root cause of an incident.
As lots of people pointed out, there are lots of well identified contributing factors to this accident that don’t have anything to do with the pilots.
Anyone who has flown into this airport will know how crazy that airspace is, and how close it feels to everything in DC. It’s an incredible approach, but this accident doesn’t exactly surprise me because all it takes is just a slight lapse in attention for a disaster to occur.
Yeah many years ago some friends and I went to fly some trick kites at Gravelly point park and when the first plane came in we realized how close the kites were to the planes, so we packed up our stuff and started to leave, as we were doing that another couple came out with kites and started to unpack theirs. When we were driving away we saw several Park police surrounding that couple and interrogating them.
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I agree with your points (except for maybe the clock ticking), but let’s avoid using ableist slurs.
Can you clarify what question?
Asking why the pilot didn’t divert or see the plane is a legitimate question. Asking why air traffic control didn’t redirect is legitimate given the time he asked it (I believe now we know that ATC tried to redirect).
Look the guy is going to be the death of this country, however, the questions themselves, as he posted them, aren’t off base. But again, he’s the fucking president and maybe he could pretend to act with a LITTLE decor.
The problen is the “'I’m just ask questions” part. He is the fucking president asking these questions on his platform. He should call his acting FAA chief and ask for information. It is a chain of command for a reason. That goes both ways, up and down.
Second he just did a press conference blaming DEI. We will know more once the black boxes are recovered. First we need to recover the bodies.
He got where he is precisely by not having any decor. His base loves that.