President Donald Trump has claimed the Federal Aviation Administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies was to blame for the tragic collision between a US military helicopter and an American Airlines plane. Mr Trump opened the White House press conference on Thursday, paying respect to those who have died with a moment of silence, and then said: “On behalf of the First Lady, myself and 340 million Americans, our hearts are shattered alongside yours, and our prayers are with you now and in the days to come.”.

The speech then took a surprising turn when he started talking about the possible causes of the crash. Here’s a summary of what Mr Trump said. The new US president implied that the diversity initiatives had reduced the safety of aviation travel during a press conference at the White House on Thursday. He said: “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas.”.

Then, without providing any proof, he suggested that the catastrophe might have been caused by the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) relaxed recruiting standards for air traffic controllers under the administrations of Joe Biden and Barack Obama. He quoted “various articles [that] appeared prior to my entering office”, adding: “The FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says FAA … says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce, [they] said, ‘They want them in, and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers’. I don’t think so. This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program.”.

Mr Trump also said the hiring guidance for the FAA’s diversity and inclusion programme included those with disabilities involving “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism”. While the FAA has diversity initiatives, there is no evidence that air traffic controller standards were lowered or that this caused the crash.

Meanwhile, an archived version of a website for the FAA's diversity and inclusion hiring programme that appears to have been taken down in December said that the agency was seeking people with "targeted disabilities" that the federal government was prioritising for recruitment at the time. When asked if he would “fire some of the diversity hires in federal government”, Mr Trump said: “I would say yes. If we find that people aren’t mentally competent … these are not people who should be doing these particular jobs.”.

He also criticised Obama’s administration: “We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. I changed the Obama [administration] standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary. “You remember that. Only the highest aptitude. They have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers. That was not so prior to [me] getting there.

“When I arrived in 2016, I made that change very early on, because I always felt this was a job that, and other jobs too, but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence, and we didn’t really have that. And we had it. And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.”. In another remark, Mr Trump blamed the Biden administration Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and said he ran the department “into the ground”.

Afterwards, the president signed a memorandum to end diversity efforts in the aviation sector and asked to review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during Mr Biden’s administration. Mr Trump also signed an executive order to appoint a new head of the FAA. The investigation is in early stages so there is no concrete evidence at the moment. Mr Trump also failed to back his words up with evidence. When asked by a reporter how Mr Trump could blame diversity programmes for the crash, the president said “because I have common sense”.

Later on, he did acknowledge the lack of a confirmed cause saying “it’s all under investigation”. On Wednesday night, a military helicopter and an American Airlines aircraft collided in midair, killing 67 people in total. After the collision, both planes plunged into the Potomac River. John Donnelly, the fire chief for Washington, DC, has now confirmed that at least two dozen bodies have been retrieved from the crash site.