An unforced error for Donald Trump

There's a time and a place to attack affirmative action programs; the moment rescuers are recovering the bodies of 67 people who died in a tragic accident is NOT it.

Donald Trump had a strong first week.

Yesterday, however, was not a good day.

We do not know what caused an Army Black Hawk helicopter to crash into a American Airlines regional jet landing at Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people Wednesday night.

As anyone who’s ever flown into Reagan knows, the airspace is heavy with civilian and military traffic. The airport is tiny, stuck on an outcropping of land just west of the junction of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, with the Pentagon across highways to the north. To say the least, it’s not an ideal location, and it wouldn’t be built there today. After 9/11, the government briefly considered closing it, but federal poo-bahs like it because it’s so close to the Capitol and White House.

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Flying is safe. Incredibly safe. (I wish medicine were half, or one-tenth, as good at finding and fixing errors.) Before Wednesday’s crash, we hadn’t had a major commercial jet accident in the United States since 2009. We still haven’t had one on a mainline carrier, as opposed to a regional jet affiliate, since an American Airlines Airbus crashed on takeoff in New York City in November 2001.

Still, there have been signs that the system is under stress.

We don’t have enough air-traffic controllers;, forcing the ones we have to work long hours. And near-misses have been disturbingly common. The difference between a near-miss and an accident is sometimes training and safeguards embedded in the system — and sometimes luck.

On Wednesday, 15 years of luck and preparation ran out, and 67 people died. We have systems in place to figure out what happened and try to ensure it doesn’t happen again. And so the only correct presidential - or human - response to the crash is to empathize with the families of the dead and to promise a full, complete, and transparent investigation.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump didn’t do that at his press conference yesterday. Instead he spent much of his time complaining about diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at the Federal Aviation Administration — even though he appears to have no evidence that they played any role in any part of the accident.

The White House then released a statement about “problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden Administrations that minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration.”

I am all in favor of having the best air traffic controllers - and pilots - based on measurable and objective benchmarks that do not include race, gender, or other markers of diversity. If those benchmarks give us a workforce that’s 99 percent white and male, so be it. Lowering those standards, just like lowering standards for elite combat units (or physicians), will get people killed.

But blaming this accident on DEI programs at this moment is wrong. The fact that Trump didn’t present a scintilla of evidence makes matters worse, but even if he had some, he should have taken the high road. The bodies were still in the river.

Taking the high road has never been Donald Trump’s way. I know a lot of you like him for that. I never have, and Thursday reminded me why.

Just imagine how you’d feel if you had family on that plane.

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Semi-related note: If you’re a pilot and want to tell me what you think of the crash - or the stresses in the system, including the push for DEI by airlines and the FAA - please email me. Confidentiality assured, of course.