(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday for an immediate aviation safety assessment, ordering an elevation of “competence” over “DEI.”
Additionally, he signed an order to create a formal commission to appoint the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. Trump appointed Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year veteran of the FAA, as acting administrator of the FAA. The FAA’s most recent administrator, Michael Whitaker, resigned last week.
The executive orders came less than 24 hours after the deadly in-air collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and a Black Hawk military helicopter.
All 67 people aboard the plane and helicopter are presumed dead.
Trump attacked the FAA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, claiming that the agency had committed to adding employees with “severe” disabilities because they are part of the “most under-represented” portion of the American workforce.
Asked on Thursday afternoon if race or gender played a role in Wednesday’s deadly collision, Trump responded, “It may have.”
“Incompetence might have played a role,” the president said aftersigning the executive order. “We’ll let you know that, but we want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are. We want the most competent people especially in those positions.”
Trump said that aviation involves “extremely complex things” and added if FAA employees “don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
Trump criticized the administrations of former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama for placing more priority on DEI hiring practices than on what he calls “merit-based hiring.”
The memorandum Trump signed on Thursday said Biden’s administration required all executive departments and agencies to implement “dangerous” DEI tactics.
