I think this post is more about the "key aviation safety advisory committee" being gutted right before the worst air disaster in over a decade.

I don't really see people defending TSA anywhere. I just see people pointing out that Trump thinks DEI initiatives are at fault, while simultaneously thinking that thinning out the workforce in a notoriously understaffed field will strengthen the workforce.

Why does he think it’s DEI hires, you ask? Well, Trump answered, and I quote: “Because I have common sense, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”

God, I hate how many people think "common sense" is a legitimate argument.

While the claim is absolutely fucking insane, I will absolutely not be surprised if when the names are released we find out that one or more of the pilots flying were people of colour and it's just trump playing racist trump things.

I don't think it's the fault of any of the pilots regardless of their race, but I can fully see trump's pipeline of POC pilot = dei hire = plane crash as "common sense".

European politics is like a mirror at this point. A UK politician basically said virtually exactly the same thing, "I don't make mistakes", a few days ago, and then proceeded to make an absolute tit of themselves 24 hours later.

What an absolute lunatic, we should never let the GOP live this down. Rub this in their faces, ongoingly. Never forget! Never Let Up!

Yeah, there's almost certainly no immediate connection. It's possible that ATC people or the pilots were distracted by the Trump chaos, but he took office 10 days ago, 10 days isn't enough for a real cause-and-effect relationship here.

Having said that, this is definitely a warning of what his terrible decisions could do. Hopefully there's enough of a backlash that he'll reverse himself.

He was president 4 of the last 8 years. His party has been attacking the job security of air traffic controllers for about 4 decades.

His party led by him even when he wasn't in charge repeatedly shut down the government making essential workers work for free and threatened to do so.

They have been saying that they would basically fire and replace everyone for the last year.

He is the single largest barrier to any effort to retain and hire talent by the federal government since 2016.

None of this speak conclusively to cause which will require investigation but unlike DEI its an actual objective factor its just not as neat a package as this sound byte

That's not what juxtaposition means. It doesn't mean thing A is caused by thing B, it just means that thing A and thing B appearing next to each other produce an interesting association.

You might can point the finger sooner, just not for the reason OP hints at. The helicopter was military, and there a closer link to Trump and his administration given that. I wouldn't jump to conclusions, but he is already blaming DEI, because of course he is.

Also to add, this is hardly the first airplane crash in a while. There was even a near miss in Arizona just over 2 weeks ago https://people.com/united-and-delta-flights-nearly-collide-while-heading-to-phoenix-airport-8774470

My brother works for the FAA. It's been fucked for a while now and Trump isn't gonna make it better. They are dangerously understaffed.

That being said, yeah this wasn't Trump's or the FAA's fault. The helicopter pilot was told to maintain visual separation with the landing plane and then didn't do so.

Don't be sorry. No one said that this was direct causation. It is merely irony.

You’ll be saying that from inside Gitmo if we don’t organize and fight back.

We don’t need the TSA or FAA for eggs. Chickens can fly.

Remember how LA’s lesbian fire chief who had like more than two decades of firefighting experience was a “DEI hire”? (She was in part hired to clean up a culture of sexual harassment and rape cover ups - which is what they really don’t like.)

People need to remember this as they look for hope that people will suddenly turn on Trump. Rather than the right wing media politicizing shit, it comes straight from the president. The right wing dittoheads nod along and act like headless repeaters.

Reminds me of boondocks when they blame the "false" uncle ruckus test results on a black intern they didn't know about.

I remember flying into the US before 9/11 and it wasn't like you could just walk around with a bomb. They really don't achieve anything that wasn't already being done.

I get sort of why security theater happens but what I don't understand is why they seem pathologically incapable of giving coherent instructions or in fact holding on to things that they've just taken off you. "Oh you have an expensive camera that has been purposely engineered to be easy to hold" *proceeds to immediately drops it

They were fired about 9 days prior to the incident.

That's the real question.