What did Donald Trump do today?

He scrambled to find a way to blame women and minorities for a plane crash.

Last night, an American Airlines flight from Wichita was attempting to land at Washington's National Airport when it was struck by an Army helicopter. All 64 people on board the plane, and all three on the helicopter, were killed. It was the worst air disaster in the United States since 2001, when a passenger jet crashed in Queens.

Trump first weighed in shortly after midnight this morning via a post to his private social media network, observing that "this is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented." That post, and subsequent comments he made at a briefing this morning before any real investigation had taken place, seemed to assume that the military pilots had been in error. Then, at a briefing this morning, Trump eagerly jumped on the idea that somehow, unqualified women or minorities hired as air traffic controllers under previous administrations were to blame. 

There is not, and never has been, any system of racial or gender preference in the hiring of air traffic controllers.

That led to this exchange:

Q: You today blamed the diversity elements but then told us you that you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistakes. You then said that perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made mistakes—

TRUMP: It’s all under investigation.

Q:  I understand that, that’s why I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.

TRUMP: Because I have common sense, and unfortunately a lot of people don't. 

At several points, Trump tried to shift the blame to former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, whom he referred to in the present tense as though he were still in office. In fact, Trump's appointee to the post is a fellow reality TV star, Sean Duffy. The alumnus of MTV's The Real World and Road Rules spoke to reporters this morning, saying that "Obviously, it is not standard to have aircraft collide." He then added, "I want to be clear on that."

Trump has failed to fill other key offices related to aviation security, like the Administrator of the FAA. Normally, for a nonpartisan position like that, the current administrator would remain in office until their replacement could be confirmed. In this case, however, the previous administrator, Michael Whitaker, was forced out of office on Trump's first day by Elon Musk. Musk wields a substantial amount of power within the Trump administration, and targeted Whitaker because Musk's company SpaceX had been subject to fines and flight restrictions by the FAA for environmental and safety violations. The most recent of these happened on January 17, when the FAA temporarily grounded SpaceX after one of their experimental rockets blew up over a populated area.

Secretary Duffy was asked at this morning's briefing who was the acting head of the FAA, and walked away without answering. Reporting on the lack of FAA leadership eventually identified Chris Rocheleau as the acting administrator, but it was sourced to "people familiar with the matter" and could not be directly confirmed. (This afternoon, apparently stung by criticism over this internal confusion, Trump hastily appointed an acting FAA chief.)

Trump also made a point of firing the head of the Transportation Safety Administration and the Commandant of the Coast Guard for what he identified as ideological reasons—even though it was Trump who appointed the TSA head, David Pekoske, in the first place. Both agencies are involved in the investigation and rescue efforts. Similarly, he gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and forced a halt to purely routine aircraft safety regulation. 

Trump has frozen hiring of air traffic controllers, in defiance of a law mandating accelerated hiring to address critical shortages. This led to immediate concerns about the impact on safety, even during Trump's first week in office. The DCA tower was operating with half the normal complement of controllers. 

The order freezing staffing levels in place, which Trump signed on the first full day of his second term, was titled "Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation."

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who don't yet know what has happened in a crisis shouldn't pretend that they do.

• Believing that minorities and women are inherently unqualified for any given job is racism and sexism, not "common sense."

• The most important thing here is not whether Donald Trump can avoid having to take responsibility, and it's bad that that's what he seems most preoccupied by.

• In a meritocracy, the person put in charge of the Department of Transportation would know who was in charge of the FAA, and be able to do more than observe that aircraft don't normally collide.