Tipsheet

Here's Why a CNN Reporter Melted Down After Trump's Reagan Airport Presser

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 30, 2025 3:30 PM

President Donald J. Trump addressed the nation after the horrific air disaster at Reagan National Airport last night. Around 9 pm EST, an American Airlines flight from Kansas collided with an Army Blackhawk helicopter on approach. There are no survivors. The 64 people on board and the three soldiers in the chopper were all killed. It’s an unimaginable tragedy, though the liberal media was waiting in the tall grass to attack the president. He was waiting for them. 

The swipes at DEI programs, though, will trigger the most in the news media, who, if they did their job, would discover that Trump is right. We’ll get to that in a second. Yet, CNN’s Pete Muntean, who described the situation last night well, decided to have a total meltdown over these remarks. It was Jim Acosta-like: 

“I put my head in my hands, Pam, when the President said that. This is something that has been pushed by the far right for a few months now, that DEI policies are to blame in the degradation of safety in aviation in the United States. But frankly, the President is getting out ahead of his skis here. What he has. Said is not only unprofessional, unprofessional, unpresidential, inconsiderate of the status of this investigation, but frankly, it is just unhinged that he could even say with any sort of certainty that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies had any part to play in this accident. Remember that 67 people are dead.  

I hate to get so upset here, but this is something that investigators will really need to pick apart piece by piece and that is going to take some really significant time. We're not even 24 hours after this crash. We’re barely even 12 hours after this crash. And he is saying with a lot of certainty that the blame is on DEI and the blame is, in some ways, on air traffic control and air traffic control hiring.  

I have to feel for the air traffic controllers in the tower at Reagan National Airport, who had to essentially sit there helplessly and make the call to first responders to say, we have a serious aircraft crash at 848 last night. Let's parse out some more of this, because it's really significant here that President Trump also put some of the blame on Democrats. He — he said that transportation secretary, now former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg engaged in B.S. You can use — te [sic] actually used the full word live on television. 

The fact of the matter is that Transportation Secretary Buttigieg was very hard on aviation safety. There was a day long safety stand down because of the rise of near collisions on the runways at commercial airports nationwide. That really took off in 2023. I did a sit down interview with Buttigieg. He was well versed on the topic. He knew the points. He knew where the blind spots were, and the FAA and the Department of Transportation from the top down of the Biden administration, was taking that problem very seriously. He also was incredibly hard on airlines and consumer protections. The big bottom line here is that there are so many vacancies in the federal government when it comes to aviation safety.  

There is no administrator of the FAA right now. President Trump has not put somebody forth for that. There is no administration of the Transportation Safety Administration. The Trump administration needs to put forth somebody for that as well.” 

Yeah, let’s talk about the air traffic controllers for a second because the Biden administration pushed to have brain-damaged, drooling vegetables working in these positions. I don’t care what skin color the air traffic controllers are; land those planes safely. The Biden administration sacrificed competency for this nonsense, which might have led to tragedy. 

Jeff Zeleney and Dana Bash also chimed in, with the latter even claiming that Trump's attacks on DEI have made people more fearful of flying. Truly incredible stuff. 

***

Recommended

Air Traffic Control at Reagan Airport Described As 'Not Normal' Before Crash Matt Vespa
Adam Schiff Tried to Take Down Kash Patel. It Went How You'd Expect. Katie Pavlich

Trump was right again.