Vice President J.D. Vance has forcefully supported former President Donald J. Trump’s warning that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies contributed to a recent plane crash in Washington, D.C.
During an appearance on Fox News this weekend, Vance said that “DEI regime” policies have deterred capable white people from applying to become air traffic controllers.
“We have a massive shortage of air traffic controllers and, in fact, there have been a number of lawsuits from people who would like to become air traffic controllers against the Obama and Biden administrations, who basically said, ‘We were told not even to apply because of the color of our skin,’ because they were white people who wanted to be air traffic controllers, and under the DEI regime of the Biden administration, they weren’t welcome,” Vance explained.
Trump criticized the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) diversity-obsessed hiring practices following the crash. In particular, he highlighted the FAA going out of its way to recruit employees with “severe intellectual disability” and “psychiatric disability,” alongside people with a range of physical ailments such as epilepsy and complete or partial paralysis.
The agency has been involved in a class-action lawsuit concerning its recruitment methods.
Vance says the “scandal” of discriminating against potential recruits based on their race “thankfully… has stopped under the leadership of President Trump.”
