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Donald Trump gave a meandering response when probed about the surge in plane crashes on U.S. soil since his return to office while flying aboard Air Force One.
The president answered a question about the recent spate of air accidents while returning to Washington, DC on Sunday evening just hours after a small aircraft went down near a retirement village in Manheim Township in Pennslyvania, resulting in five people on board being hospitalized.
Asked by one reporter whether his Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had “legitimate concern” after his department had been “gutted” – including 400 Federal Aviation Administration workers being laid off last month – the president claimed the recent crashes have “nothing to do with the department.”
“That was a small plane and that would have happened whether he had a big department or a small department, as you understand,” Trump said referencing the Pennslyvania crash.
“It’s just they have spates like this, you know, they have times when things happen a little bit more often than normal, and then it goes back, and you go many years without having a problem.”
According to data from the National Transportation Safety Board, there have been fewer than average air accidents for the first two months of the year.
January and February typically have about 20 fatal aviation accidents – including all civil aviation, from large commercial planes to private jets – in the U.S. per month. This January, there were only 11 fatal aviation accidents, and in February there were 10, according to the NTSB.
There were also 67 total aviation accidents in January – fatal and non-fatal – marking a record low for the month, per NTSB data. February’s 74 air accidents were down from 93 in the same month last year.
Implementing his weave, the president also heaped on praise for the Southwest Airlines pilot who narrowly avoided colliding with a private jet that was crossing the runway at at Chicago’s Midway Airport while Flight 2504 attempted to land.
The Pennsylvania crash marks the latest in a string of air accidents including the 67 passengers and crew killed when American Airlines Flight 5342 and a military Black Hawk helicopter collided over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. on January 29.
Trump used a deadly air crash to attack his two Democratic predecessors and controversially suggested the tragedy was the result of DEI initiatives in government.
Two days later, a small medical transport plane crashed into a huge fireball near the Roosevelt Mall in Philadelphia, killing seven people, including all six passengers on board.
On February 6, nine passengers and a pilot were confirmed dead after a Berin Air Cessna crashed near the Norton Sound in rural Alaska – about 10 minutes before its scheduled arrival in Nome.
Two people were killed following a mid-air airplane crash at Marana Regional Airport in Marana, Arizona, on February 20.
