‘You want me to go swimming?’: Trump won’t visit Washington DC plane crash site because it’s ‘the water’
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Donald Trump responded sarcastically to questions about whether he would be visiting the site of the deadly crash over the Potomac River in Washington D.C., asking reporters at the White House: “You want me to go swimming?”
The president said on Thursday he would be meeting with some of the families of victims of the tragedy, which occurred at Ronald Reagan Airport Wednesday night. All 67 people involved in the crash are presumed dead, authorities said previously.
When asked about his plans to visit the crash site, he replied: “I have a plan to visit, not the site. Because you tell me, what’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?”
Social media users were quick to condemn the “callous” comments.
“67 people die under his watch, and he makes a joke? Callous, heartless, completely lacking in empathy on full display because so many other Americans are like this and see no problem with it,” one user wrote in response to the clip.
“We are such a profoundly unserious country sometimes,” added another.
The president’s remarks came as he signed an executive order following up on remarks he made earlier in the day at a press conference, in which he laid the blame for the crash on Joe Biden and diversity (DEI) programs.
The order is titled “Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety.”
“We want the most competent people,” Trump said. “We don’t care what race they are. We want the most competent people, especially in those positions.”
He added: “You’re talking about extremely complex things, and if they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
Trump made the comments before any investigative findings into the crash, and offered no specifics or evidence for his claims.
When pressed after his earlier remarks about why he believed DEI was responsible for the crash, he responded that it “could have been.” He said he reached his conclusion because “I have common sense.”
Trump also said he would be meeting with some of the families of the victims from the D.C. collision, but did not specify when. “I will be meeting with some people that were very badly hurt with their family members, obviously, but I’ll be meeting with some of the families, yeah,” he said.
As of Thursday afternoon, more than 40 bodies were recovered from the Potomac River, CNN reported citing sources with knowledge of official operations.
Dive operations were concluded for the day due to daylight, conditions on the water and the belief that most of the victims that can be reached without removing parts of the aircraft from the water have already been recovered, a law enforcement source told the outlet.
