Fox News host Jesse Watters went off on a bizarre tangent Thursday, questioning DEI policies that embolden “dwarves” and “people with transgender issues” following the tragic D.C. aircraft collision.
While Watters insinuated that DEI policies may not be the “main factor” behind the crash on Wednesday, he maintained that quotas prioritizing the inclusion of minorities might be to blame for staffing shortages in his Thursday appearances on Fox’s The Five and Jesse Watters Primetime.
“The staffing shortages, Donald Trump is arguing, are a result of DEI policies,” Watters began on The Five’s Thursday newscast, referring to the president’s unsubstantiated claims that DEI quotas lowered the standards of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration subsequently causing the crash. “You go back to the Obama-Biden administration and they rejected 1,000 well-qualified applicants for air traffic control because they weren’t diverse enough. Joe Biden had a DEI quota.”
“And this isn’t about Black people,” Watters continued. “A lot of people hear, ‘DEI,’ you think Black. No, he is trying to set quotas for people who are deaf to get jobs, people who are dwarves to get jobs, people with transgender issues to get jobs.
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“It’s not about race. It’s every sort of underprivileged person that has issues, and they want to be able to put these in positions at the FAA,” he went on. “They were unable to meet their own DEI quotas, and that’s what is leading to staffing shortages, among many other things. So, is it the main factor? We don’t know.”
The host went on to say that it’s “weird” that there is a staffing issue at the FAA “because there’s no staffing issue anywhere else in the federal government.” He proceeded to reason that it was a cause of “mismanagement” as both Trump and former President Joe Biden “spent the exact same money on the FAA.”
“We’re not gonna know until we have this investigation,” Watters continued as he listed other potential causes for the crash like mechanical or medical issues. “And I just hope we get it really soon.”
He then appeared on Jesse Watters Primetime to air his grievances again, repeating his claims while adding those who are “completely paralyzed, epileptic, people who were severely intellectually disabled, psychiatrically disabled” were part of “Biden’s FAA” two years ago.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham also echoed Watters’ sentiments during Thursday’s segment of The Ingraham Angle.
After playing a 2023 clip from the FAA encouraging students and alumni from “HBCUs, Hispanic serving institutions, and tribal colleges” to apply for jobs, Ingraham questioned what any of that had to do with “competence to secure our safety in the sky.”
During a briefing on Thursday, Trump placed blame on a handful of Democrats including Biden, Barack Obama, and Pete Buttigieg for implementing DEI policies that he believes degraded the FAA’s employee standards. He added that he changed the “Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary” during his first term, but Biden “changed it back.”
Trump did not in fact change the hiring system Obama introduced in 2013, which saw the inclusion of a biographical questionnaire to appeal to underrepresented employees, and left it in place during his first term.
In 2019, the FAA—under Trump—also launched a new hiring program for people with disabilities.
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“FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” the agency announced in April that year, adding that the program would “identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.”
On Wednesday night, a commercial American Airlines flight collided with an army helicopter near the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. Recovery options are still underway, though officials have indicated that all 67 individuals involved in the tragic accident are believed to be dead.