Fox is desperate to deflect from the fact that Trump didn't bother to hire a replacement for the head of the FAA, and has done nothing but cause chaos in every government agency since he took office. This racist diatribe against the Obama and Biden administrations is just the latest.
Here's Jesse Watters this Thursday, lying, just like Trump, that DEI initiatives at the FAA may have played a role in the disaster this week at the airport in DC.
JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Now, we don't know what factor DEI played here, could have been a mechanical issue, could have been medical. They've just recovered one of the black boxes and this investigation's going to tell us the truth. But when DEI is in place, which it was at the FAA, standards get lowered, staffing's affected. And when there's a disaster like this, it makes everyone naturally suspicious.
Late in the Obama-Biden administration, 1,000 well-qualified air traffic control applicants were rejected for not being diverse enough. That caused staffing shortages and the Biden administration was sued for discriminating against qualified white applicants.
The COVID shutdowns didn't help staffing either. They stopped training controllers for two years. How are air traffic controllers not essential workers? I have no idea. And this DEI thing isn't just a race thing. Biden instituted DEI quotas at the FAA in order to recruit workers who were deaf, vision-impaired, missing limbs, completely paralyzed, epileptic, people who were severely intellectually disabled, psychiatrically disabled, and dwarfs.
It's not just Watters. They've been spreading this nonsense on every show hour after hour since this tragedy struck and Trump held his shameful presser where he said the same.
As both NPR and ABC reported this week, DEI hiring practices do not apply to air traffic controllers.
That hasn't stopped any of them from repeating the lie, and using a lawsuit from a winger 501C3, the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which sued in 2019 that the Obama administration discriminated against white people who were applying to be air traffic controllers as proof that Trump's attacks are somehow founded.
According to the Moonie Times, the case is set to be heard this summer.
I would love for someone to explain to me how some hiring practice that they're all railing about under Obama didn't get "fixed" during Trump's first term. I assume that question will never get asked or answered by our lazy corporate media of the serial liars in the Trump administration.
