February 1, 2025

Sen. Tim Kaine called out Donald Trump’s despicable attempt to blame DEI on the horrific air disaster that occurred under his own watch this week exactly for what it is: a desperate attempt to shirk blame for his own dangerous incompetence.

Kaine deserves props not only for his forceful and dead-on criticism but for his framing. He didn’t fall for Trump’s effort to cause an uproar over diversity and racism but shifted it to its proper context:

KAINE: I think the president was race baiting to take attention away from this: He let Elon Musk force the resignation of the FAA administrator at the beginning of the administration. He disbanded, on day two of the administration, an aviation safety committee within DHS, and the reason for disbanding it is "we want to focus on national security." What air safety isn't national security?

He has got an OMB director who is pushing a hiring freeze and federal funding pauses, saying, "I want to traumatize the federal workforce," when we already have too few air traffic controllers. This president is starting off, just within a week and a half, an anti-safety agenda that is going to hurt our air safety, and he desperately did not want to be asked about that. I think that's why he went the race-baiting route, because he realized, "Wow, we just sacked the FAA administrator. We just sacked the Aviation Safety Board, man, they're going to come after us, we better blame somebody else."

Dems, can you shout this from the rooftops? We need this kind of messaging everywhere, not just on MSNBC.

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