Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) said on Friday that President Trump should be accountable for potential issues that led to the deadly aircraft crash this past week, noting the incident occurred while he was already in office.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, Vindman said there’s no “warmup” period for presidents before they bear responsibility for crises on their watches.
“The buck stops with the president,” Vindman said. “There’s no warmup period for the president of the United States. There’s no warmup period for the cabinet. He is the president of the United States. He has a cabinet that’s in place.”
“If he wants to take responsibility for a raft of illegal executive orders, he better take responsibility for being the president and being in charge when a plane goes down in Washington, DC, and it’s as simple as that.”
“It’s on him. It’s on his shoulders,” he added.
Trump, at a press conference Thursday, said it was not clear the air traffic controllers made any mistake but pledged to investigate all angles of the crash. He also knocked his Democratic predecessors over aviation standards, suggesting that the Democrats didn’t put safety first and that diversity initiatives have weakened the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Pressed by reporters on how he could conclude that diversity had something to do with the crash, Trump said, “Because I have common sense, okay? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”
“We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level. When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time, and they’re all coming in different directions, and you’re dealing with very high-level computer, computer work and very complex computers.”
The cause of the crash between an American Airlines plane and a military helicopter Wednesday night is still unknown, and investigative authorities have not publicly indicated who could be responsible for the crash.
