After TWA Flight 800 crashed in New York in 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton asked “every American not to jump to conclusions” about what brought it down and declared it time “to pull together and work together.”
Five years later, when American Airlines Flight 587 fell out of the sky, President George W. Bush predicted that the “resilient and strong and courageous people” of New York would get through the tragedy. In 2009, after a Colgan Air plane crashed near Buffalo, New York, President Barack Obama said that “tragic events such as these remind us of the fragility of life.”
And then there was President Donald Trump. In the wake of this week’s midair collision near Washington, Trump was more than happy to jump to conclusions and pull the country apart rather than together. After declaring it to be an “hour of anguish for our nation,” Trump just five minutes later let anguish give way to aggression as he blamed diversity policies promoted by Obama and former President Joe Biden for the crash, which killed 67 people.
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