Quotes
Not surprised, disgusted."
Asked by left-leaning MSNBC about his reaction to Trump's comments, Sullenberger responded on Thursday The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot,
We can have great confidence that the results will be found, they will be made public,
I don't want to draw you into politics but if you have a reaction to what the president said today about this, please share it with us,
host Lawrence O'Donnell said I just watched President Trump's news conference on the heartbreaking, horrific accident at DCA, and I have to tell you: It's one thing for internet pundits to spew up conspiracy theories. It's another for the President of the United States of America to throw out idle speculation even as victims are still being recovered, and families are still being notified. It turns your stomach."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X When we deal with safety, we can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety that impact the lives of our loved ones, our family members, and I think you make a really important point on that Mr President. That is the motto of your presidency: the best and the brightest, the most intelligent, coming into these spaces."
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said during the news conference Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch."
Pete Buttigieg, who was former president Joe Biden's transportation secretary, wrote on X Because I have common sense. OK? 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."
Trump, when asked why he was blaming diversity initiatives when the cause of the crash was still under investigation, said PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ."
The controller made another call to the chopper just moments later, saying You have to try to figure out: Are they above you or below you? Or how far away? Or which direction are they headed, ... Everything is harder at night.” ... We don't know” if that was for sure what happened
The retired aviator went on to say ... adding, We have the obligation to learn from every failure and improve.”
Of course, we’ve added technology to it. But a lot of the technology is old.”
I would say, the helicopter was aware there was a plane in the area.”
In Thursday’s press conference, and when questioned by a reporter on whether the plane was aware of the helicopter in the air, Secretary Duffy took a long pause and said Nighttime always makes things different about seeing other aircraft — basically all you can do is see the lights on them
There would have been fewer ground lights visible over the water than over land at night.
We’ve had to learn important lessons literally with blood too often, and we had finally gotten beyond that, to where we could learn from incidents, and not accidents,
Captain Sullenberger told The New York Times I’m just devastated by this,
Together, we take solace in the knowledge that their journey ended not in the cold waters of the Potomac, but in the warm embrace of a loving God,
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