An adolescent imagination out-runs investigation, facts a week into Trump's second act

Image generated with Leonardo AI.

All the brain-draining anxiety and fleeting, but seemingly so monumental grievances and slights and recriminations of human life, fall into proper mortal perspective as we witness a national tragedy like the helicopter-plane crash over the icy Potomac River between Washington, D.C. and neighboring Virginia.

Life, the blend of beauty and pain, can be snatched in an instant as it was for 67 people Wednesday night.

I lived in Arlington, Virginia for four years and would have had a sight line at the explosion from my apartment. I'd watch flights head toward National Airport most every night, the serenity of routine settling my internal monologue from a day of work on Capitol Hill, where I was a congressional press secretary in my 20s.

I know the geography of the crash. As bad as it was, the fact that it happened over the Potomac and not in a nearby high-density residential-commercial-government section of the DC metro area is a blessing inside a horror.

There are questions that will turn into answers, and then blame, and, finally, policy and protocol corrections — as is the way of things with human error.

The fact is there has not been a commercial airline crash in the United States for 16 years -- a stretch that included the second term of President Obama, President Trump's first term and Biden's full time as commander in chief.

The rescue operation in the river had barely turned into recovery-investigation mode when President Trump desecrated decency from the world's most influential platform with wild speculation about the cause of the disaster. He cast the villain roles before the first fact hit the national stage.

"We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas — and I think we'll publicly state those opinions now," Trump said in his news conference, a head-spinning articulation, out-loud (again, out loud!) that he was presenting "opinions," not facts formed and backed by investigation.

He spray-gunned blame around with glee, like a Roman Emperor delighting at the sight of blood in the arena. The pained resolution of an FDR after Pearl Harbor or anguish of Obama, watery eyed, following Newtown or George W. Bush after 9/11? No, not for Trump. The press briefing room at the White House turned into political sporting ground featuring the president's adolescent imagination.

He blamed the helicopter personnel. "You could have gone up, you could have gone down."

Then, admitting he had no evidence, and was basing his assessment on "common sense," Trump baselessly suggested that DEI policies — the hiring of anyone who is not white and male — was the cause of the disaster.

He suggested people with disabilities were the root of the disaster.

Then blamed Obama.

Then blamed Biden.

Then "dwarfism." What?

The president used the moment to take political shots at Pete Buttigieg, the former U.S. secretary of transportation.

"He was a disaster as mayor" of South Bend, Indiana, Trump said during the moments of national mourning.

"He's just got a good line of bullshit," Trump continued on Buttigieg.

I'm sure this is what grieving families in Kansas, the origin state for the flight, want to hear hours after suddenly losing loved ones. How soothed they must have been to hear attacks on Buttigieg.

Had this accident occurred exactly 4 years ago to the day, it's hard to imagine a newly inaugurated President Biden blaming the first Trump administration for the crash.

President Trump even accidentally acknowledged the insanity of his meanderings.

"You have a confluence of bad decisions that were made," Trump speculated.

Perhaps. But we don't know.

Trump is so accustomed to his stream-of-consciousness utterances being absorbed as gospel that he's functioning today as part authoritarian, part cult leader.

Trump continues to escape consequence for so many lies, lies and more lies.

So far.

The news conference showed America for what it is becoming: one nation, under iPhone, divisible by algorithms, with liberty for a few and justice dispensed in instant blame with due process floating in the wreckage along with the remnants of a jet and helicopter.

About The Iowa Mercury

(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )