Vice President J.D. Vance suggested Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama ordered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) “not to hire” white people.
During a Sunday interview on Fox News, Vance said the Trump administration would “do a better job at the policy so that we make sure that aviation is as safe as it possibly can” after a recent deadly plane crash near Washington, D.C.
“And that does, I think, mean that we have to talk about the DEI policies,” he opined. “And in fact, there have been a number of lawsuits from people who would like to become air traffic controllers against the Obama and Biden administration, who were basically said, we were told not even to apply because of the color of our skin, because they were white people.”
“Under the DEI regime of the Biden administration, they weren’t welcome,” the vice president added. “It means that we don’t have the best and the brightest sometimes in these positions.”
“We knew for years that we had a shortage at air traffic control,” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo noted.
“Well, part of the reason why we had a shortage in air traffic control is because we were telling our air traffic controllers not to hire people because of the color of their skin,” Vance insisted. “That is a scandal. And it is a scandal, thankfully, that has stopped under the leadership of President Trump.”
Bartiromo pressed Vance on his claims.
“Do you have any evidence that any of those hires that were there at the control Wednesday night were DEI hires?” she asked.
“This is not saying that the person who was at the controls is a DEI hire, but let’s just say, first of all, we should investigate everything, but let’s just say the person at the controls didn’t have enough staffing around him or her because we were turning people away because of DEI reasons,” the vice president asserted. “There is a very direct connection between the policies of the last administration and short-staffed air traffic controllers.”
“That has to stop.”
