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Feb. 3, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: President 47 lacks the empathy needed to be the nation’s Consoler-in-Chief. Instead of bringing a broken nation together as “one family” in mourning the 67 lives lost in last week’s D.C. plane crash, he exploited the painful losses of the bereaved and deepened political divisions to insist in his self-centered way that this was not his fault.
47 plays the blame game using right-wing propaganda and lies. While he accused Obama and Biden of lowering Federal Aviation Administration standards with “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” policies, these policies were in fact launched during 45th’s own administration. 47 failed to mention that the air controller tower was under-staffed due to his hiring freeze, that on Jan. 22, he dissolved the aviation safety board at the Department of Homeland Security, or that on Jan. 20, Elon Musk put his profits over public safety by pressuring FAA leader Michael Whitaker to resign.
Instead, without evidence, 47 demonized those with “severe intellectual disabilities” as the real culprits behind the crash. As the mother of a son with a severe intellectual disability, I was sickened to listen to the president’s contemptuous and outlandish accusations on the radio. Through DEI initiatives, my son Caleb works as a dishwasher at W&L and does the job as well as anyone. But instilling fear in the public that someone as limited as my son could ever qualify to be an air-traffic controller is irresponsible and absurd.
47 has a history of insulting people with disabilities. In 2015, he mocked the spastic movements of a NY Times reporter. In 2023, he warned that “insane asylums” and “mental institutions” around the world were “dumping” their lunatics into the United States, as if they were garbage. He even told his nephew Fred, who has a disabled son, that people with disabilities “should just die.” Resorting to dog-whistling tactics once again, 47 has scapegoated the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. Shame on him! Gloating that he would hire only “superior” “geniuses” like himself as airtraffic controllers, he sadly reveals his emotional intelligence as zero. DEMAREE PECK Lexington
