President Donald Trump speaks about the mid-air crash between American Airlines flight 5342 and a military helicopter in Washington, D.C, from the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. (Oliver Contreras – AFP / Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders January 30, 2025 at 12:50pm
Rescuers were still combing the Potomac for bodies, but leftists weren’t letting it rest.
After Wednesday’s plane-helicopter collision over Washington, D.C., some members of the mainstream media didn’t waste a minute before taking to social media to cast blame on President Donald Trump.
And it didn’t take long after that before they were taking it back.
In a suspiciously similar flurry of posts on the social media platform X, journalists from New York; Nashville, Tennessee; and around the country took note of the crash and linked it to news about Trump’s plans to trim the federal workforce.
The implication was ghoulish as it was obvious — that Trump’s action had somehow played a role in the still-unexplained tragedy that reportedly killed more than 60 on board the American Airlines passenger plane and the U.S. Army helicopter’s three-member crew.
It was, as one X user put it, “as low as you can go.”
Another absolutely horrid take, this time courtesy of @Bakari_Sellers.
1) The hiring freeze did NOT apply to ATC.
2) Even if the headline was accurate, using the death of 60+ innocent people to get a political dig in an hour after their death is as low as you can go.
Say less. pic.twitter.com/hz5LSKL7eJ
— Dave Galluch (@DaveGalluchPA) January 30, 2025
But it was also wrong — and the assertions quickly disappeared from X.
Do you trust the mainstream media?
Sometimes that happened with a weak apology. Sometimes it happened with plain — no doubt embarrassed — silence.
On the weak apology front come CNN’s Bakari Sellers and Nashville, Tennessee, television journalist Phil Williams of WTVF. Both men published, then deleted posts, vaguely hinting at Trump’s culpability.
Both then apologized, though the sincerity of the apologies was questionable. Sellers claimed he was just “frustrated.” Williams claimed he’d been misinterpreted.
WARNING: The Sellers’ post below includes vulgar language that may offend some readers.
Deleted an earlier post because it unfortunately was interpreted as blaming tonight’s tragedy on policies in Washington. That was certainly not my intent. As someone who has covered aviation safety for many, many years, I know that you cannot suddenly pull people out of an ATC… https://t.co/pZGst21atK
— Phil Williams (@PhilNvestigates) January 30, 2025
I deleted the post because timing matters. Politics at this point does not. I fucked up, I own that. I am very prayerful but I’m also very frustrated upset and disturbed with where we are as a country. I recognize, and I will do better.
The only thing that matters is rescuing…
— Bakari Sellers (@Bakari_Sellers) January 30, 2025
At least both had the semblance of decency to make some sort of public explanation.
Meanwhile, New York City-based freelancer David Freelander, whose website practically screams “Northeastern Liberal” and whose work includes a fawning profile of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also deleted a post that linked the tragedy, but not before the X platform’s “Community Notes” got involved.
Good thing Community Notes corrects your post that’s trying to turn a horrible tragedy political…..
What a despicable thing to do by you.
See the community note pic.twitter.com/u4DcgBYGRD
— AJH – Question Everything (@1_2_question) January 30, 2025
Like I said to that coward @Bakari_Sellers before he deleted this exact same tweet. Nothing in this headline has to do with the crash but you’re such a partisan ghoul you couldn’t help but try and politicize this tragedy.
— Publius (@MylesKamara) January 30, 2025
The Trump-bashing posts are exactly the kind of reaction Americans have come to expect from the mainstream media since the former celebrity businessman’s arrival on the political scene.
Any normally rational person would have known intuitively on hearing of the crash that, whatever the circumstances that surrounded Wednesday night’s collision over Washington, the chances that they could have had anything to do with Trump’s order last week were minuscule to the point of non-existence.
But normally rational people are interested in objective reality. That wasn’t the issue here, political reality was.
And blaming Trump for anything bad that happens in American life is the political reality the liberal media live in.
Fortunately, there are plenty of Americans who live in the real world and are on to the game.
You should be ashamed but somehow I know you’re not.
— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) January 30, 2025
You said what you said with a clear intention of politicizing it.
You “owning” it is a cop out.
Mask off moment.
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) January 30, 2025
Even if Reagan airport was shorthanded and needed more ATCs, they couldn’t have been trained to work there in less than a week. This is just stupid.
— Gary Wayne (@revgarywayne) January 30, 2025
And then there was this one, that probably summed up the feelings of virtually all conservative Americans on hearing the fallout from the plane crash tragedy.
We really don’t hate the media enough
— aka (@akafaceUS) January 30, 2025
“We really don’t hate the media enough,” the user wrote.
“Hate” might be too strong of a word, but there’s no denying the mainstream media has spent decades building the environment where normal Americans view their offerings with mistrust, hostility, and a healthy dose of contempt. In fact, that’s largely why Trump is the president today.
Trying to turn a tragedy into a political triumph before the bodies have even been found is no way to change that.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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