Two weeks in, and the restoration of Donald Trump to the US presidency is proving even worse than feared, even for those of us who feared the worst. He has menaced allies, threatened to grab land from other nations, proposed what has been condemned as ethnic cleansing in Gaza, praised dictators, targeted vulnerable citizens, undermined his criminal justice system and chipped away at democratic norms.
Over the weekend, he unleashed tariffs to spark trade wars that might damage the global economy as profoundly as the pandemic.
Yet even amid all the havoc sparked by the return of this human wrecking ball to the White House, his reaction to the deadliest aviation disaster in the United States for two decades was uniquely disturbing and sinister.
Trump typically sought to seize the spotlight after 67 people died in a collision between an army helicopter and a commercial airliner landing in Washington. So he brushed aside the grief of families even as bodies were being pulled from the Potomac River to exploit the tragedy for his own tribal battles, lashing out at political foes rather than seeking to soothe distress at a moment of national pain like recent predecessors.
And before any black boxes had been recovered, he claimed a “diversity push” at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could have facilitated the crash in comments that breached a central tenet of flight safety procedures: to establish all facts about an accident, not attribute instant blame.
His sordid performance at a press conference after the incident heightens fears that the world’s most important democracy might be unravelling before our eyes.
Given the poisonous nature of this President – freshly empowered by an electorate that is understandably frustrated by Washington’s corruption and failures – it is all too easy to shrug off Trump’s self-centred behaviour. In the current populist climate, it seems almost normal to see a political leader adopt a divisive and irresponsible approach, even to terrible tragedy.
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Read MoreYet how grotesque to hear this man – born into great wealth and handed the most powerful platform on the planet – use deaths in an aviation accident to stir bigotry and stoke hatred against society’s most marginalised people. Trump has previously focused mainly on transgender citizens in his baleful efforts to unravel diversity initiatives. This time, he turned fire on people with disabilities – and as so often, sprayed out falsehoods from the presidential pulpit as he claimed the mid-air crash “could have been” caused by hirings that compromised safety.
He accused the FAA of “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website”.
And he hit out at how people with “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism all qualified for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, little runway.”
There is no known evidence that anyone with either physical or learning disabilities bears any responsibility for this crash. Nor is there slightest reason why someone missing a limb, say, or with dwarfism should not direct flights.
Soon it emerged that Trump was guilty of gross hypocrisy since efforts to recruit people with some disabilities for air traffic operations began under his first administration as part of a laudable initiative – dating back to a previous Republican presidency – to improve federal hiring of citizens with disabilities. And that language he sneered at with such disdain? It was posted on the FAA website throughout his first presidency.
There should be room in any organisation with 45,000 staff – only 14,000 of them in air traffic control – to find jobs even for people with profound disabilities. Yet while more than one in eight Americans have disabilities, they comprise only about 2 per cent of FAA hirings – a statistic underlining the stark reality of their struggle to find employment, leaving them far more likely to be jobless and stuck in poverty, as in Britain. This is especially true for citizens with learning disabilities, the most marginalised community in so many countries.
But this is not just an issue about pay, nor about simply cutting surging benefit bills. It is about pride. It is about power. And it is about the ability of workplaces to break down corrosive barriers of fear and prejudice when people spend time together in factories, offices or shops.
Trump’s repulsive comments, demonising people with disabilities, sparked rightful anger. “The implication that people are being hired to do a job for which they are unqualified is an unfounded lie that further reinforces harmful stereotypes,” replied leading disability groups.
Miles O’Brien, a pilot who lost his left arm in an accident, said his president’s words felt like a “gut punch”, pointing out the FAA had never lowered flying standards to foster inclusivity. “I went through every hoop and got over every bar an able-bodied individual would in order to be recertified to fly,” he said.
Last week’s aviation tragedy exposed how even grieving families and people with disabilities are seen as acceptable collateral damage in Trump’s brutal culture wars. He is, after all, a man who mocked a disabled reporter at a campaign rally and once said – according to his nephew – people with costly, complex conditions “should just die”.
With grim inevitability, sidekicks and sycophants instantly mimic his stance. “Raise your hand if you want to be the person with a flight that’s led in by a blind dwarf with severe psychological and intellectual disabilities,” said one appalling toady on BBC’s Newsnight. Meanwhile, “anti-woke” crusaders such as Elon Musk revive the damaging use of “retard” as an insult. Truly, we live in dystopian times when billionaires inflame bigotry against some of the least powerful citizens in society.
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