Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, stated that the shortcomings in his department occurred because his predecessors "lost that mission" of safety.

Duffy began working at the same time that a significant airline accident happened near Reagan National Airport, as The New York Post reported.

An American Airlines passenger plane plane with about 60 passengers and four crew members and a Black Hawk chopper crashed, killing all 67 people involved.

President Donald Trump proposed in a press conference the next day that the crash may have been related to DEI policies, insinuating that sub-par hiring tactics could have played a role.

Department's Role

Duffy agreed on Sunday that the Federal Aviation Administration was the only agency in the whole Transportation Department that had an operational DEI policy when he started office.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for overseeing air traffic controllers at all airports in the United States.

“So I do know that in the last administration, they were focused on not safety, but they were focused on changing the name from ‘cockpit’ to ‘flight deck.’ Or ‘notice to airmen,’ they wanted to change it to ‘notice to air mission,'" Duffy said on CNN’s State of the Union.

"They focused on EVs and sustainability and racist roads, things that don‘t matter in regards to safety,” the transportation secretary went on.

The Actual Mission

According to Duffy the agency should have been acting with other goals in mind.

“Our mission since the start has been safety, and they‘ve lost that mission. And we see when you don‘t focus on safety and you focus on social justice or the environment, bad things happen.”

Trump has not yet provided evidence to support his claim that DEI employment procedures were responsible for the tragedy, aside from comments about safety not being the first priority.

Duffy stated that the Biden administration decreased the scores on entry exams in order to allow more people to enter the field of air traffic control.

Agency Movements

Safety jobs in the FAA are exempt from the hiring freeze and early retirement incentive debates at other federal agencies.

Duffy acknowledged that he has employed air traffic controllers and that no safety positions were offered incentives. This is thought to likely have made an impact on not only the volume of applicants to one of the most stressful jobs in the country, but also the quality of indivuals who apply.

So far, officials have found more than 40 dead in the Potomac River.