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Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, a lot of Americans turned on the TV today hoping that the President of the United States was going to make a nonpolitical, nonpartisan statement grieving the loss of those who died in the awful plane crash last night. Instead, he almost immediately launched into a political tirade, blaming what he called DEI. That accusation was echoed by the new Secretary of Transportation and the new Secretary of Defense.

Apparently, the allegation is that by hiring non-White men at the FAA, this plane crash occurred. That is not true. That is offensive. It is not grounded in fact. It is just not accurate that by hiring women or Black people or Hispanics that the safety of this Nation is compromised. That is offensive.

What we have just learned, though, is that the initial FAA report suggests that the tower staffing was not normal during the crash, that the controller on duty last night was doing a job traditionally handled by two people. There is supposed to be someone handling helicopter traffic and someone guiding planes into the airport. There was one person doing that job last night.

We will learn more about what caused this crash. But it is not lost on us that the President of the United States made a choice when he came into office. He threw the FAA into immediate crisis. He ousted the Administrator, replaced the Administrator with no one, and spent the first week trying to bully and intimidate Federal employees. He fired the entire FAA Safety Advisory Board.

So we will take the time to find out what actually happened, but this happened under President Trump's watch. Clearly, something was not right in that tower last night, and it is important for us to follow the facts instead of making quick accusations.

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