On January 30, 2025, a day after the crash, Trump was asked if race or gender played a role. He responded, “It may have, I don’t know. Incompetence might have played a role, we’ll let you know that, but we want the most competent people. We don’t care what race they are… You’re talking about extremely complex things, and if they don’t have a great brain… bad things will happen.” He also pointed to past FAA efforts to diversify its workforce (see image below), stating, “A group within the FAA determined that the workforce was too white, then they had concerted efforts to change that… in the Obama administration.”