‘The View’ Cohosts React to Trump Plane Crash ‘Blame Game’

Ana Navarro wasn’t the only The View cohost with something to say about Donald Trump’s controversial press conference reaction to the tragic crash of a commercial airplane and a military helicopter. On Friday’s (January 31) episode, she was joined by Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin at the table to talk about that very subject at the top of the hour. 

“In the wake of a national tragedy like Wednesday’s fatal plane and helicopter collision in D.C., most elected officials put politics aside, wait for answers, and let people grieve. And then there’s Trump,” Behar said before rolling footage of some of Trump’s most criticized comments, like blaming the Federal Aviation Administration’s diversity in hiring initiatives and citing “common sense” as his evidence of that connection.

“Victims were still being taken out of the Potomac while he was saying this,” Behar noted before turning the floor over to her colleagues.

“Well, beyond the egregious and illogical jump to DEI was the continual and predictable lack of impulse control by someone with the largest mic and the largest audience of anyone in the world,” Sara Haines said first. “Step one in a tragedy is to mourn, to wait, for these families who don’t even know what happened.” 

“Whatever happened to thoughts and prayers?” Behar wondered aloud. 

“Well, that’s only when children are being shot,” Navarro said glibly.

Haines then continued, “There are people, though, that are being notified that their loved ones not coming home. This is not the time. Let’s let all that dust settle. It’s like the wildfires when they started playing while they’re burning. People are trying to blame game it. I think Trump also posted soon after this tragedy occurred, and said that this seems like it should have been avoidable. The worst thing you can say to someone who just lost a loved one is, without any evidence, that it could have been avoided. And let us remember that even the most highly trained and skilled workers in this world… everyone makes mistakes. We don’t know why this accident happened, and the loose way he speaks about it without any knowledge is heartbreaking, disgraceful.”

Navarro then reiterated her previously shared points about Trump — saying his job was to be the “consoler in chief” — and added, “When you talk about DEI and Trump, it means despicable, enraging idiocy. That’s what his DEI means.” She went on to read a statement shared by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who Trump laid blame on as well, in which he said, “Trump should be leading, not lying.” 

.@AnaNavarro: “When you talk about DEI and Trump, it means ‘despicable enraging idiocy.’” pic.twitter.com/uXuDTPk95V

— The View (@TheView) January 31, 2025

When it was Hostin’s turn to speak, she contended she wouldn’t “dignify” Trump’s comments about DEI with a response, but instead pointed to reasons why he should be held accountable: “Just last week, Trump fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard, and he also eliminated all the members of a key aviation security advisory group,” she explained. “When voters decide that they want someone to blow things up, and they want someone to blow up infrastructures, this is the result.”

Griffin got in the last word on the subject and said, “Donald Trump acknowledged when he walked out that he still does not know the cause of this, that there’s an ongoing investigation. … I think any attempts to swiftly blame Donald Trump are wrong, and it’s even more ridiculous that he is the president of the United States tries to point to DEI when he has no information to back that that is, in fact, what caused this accident. It’s so tragic.”

She also lamented the fact that his statements have dominated the day’s media coverage when there is also plenty to cover about the day’s confirmation hearings. “Tulsi Gabbard was asked five times to say whether or not what Edward Snowden did was treasonous and that his decision to flee to Russia after releasing American secrets put us in danger. RFK Jr. was up as well as Kash Patel for FBI director, and I don’t think that this is a strategy for Donald Trump, per se, but it has this unattended consequence of people then not paying attention to things which will have real impacts on Americans because they’re so caught up in just the crazy of the news cycle and how he floods the zone.” 

The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC