J.D. Vance: ‘We Want the Best People at Air Traffic Control’

Vance: “Thank you, Mr. President, for your leadership. I just want to reemphasize something the president said, and you heard from that secretary of transportation and of defense, there really was a whole-of-government response. We were all on the phone, we’re all communicating yesterday, trying to get to the bottom this immediately, but also try to communicate with the American people about what happened. Something the president said that I think bears reemphasizing, which is that when you don’t have the best standards in who you’re hiring, it means, on the one hand, you’re not getting the best people in government, but on the other hand, it puts stresses on the people who are already there. And I think that is a core part of what President Trump is going to bring and has already brought to Washington D.C., is we want to hire the best people because we want the best people at air traffic control. And we want to make sure we have enough people at air traffic control who are actually competent do the job. If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin. That policy ends under Donald Trump’s leadership because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry. Thank you, Mr. President.”