WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump briefed reporters Thursday on the midair collision between an Army helicopter and regional passenger jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, his pick to lead the Army, Dan Driscoll, told senators he would emphasize a “culture of safety” if confirmed.

The crash, which happened Wednesday shortly before 9 p.m., hung over the Senate Armed Services Committee’s confirmation hearing of Driscoll, who would play a role in the service’s ensuing investigation into the incident should he win approval from the full Senate to become the next Army secretary.

Describing the episode as one “that seems to be preventable,” Driscoll told lawmakers he would seek to work with the Hill to “mitigate the odds that it could ever occur again.”

“There are appropriate times to take risk and there are inappropriate times to take risk,” he said. “I don’t know the details around this one, but after doing it, if confirmed, and working with this committee to figure out the facts, I think we might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be near an airport like Reagan.”

More details have begun to emerge about the incident, in which a PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet collided in midair with a Blackhawk helicopter. The helicopter was undergoing “an annual proficiency training flight,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a taped statement.

Speaking Thursday in the White House briefing room, Trump said he had watched tapes that showed the pilot of the passenger jetliner was “doing everything right,” and placed blame on the chopper’s pilots and air traffic control at Ronald Reagan National Airport.

He also appointed Chris Rocheleau, a U.S. Air Force veteran who was previously chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association, as acting FAA administrator.

After offering thoughts and prayers for those affected by the crash, he said the crash “could have been” due to safety standards that he claimed were lowered under the Biden administration, “but we don’t know yet.”

“I put safety first,” Trump said. “Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen . . . Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”

He cited policies to increase diversity at the Federal Aviation Administration that he said included plans to “focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.”

When asked how he knew the crash could be related to diversity requirements for air traffic controller hiring, Trump said, “because I have common sense.”

The Army has faced a recent spike in aircraft crashes. The service’s fiscal 2024 annual aviation assessment showed that Class A mishaps, a category that indicates fatalities or damage totaling at least $2.5 million, hit a 10-year high.

“FY24 will be a year that Army Aviation looks back on in hopes of never repeating,” the report, released earlier this month, stated.

The FAA has also been under increased scrutiny following a number of reports of near-miss collisions over the past few years. That prompted the aviation agency in October to open an audit into runway incursion risks at the nation’s 45 busiest airports.

In all, the passenger aircraft was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, while the Blackhawk helicopter was carrying three soldiers, according to officials. The soldiers — a “fairly experienced crew” that had night vision goggles, Hegseth said in his video message — were part of the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

During the Armed Services hearing, senators mourned the incident and sought a path forward.

“As we await further updates, I hope that we will all pledge to redouble our efforts to ensure that the federal agencies that make the nation’s skies safe, the FAA, the NTSB, the DOT and others have the tools, the funding, the resources, support from the Congress, to prevent future tragedies like this one,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said.

And Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., sought to tamp down any early speculation surrounding the collision. Duckworth previously deployed to Iraq as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot.

“I would like to caution that before we start calling it a training accident, that we have a better idea of what exactly happened because a training accident has very specific definitions,” she warned her colleagues. “So please be careful about that. It tends to then start to blame the pilots, and frankly, our military pilots are some of the best trained in the world.”

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