Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth provided a key update on Friday morning following the deadly air crash in Washington, DC, on Wednesday evening.

During an interview on Fox & Friends, Hegseth defended President Donald Trump partially blaming DEI for the disaster.

Co-host Ainsley Earhardt kicked off the segment by saying: “Let’s talk about DEI. What was happening in the control tower? We talked to Congressman Troy Nehls, and he said that at this airport, which is the busiest runway in our country, they needed 30 personnel inside the control tower. There were currently 19 when this crashed. And then there’s a lawsuit that alleged that the FAA turned away nearly a thousand air traffic controller applicants solely based on race last year. And then there is a report that the FAA launched a national outreach program for DTI, which included a push to hire workers with severe intellectual disabilities and psychiatric problems.”

“When you’re a mom and you’re a dad and you’re putting your kids on the plane or you’re flying as a family, that’s unacceptable. We don’t care your race. We want to make sure whoever’s in there that it’s fully manned. And we want to make sure they’re qualified,” Earhardt added.

“Completely unacceptable, Ainsley. You’re exactly right. So I don’t know exactly how the staffing occurred in that particular air traffic control tower. And it sounds like there was a shortage and the investigation will tell us more about that. But the environment around which we choose, pilots or air traffic controllers, as the president pointed out correctly yesterday, better be the highest possible standard, the best of the best who are managing, you know, multiple flights. I mean, a flight a minute and managing radio traffic,” Hegseth replied.

“I think the closest analogy to military service guys is it pilots or air traffic controllers. I don’t care what background they come from, what their race is, what their gender is, if they’re rich or they’re poor, I just need them to be good at their job because I need my flight to land safely. The same thing applies to the Defense Department, to our military. I don’t care about your background, your gender or your skin color. I want the best,” Hegseth added.