President Trump: "The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high"

Focus on maximum ceiling of 200ft imposed on rotorcraft traversing Potomac

President Trump just wrote the following on his Truth Social account:

It does indeed appear that—for reasons that are now obvious—the designated route for rotorcraft traversing that section of the Potomac imposed a 200 foot ceiling. Tracking data reported by FlightRadar24 and FlightAware indicates the incident CRJ700 was descending through 375ft when it stopped transmitting.

If all of the above is confirmed, it raises the pressing question: Why did the Black Hawk pilot exceed the altitude limit by almost 2X?

According to an ABC News report, the pilot and crew were “very experienced.”

It was a very experienced group," said Jonathan Koziol, a retired Army chief warrant officer with more than 30 years experience in flying Army helicopters. Koziol has been attached to the Unified Command Post created at Reagan National Airport to coordinate efforts following the deadly collision.

Koziol confirmed to reporters on a conference call that the male instructor pilot had more than 1,000 hours of flight time, the female pilot who was commanding the flight at the time had more than 500 hours of flight time, and the crew chief was also said to have hundreds of hours of flight time.

Though all of this experience sounds great, it makes one wonder all the more why the helicopter grossly exceeded a critical altitude limit for helicopters crossing the Potomac on the final approach to Washington Reagan.

The setting and timing of the disaster—in Washington D.C., a few days after Pete Hegseth was sworn in as Secretary of Defense—strike me as intriguing.

I wonder if the Army can be trusted to conduct and disclose the results of a full and transparent investigation instead of stonewalling—like it did when it came to investigating why its Patriot missile battery shot down a Navy F/A-18 Hornet on April 2, 2003.

From my years of reading military history, I know there was—until very recently—a widely held, firm conviction that mixing young males and females on board military vessels often results in a breakdown of discipline and attentiveness to duty. Did the male instructor have a romantic relation with the female student, perhaps one that had become volatile? NOTE: I am not claiming that this was the case; I am merely pointing out that if I were Secretary Hegseth, I would inquire about this possibility.

I also wonder about possible mental health deterioration in the military in recent years, with the Biden administration’s fetish for COVID-19 vaccines, transgender weirdness, and DEI.

Finally, even before this incident, I have wondered if the Trump administration will have to contend with crises arising from deliberate acts of sabotage. If I were an investigator, I would at least consider the possibility that the altimeter or other critical equipment on board the Black Hawk had been tampered with by a saboteur.

Here I would like to be very clear that I am NOT presenting conspiracy theories. I am merely stating the theoretical possibilities I would examine if I were investigating the accident.