Donald Trump used the plane crash in Washington DC to attack his political enemies, claiming Democrats were responsible for declining standards in air traffic control and that the disaster “could have been” caused by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at the Federal Aviation Administration.

During a press conference on Thursday about the crash, Trump turned what might have been a sombre briefing into a baseless rant against DEI despite no evidence of a link with the plane crash.

The president was backed to the hilt by the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, who said “we can only accept the best and the brightest” in positions affecting passenger safety, and the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, who echoed: “The era of DEI is gone at the defence department and we need the best and brightest.”

Then came the vice-president, JD Vance, who claimed, “we want to hire the best people” who are “actually competent enough to do the job”. He said without offering evidence that hundreds of people had sued the US government because “they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin”.

Trump returned to the lectern to claim that “very powerful tests” for competence in air traffic control were “terminated” by Joe Biden.

When pressed on his citation of DEI as a cause of the crash by reporters after his address, Trump said: “It just could have been.”

He also claimed that when he was president between 2017 and 2021 the US “had a much higher standard [in air traffic control] than anybody else”, then accused the Biden administration of letting standards slip.

Asked how he could so quickly decide diversity was to blame for the crash near Reagan National airport, Trump said: “Because I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

Officials said 67 people died in the crash on Wednesday night, when a military Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines jet. By late Thursday morning, 28 bodies had been retrieved from the Potomac River. The identities of the victims are beginning to be reported.

Trump also mused about errors by the helicopter pilot.

Since returning to the White House earlier this month, Trump has made attacks on DEI policies in federal government a central and highly performative part of his rush of hardline executive orders.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, he quoted in familiar scattergun style from what he said were “various articles [that] appeared prior to my entering office”.

“And here’s one,” Trump said. “‘The FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.’ That is amazing. And then it says FAA … says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce, [they] said, ‘They want them in, and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers.’ I don’t think so. This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program.”

He appeared to be reading from a report published by Fox News.

Trump continued: “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress where you have many, many planes coming into one target, and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it.”

Asked if he would “fire some of the diversity hires in federal government”, Trump said: “I would say yes. If we find that people aren’t mentally competent … these are not people who should be doing these particular jobs.”

More conventionally, Trump opened the briefing with a moment of silence, then lamented “a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history, and a tragedy of terrible proportions”.

He also said he could “only begin to imagine the agony that [victims families were] feeling, nothing worse”, adding: “On behalf of the first lady, myself and 340 million Americans, our hearts are shattered alongside yours, and our prayers are with you now and in the days to come.”

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“We did not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opinions and ideas,” Trump continued. “We have some pretty good ideas … we’ll find out how this disaster occurred and we’ll ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. The FAA and the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] and the US military will be carrying out a systematic and comprehensive investigation.”

But Trump was keener to divert blame. Promising to “restore faith in American air travel”, he sought without offering evidence to blame previous Democratic administrations for the Reagan airport crash.

“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” Trump said. “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.

“You remember that. Only the highest aptitude. They have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers. That was not so prior to [me] getting there.

“When I arrived in 2016, I made that change very early on, because I always felt this was a job that, and other jobs too, but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence, and we didn’t really have that. And we had it. And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse.”

Trump also took aim at Pete Buttigieg, the former Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was transportation secretary under Biden.

“He was a disaster,” Trump said. “He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit.”

Trump also said Buttigieg, who is gay, ran the transportation department into the ground “with his diversity”.

Elsewhere, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate minority leader, told reporters Trump’s remarks “turn your stomach”.

“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories, it’s another for the president of the United States,” Schumer said.