A trans National Guard pilot was falsely accused of flying the helicopter in the fatal plane collision

By Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — A trans member of the National Guard is speaking out after a wave of claims on social media falsely pointed to her as the pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet in Washington, Wednesday, killing 67 people.

Jo Ellis, a UH60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot for the Virginia Army National Guard, posted on Facebook Friday to dispel the rumors that had echoed President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated blaming of diversity initiatives for the fatal accident.

“Some craziness has happened on the internet and I’m being named as one of the pilots of the DC crash,” Ellis wrote. “It’s insulting to the victims and families of those lost and they deserve better than this BS from the bots and trolls of the internet.”

In her Facebook post, Ellis shared a screenshot of two X posts that linked her being trans to the catastrophic crash, with one user saying they “wouldn’t be surprised” if “the pilot was trans” in response to another post that claimed Ellis “has been making radicalized anti-Trump statements on socials. The latter account has since deleted the post and published an apology.

A separate account, which has a blue checkmark and 13,600 followers, shared a now-deleted post directly attacking Ellis and spreading the bogus conspiracy theory. While the account has likewise issued a correction, the post still raked in at least 195,000 views and was reshared almost 1,000 times before being deleted.

At the time of both corrections, “Jo Ellis” was the No. 3 trending topic on X, with 19,400 posts. And, despite Ellis’ correction — which she further addressed in a follow-up Facebook video, captioned “proof of life” — far-right accounts on X have continued to spread misinformation and hate speech.

Ellis’ erroneous scapegoating in far-right circles follows the guardswoman’s publicized sit-down with CNN’s Michael Smerconish, slated to appear in Saturday’s episode of “The Smerconish Podcast” during which she discussed her service and experiences with gender dysphoria. In an essay for Smerconish’s newsletter, Ellis also discussed her story, writing about transitioning while serving in the military.

Hate speech following the crash echoed recent attacks from Trump on DEI initiatives and executive actions targeting transgender Americans. Since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has repeatedly taken aim at transgender people, saying in his inauguration speech “that there are only two genders: male and female.” Amid his flurry of executive orders, Trump has also re-banned transgender Americans from serving in the military, reviving his 2017 order that was repealed by then-President Joe Biden in 2021. And, in his first White House briefing room address, Trump directly linked the crash to DEI while also blaming initiatives from Democrats.

“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,” he said.

In a Thursday White House memo, Trump blamed the Obama administration’s implementation of “a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude,” further linking the crash to DEI initiatives.

“The Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with “severe intellectual” disabilities in the FAA,” Trump wrote in the memo.

Neither the memo nor Trump’s press conference provided any evidence to support his brazen claims. When one reporter pressed the president for an explanation of his diversity claims during the press conference, Trump again failed to provide evidence, responding simply: “Because common sense and unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”

Baseless DEI attacks have become one of the key pillars of the president’s MAGA platform, and Trump is far from alone in linking disasters to diversity initiatives. When disastrous wildfires erupted in California, Elon Musk used his X pulpit to claim “DEI means people DIE,” while others took aim at Karen Bass, the first woman and second black person to serve as Los Angeles mayor. Conservatives likewise blamed Kristin Crowley, the city’s first woman and openly gay fire chief, for the wildfires that killed 28 people.

Other incidents have also been linked to DEI initiatives. Rep. Dan Meuser told Fox News that the New Orleans’ New Years Day tragedy was because “the priority of the last four years has been DEI, not IEDs.” And Phil Lyman, the one-time Maryland gubernatorial hopeful, blamed the Baltimore Key Brdieg disaster on “governors who prioritize diversity.”

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