In remarks Thursday, President Donald Trump brought up the Jan. 29 D.C. plane crash tragedy — and made a jarring comparison.
During the National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol, Trump mentioned the disaster — in which 67 people lost their lives after an American Airlines flight collided with a Black Hawk Army Helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport — and compared the odds of a helicopter and plane colliding to golf balls striking one another on a golf driving range.
“I guess the helicopter was high, and we will find out exactly what happened,” he said. “But the odds even if you had nothing, nobody, the odds of that happening are extremely small. You go to a driving range in golf and hit hundreds of balls, thousands of hours.”
He added, “I’ve never seen a ball hit another ball. … Balls going up all over the place, you never see them hit. It was amazing that could happen. There were a lot of mistakes made. It should’ve never happened.”
Trump’s comments come after he gave a blunt answer a question from reporters earlier this month about whether he would be visiting the site of the tragic crash over the Potomac River.
“I have a plan to visit, not the site. Because you tell me, what’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?” he responded.
Watch Trump’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast below.