The world waited breathlessly this week for word on the fate of the explorers touring the Titanic wreckage in the 5-passenger OceanGate submersible called Titan, which had lost communication and was later determined to have imploded on descent.
While many saw the submersible’s fate as sad and unfortunate, and others blamed the private company who ran the tour for allegedly neglecting certain risk factors, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (a former Navy SEAL) took a different approach.
Crenshaw blamed the U.S. government for its failure to save the sub, calling the rescue attempts an “epic failure in leadership.”
The Texas Republican said: “What appears to be the case [in the sub rescue efforts] is epic failure in leadership. Where exactly that leadership failure is, I don’t know. Is it the White House, Coast Guard, Navy? I’m not sure.”
Critics saw Crenshaw’s blaming of the U.S. government for what happened as outrageous, instead characterizing the recue efforts as laudable but hardly the responsibility of the Coast Guard, Navy, or the White House.
Alejandro Villegas, for example, points out that using taxpayer funded systems to rescue private organizations is usually what the GOP stands against — see “too big to fail” and the rescue of Silicon Valley Bank.
Villegas writes: “A private business cut corners avoids regulation gets in trouble over 900 miles from USA…and it’s the fault of our tax payer funded US Coast Guard?”
@DanCrenshawTX whining about our coast guard response is peak GOP stupidity….
— Alejandro Villegas #🟦 (@thecorpmex) June 23, 2023
A private business cut corners avoids regulation gets in trouble over 900 miles from USA…and it’s the fault of our tax payer funded US Coast Guard? https://t.co/YAjhSJHL90
California Congressman Ted Lieu took exception to Crenshaw’s criticism too, dropping a truth bomb about where the culpability really lies — and it’s not with the U.S. government. Lieu says instead:
“We should all support the brave personnel of the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Navy. One entity is responsible for the deaths of the people in the Titan sub. That entity is OceanGate. They ignored repeated warnings that their sub, which imploded during descent, was seriously unsafe.”
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