After TWA Flight 800 crashed in New York in 1996, President Bill Clinton asked “every American not to jump to conclusions” about what brought it down and declared it time “to pull together and work together.”

Five years later, when American Airlines Flight 587 fell out of the sky, President George W. Bush predicted that the “resilient and strong and courageous people” of New York would get through the tragedy. In 2009, after a Colgan Air plane crashed near Buffalo, President Barack Obama said that “tragic events such as these remind us of the fragility of life.”

And then there was President Trump. In the wake of this week’s midair collision near Washington, Mr. Trump was more than happy to jump to conclusions and pull the country apart rather than together. After declaring it to be an “hour of anguish for our nation,” Mr. Trump just five minutes later let anguish give way to aggression as he blamed diversity policies promoted by Mr. Obama and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for the crash, which killed 67 people.

Mr. Trump has never been like other presidents. He does not follow many of the rituals and traditions of his office. He practices the politics of division rather than unity. Where past presidents have sought to project a comforting, paternal presence for a stricken nation in moments of crisis, Mr. Trump’s instinct is to move quickly from grief to grievance. He has long demonstrated that he is more comfortable as the blamer in chief than consoler in chief.

His decision to use the bully pulpit of the White House on Thursday to assign responsibility for the crash to his political rivals by name without offering a shred of evidence was, even for Mr. Trump, a striking performance. And it was no off-the-cuff comment. He followed up by signing an order directing a review of “problematic and likely illegal decisions” by Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden.

While Mr. Trump said there would be a “systemic and comprehensive investigation” of this week’s crash, he did not wait to offer the conclusions of his own rather less methodical inquiry.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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