A couple of days ago we saw the worst disruption to air travel that we’ve seen in the United States in over 25 years, as air traffic shut down nationwide for over four hours. President Trump was publicly very quiet at first, leaving his cabinet members to (very poorly and dishonestly) respond to the situation.
Well, Trump is now speaking out, and you’ll never believe who he’s blaming. Yes, of course… former President Biden! This isn’t even partisan, folks, let’s just look at the facts…
Trump speaks out about FAA issues, blames Biden
Trump took to social media to apologize to the traveling public, thank them for their patience, and promise to investigate what went wrong. Just kidding. Instead, he wrote about how much Biden sucks, and about how great the FAA is under him:
The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster. Everything they touched turned bad. Big money spend unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began. We have the knowledge and plan for the Flight Control Systems, we need Congress to give the money, FAST! Our FAA is doing a great job, and is ready to go.
In another social media post, Trump posted about how the Biden administration set back air traffic control modernization by years.
Let’s be objective about the FAA situation
There’s no denying that fixing the FAA is a bipartisan issue. We all want our aviation ecosystem to be efficient and safe. In recent years, the FAA has had two major issues:
- Our overall infrastructure has badly needed modernization, and that’s something that costs tens of billions of dollars
- We also had a shortage of air traffic controllers, which has repeatedly caused major operational issues
Let’s talk about that second point first. The reality is that fixing the staffing mess at the FAA is a tough job with little instant gratification. After all, once you hire people to become air traffic controllers, it’s a long process until they’re fully certified.
What FAA staffing trends have we seen over the past several years? Edward Russell points to some fascinating statistics, taken directly from the Federal Workforce Data. The below chart shows the annual change in the number of employees at the FAA.
According to this:
- During Trump’s first term, the FAA workforce was reduced by around 858 people
- During Biden’s term, the FAA workforce was increased by 1,284 people
- During Trump’s second term, the FAA workforce has been reduced by 1,767 people (and that’s not even halfway through the term!)
Given the air traffic controller shortage we’ve seen, plus the importance of oversight for work like what we saw on Friday (which shut down our system), should Trump really be doing a victory lap here? For that matter, let me remind everyone that the union representing FAA employees claims that projects like what happened on Friday would’ve normally had a risk assessment and would’ve been overseen by FAA employees, but that’s no longer the case.
Let me be clear, I commend the Trump administration for trying to put together a plan now for modernizing air traffic control, even if the plan isn’t perfect. I’m frustrated that previous administrations didn’t do more (including Bush, Obama, etc.). But what’s so absurd here is the complete lack of accountability:
- Trump and Duffy are obsessed with demanding money from Congress now for FAA modernization, as if that’s somehow a response to this screw-up; it looks like the shutdown happened because of a mistake with installing updated equipment, so it’s about a lack of proper oversight of a project like this
- What is the excuse for not having gotten funding in the past two years, when Trump and Republicans had full control of everything? I mean, Trump has enough power over the other parts of the government to avoid the Epstein files being released, so you’d think he could also influence this, no?
- If Trump is going to talk about what a poor job Biden did with FAA modernization during his first term, why shouldn’t that same standard apply to Trump’s first term, given that an FAA modernization is decades overdue, and not two to six years overdue?
You’ve gotta love Duffy’s complete inability to answer the question about why they haven’t gotten the funding for this in Trump’s first two years, if it was such a legislative priority. He can just talk about how he has had 100 press conferences, but is unable to provide any sort of a coherent justification.
Man, the below 2023 post from Donald Trump Jr. is just pure gold…
Bottom line
Trump is finally speaking out about the FAA meltdown on Friday. He’s not apologizing or showing sympathy to the public, but instead, he’s just talking about how incompetent Biden was, and how the FAA under him is great. Never mind the fact that FAA staffing under Trump has gone down significantly, and if the union representing FAA employees is to be believed, this has caused a reduction in oversight of projects.
What do you make of Trump’s response to this situation?
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