Unqualified Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been making the rounds on cable television to blame former President Joe Biden and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for air traffic control problems at Newark Airport that Donald Trump and his co-President Elon Musk helped create.
Duffy’s latest effort to shirk responsibility for air traffic woes comes as travelers worry about the delays and dangerous radar outages that have been plaguing Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the country’s busiest airports and a hub for major carrier United Airlines.
"We're all been reporting and seeing what's happening at Newark airport. And I think it's clear that the blame belongs with the last administration," Duffy said at a news conference on Monday.
Duffy made even more idiotic comments during that same news conference, saying that the problems should have been fixed by Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people weren't flying.
"We didn't have to be here. This did not have to be our story. Over the last four years, the last administration, they knew this was a problem. During COVID, when people weren't flying, that was a perfect time to fix these problems," Duffy said.
Of course, Biden was not president in 2020 when the pandemic started and flights were basically halted. It was Duffy's Dear Leader Donald Trump who was president then.
Duffy continued his blame game tour on Tuesday, insisting again to CNBC that the problems at Newark Airport are Biden and Buttigieg's fault.
"Government watchdogs warned the last administration, and they did nothing. We are going to make sure things are done right," Duffy said.
Of course, it was Duffy—under the direction of Trump and Musk—who fired 400 Federal Aviation Administration employees in February, including those who worked on "radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance," The Associated Press reported in February.
Related | Trump team makes desperate bid to solve air traffic controller crisis
Trump also gutted an aviation safety board mere days before the Jan. 30 plane crash at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., that killed all 67 people onboard in the deadliest airline disaster in the United States in decades
And the Trump administration also offered buyouts to FAA staffers in January—including air traffic controllers—as part of Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s effort to slash the federal workforce.
A display shows the status of flights at Newark Liberty International Airport on May 5.
Now, Duffy is practically begging air traffic controllers to stay on even as Trump and Musk continue to make federal government offices a hostile and demoralizing place to work.
To set the record straight, Biden and Buttigieg did try to fix the air traffic control problems while in office, but had their efforts blocked by Republican lawmakers. For example, in April 2024 Buttigieg asked Congress to approve funding to hire 2,000 more air traffic controllers. But Republicans ignored Biden’s budget requests and instead passed a series of stopgap funding measures to keep the federal government open.
That hasn’t stopped Duffy from trying to deflect blame for the problems at Newark—which we might add were not happening when Biden and Buttigieg were at the helm.
In February, amid a spate of deadly plane crashes across the country, Duffy blamed Biden.
“To cast blame on this administration for the policy failures of the last four years and say it’s our fault is outrageous, but it’s rich,” Duffy said on Newsmax at the time.
The fact that Duffy just can’t keep Buttigieg’s name out of his mouth suggests Republicans could be worried about the former transportation secretary’s possible 2028 presidential bid.
Buttigieg, for his part, is blasting Duffy for playing a blame game instead of taking responsibility.
He “needs to spend more time doing what the American people are paying him to do—fix problems—and less time blaming others," Buttigieg said in a statement to The Guardian.
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