President Donald Trump’s administration has laid off hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees despite roughly a half dozen deadly plane crashes since he took office. But his administration continues to insist that the two are not connected.
In a Tuesday interview with Newsmax, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said “it’s rich” that people are blaming the Trump administration for the plane crashes. Instead, he seems more keen to blame former President Joe Biden despite him not being in office when any of the six crashes took place.
“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.
He also confirmed previous reporting that the Trump administration had laid off several hundred FAA employees, but attempted to justify it by saying that “less than 400” workers had been let go recently. The MTV alum said that was a drop in the bucket, considering roughly 45,000 people are employed by the FAA.
The recent statements from Duffy echo past ones he’s made on social media. On Monday, he made a similar argument that the probationary workers who were let go made up only a small fraction of the workforce.
“[T]hey were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago,” Duffy said of the affected workers in a Monday post to X. “Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.”
Still, on Saturday, the union representing FAA employees slammed the federal government’s decision to suddenly terminate the airline workers. The union said the decisions were done without cause “nor based on performance or conduct.”
“Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety,” David Spero, national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, said in a statement. “And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”
Notably, since Duffy’s ill-timed statements, there was another airplane-related casualty. According to preliminary reportingat least two people were killed in a crash at an airport in the Tuscon, Arizona, area on Wednesday morning.
But before Trump and his wildly unqualified Cabinet picks took control of Washington, D.C., the last major fatal passenger-jet crash occurred in 2009. Still, Trump and his administration have continued to defer blame and insist that they have nothing to do with the incidents—pointing the finger at everything to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to workplace diversity policies.
What the Trump administration fails to account for is that it’s laying off workers from an already understaffed industry. In January, a passenger jet and a military helicopter collided near Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Washington, D.C., killing all 67 people aboard both aircrafts. Staffing at the air traffic control tower that day was “not normal,” according to an FAA report.
As the president and his cronies continue to attempt to shift blame to Democrats for the deadly crashes, Duffy announced that officials from Trump donor Elon Musk’s company SpaceX planned to visit the FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center, in Virginia.
Because letting Musk’s cronies stomp through government agencies has worked out well so far.
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