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President Donald Trump’s bombshell threats against air traffic controllers have Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy feuding with his predecessor. Trump threatened to “dock” air traffic controllers on Monday for not showing up to work despite them not receiving paychecks during the ongoing government shutdown. The explosive comments prompted widespread criticism online, including from former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who served in the Biden administration. “The President wouldn’t last five minutes as an air traffic controller, and after everything they’ve been through - and the way this administration has treated them from Day One - he has no business shitting on them now,” Buttigieg said in response to Trump’s comments. This prompted Duffy to fire back at Buttigieg. “Give me a break. You were basically AWOL at the DOT. I spend my whole day dealing with your neglect and cleaning up your messes. Sit this one out,” Duffy wrote on social media platform X. Later on Monday, Trump was asked whether he could assure Americans that air travel would go back to “normal” when the government shutdown is over. Trump responded by attacking Buttigieg and his efforts to improve the air traffic control system. “[Buttigieg] was the Secretary of Transportation, and he spent billions of dollars trying to patch together our air traffic control system, which was a conglomeration of all different systems,” Trump said. “They had hundreds of countries where companies working on it, and they were spending billions of dollars, and when they turned it on, it didn’t work. It didn’t even work a little bit.” Buttigieg responded with a video shared on X, saying that Trump’s claims on air traffic controllers were false. He also accused Trump of trying to distract Americans from the health care premiums that are set to skyrocket without an extension on Affordable Care Act subsidies. “He just made a bunch of s--- up about air traffic control. This is a system that was in pretty rough shape by the time he lost in 2020, and we took it over,” Buttigieg said. He said the Biden administration “improved” the system, adding that Trump because the first president in decades to “inherit an air traffic control workforce that was actually growing instead of shrinking.” He then criticized Trump for bashing air traffic controllers when there is already a shortage of them. “The most important part of the whole system is the air traffic controllers themselves, which is why it is disgraceful that the President went on social media earlier today and attacked controllers after everything that they’ve been through, and at a moment when America has a serious air traffic control shortage,” Buttigieg said. “So why would the President be picking a fight with air traffic controllers today of all days? Probably it’s to change the subject from how he and Republicans are increasing your health insurance premiums on purpose right now, and from how he has totally failed on his promise to make everyday life more affordable right now, the President is losing on the economy because the American people can see how he’s failing, and people feel it every time they open up an insurance bill, every time they go grocery shopping,” he added. The government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history, has fueled chaos across the country due to federal employees not being paid. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began reducing flights at 40 major airports on Friday amid the ongoing government shutdown, causing thousands of delays and cancellations across the country over the weekend. On Sunday, the FAA reported some arrivals at Newark were delayed an average of 2 hours and 14 minutes due to staffing shortages.
