President Donald Trump’s administration has laid off tons of of Federal Aviation Administration staff regardless of roughly a half dozen deadly plane crashes since he took workplace. However his administration continues to insist that the 2 aren’t related.
In a Tuesday interview with Newsmax, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy mentioned “it’s wealthy” that persons are blaming the Trump administration for the aircraft crashes. As a substitute, he appears more keen to blame former President Joe Biden regardless of him not being in workplace when any of the six crashes befell.
“To forged blame on this administration for the coverage failures of the final 4 years and say it’s our fault is outrageous, however it’s wealthy,” Duffy mentioned.
He additionally confirmed earlier reporting that the Trump administration had laid off a number of hundred FAA staff, however tried to justify it by saying that “lower than 400” staff had been let go just lately. The MTV alum mentioned that was a drop within the bucket, contemplating roughly 45,000 people are employed by the FAA.
The current statements from Duffy echo previous ones he’s made on social media. On Monday, he made an identical argument that the probationary staff who had been let go made up solely a small fraction of the workforce.
“[T]hey had been all probationary, which means that they had been employed lower than a 12 months in the past,” Duffy mentioned of the affected staff in a Monday post to X. “Zero air visitors controllers and significant security personnel had been let go.”
Nonetheless, on Saturday, the union representing FAA staff slammed the federal authorities’s determination to all of the sudden terminate the airline staff. The union mentioned the choices had been achieved with out trigger “nor based mostly on efficiency or conduct.”
“Staffing selections ought to be based mostly on a person company’s mission-critical wants. To do in any other case is harmful relating to public security,” David Spero, nationwide president of the Skilled Aviation Security Specialists, mentioned in a statement. “And it’s particularly unconscionable within the aftermath of three lethal plane accidents prior to now month.”
Notably, since Duffy’s ill-timed statements, there was one other airplane-related casualty. In accordance with preliminary reporting, at the very least two folks had been killed in a crash at an airport within the Tuscon, Arizona, space on Wednesday morning.
However earlier than Trump and his wildly unqualified Cupboard picks took management of Washington, D.C., the final main deadly passenger-jet crash occurred in 2009. Nonetheless, Trump and his administration have continued to defer blame and demand that they don’t have anything to do with the incidents—pointing the finger at every part to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to workplace diversity policies.
What the Trump administration fails to account for is that it’s shedding staff from an already understaffed industry. In January, a passenger jet and a army helicopter collided close to Ronald Reagan Nationwide Airport, in Washington, D.C., killing all 67 people aboard each aircrafts. Staffing on the air visitors management tower that day was “not regular,” in keeping with an FAA report.
Because the president and his cronies proceed to aim to shift blame to Democrats for the lethal crashes, Duffy announced that officers from Trump donor Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX deliberate to go to the FAA Air Site visitors Management System Command Heart, in Virginia.
As a result of letting Musk’s cronies stomp by way of government agencies has worked out well to date.
