In his bizarre press briefing Thursday morning to discuss the midair crash the night before, President Donald Trump laid a lot of blame, on everyone and everything from the Obama and Biden Administrations to DEI programs to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He said this despite very little information being available about what exactly caused the crash.
“A real winner. That guy’s a real winner,” Trump said of Buttigieg. “Do you know how badly everything’s run since he’s run the Department of Transportation? He’s a disaster. He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of b*******.”
Buttigieg responded sooner after on social media, calling Trump’s comments “despicable.”
Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.
President Trump now oversees the military and the…— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) January 30, 2025
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“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch,” the former Transportation Secretary said on X. “President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”
Buttigieg has been succeeded as Secretary of Transportation by Sean Duffy, the former Real World: Boston cast member, Congressman and longtime Fox News employee. Duffy appeared at the briefing after Trump spoke, and the first thing he said after stepping to the microphone was “the president’s leadership has been remarkable during this crisis.”
Between Trump and Sean Duffy, in American history we have never witnessed gaslighting and dumbfuckery of this magnitude after a tragedy. With the only requirement being fealty, Trump literally hired the most unqualified and incompetent cabinet in history. pic.twitter.com/5GHaunom7o
— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) January 30, 2025
“To back up what the president said, from what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely,” Duffy said. “It was, I would say, standard communication, so there was not a breakdown, if that’s your question, in communication between the military helicopter and the American airline flight. There was communication between the aircraft and the tower.”
Photo courtesy of an X screenshot.
