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Pete Buttigieg
“Other than mostly pronouncing my name right, everything he said was wrong,” Buttigieg said.
Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has read off Donald Trump for the latter’s fact-challenged criticism of the air traffic control system — and Buttigieg’s record.
In a Monday morning post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “All Air Traffic Controllers must get back to work, NOW!!! Anyone who doesn’t will be substantially ‘docked.’' … For those that did nothing but complain, and took time off, even though everyone knew they would be paid, IN FULL, shortly into the future, I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our country.”
He claimed he would give $10,000 bonuses to controllers who stayed on the job without pay and that those who didn’t should leave in the near future with no severance. He also alleged that the Biden administration had “wasted Billions of Dollars trying to fix antiquated ‘junk.’”
Buttigieg responded to the post on X, saying, “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.”
Later in the day, at the White House, when a reporter asked Trump if air service would get back to normal after the federal government shutdown ends, the president said it would be “better than normal” and railed against Buttigieg.
“We had a guy named Buttigieg,” Trump said. “Boot-edge-edge, they say, is the best way. Just say two edges like off the edge of a cliff, which is where they were taking us, by the way.”
“Boot-edge-edge was the secretary of Transportation and he spent billions of dollars trying to patch together our air control, our air traffic control system, which was a conglomeration of all different systems and all different cities,” he continued. “He spent — they had hundreds of countries, hundreds of companies working on it, and they spent like billions of dollars and when they turned it on it didn’t work, it didn’t even work a little bit, that’s why you had a helicopter crashing into an airplane that if we had a great system, bells and whistles would have started going off.” (That crash, in January, was likely due to other causes, such as staffing and the helicopter's faulty altitude gauge.)
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Buttigieg responded to this in a video on Bluesky after he and husband, Chasten, put their children to bed Monday evening.
“Other than mostly pronouncing my name right, everything he said was wrong,” Buttigieg said. “He told a story about air traffic control that was both false and confusing. He just made a bunch of shit 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,” the former Transportation secretary went on. “So we improved it, including launching a long-term communications fix that is still under way that he is now passing off as his idea. And thanks to our work, this year he became the first president in decades to inherit an air traffic control workforce that was actually growing instead of shrinking. 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.
“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 how he has totally failed on his promise to make everyday life more affordable. Right now the president is losing on the economy because 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. So for everyone who wants to see change, let’s stay focused. Let’s keep the pressure on. Let’s take the same energy that saw Democrats dominating Election Day last week and carry it into next year and beyond.”
The reference to insurance premiums came because the proposal to reopen the government does not include an extension of subsidies for policies bought under the Affordable Care Act. It passed the Senate Monday night with mostly Republican support. The House could vote on it as early as Wednesday.
Related: Why most LGBTQ+ Congress members oppose deal to end government shutdown
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association told NPR that very few controllers have been off the job. “The vast majority of these highly trained and skilled professionals continue to perform one of the most stressful and demanding jobs in the world, despite not being compensated,” a statement from the union said. “Many are working six-day weeks and ten-hour days without any pay.”
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