Washington: One of the first stories I covered after Donald Trump’s inauguration was the devastating crash of American Airlines Flight 5342, which collided with a Black Hawk army helicopter on approach to Washington’s city airport. All 67 people on both aircraft died.
While bodies and debris were still being pulled from the water, Trump called a news conference and speculated without evidence that diversity, equity and inclusion policies could be to blame. It was premature, reckless, insensitive and wrong.
The president took an entirely different approach to the nationwide ground stop that halted air traffic across the US on Friday and is still playing out with delays and cancellations 48 hours later.
He did not say anything publicly throughout the crisis, instead posting about the boat crash in New Orleans, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and, most of all, about the redevelopment of a Washington golf course.
It was only on Sunday morning (US time) that Trump commented on the airspace incident, writing on Truth Social that Congress must approve “desperately needed” funding to build a new air traffic control system.
As the crisis unfolded, the president had his inexperienced homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, in front of the cameras explaining that “this is not another 9/11”, and scolding reporters for not adopting Trump’s rebranding of AI (“We call it SI, remember,” he told a journalist).
Later, when Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appeared in the White House briefing room for a news conference on which millions of Americans and others were hanging, it felt as though their main mission was to praise Trump and demand money from Congress.
“This is what the leadership of President Trump looks like,” Mullin said. “We’re built to handle crises like this.” Would that it were true.
It took more than five minutes to get to the actual nub of what happened – a router that was playing up and giving inconsistent data, leading technicians to shut down the system. And it took 10 minutes to get to the announcement that the ground stop had actually been lifted.
“What is Duffy doing?” observed conservative columnist and former Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen on X. “No one cares about political responsibility right now. They want to know what’s happening, when it will be fixed, and when planes will be flying again!”
Things didn’t get off to a great start the next day either. Duffy’s morning-after news conference began late, and the microphones didn’t work properly. He and other officials had to stand around for minutes while tech staff resolved the issue.
Steve Bannon, the MAGA commentator and former Trump strategist, was scathing on his TV show as he watched the mess unfold live. “Let me be blunt – when you step up to the mic, the mic’s got to work,” he said.
“People are going to say, ‘Hey, why should we get on planes? We can’t even get the sound right’. We’re about to go through a shredding machine with the Democrats in charge, and people better be on point.
“When you say 10.30[am], stick the landing – let’s have it at 10.30. When you come out, have the sound ready to work. Because now this is going to be the meme.”
It looked like a clown show. But tech issues are a small thing.
The more sinister part is that it’s difficult to trust anything these administration officials say because their instincts are to praise the leader and deflect blame to others. That’s not what people need in a crisis .
Duffy, when asked why the White House couldn’t get the money for system upgrades from a Congress that has been controlled by Republicans for two years, went down the Trump route and asked the reporter which news outlet she was with.
And on Saturday, Duffy was quick to point the finger at telecommunications network owner L3Harris, which performed the maintenance work. That may be the case but, as Duffy himself points out, it is successive US governments that have let the network remain this antiquated for this long.
On Sunday, he was asked on CNN why Trump does not speak publicly about air traffic control upgrades as much as, say, his White House ballroom or the Washington golf course, if the issue was so important.
Duffy said the president constantly talked to him about it in private. Trump “loves the airspace”, he told CNN. “This is the first president we’ve ever had who cares this much about modernising the airspace.”
You can see why Americans might find that difficult to believe. Last year, Trump was blaming DEI hires for air crashes hours after they occurred, and his Department of Government Efficiency was sacking technicians from air traffic control in a cost-cutting exercise. Now he is demanding $US50 billion ($74 billion) for critical upgrades.
Everybody agrees that US air traffic control, radar and weather systems – which still use floppy discs for some functions – need to be modernised. It’s an awful lot of money, but in Duffy’s telling, it would essentially mean building an entire new bespoke system.
This is a great test for a president who says that he wants to do deals with the incoming Democratic Congress. It could even be done before the new lawmakers take their seats. It’s on Democrats, too, not to play politics and to engage with the administration in good faith, if that is what’s on offer.
But on too many occasions, this is an administration elevates politics and propaganda above competence and compromise. The clowns must become the adults in the room.
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