Former Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Pete Buttigieg called President Donald Trump’s remarks on the Washington, DC, helicopter-plane crash “despicable,” and made false statements to defend his track record in a rant on social media.
“Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” the recently departed secretary wrote on January 30, the day after the tragic crash killed all 67 people on board both aircrafts above the Potomac River:
“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,” Buttigieg continued. “President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA.”
Despite his claim that he “drove down close calls” during his 2021-2025 tenure, a 2023 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) review that was ordered following several national incidents found that “inadequate, inconsistent funding” and staffing shortages had led to an “erosion” of safety standards that made “the current level of safety unsustainable.”
“Together, these challenges contribute to increased safety risk and should be regarded as incident precursors,” the report stated.
FAA officials also noted that the incidents recorded in the beginning of 2023 demonstrated “an increase in the most serious type of runway incursions.”
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One of the major incidents that prompted the review was the collision of two United Airlines jets at Boston’s Logan International Airport in March of that year.
That event occurred just days after another “close call” incident at the same airport, where a Jetblue plane had to take “evasive action” while landing to avoid a private Learjet that was taking off, allegedly without clearance, according to NBC Boston.
Buttigieg continued in his X post to claim that one of Trump’s first actions in office this year “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,” he added.
The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor continued to blast Trump on Sunday, stating that his administration “can’t spin this away”:
“The Trump administration contacted air traffic controllers, offering buyouts to leave their jobs. It’s a very easily proven fact,” Buttigieg claimed.
In the Associated Press article that Buttigieg linked as a “receipt,” his own argument was dispelled:
While it is true that Trump offered federal employees the opportunity to resign if they do not want to comply with his “return to office” mandate, the AP noted that the U.S. Office for Personnel Management (OPM) said Friday that air traffic controllers were not eligible for the buyout plan.
The offer also excludes “military personnel, U.S. Postal Service workers and positions related to immigration enforcement and national security,” according to the Hill.
As the AP article that Buttigieg linked states, “There’s no evidence that the White House effort to downsize government played any role in the collision, with shortages of air traffic controllers long predating Trump taking office.”
An ATC source recently revealed to CNN that DCA’s control tower was only about 85 percent staffed, with four out of 28 positions needing to be filled.
Even if the control tower was fully staffed, it would still be two personnel short of the 30-member ATC staff target stated in the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, an annual report to Congress from 2023.
After presumably realizing that his “receipt” did not back up his claims as he initially thought, the former DOT secretary made another follow-up post:
“Now they claim the controllers aren’t eligible for buyouts after all. What changed? Why were they sent the offer? At best — and this is being generous — it was disturbingly sloppy, in a field which demands precision and competence.”
Buttigieg’s angry X rant came soon after Trump held a press conference on the horrific crash, which had no survivors:
After beginning the briefing with a moment of silence for the victims — 64 passengers and crew members flying in from Wichita, Kansas, and three military service members aboard the Black Hawk — Trump lamented how the Biden administration changed FAA standards “to lower than ever before.”
Shortly after re-entering office on January 20, Trump took executive action to direct new DOT Secretary Sean Duffy and acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau to return to “merit-based hiring” for all positions, including air traffic control (ATC), and to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that Biden and Buttigieg had facilitated.
“Last week, long before the crash, I signed an executive order restoring our highest standards for air traffic controllers and for other important jobs across the country,” Trump said at the press conference.
He went on to say that it “doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are” if ATC personnel are smart and talented.
“What matters is intellect, talent… They have to be talented geniuses,” the president added. “We can’t have regular people doing that job. They won’t be able to do it.”
A January 15 Fox News article revealed that the FAA was heavily pushing DEI measures, and was “actively recruiting workers who suffer ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.”
Later in his briefing, Trump called Buttigieg a “disaster”:
“Secretary Pete Buttigieg…a real winner, you know how badly everything’s run since he ran the DOT? He was a disaster as a mayor, he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit,” he said of the former Democrat presidential candidate.
According to Trump, Buttigieg ran DOT “right into the ground with his diversity.”