After grounding all air travel in the U.S. for hours, inconveniencing or worse, God-only-knows-how-many travelers for God-only-knows-how-long, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy turned a briefing into a pro-Trump cheering session.
The main takeaway from those two members of the party of personal responsibility was that they took none. As Heather pointed out, Duffy and Mullin blamed President Biden and Congress. The main point of the briefing was not to provide much-needed information to stranded travelers, their families, and business associates, but to praise Dear Leader Trump and demand $50 billion.
DUFFY: So what happened? … What we have is an incredibly old air traffic control system. … The president, for the last year, has been asking Congress to fully fund a full build of a brand-new air traffic control system…Give us the money to fix it. … I want $50 billion.
Anyone looking for reassurance, especially about Thanksgiving travel, would not have found much.
DUFFY: [Fixing the system] will not get done overnight. … We don’t have full funding. … What went down was old, right? It was old, legacy equipment. It failed. And listen, it will continue to fail.
…
MULLIN: We can’t do this. It has to be a complete overhaul of the system.
read more