Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy tore into his predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, and former President Joe Biden during a press briefing about system outages, staffing shortages and delays at Newark Liberty International Airport.
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00:00Two questions. One is, I know you said Newark will be a priority. Will it be the number one priority given the confluence of problems that we've seen?
00:08So I think we're going to have to do more than one location at a time, but yes, priority number one is going to be Newark.
00:21And then I understand you're placing a lot of the blame on the previous administration, but these problems are happening now under the second administration.
00:30Are you just unlucky, or are there some real issues that need to be addressed under this current administration?
00:36If you buy a used car, you drive it home, and go to bed, wake up the next morning, drive to the store, and it breaks down, is it your fault, or is it the guy that you bought it from sold you a lemon, right?
00:49So we have to recognize, again, because I think a lot of the media tries to say, oh, this infrastructure is failing under the first hundred days of the Trump administration,
00:58or Sean Duffy as secretary. And I think that is a known falsehood, known lie by the media.
01:06You all know that it's been cracking. Those of you who cover aviation, there's been telltale signs, there's been conversations,
01:13there's been congressional hearings on this, and the fact that the last administration did nothing should be reported.
01:18The fact that they spent $1.2 trillion and really invested zero in this massive infrastructure build that America needs, aviation needs,
01:30and they didn't pay attention to it at all. That they would have moved the TRACON from N-90 down to Philly,
01:35and wouldn't harden the network, and wouldn't move the STARS system down to Philly, shows, I think, a lack of focus.
01:44And maybe when you work from home, or maybe when you work from Michigan as a secretary,
01:49you're not focused on the real issues that are taking place throughout the airspace.
01:53And that's what was happening at this department.
01:55They were focused on what we call a cockpit versus a flight deck.
01:59We had to change notice to airmen to notice to airmission, right?
02:05That was the focus, as opposed to you have a cracking system, and let's get the money to fix it,
02:10or let's at least start the fix in that system.
02:13They didn't do that.
02:14And so I've inherited it.
02:16The Trump administration has inherited it.
02:19Donald Trump has said we are going to fix it.
02:21We are not going to pass it off.
02:22So we are not going to do what they did.
02:25And so I fully embrace, as you can see, we've developed a plan.
02:30We've put out a plan.
02:31We've told the Congress this is what we have to do.
02:33We are not shying away from any problems.
02:36But I think it's important to recognize why we have the problems.
02:40You didn't get old, cracking infrastructure in 100 days.
02:45It came from the four years before they chose to do nothing.
02:49And so we're going to fix it.
02:52The Congress has to help.
02:53And if they do, we're going to fix it quickly.
02:57They gave us the problem.
02:59We have the results in this administration.
03:01And, again, we're going to continue to update you.
03:03If there's any other issues at Newark, we want to be transparent.
03:06We want to let you know what infrastructure problems there are.
03:10If there's telecom issues, we're going to let you know what those are.
03:13And we'll keep you apprised of how we're going to fix the issues that arise.
03:18Hopefully we're done.
03:19I'm not going to tell you we're done.
03:21My hope is that we're done.
03:22But as Chris Rushlow indicated, we are about safety.
03:27And I know there's frustration about the number of flights at Newark.
03:30I get that.
03:31I fly out of Newark.
03:32My wife flies out of Newark.
03:34My kids fly out of Newark.
03:35It's frustrating.
03:36But, again, we're all about safety.
03:38Safety is the mission.
03:40And so if we can only do 24 to 28 flights an hour, that's all we're going to do to feel like we are adequate in the mission of keeping people safe going from point A to point B.
03:53And with that, thank you all for coming.
03:54We'll keep you updated as things develop.