Incompetence, zero relevant experience, and cult worship of Dear Leader have consequences.
Backstory: A United Airlines flight aborted takeoff due to a strange smell. An air traffic controller at La Guardia sent a fire truck to check things out. The truck was cleared to cross a live runway while an Air Canada flight was landing. The controller realized their mistake and desperately tried to stop the truck. Too late. Afterwards, the controller muttered three words. “I messed up”.
That controller will have to live with their mistake forever; however, this is the end result of systemic gutting of the FAA at the same time it is led by Sean Duffy - a former host of the reality show “the Real World: Boston” with zero experience in transportation management or policy, aviation management or policy, or, frankly, any professional experience of any kind that would be relevant to running the Department of Transportation.
What Sean Duffy does have is TV good looks and blind loyalty to willfully ignorant, pathologically lying, malignant narcissist President of the United States.
By all accounts, the FAA is currently short somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 air traffic controllers. That is a shortfall of somewhere between 25%-35% based on current staffing levels and goals.
In February 2025, the not legally existing “Department” DOGE fired approximately 400 FAA employees. These employees filled a wide range of support roles essential to aviation safety, including maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, aviation safety assistants, and administrative staff.
In response to increasingly large amount of “runway incursions” in the U. S. (there were approximately 100 in both January 2025 and January, 2026), Sean Duffy
agreed to hire more controllersthreatened pilots with license revocation.
If past behavior predicts future performance, Duffy, Trump et. al. will blame the air traffic controller for making a fatal error. Which is tragically true in a direct sense. However, much like climate change - where any individual weather event can be rationalized as not arising from climate change - the Administration will likely deny any connection to systemic issues at the FAA or under-manned airport control towers.
Incompetence combined with lack of expertise/experience, a system stretched to the breaking point and fealty to Dear Leader WILL create tragic incidents (let’s not forget the collision over he Potomac last year), no matter how good looking or Fox TV-experienced is the Secretary of Transportation.
But, yeah, let’s spend over $1 billion per day in the Middle East to sate the whims of a madman and ruin our economy.
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Somewhat related:
WELKER: Would the administration ever raise taxes in order to fund this war? BESSENT: Again, Kristen, terrible framing WELKER: It's a simple question BESSENT: It's a ridiculous question WELKER: Can you answer it? BESSENT: Why would we do that? We have plenty. We have a trillion dollars.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-03-22T14:22:16.706Z
Our blue-blood, well-coiffed, silver-haired, snooty Secretary of the Treasury ridicules a simple question about actually trying to pay for the war in the Middle East by raising taxes. Even though until George W. Bush, we had never cut taxes in a time of war in the entire history of the United States of America and frequently raised them. We raised taxes during the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam (LBJ passed a tax cut in 1964 before Vietnam involvement exploded into full-scale war, but Congress passed a tax surcharge in 1968 to pay for Vietnam).
Incompetence combined with hubris, rigid ideology and fealty to Dear Leader WILL lead us towards economic and financial ruin.
But, yeah, let’s spend over $1 billion per day in the Middle East to sate the whims of a madman and ruin our economy.
