November 9, 2025

Transportation Secretary and former reality TV star Sean Duffy went on CNN to speak with Jake Tapper about the air traffic controller shortage that Duffy created and how it will impact Thanksgiving travel plans. Long answer short: It's not good:

TAPPER: So you talked about Thanksgiving. Do you have any sort of numerical idea of how many Americans will not be able to be with their families for the holiday because of this?

DUFFY: I think the number is going to be substantial.

Again, you look at the trend line, Jake, and it's only gotten worse as we've gone through the shutdown. We're day 40 now. And we saw the largest number of outage of controllers was on Halloween, the 31st. Those numbers were 61. Yesterday it was 81.

And the controllers that I've talked to said, a lot of them, we can miss one paycheck. They told me that virtually none of them can miss two paychecks. And so they're going to be confronted with the idea of, as you mentioned, going to get a side job, a second job to make ends meet, to put food on the table, put gas in the car, to pay their rent. And a lot of these controllers who are young, Jake, they don't make a lot of money. They're just getting into the business of being an air traffic controller. So they make less than $100,000 and they live in a really expensive place. They're the single income earner. And they have a kid or two at home. It's very challenging.

Again, Duffy willfully fails to own up to his role in this debacle by firing hundreds of air traffic controllers because they were women, people of color, transgender, gay, or any other group that Christofascists are scared of. I bete those hundreds of workers would have come in real handy right now.

But what really burns my toast is that no one, and I mean no one, has as the question of since when did Republicans give a damn about workers? Trump and his acolytes have ggone out of their way to create hostile work environments by firing people en massse and at random, trying to bust their unions, and now expecting them to work without pay because they want to take away people health care coverage, no matter how many people they have to starve to do it. And they sure as hell don't care about the working poor that they are suing to keep from getting food subsidies.

This sudden faux concern about workers is nothing more than a cynical ploy to try to divert blame from their own massive failures.

H/T to Aaron Rupar for the video

Can you help us out?

For over 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but social media is limiting our ability to attract new readers. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon