Trump Promises Changes With National Airspace
Former President Donald Trump, never one to waste a moment for a pointed jab, took direct aim at Pete Buttigieg this week, using a press appearance in the Middle East to slam the former transportation secretary’s track record.
Trump’s critique was both characteristically bombastic and focused: Buttigieg, he claimed, was a “do-nothing” figurehead more interested in public image than public infrastructure. This time, however, the criticism was anchored in a real and consequential lapse—a communications breakdown between Reagan National Airport and the Pentagon that reportedly contributed to a mid-air collision involving a military helicopter and a regional aircraft earlier this year.
Buttigieg, long a target for conservative critics, found himself at the center of this scandal due to the revelation that the emergency hotline designed to facilitate coordination between Washington’s busy civilian and military airspaces was nonfunctional. According to preliminary reports, the failed system played a critical role in delaying response coordination, and that lapse may have contributed directly to the incident in January.
Trump on Air Traffic System: We’re going to be giving out a brand new system… We’ll have the best system and we think we know who that system is. But we have a lot bidding.. We want a unified system we don’t have 5000 contractors in all different places, some digging ditches and… pic.twitter.com/zhu4royMg4
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 15, 2025
Trump seized on the moment, not just to highlight the incident but to use it as a broader symbol of administrative incompetence. His mockery was vintage Trump: a cocktail of ridicule and commentary that often blurs the lines between comedy and critique. Buttigieg, he said, was more interested in “riding a bicycle” for show than managing what Trump described as “the biggest air system in the world.” He ridiculed the now infamous “bike-drop stunt,” in which Buttigieg used a government SUV for most of his commute before riding a bike the final stretch to appear environmentally conscious for the cameras.
Trump also attacked the technological missteps under Buttigieg’s leadership, alluding to failed attempts to integrate outdated copper-based systems with modern glass infrastructure, claiming that the entire modernization effort was “a mess” involving thousands of contractors and zero results. Though his technical language was broad and often imprecise, the underlying point was clear: the air traffic control system is broken, and Buttigieg failed to fix it.
Ironically, Trump’s own infrastructure agenda during his presidency was often criticized for being more talk than action, but the former president is now positioning himself as the man who will finally do the job right. He pledged a unified contract for redesigning the nation’s air traffic control systems, with satellite capabilities, while also acknowledging the need for ground-based radar to maintain redundancy and ensure coverage of non-compliant or minimally equipped aircraft.
The political undercurrent of the attack was just as strong as the policy critique. Trump clearly aimed to kneecap any potential 2028 ambitions Buttigieg might have. By portraying him as a lightweight who “goes on TV to talk about anything but transportation,” Trump sought to reframe Buttigieg’s brand as performative rather than executive.
He also nodded—whether intentionally or not—to the cultural divide that often underpins today’s politics. The mention of Buttigieg’s beard, his husband’s social media presence, and past criticisms of Florida’s parental rights legislation weren’t just side remarks—they were calculated signals to a base that remains deeply skeptical of cultural progressivism and bureaucratic theater.