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Donald Trump says a “bunch of old broken stuff” is to blame for the nationwide FAA ground stop that froze air travel across the country on Friday.
The president pinned the meltdown on aging air traffic control equipment and waved off the idea that the country had been hit by a cyberattack, Radar Online reports.
Trump, 80, shared his theory in a phone call with reporter Peter Doocy, who then passed it along to Laura Ingraham on air.
“He says it does not seem like this is a cyberattack or AI or anything like that,” Doocy said. “I asked him a couple different ways, and he said it doesn’t seem like that, and that that is the first thing that they always look for.”
Doocy added that Trump pointed to the lack of anyone claiming responsibility as a sign that the outage wasn’t an attack.
“He said there’s nobody taking credit, which would be common if somebody did execute a huge cyber attack like this on critical infrastructure, but that he would let us know and the team would let us know if that is something that happened,” Doocy explained.
By Sunday, Trump had found someone else to blame. He reportedly pointed the finger at the Biden administration, calling the situation a “disaster” and saying of his predecessor’s team, “Everything they touched turned bad.”
Those comments were widely described as Trump breaking his silence on the crisis. Reports also say the president kept out of sight on Friday while the FAA issued the ground stop.
The order came down at 3:54 p.m. EST, with the FAA citing “extraordinary circumstances” and “reasons of safety.”
“All departing traffic should remain ground stopped until further notice,” an air traffic control advisory read. “Inbound international flights will be managed on a case-by-case basis.”
More than 1,000 planes were already in the air and on their way to U.S. airports when the order was issued, according to flight tracking data. Millions of travelers were caught up in the chaos.
Days after Trump offered the White House press secretary job to UFC boss Dana White, it was members of the Cabinet who stepped up to explain what had gone wrong.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the shutdown was caused by “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin spoke to reporters outside the White House and also downplayed fears of foul play.
“There was no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us. It’s just a telecommunication outage as of right now,” Mullin said.
He insisted that passengers who were already airborne were safe, but cautioned against jumping to conclusions before officials could get communications back up and find the root cause.
“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Mullin said.
Friday’s shutdown was only the second nationwide ground stop since the September 11 attacks.
The previous one happened in January 2023, when an FAA computer outage halted domestic departures for roughly 90 minutes.
Back then, Republicans were quick to blame Pete Buttigieg, who was serving as Transportation Secretary under Biden at the time.
“This is what happens when you hire clueless liberals for jobs they aren’t qualified to do,” Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert wrote on X after that outage.
This time around, Trump’s team is pointing to old equipment and the previous administration, while officials work to pin down exactly what caused the communication failure.
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