Fox Anchor Presses Trump Transportation Chief On Job Cuts Amid Air Disasters

Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer confronted Trump Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy over job cuts amid a series of air disasters, asking him to respond to the criticism that this is “not a time to cut employees.”

President Donald Trump and DOGE czar Elon Musk, have drawn intense scrutiny for slashing (and later un-slashing) jobs willy-nilly, including a slew of FAA firings on the heels of several aviation disasters. Those fired reportedly included employees hired for radar, landing, and navigational aid maintenance who were dismissed without cause because they’d been on the job for less than a year and were considered probationary.

On Monday morning’s edition of Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, Hemmer rattled off a series of recent high-profile aviation disaster. He then asked Duffy — a former Fox News colleague — “what do you say” to people who think cutting jobs now is a bad idea:

HEMMER: Okay. So, we looked up today’s 24th. As of today, this is what you filed. Five things I did last week, terminated the New York City elitist anti-worker congestion pricing. That was number one. Number three, save $10 million a year by eliminating redundant, outdated landlines. Number five, toward Burbank, California traffic control tower, and on it went. I did that over the week. I put in a ChatGPT and it gave me a great answer, by the way. So, I felt okay with that.

I also want to show you the incidents, the aviation disasters so far this year. You look at January 29, January 31, February 6, Feb. 10 and then Feb. 17, Delta regional jet flips, that was the one in Toronto.

A question for you, Mr. Secretary. Some say this is not a time to cut employees given the safety factors that are concerned. What do you say to them?

DUFFY: So, Bill, there’s fat everywhere in government and in DOT as well. But let’s be clear, at FAA, we cut 352 people out of 50 — I mean, sorry, 46,000 people. That’s 0.8 percent of the workforce. These were probationary workers. They were employed for less than a year at DOT. So, these weren’t the old school, really ingrained employees of the DOT. And not only that, we kept all the critical safety positions and we actually hired more positions into critical safety, like air traffic controllers. We hired more inspectors for things like pipelines and for aircraft. So, again, we have a safety mission.

But for people to say that because we cut 352 people out of 46,000, that that’s a risk to safety, give me a break. I mean, that’s just plain politics as opposed to saying, let’s cut the fat.

HEMMER: All right. Two more questions here. This goes back to the end of January, New York Times headline, here we go on screen, call for a number one. Air traffic control facilities are understaffed. Persistent staff shortages have raised safety concerns at many facilities. Staffing is so low that at least a quarter of the workforce is missing. Your reaction on that.

DUFFY: Yes. No, it’s a problem, Bill. We need to surge air traffic controllers. I’m going out to the main academy we have, which is out in Oklahoma City. We’re going to surge air traffic controllers. It takes time to train them up through the academy and in the towers. We need to expand how many get through that school, but this has been a problem for a long time.

So, it’s not just air traffic controllers. Bill, it’s the technology. In a lot of these air traffic control centers, they’re using floppy disks. A lot of your young viewers don’t even know what that is, but this is really old technology. The communication system with the internet is not well served. So, again, that doesn’t go to air safety, but that does go to the technology that we use. Government takes 8, 10, 15 years to upgrade systems, and that’s the enemy of progress.

So, we’re going to do this very quickly. We’re going to look at a year, a year-and-a-half time frame and do massive upgrades, improve the systems, help air traffic controllers, keep our skies safer. And, again, time is the enemy. We’re going to do it quick.

Elon Musk’s team at SpaceX have come in and given their advice. Other really smart people have come in to offer their advice as well. We’re bringing in America’s best and brightest, whether it’s air traffic control or advisors on technology to make sure that, again, we have the greatest air traffic control system, safest system in the whole world.

Watch above via Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom.