‘Buttigieg Is On The Ball’: Elon Musk Praises Key Biden Official After Pushing Wild Claims About FEMA

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg spoke with MSNBC host Jen Psaki on Sunday about his efforts to combat the rampant misinformation being spread online by the right regarding recovery efforts in the southeast after Hurricane Helene devastated communities from Florida to North Carolina.

Major figures in the MAGA world, from former President Donald Trump to Elon Musk, have spread wild claims online that Democrats and FEMA were intentionally preventing aid from getting to rural areas where Republicans lived. Musk posted on X late last week that his “my blood is boiling” after a helicopter pilot told him “@FEMA wouldn’t let them land to deliver critical supplies.” Musk then also engaged with Valentina Gomez, a hard-right homophobe, who baselessly claimed, “Multiple sources on the ground are confirming that there is a blockade.” “What the hell,” replied Musk to his over 200 million followers.

“Washington Post reports that rumors and conspiracy theories have already prompted unnecessary evacuations. And some of these falsehoods have been viewed millions of times on social media. That’s just some of the reporting. There’s lots of reporting in local papers as well about how damaging this has been. But you and your department have been so involved. How damaging has the misinformation been and what impacts are you seeing in terms of the recovery and the people who are trying to find loved ones and get accurate information?” Psaki asked Buttigieg to begin the interview.

“Well, it can have a real cost for people on the ground who are already dealing with so much. And, you know, it’s right up there with making sure that people have access to transportation, making sure they get their power back on, making sure communications come back. Another part of that is making sure you can get good, accurate and useful information. Unfortunately, that has become in many ways more difficult in the current digital information environment,” Buttigieg replied, adding:

And so it’s become more important than ever to have trusted and reliable sources. We’ve worked to make sure that information that gets to users is good. For example, State 511 systems. And then for responders, we set up a routing assistance hotline just so that if you’re involved in an emergency operation, you could call and get our data about where a road might actually be open and available or out of service, where a bridge is taken out. But you look at what’s going on online, a lot of it seems to be driven by politics and that is actively harming and disrupting the process of getting back to normal for so many people whose lives were upended by this this awful storm.

“And the recovery is still certainly continuing. That’s very helpful information for people to know out there. I saw this. I’m sure a lot of people saw this. You actually personally pushed back against some misinformation about hurricane relief in an exchange with Elon Musk of all people on Twitter. We are showing it right there, basically telling him that he could call you if he was confused. Whatever you told him seemed to work because he publicly thanked you and said, ‘You’re on the ball,’ which is not something he typically does. Did you end up speaking with him or did he just take your word for it online?” Psaki then asked, turning the conversation to Musk.

“No, he took me up on that. He called. We had a conversation. What we found out was actually happening was the FAA was not closing down any airspace, but there was an issue with pilots who were helping get StarLink, StarLink equipment to where it needed to be, having the right information. We worked that with local authorities and we’re able to take care of it. And I think to me, it’s an example of how often the best thing to do is just to pick up the phone, Buttigieg replied, adding:

I don’t want to get too much into the weeds, but since there has been some confusion and even misinformation about the FAA’s temporary flight restrictions. I should probably explain how it works.

This is a process that has been in place for decades. And basically what happens is if you have a disaster area, there’s a lot of rescue operations going on, a local airport or a fire department or the Coast Guard flying helicopters, somebody like that can request what’s called a TFR, doesn’t shut down the airspace, but it increases the level of coordination that goes on because you want to make sure that that airspace is safe and that you prevent the risk of collisions.

And so when you hear that term, that’s what’s going on. Again, I don’t mean to get that technical, but I’ve been amazed at how a little kernel of some detail gets blown up on the Internet into something that it’s not. And so what I’ve seen going on around what the FAA does to coordinate and facilitate rescue flights, including, you know, a lot of good samaritans who are out there, is civilians helping because they have pilot’s licenses. And that’s a great thing. It’s just important that they coordinate and make sure that it’s safe.

FEMA was forced to put out a fact sheet over the weekend dispelling the various false claims circulating from the right, including the claim that airspace was being closed and that FEMA was running out of money.

Watch the clip above.