More than 24 hours after the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop on Friday, US President Donald Trump has yet to issue a public statement or address the American people about the major disruption in air travel.
The nationwide ground stop halted nearly every flight for several hours, and its effects are still being felt at airports around the country on Saturday.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed the incident on a lack of funding from Congress and an FAA contractor, while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pointed to integrating newer technology into older systems.
While Mullin claimed on Friday that the president had been briefed on the matter, he has yet to address Americans about the incident directly.
While Trump hasn’t issued a formal statement on the matter, he reportedly told Fox News’ Peter Doocy on Friday that the ground stop didn’t seem to be the result of a cyberattack.
“He says it does not seem like this is a cyberattack or AI or anything like that. I asked him a couple different ways, and he said it doesn’t seem like that, and that is the first thing that they always look for,” Doocy said on air Friday.
CNN’s Brian Todd noted that this silence from Trump was uncharacteristic for a president who rarely misses an opportunity to rant and rave about various topics.
“It’s been a somewhat bizarre and certainly uncharacteristic silence from the president yesterday and today on all of this. He has not spoken out publicly yesterday or today. He has not posted anything on Truth Social yesterday or today about the entire situation,” Todd said, adding that the public is not expected to hear from the president for the rest of Saturday.
However, Trump has not been silent overall, as he’s made time to post extensively about his planned renovations to Washington, DC’s East Potomac Park and Golf Links.
Even while the ground stop was ongoing on Friday, Trump’s mind was clearly elsewhere as he posted about overhauling the entertainment industry.
“MAKE OUR ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote on Truth Social, over an hour after the ground stop started.
Among the other topics the president chose to post about instead of the ground stop were attacking California Gov. Gavin Newsom and ranting about the stock market.
Trump has also seldom appeared in public over the last week, only participating in a Veterans Day event at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday and making an unscheduled appearance with UFC president Dana White on Monday.
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