Travelers who were ensnared in the national ground stoppage that upended air travel throughout the country this weekend better not hold their breath for an apology from President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary — because he refuses to offer one. Sean Duffy was on Sunday’s Meet the Press, where he talked about the air travel nightmare that began Friday, and he made it clear a mea culpa was not in the cards. “It happened on my watch, but we have to be clear: I am moving at an incredible speed that no one has done at the FAA or in decades, and I’m proud of the work we’re doing, the attention we’re bringing to this issue,” Duffy told the NBC News show. “But I can’t apologize for what was passed off to us, and I can’t blame Republicans or Democrats because it’s all of them.”Duffy followed in the footsteps of Trump, who broke his silence over the debacle on Sunday via Truth Social, blaming one of his favorite targets: former President Joe Biden. “The Biden Administration was an FAA disaster. Everything they touched turned bad. Big money spent unwisely, making an old and broken system worse than when they began,” he said. Duffy also said he ‘can’t cancel’ using L3Harris, the contractor blamed for the Federal Aviation Administration’s outage, because it owns the network that operates communications for the FAA (Reuters)The president added, “We have the knowledge and plan for the Flight Control Systems, we need Congress to give the money, FAST! Our FAA is doing a great job, and is ready to go.”The secretary expanded that blame scope and said the mess was “30 years of a lack of investment,” from the previous administrations, adding, “Why they didn’t do that I don’t know, but they gave me a system that needs to be fixed, and President [Donald] Trump and I are going to fix it.”Duffy also said he “can’t cancel” using L3Harris, the contractor blamed for the FAA outage, because it owns the network that operates communications for the FAA.“Which is why I’m asking for billions of dollars from Congress to build a brand-new architecture of a network, by the best companies in the world including AT&T, Verizon and [Lumen Technologies],” he added. More than 9,000 flights were delayed Friday, which resulted in more than 6,000 cancellations on Saturday.
Sean Duffy refuses to apologize for nationwide travel nightmare — but he’s happy to point fingers
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