The White House is now asking people in power to forget the evidence of their eyes and ears.
Two planes bumped wings while taxiing on the runway at Reagan National Airport Thursday, marking yet another critical safety failure at one of the nation’s major airports. One of the planes carried several U.S. lawmakers, including Representative Josh Gottheimer, who blamed the incident on the Trump administration’s recent cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration, claiming that slashes to the agency “weaken our skies and public safety.”
But the White House outright rejected Gottheimer’s explanation, insisting without evidence that the New Jersey representative was “wrong.”
“There have been no cuts to air traffic controllers, safety personnel, or safety-critical positions at the FAA,” the White House official X account posted.
That is, however, not exactly honest—even according to Trump’s own officials. In February, the administration erased 400 FAA roles, including positions that supported air safety. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the cuts that time, though he attempted to minimize them by highlighting the overall staffing of the agency, which Duffy claimed employs some 45,000 workers.
Other representatives aboard the plane shared their experiences, similarly arguing that the White House was distorting the safety of America’s air travel.
“You felt it, and you saw the wing actually flapping up and down, so you knew there was a strong contact there,” Representative Adriano Espaillat told CNN. “They told us that they were going to take us back to the gate. We waited a little bit, we saw some emergency vehicles near us, and then they took us back to the gate.”
When asked if he believed that the White House was attempting to deceive the public about the health of America’s airports, Espaillat said, “They’re downsizing, they want to misguide us about that, but this is an agency that in particular, this airport, has seen already tragic incidents where many people died.” Espaillat said, “They should be beefed up to a level where everyone feels secure.”
“I thought about going Amtrak,” he added, calling the episode “dangerous.”
It’s just the most recent of critical errors occurring at Reagan National Airport. Last week, a physical fight broke out in the air traffic control tower at the politico-favorite airport, resulting in one supervisor being arrested and charged with assault and battery, as well as a managerial shakeup that saw three air traffic control managers being forced out of their roles.
In January, a midair crash between an American Airlines passenger plane and a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter over the airport killed 67 people—the first major deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner since 2009.
