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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appeared to throw Pete Hegseth under the bus on Monday night, prompting Fox News host Laura Ingraham to suggest they call up the Pentagon chief at that very moment since they all used to be Fox News colleagues.
Duffy, who has come under fire in recent days over the chaos at Newark Airport, appeared on The Ingraham Angle on Monday night to discuss his plan to “radically transform” the air traffic control system amid a series of frightening mishaps that have led to significant delays and staff shortages.
“We’re going to build a brand-new air traffic control system — from new telecom, to new radars, to new infrastructure. We’re bringing on new air traffic controllers,” he declared. “This has been a problem in the decades coming, and we’re going to fix it.”
He went on to say that the officials had “slowed the traffic down at Newark” for the time being due to safety concerns.
“When you have an incident like this, you want to make sure that people are safe,” Duffy added. “And so, you just have less departures out of the airport until we feel comfortable and safe that the system isn’t going to go down again.”
Ingraham eventually brought up an incident at Washington’s Reagan National Airport last week when two commercial airliners were forced to abort their landings because a U.S. Army helicopter was flying nearby. The flights were diverted just months after a Black Hawk collided with a passenger jet above the same airport, killing all 67 people on both aircraft.
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According to an email by FAA assistant administrator for government and industry affairs Chris Seen, the helicopter that caused the diverted flights “took a scenic route around the Pentagon versus proceeding directly from the west to the heliport.”
Reacting to the near-miss, which has prompted the Army's 12th Aviation Battalion to temporarily halt training flights in the area, Duffy claimed the issue is that high-ranking officers were using the helicopters as a personal travel service. “No more helicopter rides for VIPs or unnecessary training in a congested DCA airspace full of civilians. Take a taxi or Uber - besides most VIPs have black car service,” he said last week.
“The question becomes, who are the VIPs? Who are they?” Duffy declared on Ingraham’s show Monday. “The top brass at the White House – they take a Suburban, or a Tesla, or they take their own car. Who do these generals think they are, that they have to take helicopters to go to meetings?”
After telling Ingraham he didn’t know who was on the helicopter, she wondered why he didn’t just ask the Pentagon. “I mean, you’re the transportation secretary, how do you not know?!” Ingraham exclaimed.
The Federal Aviation Administration “doesn’t know. We asked the DOD (Department of Defense),” he responded before taking a veiled swipe at Hegseth, who has vowed “transparency” as defense secretary.
“The DOD has promised radical transparency; they should tell us who is qualified to take a helicopter out of the Pentagon. I don’t know, but they have to tell us,” said Duffy.
Grabbing her cell phone, Ingraham then pressed Duffy as to whether they should dial up their former network cohort. “Let’s call him right now,” she quipped.
“You call Pete. Dial in,” a slightly uncomfortable Duffy reacted, adding: “She actually has a phone right by her desk!”
After the transportation secretary continued to grumble that “it’s suspect that they won’t tell you who the VIP is” who was on the flight, Ingraham ended the interview by telling the former Fox host and Real World cast member that she was going to get to the bottom of it.
“We want to know who the VIP is,” she concluded. “I’m calling Hegseth during the break.”
However, during another Fox News interview on Tuesday afternoon, it didn’t appear that Duffy found his answer yet.
“And you don’t have any answer from the Pentagon?” Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked.
“I don’t,” Duffy exclaimed.
English (US) ·