For more than a day and a half, the president did not publicly comment on the FAA-ordered ground stop, which shut down all flights in the U.S. for more than four hours

NEED TO KNOW

• President Donald Trump broke his silence on the nationwide, FAA-ordered ground stop on Nov. 15, after more than a day and a half
• He blamed the outage on the Biden administration and asked Congress to fund a new air traffic control system in a Truth Social post
• Sean Duffy and Markwayne Mullin updated the country on the ground stop and the president’s whereabouts amid the crisis on Friday, Nov. 13

President Donald Trump blamed the Biden administration for the nationwide ground stop while breaking his silence on the crisis.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a ground stop on Friday, Nov. 13, shutting down all flights in the United States for more than four hours. The outage, which Trump cabinet members say was caused by old technology, left thousands of flights either canceled or delayed.

For more than a day and a half, the president, 80, did not publicly comment on the nationwide crisis. When he did, he blamed his predecessor in the Oval Office, Joe Biden, and asked Congress to fund a new air traffic control (ATC) system.

In a Truth Social post shared on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 15, Trump wrote, “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.”

“We have the knowledge and plan for the Flight Control Systems, we need Congress to give the money, FAST!” the president continued. “Our FAA is doing a great job and is ready to go.”

In a follow-up post shared on Truth Social shortly after, Trump called on Congress to modernize the ATC system and doubled down on his decision to blame Biden’s administration, which he said “set it back years.”

“If Congress approves the desperately needed money for Air Traffic Control, we can get it built quickly and efficiently,” the president wrote. “It will be the BEST SYSTEM anywhere in the World. Much of our current air control system is 50 years old – RIDICULOUS!”

“We have already started the work, but it should be done all at once, not in drips and drabs,” Trump continued, before echoing himself: “Congress must approve. The Biden Administration set it back years!”

Trump’s Truth Social posts addressing Friday’s ground stop came after the White House also appeared to blame Biden, 83, in an X post from its Rapid Response 47 account, citing a January 2023 incident during Biden’s administration in which the FAA paused all domestic departures for less than two hours, per CNN. 

“Under Biden, the FAA was focused on ‘inclusive language’ — like banning the term ‘airman.’ Even after the 2023 nationwide ground stop, they did absolutely nothing to address the problems plaguing ATC,” the account wrote on Saturday, Nov. 14. “That’s why for two years, the Trump Admin has been begging Congress to partner with us and finally get it DONE!”

The ground stop marks the federal government’s first major crisis since the midterm elections, which saw Democrats flip the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate with a slew of historic wins. After the sweep, Trump has kept a lower profile, making few public appearances even amid the nationwide crisis on Friday.

In the day and a half after the ground stop — which has only ever happened one other time, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — was issued, Trump did not address the incident. Instead, he continued to post on Truth Social about unrelated matters, including his ongoing efforts to renovate Washington, D.C. His first Truth Social post after the FAA issued the stop was a call to “MAKE OUR ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY GREAT.”

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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin updated the country on the nationwide ground stop, as well as the president’s whereabouts, amid the crisis.

“This is what President Trump does,” Mullin, 49, said while appearing beside Duffy, 55, in a news conference on Friday, according to The New York Times.

“He puts leaders in place, and he allows them to lead,” the DHS secretary continued. “They even ask, you know, why is the president not talking? It’s because he’s allowed Secretary Duffy and us to go out there and explain to you what took place.”

Duffy, 55, addressed the president’s lack of public comment while appearing on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.

The transportation secretary told host Dana Bash that he was “in constant contact” with Trump and assured that the president “was fully engaged” regarding the outage “because this is important to him and it’s important to America.”

The FAA’s initial alert was issued just before 4 p.m. EST on Nov. 13. In a statement shared with PEOPLE, an FAA spokesperson confirmed the “nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports,” citing “communication issues impacting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” Duffy later announced that the airspace was opened at 8:15 p.m. EST.

Duffy blamed the ground stop on old technology while speaking with reporters at the White House on Friday night, and said the outage “doesn’t appear” to be the result of any cyberattack, according to ABC News. It was later revealed that the nearly five-hour shutdown may have been caused by a single router installed by government contractor L3Harris in Arkansas and Texas, according to Reuters. 

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