Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is being hammered from the left and the right on Twitter in the wake of a massive holiday travel nightmare that engulfed the airline industry. Liberals and conservatives erupted after a story appeared in The Daily Mail with the headline: “Pete Buttigieg was warned about airline chaos MONTHS ago.”
The article noted that New York Attorney General Letitia James warned Buttigieg back in August about an “escalating pattern of airlines delaying and canceling flights.” In September, Buttigieg appeared on “The Late Late Show With James Corden” and insisted that airline travel is “is going to get better by the holidays.”
But now, after hundreds of thousands of passenger have been stranded, with over 13,000 flights canceled by Southwest, Buttigieg is enduring major criticism from the left. David Sirota, a former adviser and speechwriter to Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, derided, “Documents show that before this week’s travel disaster, state officials of both parties warned @SecretaryPete about the mess, begging him to crack down. He responded by going on national TV to insist travel ‘is going to get better by the holidays.’”
GOP LAWMAKER BLASTS BIDEN, BUTTIGIEG AFTER KIDS STRANDED IN BALTIMORE AMID AIRLINE CHAOS
Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation, during a tour of the Seagirt marine terminal at the Port of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., on Thursday, July 29, 2021. A bipartisan group of senators and the White House reached a tentative agreement on a $550 billion infrastructure package, a significant breakthrough in the drive to muscle through Congress a massive infusion of spending for roads, bridges and other critical projects.
(Al Drago/Bloomberg)
Liberal Congressman Ro Khanna also unloaded on the Transportation Secretary: “Nearly six months ago, @BernieSanders & I called for Buttigieg to implement fines & penalties on airlines for canceling flights. Why were these recommendations not followed? This mess with Southwest could have been avoided. We need bold action.”
Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the progressive Race Policy Center, declared of Buttigieg, “This is incompetence.” The former Democratic state senator attacked, “This is what placing unqualified people in positions of power to do the bidding of corporations will get you. There is a direct line from Secretary Buttigieg to the Southwest Airlines debacle and we shouldn’t pretend there isn’t.”
A Southwest Airlines jetliner sits at a gate on the C concourse of Denver International Airport on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, in Denver. A Southwest Airlines pilot is suing the company, her union and a former colleague who pleaded guilty last year to stripping naked in front of her during a flight, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022. C(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Conservative National Review correspondent Jim Geraghty called for answers, noting that “as bad as the weather was in Buffalo and other parts of the northeast, what bedeviled Southwest Airlines this month is an epic systemic failure — but that won’t stop a debate about how much blame should befall Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.”
He added that, for the past few months, “it seemed like the Transportation Secretary was treating his job like a de facto presidential campaign.”
NPR reported on Wednesday that close to 5,000 more flights have been canceled. The popular Twitter account @ComfortablySmug joked, “Make Mayor Pete Fly Southwest for all of 2023.”
CEO and political analyst Dan K Eberhart concluded of the Transportation Secretary: “Every time there is a crisis or transportation-related emergency, Pete Buttigieg is nowhere to be found.
