President Donald Trump praised his work on a bipartisan bill to keep film and television production in the U.S. on Truth Social, but has yet to make a public statement on the nationwide flight crisis.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced a rare nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon, as a telecommunication outage affected the air traffic control system. The cause for the outage has not been revealed, yet.
The last time a nationwide grounding of flights took place was in 2023 for just 90 minutes because of an outage in the FAA’s system to alert pilots to safety issues. Before that, the last time the FAA issued nationwide ground stops was on Sept. 11, 2001.
Rather than acknowledging the flight delays and cancellations nationwide, the president touted the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act that he is working to pass with a bipartisan effort to keep entertainment jobs in the United States.
“The support and popularity of doing this, and bringing Entertainment back to the United States of America, has been unbelievable!” Trump wrote. “Hollywood, and so many other places, have been virtually ’emptied out’ by the Tax Incentives, and much more, given by other Countries. Everyone feels strongly about the Motion Picture and Television Industry — and so do I, and we all want to save it.”
“It was MADE IN AMERICA, and must STAY IN AMERICA,” he added.
The president said that he is working with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and senators John Cornyn, Raphael Warnock, Steve Daines, Bernie Moreno, Tim Sheehy, Alex Padilla, Mark Warner, Thom Tillis, Chris Coons, Katie Britt and Dick Durbin to pass the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act.
He stated that actors, producers and blue collar crew members alike all would benefit by the passage of this bill. Trump also promised that the amount spent on tax incentives will “be made up tenfold the money pouring into the Treasury’s coffers.”
“It is a very Bipartisan undertaking, especially in that so much of the money being lost to other countries is coming out of the Blue States,” he wrote. “Hopefully Republicans and Democrats will get together and finalize this already very actively negotiated Legislation. It can be done quickly, accurately, efficiently and, importantly, will benefit all of America.”
Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, said Trump administration officials did not know the cause of the outage, but he made clear that this was not a terrorist attack.
Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, confirmed the outage in a social media post, citing “a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers.” He said that FAA technicians were investigating the issue around 1:15 p.m. PT Friday. At the time of this writing, he had not posted an update.
The post Trump Stays Mum on FAA Grounded Flight Crisis, Questionably Touts Hollywood Business Bill Instead appeared first on TheWrap.
