The Associated Press Busted for Peddling Fake News About the FAA Layoffs

They updated their story, but the tweet says it all: the Associated Press, now banned from Air Force One and the Oval Office, tried to manufacture a narrative of chaos and incompetence regarding the Trump administration’s popular initiative to whittle down the federal bureaucracy through targeted spending cuts. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been the point of the lance in exposing waste and potential fraud. 

So, the Associated Press decided to hurl this out on social media, which got slapped down by the Trump White House: 

FAA staff fired over the weekend included personnel that worked radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, among others. Hundreds were fired, just weeks after a fatal mid-air collision in DC killed 67. One employee said they were harassed on Facebook… 

For starters, DOGE doesn’t have a Facebook page. The updated story has an even more laughable narrative: that the firing of government workers, also known as AP’s readership, might lead to the collapse of American society: 

The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. 

Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement. 

The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told The Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. 

[…]

Other FAA employees who were fired were working on an urgent and classified early warning radar system the Air Force had announced in 2023 for Hawaii to detect incoming cruise missiles, through a program that was in part funded by the Defense Department. It’s one of several programs that the FAA’s National Airspace System Defense Program manages that involve radars providing longer-range detection around the country’s borders. 

Due to the nature of their work, staff in that office typically provide an extensive knowledge transfer before retiring to make sure no institutional knowledge is lost, said Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander, one of the employees in that branch who was terminated. 

The Hawaii radar and the FAA defense program office working on it are “about protecting national security,” Spitzer-Stadtlander said. “I don’t think they even knew what NDP does, they just thought, oh no big deal, he just works for the FAA.”

White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt added, “No air traffic controllers nor any professionals who perform safety critical functions were terminated.”  

Former NBC News host Chuck Todd tried to carry AP’s water and tripped: 

Guys, these stories aren’t going anywhere. They won’t resonate. No one cares about laid-off government workers whining because millions of working Americans have endured being laid off. They never got a CBS interview, nor this fake narrative that everything will die forever with these spending cuts—even Democratic voters like what Trump is doing vis-à-vis DOGE and trimming the DC fat. 

Again, this is another 80/20 issue, where the Democrats and the media land on the latter end, thinking it’s the winning side. 

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