Greene Says Trump Touted 'Saving Hollywood' While Flyers Were 'Freaking Out' Over Possible US Attack

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticised President Donald Trump on Friday over his public response to a nationwide ground stop that disrupted US air travel for more than four hours, claiming passengers feared an attack while he posted about Hollywood tax incentives.

The halt began around 4 pm Eastern time on Friday. Although restrictions initially extended until 11 pm, some departures resumed shortly after 8 pm. Greene questioned why Trump had not addressed Americans directly while travellers waited for information about the shutdown.

Why Greene Challenged Trump's Public Response

In a post on X, Greene accused Trump of failing to address the nation and skipping a press conference about the disruption. She contrasted his response with his public comments about repairing the reflecting pool and his posts about Hollywood.

'While everyone was freaking out thinking we are under some sort of attack, Trump didn't even bother to address the nation,' she wrote.

That description of passengers' fears was Greene's characterisation. Her criticism focused on the attention she believed Trump had devoted to other subjects while Americans were stranded at airports and aboard planes.

'For a man that constantly tells us how he is the only one capable of fixing things, while Americans were stranded at airports and in planes, he instead chose to post about saving Hollywood and the motion picture and television industry by giving them money in the form of tax incentives.'

Alongside Greene's Criticism, Trump Offers an Explanation

Trump discussed the outage by telephone with Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy. During an appearance with Laura Ingraham, Doocy relayed the president's assessment of what might have caused the disruption.

Doocy's remarks conveyed Trump's explanation to viewers. Greene's criticism, meanwhile, concerned what she described as his failure to address Americans directly or attend the press conference about the disruption.

'He says it does not seem like this is a cyberattack or AI or anything like that,' Doocy told Ingraham. 'I asked him a couple different ways, and he said it doesn't seem like that, and that that is the first thing that they always look for.'

Doocy also described Trump's comments about whether anyone had claimed responsibility and the possibility of further information from the president and his team.

'He said there's nobody taking credit which would be common if somebody did execute a huge cyber attack like this on critical infrastructure but that he would let us know and the team would let us know if that is something that happened,' he continued.

Infrastructure Concerns Accompany Greene's Questions

According to Doocy, Trump attributed the failure to ageing equipment relied upon by the Federal Aviation Administration. The explanation was the president's assessment, as relayed by the Fox News correspondent.

'He said instead this seems to be a situation where there's a bunch of old broken stuff in the infrastructure that the FAA relies on to keep planes in the sky. He said there's a bunch of—some of this is like 55-year-old equipment that needs to keep working, keep running, and that they have worked on it, they've talked to Congress about replacing, it just hasn't gotten replaced yet. So that is the first information that we have from the president.'