MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explained how pressures and supposed demands from Elon Musk led to former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) administrator, Michael Whitaker, quitting his job on Inauguration Day.
The move is noteworthy in the wake of the deadly crash over Washington D.C. earlier this week.
“While we are on the subject of the unquestionably and unerringly excellent performance of white men in their job duties, did you see the press conference this morning from Trump’s newly confirmed secretary of transportation?” Maddow questioned viewers, referring to the appearance of former Fox News anchor and “Real World” star, Sean Duffy, whom Trump has named as his U.S. Transportation Secretary. At the time, Duffy was wearing an jacket with ‘FAA’ printed on the back, and a reporter asked if there was an “acting FAA director.”
And the answer is no.
“Despite appearances though, that is not the FAA director,” Maddow said of Duffy, sarcastically adding that he “also was plucked from the elite ranks at the tippy top of the meritocratic pyramid in this country by which I mean he too was picked off of TV.”
Maddow then explains that just like Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey and the voluntary departure of IRS commissioner Danny Werfel, Whitaker was to remain in his position for several years. All the men named were eventually booted out of or dropped from their roles as Trump’s entourage entered the White House.
“[Whitaker] left the job on Inauguration Day, and until this morning, Donald Trump had not gotten around to appointing anybody to replace him,” Maddow said before rhetorically questioning Whitaker’s decision to leave. “Well, why did the FAA director leave on Inauguration Day, less than two weeks ago, even though we had a whole bunch of years left in his term as FAA administrator?”
That’s when she pointed to an incident that occurred two weeks ago: Musk’s SpaceX rocket exploding midair, which left debris raining down in Turks and Caicos. In response, the FAA had to urgently divert dozens of commercial airliners.
“JetBlue and American Airlines and Delta, Spirit Airlines, had a plane in the air that had to veer off course, also, the same was true for a FedEx cargo plane,” Maddow explained. “Commercial flights as far away as South Africa and Australia had to be delayed or diverted as they had to put out these emergency warnings over a whole big swatch of the Indian Ocean because of Elon Musk’s mess. This happened the Thursday before Inauguration Day.”
The explosion is just one of the many run-ins the FAA has had with Musk. Maddow outlined how the day after the crash, the FAA had to ground a SpaceX starship program as a consequence for SpaceX’s rocket explosion. Maddow then pointed to one of Musk’s earliest expressions of disdain for the FAA director when he posted a photo of Whitaker back in September 2024 with a caption that read, “He needs to resign.” Musk’s post was made after the FAA issued $633,000 worth of fines to SpaceX over safety violations during two Florida launches.
“Elon Musk had adopted this as sort of, one of his personal causes, this was one of his crusades, ‘Get rid of the FAA, get rid of this guy at the FAA who is in the way of my SpaceX company.’ He’s been personally demanding that this guy be gotten rid of, and so he got it,” Maddow said.
She continued: “FAA chief was out on Inauguration Day, and 10 days later, we had a horrific mid-air plane crash whereupon one of the cable news hosts Trump hired for his cabinet wore an FAA outfit to a press conference which made people wonder if he was running the FAA, which made reporters ask, ‘Hey, who is running the FAA?’ To which there was no answer, which apparently prompted Donald Trump today at a press conference to, surprise, name a new head of the FAA for this first time because he’d never bothered to do it before.”
Watch Maddow in the video above.
