President Trump is silent on nationwide ground stop crisis… as he clears his weekend schedule and brags about his plan to ‘save Hollywood’ instead

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1d ago

By WILKO MARTÍNEZ-CACHERO, US REPORTER 00:01 14 Nov 2026, updated 03:38 14 Nov 2026

President Donald Trump was blasted for not addressing the Federal Aviation Administration’s rare ground stop of all flights nationwide on Friday for hours before saying it ‘could’ have been caused by ‘old broken stuff.’

The FAA had grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon, citing ‘extraordinary circumstances for safety reasons’ and upending thousands of travelers’s weekend plans before the ground stop was lifted shortly before 8.30pm ET.

The reason for the halting of US flights was initially communicated by the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) at 3.54pm ET.

Around 5.52pm ET, Trump posted on Truth Social about his desire to ‘make our entertainment industry great again,’ outlining how he was working with politicians across both aisles on the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act but not making any mention of the ground stop.

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins highlighted Trump’s post and wrote on X: ‘Trump posts, not about the ground stop, but about reviving the entertainment industry in bipartisan fashion.’

Trump’s weekend schedule amid the aviation crisis listed Executive Time at 8am on Saturday and Sunday, with no other scheduled engagements.

The President said the ground stop did not seem to be a cyber attack and that it could be a result of an old system that ‘relies on some old broken stuff’ he had tried to upgrade, according to FOX News correspondent Peter Doocy.

Trump is getting constant updates on the situation, the Daily Mail understands.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication of any threats to the US, adding that the incident was a ‘communication outage’ and rejecting comparisons to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

‘This isn’t the same comparison to 9/11,’ Mullin told reporters outside the White House on Friday. ‘That’s a road I won’t go down.’

At a press conference later on Friday, Mullin said the introduction of some new technology into an old air traffic control system overwhelmed it.

The flight halt was the first since January 11, 2023, which happened after a key FAA computer system malfunctioned, and just the second since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, Trump was posting about how Hollywood had been ’emptied out.’

‘Everyone feels strongly about the Motion Picture and Television Industry — and so do I, and we all want to save it,’ he wrote. ‘It was MADE IN AMERICA, and must STAY IN AMERICA.’

Trump also posted on Truth Social to thank the US Coast Guard for their response to the boat that capsized into the Mississippi River shortly after midday and injured 32 passengers.

The Democratic members of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s account account on X criticized the Trump administration’s response to the ground stop.

‘What the hell is going on?’ the Democrats’ account wrote. ‘Trump and his cabinet are completely out of their depth.’

New Jersey Rep. Nellie Pou, a Democrat who is on the House Subcommittee on Aviation, called for the Trump administration to ‘be prompt and forthright in providing answers.’

‘I do not want to speculate the cause of this crisis right now but this is a massive, almost unprecedented disaster impacting tens of millions of Americans,’ she wrote on X.

As thousands waited to see what would happen with their flights, the Department of Labor’s X account posted a shot of the President raising a thumbs up to the camera with the text, ‘That Friday feeling,’ that was slammed by online users as tone deaf.

One user quipped that the ‘feeling is now… delayed,’ while another asked, ‘any self awareness?’

The FAA said Friday: ‘There has been a temporary telecommunications outage – out of an abundance of caution, all flights have been halted.

‘Every flight has been accounted for, and international flights will be handled on a case-by-case basis.’

It does not appear that the communications problems resulting in the nationwide ground stop are linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system that the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky.

The FAA’s SMART system is based in a single location near Washington DC, where a team of experts analyzes flight schedules, weather forecasts and hundreds of other streams of data.

That office then sends recommendations to the FAA’s command center that relays them to controllers across the country for consideration.

The company that designed the system, ASI, said ‘the current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.’

Mullin added that he did not see ‘any reason to connect’ today’s ground stop to yesterday’s global Microsoft outage that left millions unable to use the company’s subscription services.

Microsoft also said it had no indication that the nationwide ground stop was related to the service disruption.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday that ‘old hardware that went down’ caused the ground stop of all flights across the country after it was lifted shortly before 8.30pm ET following a major communications outage.

Duffy said the ‘instability’ in the radar communications at air traffic control centers started at 3.36pm as he urged that the system needed funding for a complete overhaul, estimating a $50 billion price tag.

MS NOW correspondent Eugene Daniels said stranded passengers had told him they were surprised that Trump had not addressed the FAA ground stop, Mediaite reported.

Daniels, appearing on the MS NOW program Deadline: White House, said: ‘Obviously, we heard from DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin but folks are looking to hear more information from the leader of the free world, as this is shaking out.’

‘As I’ve walked and talked with people… what they would say to me was they are shocked that they have not heard from the president in front of the camera,’ Daniels said.

Daniels added that one person said they were ‘disturbed’ by the lack of information ‘coming from this administration.’

Europe’s aviation agency suspended US-bound departures at the request of the FAA from 5 pm Eastern on Friday until midnight.

Mexico’s federal aviation agency also said that all scheduled flights from Mexican airports headed to the US were temporarily grounded.

Air Canada canceled flights to and from the US through the rest of Friday evening.

Some international flights were allowed to take off during the ground stop because they were departing US airspace.

San Francisco airport said that flights headed across the Pacific Ocean were cleared to leave the airport starting around 5pm ET, or 2pm local time. That included flights destined for Hawaii and Asia.

The Daily Mail reached out to the White House for comment.

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