Transportation Secretary and reality TV personality Sean Duffy is continuing to blame the problems that are happening during his tenure on his predecessor, out former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, saying that Buttigieg was “running for president” instead of managing the Department of Transportation (DOT).

Duffy, who has spent a lot of time in his months at the DOT blaming Buttigieg for aviation crashes and other issues that occurred since he took over the department, was on CNBC where the host said that he read that Buttigieg left the DOT “in pretty good shape” with “a lot of infrastructure programs that he put together,” but Duffy couldn’t even wait for the host to finish his question before he blurted out, “Nope!”

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“A lot of people, when they have a job, they use that job to run for a different office,” Duffy said. “And I think Mayor Pete, uh, Secretary Buttigieg, was running for president while he was the secretary of DOT and didn’t pay attention to the basics.”

Duffy said that Buttigieg focused on “DEI and climate” while he was at DOT, referring to diversity measures and plans to prepare for the effects of climate change and to reduce rising global temperatures. Both of these issues were priorities for the Biden administration, so it’s unclear why Duffy is ascribing them to a possible future Buttigieg presidential run instead of Buttigieg doing his job as a Biden administration official.

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Then Duffy brought up air traffic controllers, which is a sore spot for the current administration. The president fired scores of air safety officials upon taking office – although it’s not clear if that included air traffic controllers – even as the federal government was having trouble recruiting enough air traffic controllers, and the first major commercial passenger flight crash in 16 years occurred during Duffy’s tenure.

On CNBC, Duffy said that he “inherited a system that was dilapidated. And so we have to step in and recognize what they didn’t do and fix it. Pete Buttigieg should have seen that and started the process before I got there! But instead, he was out campaigning.” While it’s possible that Buttigieg has presidential ambitions, he was not running for president in 2024 or doing the activities associated with campaigning for president. Buttigieg ran for president in 2020, before he was transportation secretary.

Moreover, Buttigieg tried to get funding for air traffic controllers. In April 2024, Buttigieg asked Congress for the funding to hire air traffic controllers. Republicans controlled the House and did not authorize that funding increase.

Buttigieg also said on MSNBC in May that he tried to get the funding to update equipment.

“It’s obviously a real concern, a major concern,” he told host Jen Psaki at the time. “When you become Secretary of Transportation, you know that your most important priority is safety. I understood that, my predecessors understood that, and my successor says that he understands that.”

“I don’t know how you’re going to run for president on that record!” Duffy bellowed at the camera on CNBC. “You didn’t do your job!”

In a separate appearance on Fox Business that same day, Duffy made similar comments about how Buttigieg was “running for president as opposed to doing his job making sure that we got our air traffic control system modernized” and that Buttigieg “didn’t do a damn thing to fix it.”

“We’re 3000 controllers short!” Duffy said. “This is not a snap your fingers and fix it- Because it takes time to train controllers.”

This is far from the first time that Duffy has blamed the problems that occurred during his time at DOT on his predecessor. Last month, during an appearance on Fox Business, he was asked about why “a whole lot of problems surfaced as soon as you took office” and if he blamed Buttigieg.

“I do,” he replied. “Because, again, when leaders see problems, they can’t ignore the problem and pass it off to the next guy. What you should do is actually fix the problem.”

“Celebrating Transit Equity Day. Chairing the Equity Council. Stopping racist roads. Building bike paths. Funding studies on gender non-conforming people,” Duffy wrote on X in May. “This is the c**p Pete Buttigieg focused on instead of fixing the problems with Newark and our entire air traffic control system.”

Duffy himself, though, has spent some time focusing on culture war issues, including begging governors to remove rainbow crosswalks and banning diversity celebrations. Duffy has also spent some time working to bring back gendered terms to internal documents, like changing the name of “Notice to Air Missions” to “Notice to Airmen.”

“So after promising to focus on safety, they’ve gotten right down to work… on gender terminology?” Buttigieg posted to Bluesky in February.

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