Fact Check: Did Trump say Americans must give $50B if they want flights to take off?
WASHINGTON, DC: A viral rumor circulating on social media claims President Donald Trump has asked Americans to give him billions of dollars if they want flights to take off again. The claim appeared after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded flights across the country due to communication problems, sparking concern and speculation.
Claim: Trump demands $50B for flights to take off again
The rumor was sparked by an X post, according to which Trump says Americans must give him $50 billion dollars if they want flights to take off again.
The claim has been shared and amplified by multiple accounts on the platform and has garnered tens of thousands of views as of this writing.
Most users commenting under the post appeared to believe the claim to be authentic, while a few others expressed skepticism and called for verification of the rumor.
Fact Check: Trump made no such remark
The claim, however, is false, as there is no evidence of the president asking Americans to give him $50 billion dollars if they want flights to take off again.
There are no official statements, announcements, press conferences, or social media posts by Trump in which he is heard making such a statement.
If he has really made such a remark, it would not only go unreported by credible news outlets, but would have even made headlines. However, a search on Google for the claim yielded no relevant results.
Although Trump has not issued a public statement specifically addressing the aviation crisis, he has promoted a bipartisan bill aimed at bringing film and television production back to the US, as a telecommunications outage triggered a rare nationwide ground stop.
Additionally, the claim was posted by an X user named Spencer Hakimian, who, though not explicitly a parody account, has posted such fake and exaggerated claims for the sake of engagement.
FAA grounds flights nationwide after outrage
The FAA announced the nationwide ground stop after a telecommunications outage affected its air traffic control system, but did not disclose the cause of the disruption.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed that officials were investigating a communication problem.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also addressed the incident, saying the administration did not believe it was an extremist attack, stating, “This isn’t another 9/11. This is a telecommunications outage."
The last time such a nationwide flight grounding occurred was in 2023, when an outage affecting the FAA's system for alerting pilots to safety issues halted flights for about 90 minutes.
