President Trump’s Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler today on Fox News blamed Democrats for the fatal collision of an Air Canada plane and a fire truck at LaGuardia airport on Sunday, which left two pilots dead. Loeffler, echoing the White House, blamed Democrats for the current Homeland Security shutdown, which has resulted in a shortage of TSA agents and delays at airports across the country.
Note: On Sunday, Trump rejected a bipartisan proposal presented by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) which would have funded the DHS, but without ICE. (Thune suggested funding ICE in a separate reconciliation bill.) In response to Trump’s rejection, Democrats are again blaming Republicans for holding up DHS funds and not getting airports back on track.
Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler is on Fox riffing on why Dems are to blame for the crash last night in LaGuardia, because nobody in the Trump administration has real job duties beyond going on TV and fluffing the leader pic.twitter.com/ooP0LRK7p0
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2026
With Loeffler, Fox News host Liz MacDonald noted that the DHS does not oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, which administers air traffic control and is part of the Transportation Department. But the host added the unspecific assertion — a prompt for Loeffler — that there has been “severe operational stress on U.S. airport system from the Democrats’ DHS shutdown.”
Loeffler claimed: “The Democrats again are exacting [sic] tremendous pressure at a time when you least need it, when national security, when airport safety is involved. Democrats want to defund DHS at the expense of the American people.” She added, “Democrats are demanding, essentially, open borders.”
NOTE: The collision had no connection to TSA agents, the funding of DHS, or “open borders.” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said his agency would “take concrete actions to ensure something like this will never happen again.”