‘Utter Fabrication’: What One Former FAA Chief Says About Media’s Claim About Elon Musk and Air Safety

A former Federal Aviation Administration chief said Wednesday that it’s a “complete and utter fabrication” that entrepreneur Elon Musk forced out the head of the flight safety agency on President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day.   

To the contrary, the incoming Trump administration “implored” former FAA head Mike Whitaker to stay until a new administrator was in place, Daniel Elwell, deputy and later acting FAA administrator during Trump’s first term, told radio station WMAL on Wednesday. 

After a midair collision on Jan. 29 near Washington, D.C.’s Reagan Washington National Airport killed 67, left-leaning media outlets quickly moved to blame Trump and Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who Trump named to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency initiative. Musk’s SpaceX was also fined by the FAA under Whitaker.

Whitaker, the FAA administrator appointed by President Joe Biden in September 2023 resigned on Jan. 20, the day Trump was sworn into office. 

“There have been some who have said that Elon Musk forced out the previous administrator, Mike Whitaker, that the transition team fired Mike Whitaker,” Elwell, appointed acting FAA administrator by Trump in January 2018, said during an interview on WMAL’s “O’Connor and Company.” 

“I can tell you, I personally know unequivocally, that is not the case,” Elwell said. 

Elwell called it an outright myth that Whitaker was even forced out.

“I know Mike very well. He was an excellent administrator,” Elwell said in the WMAL interview. “He was actually implored to stay for a while, while the new administration found a new administrator. And for very legitimate reasons, Mike needed and had to leave after the inauguration. It was not political. When that whole thing came up that he was pushed out, forced out, fired, [it] was a complete and utter fabrication.”

The narrative nevertheless caught fire among left-leaning outlets such as The New Republic, which ran a headline, “FAA Leader Quit Before D.C. Plane Crash—Thanks to Elon Musk,” and similar headlines appeared in Huffington Post, Daily Beast, and other sites. The outlets noted the FAA proposed a $633,000 fine for SpaceX while also noting that Musk posted on X that Whitaker should resign.

“Elon Musk had adopted this as one of his personal crusades,” pundit Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC, the primary cable network for the Left. “‘Get rid of this guy at the FAA who is in the way of my SpaceX company.’ He was personally demanding that this guy be gotten rid of, so he got it. The FAA chief was out on Inauguration Day. Then 10 days later, we had a horrific mid-air plane crash.”

Also during the WMAL interview on Wednesday, Elwell said the reduction in force, also called RIF in a government acronym, should not affect the FAA on the safety front. That’s because about 400 layoffs of probationary employees—out of 45,000 employees at the agency—“has had no effect whatsoever on safety.”

“It’s way less than 1%. This was not indiscriminate at the FAA. That RIF did not impact any of the employees that are safety related,” Elwell said. “So controllers, safety inspectors, mechanics, and all the people that support those positions were not touched. It has, in my opinion, no impact whatsoever on the safety or efficiency of the FAA.”

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