Name: ‘Sheer insanity’: House Democrat reacts to Trump admin.’s handling of El Paso airspace closure
Uploaded: 2026-02-14T23:02:04.000Z
Duration: 9 min 14 s
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That was President Trump this afternoon when he was asked if there would be accountability for the chaos this week after the FAA and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy imposed a 10 day shutdown of El Paso's airspace, only to reverse course just hours later despite the White House claim the airspace was closed because of cartel drones breaching US Airspace for four sources tell NBC News it was in response to the testing of US Military technology that can be used to take down drones.

Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Adam Smith.

He serves as the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Congressman Smith, thank you so much for being here today.

And we are going to get to El Paso in just a moment.

But I do want to start in Munich, the security conference.

At the conference, your trip was canceled because of this partial government shutdown.

The German chancellor in his opening statement talked about the world order as we know it no longer existing.

Congressman, I wonder what you can tell us.

Well, first of all, it's very hard to argue with the German chancellor when you look at the way President Trump has treated the NATO alliance, you know, slapping tariffs all across the world.

I saw a headline the other day in a foreign affairs news article that described the United States as a predatory hegemon, which is something we have not been before.

Not that we don't pursue our own interests.

We do, but we've had respect for international institutions.

President Trump has withdrawn us from a number of different treaties and antagonized our allies and partners.

Now, I still believe that the United States can still get that back in a post Trump world.

But I share the German chancellor's concern about the US Becoming a solo actor and not really participating in the global order that we did so much to help create over the last 80 years.

You say you think the US can get that back.

The Danish prime minister called for European allies to band together.

I want to read you what was said and then get your reaction to that.

Within this context, is it possible to get back to it saying, quote, a Europe that is not able and willing to protect itself is going to die at some point?

The prime minister said the old world will not come back.

So she obviously disagrees with your assessment that it's possible to get back to the old world world order.

Well, I would say we're not going to get back exactly to the old world order and nor should we.

To a certain degree, the world has changed substantially.

You have the rise of countries like India, Brazil, South Africa, other countries are playing role.

But the basic princip that the US should participate in an international rules based system that I think we can get back to.

Even though President Trump has threatened it.

I mean, threatening Canada, threatening Greenland, threatening Panama, basically implying that the use of force might makes right is going to be a US Approach.

That is what I think we can get the US Back to a focus on.

It's really important that so many members of Congress are in Munich right now to reinforce the message that the overwhelming majority US don't agree with President Trump simply shattering that order and saying that the US Is now basically going to be in it for ourselves, period, full stop.

I think it's important that our members of Congress are there delivering a different message.

Well, and given that, do you think that European allies can still count on the United States?

You are saying there's a strong message being sent right now by members of Congress that yes, they should feel confident in that.

But what do you say to the skeptics out there?

I wouldn't say that they should feel confident in that.

It's more that not feel that they should not feel that all hope is lost.

You know, I mean, I think right now they should feel that they can count a lot less on the US Than they used to.

Look, one part of this, I mean, if Europe wants to become more capable of defending itself and contribute more to the collective defense at this point, I think that's fine.

I mean, I think we need to understand that it was by design that they didn't.

We provided security because Europe had spent the thousand years before World War II fighting each other relentlessly.

So we didn't want them building up their militaries.

They stopped fighting amongst each other and we had a pretty good 80 years.

It's going to shift a little bit now, but

I don't think we should lose track of the benefit of the approach that we took over the course of the last 80 years.

Well, let me turn to El Paso now and ask you about this confusion that remains over what exactly caused that shutdown of the airspace there this week.

NBC News is reporting this started with a dispute or a miscommunication between the Pentagon and the FAA over testing the military's counter drone lasers at Fort Bliss, which is right next to the El Paso airport.

Just for folks who are watching, are you closer to getting specific answers about what exactly caused the shutdown?

And look, there's two sort of separate, important issues.

One is just the sheer insanity of the way the Trump administration has approached this.

I mean, we've got agencies all controlled by the executive branch, controlled by Donald Trump, the faa, the Department of Defense, Customs and Border Patrol.

Those three agencies are all involved in this, in this shutdown, and

From the moment this happened, nobody has simply come out from the administration and said, okay, here's what happened.

Worse is they have not communicated at all with the local officials in El Paso.

They said it was going to be shut down for 10 days.

So everyone's scrambling around trying to figure out how to deal with that.

And then they said, no, just kidding, we're gonna open it up in a few hours.

So that lack of communication, this is the way the Trump administration runs things autocratically.

They make decisions, they're accountable to no one.

Now, the second thing is the actual problem going on.

The department is critically part of that, but

you also have to do it in a way that doesn't jeopardize civilian aviation, which means the FAA and DoD need to be in close communication.

And clearly they were not in this instance.

And the fact that none of them are even coming out and saying exactly what happened shows that this is an ongoing problem that the administration should.

Congressman, I do want to ask you, before I let you go about this funding fight over reforms to ICE funding for the entire Department of Homeland Security lapses at midnight.

As you well know, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shut down the idea of funding those agencies separately.

Agencies like TSA and fema, which are a part of dhs.

I want to play for you a little bit of what he had to say and get your reaction on the other side.

All the Republicans have to do is meet our requests here and negotiate in a serious way and we can pass the whole thing.