CNN trashes Trump official as 'embarrassing' tech issues crash speech

Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, attempted to hold a new press conference about Friday's nationwide grounding disaster, but was delayed after the address was beset with technical issues, leading CNN pundits to trash the incident as "frankly, embarrassing."

On Friday, the FAA ordered all flights in the U.S. to be grounded, with Duffy later claiming in a press conference that the agency's machinery "got overloaded with data and they started to give us inconsistencies in the data." The shutdown ultimately lifted after four hours at around 8:15 p.m., the longest of its kind since 9/11, causing around 10,000 flights to be canceled. Duffy also claimed that such issues would continue due to the FAA's aging infrastructure, and demanded billions of dollars in order to fix it.

On Saturday morning, Duffy attempted to hold another press conference on the matter, this time on his own and not flanked by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. As he tried to begin speaking, however, the audio from the speech appeared to cut in and out, and become overwhelmed by static noises, leaving the secretary once again at the mercy of technical issues.

As this new incident played out in real time, CNN's Wolf Blitzer provided some running commentary, making reference to the issues with the FAA's technology being outdated.

"They're clearly having some technical issues over there at the Department of Transportation," Blitzer said. "So there's been a pause in the statement, but we'll continue to monitor this... You heard some technical problems that were very, very audible earlier. Looks like the microphone could be a problem right there. A little awkward. Major news conference like this with the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, and the FAA administrator, Brian Bedford, about to give us some new information about this investigation into this disaster... Let's make sure that they fix that microphone. I hope it's not antiquated technology that they have there from the 70s or 80s, that it's new technology, that microphone that they can work with."

Blitzer then passed over to White House correspondent Brian Todd, who was even less forgiving of the situation.

"Wolf, it's awkward and frankly embarrassing, and really somewhat symbolic of everything that's happened over the past 24 hours," Todd said. Uh, just waiting for some answers from Sean Duffy, a lot of pointed questions coming his way and coming the way of the FAA administrator, Brian Bedford, who we have not heard from until, you know, we're going to hear from him in a few minutes, presumably. But he had not been heard from at all during this crisis, and neither has President Trump."