How Pete Buttigieg Stopped Elon Musk’s Childish Antics After Hurricane Helene

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to speak to Elon Musk on the phone to get the tech billionaire and Donald Trump superfan to stop spouting hurricane relief misinformation.

Buttigieg and Musk initially clashed on X last Friday, when Musk falsely claimed that the Federal Aviation Administration planned to “shut down” airspace over hard-hit states. They later spoke on the phone, Buttigieg told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, after Buttigieg corrected Musk publicly and invited the noted conspiracist to call him with questions.

“I’ve been amazed at how a little kernel of some detail gets blown up on the internet into something that it’s not,” Buttigieg told Psaki, adding that the torrent of partisan misinformation about the response to Hurricane Helene had “a real cost for people on the ground.”

Musk and Buttigieg’s specific dust-up involved temporary flight restrictions over North Carolina, where Musk’s satellite internet company, Starlink, has been establishing emergency internet service. “Hundreds” of pilots in the region had been unable to land because the FAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency blocked their flights, Musk posted.

But the reality, as Buttigieg and FAA spokesmen have since explained, is less diabolical. The FAA never closed down airspace over North Carolina. In some areas, however, at the request of local law enforcement, the FAA and state aviation agencies have required what Buttigieg called a “higher level of coordination” between pilots and local airports to prevent in-air collisions. Such requirements are standard in the aftermath of major natural disasters, when nearby air space can become dangerously crowded.

That explanation appeared to work for Musk, who on Friday afternoon posted a message thanking Buttigieg for the call and helping to “simplify” FAA regulations. But he still hasn’t walked back any of his false or misleading posts, which also claimed that federal aid workers “seized” emergency aid shipments and exhausted their agency’s budget “ferrying illegals” to the U.S.

Experts who research emergency management have grieved the vibe shift on X, which once served as a useful source of real-time disaster information. Today, it’s ground zero for a wider right-wing disinformation campaign about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.

“You look at what’s going on online [and] a lot of it seems to be driven by politics,” Buttigieg said. “And that is actively harming and disrupting the process of getting back to normal for so many people whose lives were upended by this awful storm.”

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