Transportation Secretary and former reality TV star went on CNBC to speak with Joe Kernan about how the Republicans' government shutdown is affecting the air traffic system. Over the weekend, the airport in Newark experienced many long delays due to a shortage of air traffic controllers.

KERNAN: We need to match what we can do with safety. And that's, you know, I don't even like talking about it, whether the air is safe. And I'm sure you're doing it that way. You've got to cut the number of flights that were actually allowed to operate based on the safety you can provide. At this point, you'd say the air is just as safe as it was when the government was open because there's a half as many flights.

DUFFY: So that's the consistent question I get. Is the system safe? And you see more delays, you see more cancellations of flights, and that's because we slow traffic down, because we don't have enough controllers in the towers and traycons to make sure we can navigate the flights. So that's a tool that we have to keep the system safe. I'm going to tell you this, though. Does it introduce another element of risk? If I have a controller doing two jobs, and by the way, they're certified, they're able to do both of those jobs. But is there more risk in the system when you have a shutdown? Absolutely, there's more risk. But if we thought that it was unsafe, again, we'll shut the whole airspace down. We won't let people travel. We're not there at this point. It's just significant delays. But again, if you're canceled or if you're delayed for three hours or four hours on your flight, there's one side to blame. Republicans have voted to open up the government.

So, apparently, threatening to starve people until the Republicans could take away their healthcare coverage wasn't working and now they want to take away your Thanksgiving turkey at Grandma's house. And that's not to mention that Thanksgiving weekend is the busiest travel month of the year. I'm sure the airlines will love that.

I'm just waiting for someone to ask Duffy if he would like to have those hundreds of workers he had fired back, even if they are women, people of color, or members of the LGBTQ community. He really can't complain about being short-handed after firing all those people.