MAGA media and Trump administration officials have heaped praise on a pilot with the Navy’s Blue Angels who pulled off a dangerously close fly-by over spectators on Pensacola Beach last week. The pilot himself seems to regret the low pass that sent beach gear and sand flying, telling his local congresswoman he never intended to buzz the crowd.
Rep. Michelle Salzman, R-Fla., shared her side of a conversation with the pilot in a post to Facebook on Friday. She said that the Navy precision-flyer was shaken up by a clearly dangerous maneuver that he made in error.
“He didn’t make excuses. He didn’t try to shift blame,” she wrote. “He simply talked about the miscalculated a turn, something no pilot ever wants to experience, especially one who has dedicated his life to flying at the highest level of precision. More than anything, he talked about the weight he’s been carrying since that moment.”
Dramatic video shows the U.S. Navy Blue Angels making a low-altitude flyover above Pensacola Beach, Florida, on Wednesday. Navy officials confirmed in a statement that Blue Angels leadership is "reviewing the circumstances surrounding the maneuver and conducting a thorough safety… pic.twitter.com/ZUa1ryk4X8
— ABC News (@ABC) July 15, 2026
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made light of the controversy about the pilot’s low pass, lumping it in with other recent, dangerous aerobatics that have spread on social media.
“The flyovers will continue until morale improves,” he wrote on X.
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Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said that the pilot would face no disciplinary action for the stunt.
“Flight debrief complete. No reprimands. No firings. No problem,” Cao wrote on social media. “That’s the sound of Freedom!”
Eric Trump called the outrage a creation of “the low-T mainstream media.” Per Salzman, however, the pilot knew the fly-by could have ended in disaster.
“He shared that he was shaken by what happened and needed time to process it. You could see the disappointment on his face,” she said. “This wasn’t someone brushing off a mistake, it was someone who holds himself to an incredibly high standard and was deeply affected by falling short of it.”
