As supply chain disarray remains a primary focus, especially in the coming weeks, embattled Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Fox News Sunday.
Speaking to host Chris Wallace, Buttigieg promoted the massive budget reconciliation bill as a way to combat inflation and supply chain issues, while attempting to intrinsically link them to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Look, there are so many things that are still happening in our economy — distortions, disruptions, things in our supply chain that are affecting prices that are clearly a direct consequence of the pandemic,” Buttigieg said. “Which is why the best thing we can do for our economy in the short term and to deal with these transitory issues is to put the pandemic behind us.”
Not falling for the questionable analogy, Wallace noted that operations at the Port of Los Angeles, which President Joe Biden announced weeks ago would finally move to 24/7 operations, have seen no decrease in waiting containers or backlogs, while trucker shortages continue. One day last week, a terminal in Long Beach announced that 2,000 appointments for truckers went unused.
Fox News’ Chris Wallace confronts Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Biden’s supply chain crisis getting WORSE, not better. pic.twitter.com/L7rtKS74Wk
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Buttigieg again deflected, rambling about the “transformational and historic” progressive agenda: “finally getting preschool for every kid in this country, making child care affordable for every family in this country. The biggest action we’ve done on climate ever in U.S. history,” and “electric vehicles coming on the market, to get that discount of up to $12,500 so you could buy one of these electric vehicles and never have to worry about gas prices again.”
As inflation, long denied by the Biden administration, rises, Buttigieg claimed, “This bill will fight inflation” and “we have a drag on our economy in labor supply because a lot of parents aren’t going back to work because they can’t find child care. “
He twice mentioned an irrelevant tidbit that 17 Nobel Prize-winning economists have signed some letter talking about how “the president’s pro-family policies in this package will help fight inflation.“
As if still campaigning for president, Buttigieg tried to cover every issue, adding another vaccination plea in a country where four in five adults and over 97% of seniors have received a shot.
“If we really want to see all of these disruptions end, we got to end the pandemic. That’s what getting everybody vaccinated is all about,” he said.
No, it’s not, sir. COVID is endemic, and we have to live with it. Objective medical experts also know that therapeutics are as important as or more important than vaccines.
Related: Buttigieg Pressed Over Supply Chain Chaos
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) followed the former mayor and slammed him, saying if he “wanted to solve the port issue, you’d fly out to the port, you’d sit down with everybody and find out what the problem is and then you go solve it. Typically, the problem is caused by some government regulation or some government red tape.”
On inflation and spending, Scott was blunt.
“Look at what it’s doing to poor families in this country with gas prices up 55 percent. Go to the grocery store. Food prices are up. It’s all caused by government spending,” the former governor argued. “And, by the way, if you look at inflation, the border, parents’ involvement in schools, our military support, there is nothing that Democrats are talking about doing that solves a problem that Americans care about.”
As the media lauds Buttigieg for adopting children, the ideological zealot still appears more interested in waging battles against Tucker Carlson and appeasing woke environmentalists than doing his important job.
Buttigieg’s newborn children will be dressed as “infrastructure” for Halloween. Don’t ever doubt that politics is life for the left.
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