Pete Buttigieg takes on Marjorie Taylor Greene in must-see takedown

thanks thanks so much for doing this [Music] so I'm here with the Secretary of Transportation people to judge thanks so much for coming on Good To Be With You Sarah Huckabee Sanders did the Republican response to the State of the Union uh it was a lot of fear-mongering about some dystopian future wokism critical race Theory blah blah blah what were your thoughts on the pretty stark contrast between what she did and what President Biden did I think the biggest difference was you heard President Biden talking about things that most Americans are focused on what it'll take to keep up this extraordinarily low unemployment how we created hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs uh an agenda looking forward on things like you know dealing with junk fees that cable companies or phone companies or or Airlines could charge people and then you you go over to the GOP response and it's uh wokism and she's focused on whether you say Latino or whether you say latinx and I'm just thinking you know they're on two very different pages but what was most striking to me last site in the chamber there was you could feel both on the things that that everybody stood up and clapped for and on the things where the Congressional Republicans kept their seats you could feel and and see that every single thing he raised has the support of most Americans and so to me it's just a very clear contrast in terms of who's more aligned with where most of the country is right now and by the way I think that's on purpose I think the whole the whole trying to shoehorn this idea that the Democrats are only focused on vocism and latinx and M MS and on and on is on purpose because if they were actually to point out the reality of the situation which is that Democrats are focused on job creation and getting the unemployment rate down low and cutting health care costs for Americans that would be too popular and so instead they have to create this ulterior alternate reality where uh where the Democrats are just out there vying for uh for you know taking your gas over that's true look they have this position for example they're against capping insulin at 35 a month I'm not sure exactly why but they're against it I think they know enough uh about how out of Step that is with the American people to not want to spend a lot of time to defending that view so they're talking about M Ms or whatever the outraged Azure is going to be and there was a point during the speech where Biden had to turn and reassure the Republicans that uh big Pharma would still make money don't worry they'll be fine in that chamber Margie Taylor green made her presence known every opportunity she could by you know screaming or doing what she does what was the feeling in the room what was the sense in the room while she was doing what she was doing I mean it's unfortunate when somebody decides to seek attention that way and at the same time in the room you could feel that there it was like a thousand people in there most of them are there to respectfully hear the president whether they agree with him or not and then you got these Fringe figures who I think can can really embarrass their their own caucus and uh you know it was a real problem for a speaker who I think wanted to demonstrate that there were adults in the room but you try to remind yourselves that that's just a couple of voices not uh not most of the room did it seem like there was any frustration even among Republicans with what she was doing I think so I could hear a little bit of squirming around me yeah and uh you know again it's it's there's a range of opinion in that body that's normal that's healthy that's how it's supposed to work but there shouldn't be a range in terms of your level of respect for the presidency or for the process that you're part of Margie Taylor green presided over the house last week she has this public affection with Kevin McCarthy she's clearly vying for Trump's vice presidential spot for his you know effort to become the 2024 Republican nominee what does it say that margin Taylor green not only wants to be the face of that party but that the party seems to want to let her be it's a worrisome thing to watch because usually when when you see that kind of it's just some of what we've seen from from this representative it's it's not just an extreme policy positions it's a an extreme nature I mean the conspiracy theories is space laser stuff it's just something that I think any uh any other leader would want to distance themselves from but look the speaker is working working with the slimmest of majorities and maybe he doesn't feel like he can afford to lose even the most disgraced or or extreme member of his caucus I get that but that's that's that's a them problem and at the end of the day we we think you know the best thing to do is to work with us on good policy again every single thing the president mentioned in the State of the Union speech most Americans strongly support so if if I were in the position of of any of the Republican Congressional leaders I would be making a list of at least a few of those things that we could work together on and hopefully we will on at least a few of the items on that Unity agenda right um there was this exchange between the president and Republicans surrounding Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid where their new line is that they don't want to cut these things of course we know that's not true we know that Rick Scott surfaced his plan where he would Sunset all federal legislation after five years if it's worth authorizing they would of course do it again which is effectively a death now for those earned benefits but Biden effectively got them to agree under duress that they won't touch those programs but that wasn't in his prepared remarks he basically put them on the spot and then got exactly what he wanted what was the feeling in the room when it became apparent that Biden unilaterally disarmed the Republicans most dangerous attack you know in in about 60 seconds it was a pretty amazing moment you know these things are very very scripted and usually even if there's a little bit of a disruption or something in in the hall that that doesn't change anything in terms of the the president's remarks but you know this president was thinking on his feet and I think saw an opportunity to to really make clear that the Congressional GOP can either own the position that some of its members have suggested that they would cut or Sunset Social Security and Medicare or they can reject it and getting them on their feet making clear or at least saying they make clear that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are off the table if they follow through on that that's that's a real achievement and if they don't follow through on that then the transparency that moment created will be very important as well although I would say it's not like the shame of Republicans saying one thing and then turning around and doing another has ever stopped them before but we'll see what happens on that front on the infrastructure front though Biden announced during the State of the Union a new standard to require that all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects are going to be made in America how does that impact costs and just as a follow-up to that why are these infrastructure projects in the United States exorbitantly more expensive than infrastructure projects across the world yeah it's a big and a very important question and part of what we're working to tackle is not just make sure there's more funding for infrastructure but that it gets spent effectively it's been the case in general with big projects and in particular in the US that that the bigger the project the more likely it is to take too long costs too much not come out the way you had in mind and we've got to do everything we can to fight that and we've got a lot of Brilliant Minds here at the D.O.T who've been working on identifying each point in the process where something can get delayed get blocked or see the costs escalate and try to stay a step ahead of it in terms of the Buy America piece look as you know the president is passionate about making sure we create American jobs and there have been a lot of loopholes waivers rules that have not been enforced very strongly when it comes to the basic idea we all agree on that is the law which is when you spend American taxpayer money on on on things like this that you ought to be focused on American Producers and making sure that it creates America American jobs so what he's directed all of the Departments to do what we've been doing at the D.O.T is to tighten up and toughen up the rules on this you know there have been these blanket waivers that just don't require somebody who's building a road or a bridge with Federal money to work that hard to Source American Construction Materials this changes that there may occasionally be extremely specialized components or things that are more often produced abroad but often that's precisely because we haven't pushed enough to produce them here at home so the long-term result of this is not just that we get those products made in America bought in America put into American infrastructure but it actually builds up more of the industry to begin with so that we have that industrial base we have that expertise we have those jobs and those companies that can be selling both here and around the world so on that infrastructure Point can you give a snapshot of our progress there maybe a few examples of some major infrastructure projects that are underway now yeah here's the way I would put it the first year we were focused on just getting the bill through and selling this package and and the president signed it toward the end of our first year the second year was about standing up all the programs that the package created this third year is when we're getting the money out the door and starting to see construction happen I was just with the president in Baltimore we were celebrating the tunnel that's going to be replaced there it was put in an 1873 it's 150 years old and people count on it to get to where they're going in New York Hudson River tunnel 200 000 passengers a day go through there if it became unavailable if it were taken offline you would feel The Economic Consequences everywhere 1910 that thing was built and we're finally replacing it but a lot of smaller projects too were already identifying or moving on 2700 Bridges 70 000 miles of Highway across the U.S a lot of projects that won't get national news maybe won't get a presidential visit or a visit even from me but they're going to make all the difference in the world to the community that's getting that funding whether it's putting in new mediums and crosswalks to make a street safer for pedestrians or replacing a an airport terminal that needs to be reworked on airport terminals there was obviously the whole Southwest debacle recently Republicans kind of trained their ire on you for not I guess I guess moving to modernize Southwest equipment with that said I don't know the extent to which the Department of Transportation is responsible for mandating uh that that these Airlines do have equipment that's able to service the their customers so can you talk about the work that you've done at dot to rectify that issue and also any changes with the FAA more broadly yeah one Dynamic you often see is when a company screws up there will be some people politically who try to blame it on the government we don't run an airline but we are a watchdog and so I take very seriously the responsibility our department does have to hold Airlines accountable to higher standards especially on passenger Service as a matter of fact a lot of the work that we did last year to raise the bar on customer requirements and enforceable standards things like whether they cover your hotel or your meal or your ground transportation if you get stuck because we raised the bar on that last year that's helping us this year deal with the aftermath of the Southwest situation and hold them to a very high standard that wouldn't have been possible just a year ago before we took these steps we're taking more steps now and I'll give you one example that the president mentioned in his speech it makes no sense that you would have to pay extra to sit with your kids when you're taking a flight and yet so often parents in the position of having to negotiate with a gate agent or sometimes you're negotiating with your fellow passengers for for something that should be so basic and so automatic so we're going to make sure that this is a requirement I'm calling in the airlines to do it anyway so we don't have to but we're going to be making sure that this is required now another element of you know what the dot oversees is obviously our roads roadway deaths are I believe at a 16-year high what is the cause of that first of all because you would imagine that as cars get safer as technology becomes more sophisticated those kind of things would go down but we're seeing roadway deaths go up now and what's being done to mitigate that danger we have a crisis of roadway deaths that has been building for a long time in this country in the proportions of the loss of life it's comparable to gun violence about 40 000 people a year and I would assume that some degree of responsibility is owed to the fact that we have cell phones now absolutely look technology Cuts both ways on one hand you have Technologies now that can nudge you back into your lane if you drift off that can let you know how close you are to the coast the reason you're drifting out of your lane in the first place because you're on your phone that's just the thing there is no car today even with the most advanced technology that doesn't require you to be paying attention Hands on the Wheel eyes on the road all the time and and some claims are being made about this technology but as great as those Technologies are you still need to be paying attention there's no good reason to be looking at the screen of your phone or thumb through your phone when the car is in motion put the phone down Let it wait it'll still be there or when you arrive safely and alive at your destination so distracted driving is an issue technology is an issue but so is the design of the roadways themselves and we've learned over the years a lot of things about how a road is designed they can either help or hurt when it comes to safety that's why we're funding we put about 800 million dollars on the street just recently to help dozens of communities do construction and hundreds of communities do planning to make their roads safer if we have safer roads and safer drivers and safer vehicles and safer speeds and we do more about the post crash care so that fewer injuries turn fatal we could dramatically reduce the number of deaths and move towards zero which has to be our ultimate goal I want to switch gears over back over to the to the circus element of this and and I do want to ask if you were surprised to see that Mitt Romney had called George Santos an embarrassment during the State of the Union you know if I belong to the same caucus as the same party as as he did I guess I would probably have some Choice words to it you know it's it's something that reflects poorly on on everybody on the other hand it's kind of where a lot of what you've seen on the fringes of Congress is leading to I mean in some ways just a more extreme case of some of the unfortunately you know dishonesty and and just uh Fringe nature of of some politics not all uh you know certainly not even most even on the other side of the aisle but I certainly get how somebody like Senator Romney who I disagree with on a lot of things but also have found we can work with on a lot of things be has a certain sense of uh just dignity I think about the institution and if you care about that institution and you got a guy like representative Santos there um I I got to think that would be maddening I mean it's maddening enough as an American and I guess uh he just couldn't take it anymore at the same time I mean it is the natural progression of a party that's fully embraced Donald Trump to then have recruited somebody like George Santos who basically traffics exclusively in uh in lying so not the biggest surprise but with that said you know I I know that we live of in this Perpetual cycle of hell and that lying is commonplace in government but which George Santos lie actually shocked you like which one left you saying even even in this atmosphere like again I mean on some level I hate to say it but this is more a matter of degree than it is a change in kind it's just the ultimate kind of apotheosis where things have been headed in a certain corner of that caucus for a long time I guess the fact that it's not completely clear whether George Santos is in fact his real name it just kind of sums it all up I guess that's like the uh the ultimate like well do we even know if that's his real name but do we actually really even know if that's his real name does this guy really exist yeah yeah what I think is especially funny about that is that he uh that he that he here's the thing when you need to have a new name that doesn't exactly bode well for what happened in the past so the fact that he had to change his name from you know whether it was Anthony to Boulder and then turned into George Santos the fact that you have to change your identity is usually a red flag unto itself but for me it's the uh it's the it's the dog thing it's raising raising money for the homeless veterans dog and then that Homeless veteran not getting those funds for the dog but that's just me in any case we'll leave it there I'll stop subjecting you to the to the insanity that is the George Santos Saga so uh secretary Pete thank you so much for taking the time I appreciate it good to be with you [Music]

Channel: Brian Tyler Cohen

Views: 2,088,774

Keywords: Brian Tyler Cohen, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, brian cohen, marjorie taylor greene, state of the union, pete buttigieg, sarah huckabee sanders, mayor pete, secretary pete

Id: ejaaZOpXGN4

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Yelloeisok]

It is a 15 minute video - do you have a timestamp for the MTG takedown?