During an interview this Sunday morning on ABC with host George Stephanopoulos, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg blasted the idea that conditions for Americans were better when Donald Trump was still in office as president.
Buttigieg was speaking days after current President Joe Biden’s latest “State of the Union” address to Congress. Afterwards, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) in the Republican response posed the question — with an obviously implied answer on her end — of whether her listeners in the general population were better off now or under Trump’s presidential administration.
Buttigieg pointed on ABC to the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic upheaval associated with it. “Three or four years ago, you couldn’t get toilet paper,” Buttigieg said. “Three or four years ago, we were in the middle of a pandemic that killed about a million people. When we took office, just to take a couple examples from the transportation sector, there had been four straight years of promises about an infrastructure bill that never came. Of course, President Biden delivered that in his first year. And it’s contributing to manufacturing jobs and construction jobs around the country.”
Considering his role in developments across the country’s transportation infrastructure, Buttigieg has been on the front lines of the implementation of the bipartisan deal on infrastructure spending that he referenced, which is powering an ongoing series of projects reaching evidently into the tens of thousands.
Republicans are also keeping immigration and the border a talking point for the campaign, although it gets even hollower the longer they reject the opportunities for bipartisan action on the border exemplified by the border deal that GOP Senators recently voted down. It would have expanded the roster of judges handling immigration cases, created new powers for closing the southern border in periods of strain, and more. In a recent interview, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas insisted that a legislative solution would be the most effective versus relying solely on provisions already in place like those of executive power.
