Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg took apart Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for bragging about taking away LGBTQ+ rights.
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Sec. Buttigieg said on CNN’s State Of The Union:
I’m going to choose my words carefully, partly because I’m appearing as secretary, so I can’t talk about campaigns, and I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled up shirtless bodybuilders, and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?
You know, what we’re focused as an administration on how to get things done to make people better off. I spent my week traveling around the country to places that are benefiting from infrastructure funding. We were in Appalachia, an eastern Kentucky community that’s been wiped out by floods completely and we’re bringing them highway funding that’s going to help them not only improve the road, but improve the dam and protect them from floods in the future. A few weeks ago, we were in North Dakota where there was a railroad crossing that was a community headache for decades. And thanks to President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure funds, we finally have the resources to do something about it, and we’re going to make that better and have it not be a problem holding back first responders.
These are the kinds of problems that most of us got into government, politics, and public service in order to work on. And I just don’t understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning, thinking that he’s going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community, that is already so vulnerable in America.
Buttigieg had to be careful with his remarks because the Hatch Act prohibits government officials from using the official position to engage in election activities, but he made his point clear.
Republicans like Ron DeSantis are running on making life harder for people who already have it difficult in the United States. The Republicans aren’t running on making people’s lives better. The GOP is trying to divide America down to the nub so that they can win elections with far-right extremism.
It is almost too easy to take down DeSantis and his failing culture war campaign of failure, but the question that voters need to ask themselves is what kind of government do they want.
Do they want a government that helps people, or hurts them?
The answer to that question will go a long way toward determining who wins in 2024.