This morning, we have a new
CNN exclusive interview
with the Department of Transportation
Secretary Pete Buttigieg,
speaking to our own Isaac
Dovere about a judge is acknowledging
some mistakes in his response
to the East Palestine, Ohio
train disaster.
And he admits that he should have gone
to the devastated community sooner.
The accident created
a political firestorm with Buddha footage
at its center.
The transportation
secretary has become a target
of an almost unrelenting onslaught
of professional
and very personal attacks
from conservative media
What is the £150?
What if not even a size small
construction vest fits this guy?
It's draping off of him.
He looks like he's wearing a costume.
If Pothole Pitch
seems lazy
and out of touch
to all of you, that is because it's true.
There's never been a Cabinet secretary.
This flame buoyantly incompetent
and this so obviously uncaring,
almost to the point of evil.
If we're being honest about it.
British Edge is now hitting back
telling CNN
it's really rich
to see some of these folks,
the former president,
these Fox hosts
who are literally lifelong Card-Carrying,
members of the East Coast elite,
who wouldn't know
their way around a TJ Max
if their life depended on it,
to be presenting themselves
as if they genuinely care
about the forgotten
middle of the country.
You think Tucker
Carlson knows
the difference between TJ Max and Kohl's?
CNN's Isaac Dovere did that interview
and joins us now,
and he has the answer to that question.
I was just kidding.
I don't know if this is just kidding.
But it is it is significant
that he's acknowledging the mistake,
but also going on the offense
a little bit.
Yeah.
Look what we've seen over the last
bunch of weeks here
with the train derailment
and even before that
with the flight
delays and cancelations that Southwest,
any time
anything comes up about transportation,
suddenly it's people, the judges fault.
And there's a point in the article
you don't have that
when when the price of eggs went up.
It wasn't like Tom Vilsack,
the agriculture secretary,
was on the hot seat
in this way,
who the judge obviously ran for president
and did pretty well.
There is a lot of speculation
he'll run
for something more in the future.
And that has made him a target.
It's made him a target from the right.
It's made him target for the left,
even on things
that he doesn't really control.
And in sitting with him,
we drove around in
Kansas and Missouri
on Monday of last week
talking about this.
You could see the frustration about it
coming through.
I asked him about that,
about the criticism
that he got in there and asked him about
whether he said
whether he went to Palestine
because Donald Trump went.
And people
who think that that's why he went
and he said
on the record,
we said that's bull,
but use the full word there,
then I want you to keep us
from getting any fines.
No, no, I can't.
But you
know what
was also interesting in your piece,
you talked
to a Democratic member of Congress
who will go nameless,
nameless in the piece
who says
Britain's appeal
in 2020 has a fresh face,
who wanted to get past the divisions and
the divisions
and move the nation forward.
But this person says it's
sad to see him
become a partizan brawler
on Twitter and cable news.
He's become the most polarizing
member of Biden's cabinet.
So what is interesting to me about
this is that
I think there are a lot of ways
that Democrats
view bitter
judges, almost like
a viral cable news startup.
When he goes on Fox News,
a lot of Democrats
who don't even really like him
in other areas cheer that on.
But this member seemed to think that
that was actually a knock on it.
Yeah, I'm
not sure that member is representative
of the
a lot of the other Democrats in the party
and definitely not
within the White House.
I mean, the White House
loves to have secretary booted judge
go across the cables, especially on Fox.
It's something
he also did when he tried to make a run
for the presidency.
And they find they view him
as one of their most
effective communicators,
even in a moment like this
when they're dealing
with the Ohio train derailment.
I also just wanted
to point out something,
when you played that Tucker clip,
he used the word flamboyant
and he used the word evil.
We know what he's talking about there.
He's talking about an openly gay man
by calling him
flamboyant and
evil,
which also speaks to what
we have been talking about
during the show,
which is this larger message
from Fox,
from Republicans
in trying to attack LGBTQ
and transgender people
as their wider campaign message.
All right. I have to play this.
This is from SNL.
Kind of spoofing. Exactly.
What you're talking about.
But you train exploded.
And who do we blame?
Who do we blame?
We blame. But Judge
where words you judge,
this was his responsibility.
Unfortunately,
he was too busy
being a nerd and being gay.
Dealt
with a very much more important issue
of should drains, have big boys and
I mean, the fact that he is
gay is such a huge part of this. Right.
One of the things that I asked about
was the attention to the shoes
that he was wearing there
and they were not work boots that he
wore when he got to the train
derailment site,
their boots,
their sort of fanciest boots.
And he said to me
that that was maddening.
And he got his voice, got a little tired
as we were talking about this.
And he said it's just
when people
are talking about things like that,
when I'm trying to talk about
people's lives
and how to solve the problems
here said
that these outlets need to make a choice
where his words come,
whether they are covering fashion
or whether they're covering policy
and whether they're covering
what happens
when people are trying to recover
from a disaster like this. Yes.
Before you jump in, Eva,
I mean, one of the broader
points of all of this is
this is the transportation
secretary we're talking about.
Most Americans have no idea
who that person ever is.
And here's Ray LaHood, a former
transportation secretary himself,
saying he's never heard of this
level of criticism.
Another against another secretary ever.
And I've been following this a long time.
I've never seen it like this before.
This is pure politics.
It's politics
because people think he's
going to run for president.
That's why.
And it is because of his identity. Right.
He can't change the fact that he is gay.
And so many of these attacks are bad
faith attacks.
There's a
tweet from a prominent conservative
suggesting that him and his husband
holding their children
is is everything that is emblematic
of what's wrong with America.
He can't
he can't do anything
to really argue with that
because the terms of the argument
are not even fair.
I will say, though, in
his interview with you,
I think it is good
that he is being so publicly contrite
and saying, listen, yeah,
I did mess up here.
And then steering the conversation
back to the policy and saying, hey,
but now that we have Republicans
attention, let's hold
the railroads accountable,
something that Republicans in the past
have not championed.
That's probably
the only way forward on an issue
like this one. And to be clear,
he did
acknowledge that it was a misstep,
not just on his part,
but on the White House's
part to just not see the politics
of this one coming
when clearly this was getting picked up
very heavily by conservative media
as a as a political issue.