Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg lit into Donald Trump on Fox News Sunday, calling the former president a liar who has failed to deliver on his promises while turning the GOP into a cult of personality who covers for their leader's embarrassing stumbles.
Before he became president, Trump had promised to deliver at least 6% economic growth and pass an infrastructure bill, Buttigieg said. He failed to do so, while President Joe Biden passed a bipartisan infrastructure plan and has presided over the strongest economy in the developed world.
Buttigieg noted that Trump did keep two major promises: to overturn federal abortion rights and pass a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. "If you want to know what a second Trump term would be like, I would start by looking at those rare promises he actually managed to keep," he told Fox News host Shannon Bream.
Bream interjected that while Trump wanted to get rid of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court's decision gave states the power to make laws about abortion rather than institute a nationwide abortion ban. That decision would "empower the states to eliminate women's access to abortion," Buttigieg argued. "And also, as you know, the Republican Party continues to be interested in a national abortion ban."
"Which he disavowed, completely," Bream said.
"Yeah, he's disavowed a lot of things. I don't believe him, because he lies all the time," Buttigieg responded.
Buttigieg pivoted towards Trump in other questions about Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' perceived weaknesses, pointing out that Trump rallied GOP opposition to a bipartisan immigration bill last year "not because he thought it was bad policy but because he didn't want that issue to get better, because if it got worse" under Biden's watch, "it would be better for him politically." He then criticized Republicans for linking immigration to crime and claiming Biden has been enabling a spike in crime, when in fact the crime rate is lower now than when Trump was president.
Bream, alluding to GOP attempts to pin the Biden fitness issue on Harris, also asked if the vice president was "aware of how he was doing." Buttigieg said Democrats had acknowledged that Biden's age hindered his ability to run again, a recognition that contrasts with Republicans' Trump "personality cult."
Republicans "will take a look at Donald Trump and say he's perfectly fine, even though he seemed unable to tell the difference between Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, even though he's rambling about electrocuting sharks and Hannibal Lecter, even though he is clearly older and stranger than he was when America first got to know him," he said. "They say he's strong as an ox, leaps tall buildings in a single bound, we don't have that kind of warped reality on our side."
In the end, Buttigieg said, Biden confronted that reality and decided to step aside on account of his age.
"He did something that I don't think Donald Trump could even conceive of doing," he said, "which is putting his own interest aside for the country."
