Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg did what he's good at. Well, he's good at a lot of things, but pushing back on misinformation on not-so-liberal-friendly shows is probably his best trait as he calmly takes apart their talking points. I haven't seen Pete on Fox News lately, have you? I'm sure they got tired of Buttigieg besting them. So, now it's CNBC’s resident Trumper Joe Kernan's turn.
"I just -- the reason that some of these numbers stay where they are is because it just seems like instead to have actually owning some of the issues that we have, instead of acknowledging that the President maybe has lost a step, the administration keeps saying, don't believe your lying eyes," Kernan said.
"No, respectfully, I think congressional Republicans are saying, don't believe your lying eyes, which is why they're polling at about 15%," Awesome Pete Buttigieg said.
He brought receipts!
"We have economic numbers -- is it my lying eyes that under Joe Biden we have had the most job creation in American history?" he continued. "Is it my lying eyes telling us that unemployment and inflation are both below 4% and have been that way for the longest time in who knows when? Is it reality or is it spin to point out the fact that manufacturing jobs are up under this President and were down under the last President. These are matters of simple fact."
"When we heard for three years that the border's closed and it's secure," Kernan said. "We heard it -- And 7.2 million people have come into where our big cities have no idea how to handle this. And you hear from the administration --"
"Here's the thing, Joe," Buttigieg said. "This is really important. This is really important, okay? The common sense position, and the position that, by the way, a lot of moderates, Democrats, and moderate Republicans would always say, the kinds of things that you hear at the Chamber of Commerce in Indiana, where I come from, is that there ought to be more legal immigration and less illegal immigration. And yet when there's a chance to actually do that, that's not what happens."
"The last administration cut legal immigration," he continued. "And meanwhile, our economy is pulling people, just as much as terrible conditions in Latin America are pushing people. And when there's finally a bipartisan compromise that would help address at least some of those issues, congressional Republicans couldn't get it done, because Donald Trump who's not even in elected office, killed it. That is a fact."
"That -- we'll see whether this moves the needle," Kernan said. "I just think, you know, the American public just wants something that benefits them. They just don't want to hear --"
"So do we," Buttigieg said.
And that's how you present receipts in an interview. He left Kernan stuttering.
