Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg explained to CNN, ABC and NBC news the extraordinary and historic accomplishments the Biden administration has delivered to the country in two short years, just before the president gives his SOTU speech on Tuesday.
Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked why so many of these accomplishments have not helped Biden's poll numbers.
"Let's go to the President's State of the Union," Todd said. "Look, he's got a lot of things to tell. Why do you think that it has not penetrated the American public?"
"When you think back in historic terms to what it means to inherit one of the toughest situations faced by any president since FDR, pass the most significant legislation on our economy in many ways since FDR, while facing the largest land war in Europe since Truman, achieving the second-most-important health care bill since LBJ, and the most important infrastructure bill since Eisenhower," Buttigieg explained.
"As Ron [Klain] put it, 'and that was just the beginning of the list of accomplishments.' But one of the things that we found is that this is happening simultaneously with some of the toughest circumstances ever," he continued. "We recognize that. And there continue to be a lot of issues that Americans are facing every day, even as we see extraordinary economic news: up 500,000 jobs just created in the last month."
Speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN, Buttigieg said.
But let's talk about what we have to show for that even just in the two years that the administration has been here, we just saw the latest round of job numbers that came out, record low unemployment, the lowest we have had in more than 50 years.
And, usually, when unemployment is that low, inflation is going up. Right now, inflation is going down, along with unemployment. We're talking about the most jobs created under any president in this period, matter of fact, the president creating more jobs in two years than you have seen typically in four, and coupled with things that Republicans often say that is very important to them, like deficit reduction, historic reduction of the deficit, to the tune of $1.7 trillion under this president.
You look at what's been done in two years, and I think the president is going to be going into the State of the Union speech with a context of extraordinary, historic accomplishment.
Look, what we're seeing is extraordinary. Record job creation. As the president has pointed out, more created in two years on his watch than four years on any other president's watch. And usually when you have unemployment go down like this, you have inflation go up. But right now, inflation is going down as well.
The economic track record in terms of creating manufacturing jobs, in terms of lowering costs, like $35 insulin for seniors. We tried to get $35 a month insulin for everybody, and Senate Republicans blocked us. But we were able to do it -- the president was able to do it for – for seniors. Accomplishment after accomplishment.
And if you look at things like the infrastructure package that I'm working on that was passed in his first year, set up in his second year, it's really in the third and fourth years of – of his presidency –
One of the major reasons Biden's accomplishments have been blunted for the public is because the Beltway Media takes its cues from the right-wing noise machine. It's in their interest to sideline all good news under Biden while covering up all the bad news that follows Trump and the MAGA cult around.
We've just had days of insane ranting about a Chinese spy balloon.
Has that helped the country?
Nope.
Has it thrown a smoke screen around the incredible jobs report for January?
Absolutely.
Is this latest nonsense used solely for the purpose of undermining the Biden administration?
Yes.
Fox News used unqualified Trump admin sycophants to run this headline.
I rest my case.
