At his VoteVets Action Fund town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg mocked Education Sec. Linda McMahon.
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00:00And for marginalized people, for our veterans, that's what we need.
00:05And so my question was, how do we get them fired up to really serve us when they,
00:11and hopefully we get it back soon, the power to do this?
00:15I think you're describing such an important point.
00:18This isn't, look, obviously there is a parade of horribles emanating from this White House and this administration.
00:25But, look, there are a lot of people, we all have neighbors who voted for,
00:28and by the way, a lot of them don't even like him.
00:31But they said, you know, maybe he's going to make me better off.
00:35Maybe he's going to just smash everything and come up with something better.
00:41Yeah.
00:42By the way, he did the first half, the smashing stuff up part, right?
00:44He did that.
00:45Just not the part where it makes us better off.
00:50And it is both politically and substantively wrong, in my opinion,
00:56if all my party has to say is, let's go back.
00:59I am not here saying we've got to make things back the way they were in 2023.
01:04If, look, the hard truth is, if our government, our politics, our society, and our economy were working,
01:13we wouldn't be here.
01:15Proto-authoritarian populist movements don't just come out of nowhere.
01:19They find fertile ground when things are not working.
01:23And, again, in a room of folks who have served, you know this.
01:27You know how frustrating the old status quo of the VA was,
01:31even as incredible things were done to make it better.
01:34And one thing every veteran is an expert in is bureaucracy, right?
01:40We all know so much about paperwork.
01:43We've seen Americans at their best, but we've seen government at its most frustrating
01:49because we were part of the largest, most bureaucratic bureaucracy in the world,
01:52which is the United States Department of Defense.
01:56And yet we can make it make us better off.
02:00So take the budget.
02:01And, again, look, everybody's talking, including me, talking about the jumbo jet
02:04because I'm pissed off about the jumbo jet.
02:06But I believe the most important story today is that the numbers started coming back
02:12on the budget reconciliation put forward by the congressional Republicans,
02:16which last time I checked, literally as we speak,
02:18they're marking up in committee and voting on.
02:20And it is literally a zero-sum game
02:22because the more they do this, the less there is for that.
02:25So, yes, I am against the enormous tax cuts for the rich that they are pushing through.
02:30But part of why we're against that is we're for taking those dollars and using them
02:42to make sure that nobody in this country,
02:46no child in this country goes without health insurance,
02:48to make sure that no child in this country goes hungry.
02:51We heard earlier about that USDA program that my friend and colleague,
02:59Secretary Vilsack, had to help make sure that more food goes directly from farms
03:03to people who need it.
03:04I'm for that.
03:05We could do that.
03:06We could do better.
03:07Look, we've got to come up with some new answers.
03:10And I'm talking about my party, too.
03:13The post-World War II order, international and domestic, is gone.
03:19Or at least it will be by the time these guys are done with it.
03:23And the truth is, it's been a while since it was really keeping up with the realities
03:27of the 21st century.
03:30We need to be presenting answers in accordance with our values
03:34on how to make sure government can actually get stuff done,
03:38actually work, be more user-friendly, deliver.
03:41And that means some tough conversations on our own side
03:44about how we get in our own way sometimes with government.
03:46But as somebody who worked for years to deliver transportation projects,
03:50I know there's things we could do to make that happen faster and better.
03:54And it means being ready for some of these things coming our way.
03:57I think even now we are underreacting to stuff like artificial intelligence.
04:02Or as President Trump's Secretary of Education calls it, A-1.
04:06I don't know if you saw this.
04:07She thinks there's something called A-1.
04:21Which means she doesn't understand that it stands for AI.
04:25Which means she doesn't understand artificial intelligence.
04:27But for all the problems that technology can create,
04:41it can actually create a future where we're working less hours
04:44and have more money in our pocket.
04:46That's something we're for.
04:48But it means making sure that the incredible gains
04:51that come from that technology,
04:53that we have a policy structure that gets a share of that out
04:56to the American people instead of taking somebody
04:58from being worth $200 billion to $400 billion.
05:03That's what we're for, among other things.
05:08Let's see.
05:10Right here.