Pete Buttigieg Mocks Linda McMahon For AI-A1 Mixup At Iowa Town Hall

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At his VoteVets Action Fund town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg mocked Education Sec. Linda McMahon.

Transcript

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.

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