Pete Responds To Trump's Speech, Live on CNN

Let's bring in Pete Buttigieg. He served as Transportation Secretary under President Biden. Secretary Buttigieg, good to see you. So what's your reaction to the speech? What's your reaction

to the results from our instant poll? Well, I'm not surprised that those numbers seem to suggest that this is, if I understand them right, the weakest performance ever, at least the weakest performance ever by President Trump in a state of the union, because there's this big disconnect between the tone he's taking, everything's going along fine and we're just going to do more of it, and what people are actually feeling at home, where things are more expensive and the country feels like it is even more chaotic

than it may have been before. And so, remember, the central promise of this campaign, certainly the day one promise of his presidency is I will make things more affordable for you. He's come in, he's done the opposite. And by the way, it's not only that he has tried and failed to cut prices or cut inflation, that would be bad enough, but it's that he's actually actively increased our costs. And you can't trick people about that.

Look, about $1,000 a household is what his tariffs cost the average American household last year. And maybe to him and his billionaire allies, the kinds of people who got most of his tax cuts, maybe that's not a lot of money. But, of course, to most Americans, $1,000 is a lot of money. You notice that in your family budget and you can't be tricked about that by the president spinning stories for a two hour long speech.

So let's talk about a couple of things having to do with affordability since you're bringing that up, which is using the argument of affordability right now, Democrats, are the same ones that supported the Biden policies that created the huge spike in inflation and created, in his view, the mess that we're in. How do you respond to that?

Yeah, if he was in his first few months, he might have been able to get away with that. But now that we're in the second year, and remember, Americans understand exactly what these tariffs did to them. That's why they're so unpopular. That's why the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of the president's handling of inflation in the economy. We know that he is making us pay a tax called a tariff on the things that we buy every day. And even though the Supreme Court held that many of the tariffs he implemented were illegal and struck them down, it's not clear that he certainly doesn't seem to have any intention of giving us our money back as Americans.

And we know that some of those tariffs are still on the books, and we're still paying what will be at least hundreds of dollars per household right now. One of the many lies he told tonight was that other countries are paying it. Again, you can't trick Americans about that because we see that on our bills. So, of course, blame shifting is a very typical thing you're going to see from this White House. But given that we all saw with our own eyes him implementing the tariffs and charging us more, we all saw that it was Republicans

who were against the lower health care premiums, given that we all saw the tax cuts for billionaires that this president passed in his first year. I think it's pretty hard to suggest that the economic problems can be traced to the previous administration. By the way, the other thing really important about the tariffs, they didn't work, right? So it's not just that we're paying more, it's that these economic measures are getting

worse. We saw economic growth dramatically slowing in the last quarter. We saw manufacturing jobs which went up and up and up. They went down in the course of the last year. So you got to ask yourself, well, what's changed in 2025 compared to before? And obviously what changed is the president.

There are some other things that the president talked about that would address affordability, even if the president said that it was kind of a Democratic invented issue and also that Democrats started to begin with. They are, they include the fact that taxes on tips and taxes on overtime are going to be eliminated because of provisions from the bill that passed last year. He talked about the housing crisis and not banning Wall Street companies from buying up houses to rent to prevent people from being able to buy them. He talked about a measure

Trump Rx which would lower the cost of prescription drugs. I mean he is Acknowledging in a way even if he's saying that things are great. He is acknowledging that there's a lot more that can be done

Yeah, but in every case it's window dressing, right? The Trump Rx thing, which is largely taking credit for kind of an existing coupon program as I understand it, doesn't really balance out the fact that the Republicans are making so many Americans pay more on their health care premiums. The tax on tips thing, which I think it's great to have that be tax free, but it doesn't really outweigh the fact that so many Americans are facing the cost of the major, major tax cuts for billionaires.

It was, of course, that and the corporate tax cuts. That's the main focus of his tax policy. The housing piece, you know, I am also skeptical of these firms going in and buying houses, but for the other 99 percent of houses that aren't owned by those kinds of firms, we gotta hear more of a clear plan. And one of the things that's making it

hard to afford a mortgage right now is interest rates. Interest rates are pushed up by the enormous deficits created by the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest and the corporations. So in every case, he's offering a little droplet of something.

Some things I might even agree with, but that little droplet goes into a bucket of things he has done to actively make the problem worse. And I think folks sitting at home, my neighbors in Michigan, folks I meet in my travels see it. And I was just, I just met a brewer in New Hampshire who was walking me through just how much more a beer costs now, a can of beer that they produce because of the tariffs. And whether we're talking about a can of beer, whether we're talking about automotive equipment coming in, we see it left and right. We're feeling it.

And everybody knows, or at least the vast majority of Americans get, that we are paying more specifically because of Donald Trump's policies.

A brewery in New Hampshire, you said?

Yeah. It was a good example of how this isn't just something going into industrial goods, like a can of beer. And it's a small business kind of place that a lot of people gather at and count on as

a company.

No, I get it. Look, I can't eat all of those costs. Some of those got to go to our consumers.

No, I just didn't know. I went to college in New Hampshire, I just didn't know if you know that that's actually where they have the first in the nation primary. But just what I just did on the top of my head. Secretary Buttigieg, good to see you. Secretary Buttigieg, good to see you.

Thank you so much.