Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday compared Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s proposed allocation of infrastructure funds to how things were in America when segregation was legal.
Appearing as a guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Kilmeade pounced on the secretary’s comments on MSNBC last week about racial gaps in usage of certain forms of transportation. Buttigieg also recently stressed that infrastructure decisions he makes have an inherent racial and climate component, something he has repeatedly said.
“I thought we got away from the black roads and white roads, and white water fountains and black water fountains, and black bathrooms and white bathrooms. But now we are down to that again,” Kilmeade complained. “We are going to fix the roads for minorities and make sure the roads are equal? Unbelievable the way this administration sees race and green climate in just about everything. It’s almost comical if we weren’t forced to live in it.”
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Buttigieg’s comments about racial inequities in the transportation system have been mocked by right-wing commentators and politicians before. In November, Tucker Carlson called the former South Bend mayor one of the “dumbest people in the world.” Carlson was apparently indifferent to the real world examples that illustrate Buttigieg’s point.
Kilmeade’s use of a bad analogy to advance a worn-out complaint was just the first instance of the Fox host grumbling about the Biden administration official. Kilmeade also mocked as far-fetched Buttigieg’s newly unveiled plan to reduce, and eventually eliminate, road fatalities.
“I’m an optimist,” Kilmeade began, “but I don’t believe there’s any human being that can get us down to zero traffic deaths. If so, I can take out my seatbelts and empty my dashboard of the airbag. I’m going to have to look into that.”
Later, Carlson chimed in that Buttigieg will in fact reach this goal “by eliminating cars.”
“So I think he actually may make good on that,” Carlson said, perhaps making a dig at the transportation secretary’s emphasis on public transportation. Buttigieg, of course, has never said he aims to get all cars off the roads.
