Pete Buttigieg rips Marjorie Taylor Greene’s brainless argument about gas prices

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene/Minister Pete Buttigieg Photo: Shutterstock

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tried to attack the Biden administration for its support of electric vehicles (EVs), and the response from our Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was priceless.

“Do you think gas prices are high now?” Greene asked at a rally in Las Vegas last June. “Just wait until you’re forced to drive an electric vehicle.”

Related:

The crowd booed, and Greene waved his hand and said, “Exactly.”

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into the policy impact on the LGBTQ+ community and more.

Republicans often claim that the Biden administration will “force” people to drive electric cars, despite having no evidence to support this and no explanation for how they plan to do so. But the problems with Greene’s statement go beyond that.

“It’s probably also worth noting for Marjorie Taylor Greene that she probably doesn’t worry too much about the cost of gas when she drives an electric vehicle,” podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen said after playing the clip in an interview with Buttigieg.

Buttigieg then pointed out the mistake Greene made in economics.

“If you really thought about it, if everyone drove an electric vehicle, demand in global oil markets would probably go down, which would mean that oil would actually be cheaper,” Buttigieg said. “But I doubt she’s thought all that through.”

The Biden administration has encouraged people to buy electric cars, vehicles that many conservatives oppose for ideological reasons. Because of his position in the administration, Buttigieg has had to respond in the past to the notion that President Joe Biden would force people to drive electric cars.

Greene herself accused Buttigieg of trying to “emasculate the way we drive” by supporting this environmentally friendly form of transportation in 2022.

“I literally don’t even understand what that means,” Buttigieg responded in a later interview.

“My sense of masculinity does not depend on whether my vehicle runs on gasoline or electricity,” he continued. “It’s a practical matter.”

Earlier this year, Greene used Buttigieg’s support for electric vehicles to accuse him of sexually abusing children.

“You know what?” she said at the time. “Pete Buttigieg can take his electric cars and his bikes, and he and his husband can stay out of our girls’ bathroom.”

“The reason you hear someone like her making nonsensical – literally nonsensical – comments like that, I don’t know what you would do with an electric vehicle in a bathroom,” Buttigieg said when asked about her comments in an interview, “is because they don’t want to talk about what we’re actually working on.”

“If I were to make a list of the 10…or 20…or 50…or 200 members of Congress whose comments, thoughts, or words would be most constructive to discuss or weigh in on right now, it wouldn’t be the two or three members of Congress who are getting the most attention on Twitter, no matter how much outrage they try to outdo each other with.”

Don’t forget to share: