Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tried to attack the Biden administration for supporting electric vehicles (EVs), and out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s response was priceless.
“Do you think gas prices are high now?” Greene asked at a rally in Las Vegas this past June. “Just wait until you’re forced to drive an electric vehicle.”
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The crowd booed, and Greene waved her hand and said, “Exactly.”
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Republicans frequently say that the Biden administration will “force” people to drive electric vehicles, despite no evidence for the claim or even an explanation of how they would do it. But the problems with Greene’s statement go beyond that.
“It’s also probably worth noting for Marjorie Taylor Greene that you probably aren’t too concerned about the cost of gas when you’re driving an EV,” podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen said after he played the clip in an interview with Buttigieg.
Buttigieg then pointed out the Econ 101 mistake that Greene made.
“If you really wanted to think it through, I suppose if everybody’s driving an EV, then global petroleum markets would probably show a drop in demand, which means oil would actually be cheaper,” Buttigieg said. “But I doubt she thought through all of this.”
The Biden administration has been encouraging people to buy EVs, vehicles that many conservatives are ideologically opposed to. Because of his position in the administration, Buttigieg has had to respond to the notion that President Joe Biden will force people to drive EVs in the past.
Greene herself accused Buttigieg of trying to “emasculate the way we drive” by supporting the 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 manhood is not connected to whether my vehicle is fueled by gasoline or whether it’s fueled by electricity,” he continued. “This is a practical matter.”
Earlier that year, Greene used Buttigieg’s support of EVs to accuse him of sexually abusing children.
“You know what?” she said at the time. “Pete Buttigieg can take his electric vehicles and his bicycles, and he and his husband can stay out of our girls’ bathroom.”
“The reason you hear somebody like that making nonsensical – literally nonsensical comments like that, I don’t know what you’d do with an electric vehicle in any 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 commentary or thoughts or words it would be the most constructive to be debating or weighing right now, it wouldn’t be the two or three members of Congress who get the most attention on Twitter for whatever outrage they try to outdo each other on.”
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