Friday, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson criticized the Biden administration’s ineffective response to soaring energy costs, including gasoline, which has recently hit a record-high price.
Carlson took exception to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who, instead of addressing that problem, addressed the abortion issue recently.
The FNC host called for Buttigieg’s resignation.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Let’s say just for the sake of a mind experiment that you’re the Secretary of Transportation for the United States of America. That’s a big job. But what would you do all day? Well, that’s a pretty easy one because every Secretary of Transportation has the same two concerns, the overriding concerns, and despite what they may tell you, neither one of these concerns has anything to do with systemic racism.
So your first concern would be the price of diesel fuel. Diesel fuel is what makes transportation possible in this country. Virtually everything you buy in America arrived by diesel engine, our entire trucking fleet runs on diesel, so does every single freight locomotive in the United States.
So if diesel prices get too high, transportation — and you’re the Secretary of Transportation — stops. The price of nearly everything becomes unaffordable. So inflation is directly connected to transportation and transportation requires diesel.
It turns out the diesel fuel prices are the key to a lot of the American economy, and you would know that.
Your second concern if you were Transportation Secretary would be domestic air travel. This is a huge country, it’s far too big a country not to have reliable commercial flights from one place to another. Businesses depend on the airlines and so do families.
For generations, they’ve been able to depend on the airlines. America has had the most efficient air service in the world. Planes land on time, they don’t crash. So maintaining that system of air travel is probably the top concern of the United States Transportation Department.
So that is what you would be worried about if you were the Secretary: Diesel and airlines. And yet remarkably, in less than a year and a half, under Joe Biden, both of these things, fuel costs and air travel have gone dramatically in the wrong direction.
The price of diesel has now hit its highest price ever recorded in history. The national average is up 70 percent since just last year, it’s now $5.53 a gallon. That’s terrible for truckers, but it’s also terrible for you, it means you’re paying much more for everything you buy. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Here on I-70, a lot of big trucks making the cross country hauls, but a major increase in diesel prices. With the numbers ticking higher and higher with no end in sight, it is hitting them hard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You pay out a lot more because you’re doing the same amount of work and mileage, but you’re paying a lot more at the pump.
If you’ve got it or use it or wear it or whatever, a truck touched it one time or another.
REPORTER: So whether or not you have to buy diesel fuel, the price hike affects your goods, groceries, and services.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You pay for it one way or the other.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: The cost of a gallon of diesel fuel rose by more than a dollar in just Biden’s first year as President, that was the largest annual increase in over a decade. Why is this happening? Well, because Joe Biden made it happen. This was intentional.
It’s a product of his clampdown of domestic energy production and especially of his lunatic war against Vladimir Putin, the war that both parties seem to be in favor of, but that is crushing the United States by the sanctions of Russia that have been especially counterproductive.
So back in February, you may remember that Joe Biden pledged to destroy the Russian economy. Let’s make them poor, or is this just in retaliation for installing Donald Trump as President.
So what happened next? Well, four months later, the opposite has happened. The ruble is now at a four-year high. Thanks, Joe Biden, Russia has the largest gold reserves on Planet Earth. Meanwhile, in this country, you can’t afford gasoline.
Oh, so the opposite from what Joe Biden predicted happened. What’s his explanation for that? Explanation? Sorry. It was an Act of God. I can’t do anything about it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are in a situation where, you know because of a war in Ukraine, gas prices and food prices are extremely high.
There’s a lot going on right now, but the idea we’re going to be able to now click a switch to bring down the cost of gasoline is not likely in the near term, nor is it with regard to food.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, there’s nothing we could do. Oh, well, you could push to an end of the war in Ukraine, which Biden is single handedly prolonging. You could force your client state, Ukraine, to come to the table, both countries Russia and Ukraine want to do that. The only reason this war continues is because the White House is forcing him to continue.
And then by the way you could stop shutting down energy pipelines. You can stop canceling oil drilling. But of course, Biden doesn’t plan to do that, it would help America too much. Instead, he is pleading with Venezuela for oil, and then pleading with the Saudis.
Wasn’t it just the other day that the United States was energy independent? Yes, but now, we’re begging dictatorships to sell us oil. But it won’t be enough.
Industry officials are predicting shortages very soon, quote, “I wouldn’t be surprised to see diesel being rationed on the East Coast this summer, said John Catsimatidis, CEO of United Refining Company, quote: “Right now, inventories are low, and we may see a shortage in the coming months.”
What would that look like here? It would be ugly. And again, it has worked to Russia’s advantage. Even “The New York Times” was forced to acknowledge that this week, quote: “China and India could be protected from some of the burden of higher oil prices because Russia is offering them discounted oil. Russia has become the second biggest oil supplier to India.”
So how is this a good thing for the United States? No, it’s the opposite. It is a disaster. And this is the first crisis you would expect the Secretary of Transportation to be on top of.
We can’t afford gasoline, but Russia now has so much oil, it is selling it at a discount to our main global adversary China. That seems bad. But it’s only one crisis that the Transportation Secretary has on his plate.
The second is domestic air travel. It has become totally unreliable, tried to fly anywhere recently? It’s like traveling in India 1985. You have no idea if the planes could arrive or leave, no one will give you a straight answer on that and there is nothing you can do.
It is falling apart, and anyone who has tried to go anywhere, particularly this weekend can tell you that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABC REPORTER: Since Friday, we’ve seen more than 2,500 flights canceled in to and out of the U.S.
Delta seeing the most blaming weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing and increased COVID case rates.
The FAA reporting staffing shortages at its air Traffic Control Center in Jacksonville, one of the busiest in the nation, saying in a statement, “Weather was a factor, but staffing has been a challenge.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, staffing has been a challenge. Why is that? Maybe because Joe Biden forced the airlines to fire employees that didn’t want his ineffective shot, and so the system fell apart, there aren’t enough people to run it. Airlines can no longer provide on-time flights.
So guess what rich people are doing? Well, rather than work to fix the system, they are just opting out completely, they’re flying private. According to latest earnings report from the charter airline company, Wheels Up, in March of 2020, it had 6,300 active members. That number has now nearly doubled to 12,400, and it’s not just Wheels Up. That’s the trend across the industry.
According to private jet data provided by airports, there were total in April of 2019 of 389,000 private jet flights in this country. Again, April 2019. In April this year, there are more than 475,000 because everyone is so much richer after the COVID lockdowns, no, because if you can afford to fly private and get out of our crumbling commercial air system, you will.
But if you can’t afford it, good luck getting where you’re going. You’re probably going to spend some unscheduled time in an airport.
For the first three months of 2022, major airlines in this country recorded a cancellation rate that is 50 percent higher than it was for the same period in 2019, fifty percent higher. Good work, Joe Biden.
In the first quarter of this year, the Department of Transportation received more than 13,000 complaints about airline services, that’s up 330 percent from the first quarter of 2019. What a disaster.
And not only are you unlikely to get where you’re going on time, you’re also going to pay a lot more for your ticket. The average price of a domestic roundtrip flight is now more than $400.00. That’s up 70 percent since January.
In January, the average cost was $236.00. It’s up 40 percent from this time last year when the average price was $288.00. That’s gas prices. Airlines are actually cutting routes because it’s no longer profitable for them because gas is too high. Again, thanks, Joe Biden.
JetBlue is killing 27 regular routes this summer, height of the travel season; Delta is getting rid of a hundred.
So what is the Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg doing about this? Working feverishly to fix it? No. Working feverishly on the equity agenda, their only concern.
So vax mandates put the airlines into turmoil without saving a single life, now, the administration is demanding that airlines hire fewer White pilots and fewer White air traffic controllers because that was the real problem because skin color somehow is related to aeronautical skill. And airlines are doing it.
United has announced that 50 percent of its company’s pilots will be quote “women or people of color” over the next decade. Why should you care what the color of your pilot is? What does that have to do with anything? No one explains.
But The New York Times is thrilled by it.
They just published this triumphant feature piece, quote: “The End of the All-Male All-White Cockpit” which apparently served us so badly. Again, no one explains why you should care about the race or gender of your airline pilots, everybody cares about their skill, except “The New York Times” and the Biden White House.
By the way, at the same time, the White House is doing all it can to keep fuel prices high. Biden has just pushed the E.U. to stop buying Russian oil. It is payback for getting Trump elected, but the effect is to guarantee higher prices on international oil markets, and that means higher prices for you.
So this is not an accident, they’re doing it on purpose. This is the Green New Deal they couldn’t get through Congress.
And the Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the one who owns stock in an electric vehicle manufacturer, even after she took her current job, came out and admitted this out loud this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER GRANHOLM, U.S. SECRETARY OF ENERGY: What we want to do is to make sure that everyday citizens have access, for example, can get in to, can afford an electric vehicle where you wouldn’t have to worry about the price of gasoline, yet, we’re not at that place yet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So what does Pete Buttigieg who is the Transportation Secretary doing about this? Well, in November, he told Americans in rural areas, the poorest parts of this country to go ahead and buy electric vehicles. “Get a Prius,” even when they cost more than 50 grand. And that same month, of course, he reminded us that our highways are racist quote: “If an underpass was constructed, such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to the beach, were designed too low for it to pass by. Obviously, that reflects racism that went into those design choices.”
Racist roads, can you name one? No, of course not. But these are his obsessions.
More recently, the Transportation Secretary has been telling us about the one thing that is going to fix our high fuel prices and clogged commercial airline travel, and that is of course, abortion.
Here he is on June 1st, more abortion.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: At the end of the day, we reached a view as a country that the way we would resolve this very difficult issue is to trust women. And after 50 years that that’s apparently being thrown out the window.
The broader question that I think is before us now will be: Did we live to see the high watermark of rights and freedoms in this country and watch that begin to move in the opposite direction?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Now that guy is not the Secretary of Abortion or Ladies Rights, that’s the Secretary of Transportation who was lecturing you about abortion, a topic that doesn’t really have anything to do with him on any level, even as our transportation systems are falling apart, and that’s not an overstatement.
He is busy going to policy conferences telling you the real problem in this country is the Supreme Court ruling on abortion.
Pete Buttigieg is a disgrace. He is not even doing the bare minimum to fulfill his job requirements. Pete Buttigieg should resign, at least.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor