In an absolutely wild video and social media post on Thursday, January 2, “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg compared President Joe Biden’s expensive but otherwise unimpressive investments in American infrastructure to the Hoover Dam project, a claim that sparked a great deal of criticism and mockery online.
In the post itself, Mayor Pete wrote that the Biden-Harris Administration had a “Big Deal” for American infrastructure that compares to the Hoover Dam, a clear attempt to connect the faltering duo to FDR’s “New Deal.” He wrote, “I’m confident that a century from now, future Americans will look back on the work we’ve done—much as we look at the Hoover Dam—and see how the Biden-Harris Administration’s “Big Deal” for infrastructure made big things possible.”
In the video itself, Mayor Pete claimed that the Biden Administration and its Department of Transportation had solved the COVID-era supply chain bottlenecks, and solved the problems of the reaction to the disease. He said, in that part of the clip, “President Biden arrived in office with a sober recognition of the scale of the problems our country was facing.”
Speaking a bit later on in the clip, Mayor Pete claimed that the Biden Administration had managed to create millions of jobs, a claim often pushed by members of the Biden-Harris presidency but disputed by most everyone else, as the jobs “created,” as Mayor Pete put it, were much rather people returning to work after COVID than new jobs created under the Biden presidency.
As could be expected, Mayor Pete faced a heavy dose of criticism and mockery over the claims made in the post and video. For example, Mollie Hemmingway, the Editor-in-Chief for The Federalist, jokingly commented, “sir, are you high”? Joking about Mayor Pete’s accomplishments, or more accurately the lack thereof, a commenter on Hemmingway’s comment said, “wait. what did they do for infrastructure? 7 charging stations and a high-speed train to no where.”
Hemmingway was far from the only one to sound off on Mayor Pete’s absurd claims. John Hawkins, a conservative X personality and author, chimed in as well, saying, “If you clowns had been in charge of building the Hoover Dam, it would have cost 400 billion dollars and we wouldn’t have started building it yet.”
In much the same vein, X personality Chad Felix Greene posted, “The entire theme of this administration has been boasting of being the most incredible, history-making, innovative and celebrated administration of all time, despite no one being able to name a single thing they’ve done. It is obnoxious, but they keep strutting around…”
