Buttigieg hits back at Speaker Johnson’s criticism of Biden’s SOTU address

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg fired back Friday at House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) criticism that President Biden’s State of the Union address was “hyperpartisan” and “vitriolic.”

During a Friday morning appearance on “CNN This Morning,” Buttigieg said some of Johnson’s comments were “literally false,” listing bipartisan legislation that Biden passed through Congress and signed into law.

“Well, the Speaker’s comments are literally false, because the president talked about a bipartisan infrastructure, a bipartisan border bill, his bipartisan unity agenda on confronting things like fentanyl and cancer,” Buttigieg said.

“It’s a matter of fact. Pretty much everything — as far as I recall — that the president mentioned, there’s something probably 60-70 percent of Americans or more would support.”

The Transportation secretary acknowledged that Biden scrutinized Republicans in Congress over their support for slashing tax rates for wealthy individuals, but emphasized that the majority of U.S. voters side with Biden on the issue.

“But while that might be an issue that has strong partisan lines in Congress, out in the country, most Americans — Democrats, independents and Republicans — disagree with congressional Republicans’ agenda to cut taxes for the wealthy and agree with the president that it is wrong for billionaires in our biggest corporations to be paying a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers,” he said.

Johnson said Biden’s speech was “overly partisan” while talking to reporters after the address Thursday night, explaining why Biden got heckled during the speech by a handful of GOP lawmakers.

“People got very emotional tonight because it was an overly partisan speech and it was filled, full of information that is just objectively not true. And so you saw the visceral reaction, I think, from people in the chamber, and I suspect that a lot of people at home were feeling that same frustration,” Johnson said Thursday night.

Biden had a fiery exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of his biggest critics on Capitol Hill, during the speech over Laken Riley, a Georgia college student who was killed by a man who illegally crossed the border, according to police.