Buttigieg Mocks People Who Don’t Want Electric Vehicles

(RepublicanReport.org) – Joe Biden issued his administration’s EV Acceleration Challenge in March 2023. The president called on the nation to dedicate resources to achieving his goal of ensuring that electric vehicles (EVs) will constitute half of all new sales by 2030. Since then, administration officials have relentlessly pursued that objective despite public outcry against the shift. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently took things to the extreme when he mocked people who didn’t want electric cars.

On April 2, Buttigieg sat down for an interview with Fox News, and the topic quickly turned to the Biden Administration’s push to adopt EVs. “America’s Newsroom” co-host John Roberts pointed out that Ford Motor Company recently announced its decision to lay off roughly two-thirds of its workforce at its F-150 Lightening Electric Truck plant. He also noted that Tesla’s first-quarter sales fell by 8.5%.

“EV sales are nowhere near what [Biden] wanted,” Roberts explained. He asked Buttigieg why the administration continued its efforts to “shove [EVs] down consumers’ throats” despite the apparent lack of interest.

Stunningly, the transportation secretary dismissed Tesla’s waning sales figures and claimed consumers wanted to buy EVs. Buttigieg said the “automotive sector is moving toward EVs,” adding that it would be futile to “pretend otherwise.” He compared people debating the shift to EVs to conversations with people saying they thought they could keep their “landlines forever” in the 2000s.

Steve Guest, a former communication advisor for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), posted a clip of the exchange on his X/Twitter account. As one might expect, users quickly responded to Buttigieg’s claim, and not in a good way.

WATCH: Pete Buttigieg mocks Americans who don't want to be forced into buying electric vehicles:

"I feel like it's the early 2000s and I'm talking to some people who think that we can just have landline phones forever." pic.twitter.com/Pz28FEmfVQ

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) April 2, 2024

For instance, frequent Fox News guest Larry Behrens noted that if “EVs were so successful,” why did Biden administration officials keep resorting to using “executive fiats to force them on us?” Another user said he had been selling cars for nearly three decades and confirmed that “there’s not a lot of serious interest in EVs.”