It makes me nothing short of giddy to know that America’s number two toxic male just got his ass handed to him by a gay man he was making fun of for being gay. I’m actually not sure if Donald Trump Jr. is the second-most toxic male in the country, I just like calling him “number two.”
Anyway, Lil’ Don is up to his antics again on the ol’ interwebs, making har-de-har-har GAY jokes on social media. Junior hates the idea of anyone he thinks of as less than human having any kind of success, so he popped over to his pal Elon’s house at X to poke fun at Pete.
Does not seem like a great return on investment… but hey he checked a woke box so it’s totally worth it. 🙄 https://t.co/VSOYAJgOQV [1]
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 25, 2024 [2]
Don retweeted a claim by Ohio Republican Michael Rulli that “Pete Buttigieg will leave his post as Transportation Secretary having spent $7.5 BILLION to build 8 EV charging stations. His legacy will be squandering billions on something nobody wants, while millions struggle to afford the things they need.”
If you think the claim seems dubious, you are of course correct. It’s a stupid thing to believe to begin with, and it took almost no time at all before the issue was debunked, including with information from Pete Buttigieg himself.
Of course, the purpose of Junior’s addition to the conversation wasn’t even to talk about EVs or charging stations or even about the budget. It was simply to state outright that Pete Buttigieg only got his job because “woke” people needed a “woke” choice for the position, and Pete is gay.
Being the silly pragmatist that I am, I’d always assumed that Joe named Pete Transportation Secretary because he was smart. Even at my most cynical, I thought maybe it was because Pete was a formidable primary opponent, and it’s traditional to give appointments to your former primary rivals.
Not in Trumpworld. They don’t believe that women can get jobs without using sex to gain advancement. They don’t believe that Black people are qualified to do anything without being called a DEI hire. And a gay man can’t possibly become Secretary of Transportation for any reason other than someone wanting to fill a quota of gay appointees.
All of that is as hilariously false as the idea that anyone spent seven and a half billion dollars to build eight charging stations. You could buy the White House 20 times with that much money.
But, being as even-handed as Pete is, he decided to school Junior on what happened and didn’t happen with all that money. And he did it all back via social media, to the point that he got kudos from Lil’ Don’s pal Elon.
The tweet you quoted is false.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) November 25, 2024 [3]
To start with, $7.5B has not been spent, nor anything like that. That’s the entire program budget for the NEVI program, which is to help build out a national charging network by 2030.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) November 26, 2024 [4]
Secondly, there are chargers now operational in nine states (which does not mean 9 chargers, to be clear). These are only the first handful though. Most are to be built in the 2nd half of the decade.
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) November 26, 2024 [5]
Third, in this program the chargers are built by the states, not the federal government. And while it takes time to get a novel multi-billion dollar program going across 50 states, the states are on track. https://t.co/Sf0hkzBLyn [6]
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) November 26, 2024 [7]
For anyone interested in this program and where the chargers are going, here’s further data and a map. https://t.co/ROs2XPJhSp [8]
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) November 26, 2024 [9]
Again, if it wasn’t already humiliating enough for Junior to get publicly roasted with facts — ones that were easily verifiable to begin with — he also got to watch Elon Musk give Pete props for the information:
This is helpful to understand
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 26, 2024 [10]
Now, don’t let it sound like I’m admiring Elon Musk for admitting that Pete was giving good and useful information here. As the owner of the biggest US electric vehicle manufacturer and the second-biggest in the world, I feel like this is all stuff that Elon probably should have been keeping up on. In fact, if they’re such good friends, you might think Musk would’ve prevented Junior from making an ass of himself publicly like that by just explaining it to him.
Or, you know, maybe he just meant that Pete had done a pretty good job of explaining it.
Either way, Junior looked like a jackass and Elon made Pete out to be the good guy in the situation. But the thing is, it’s just never a good idea to come for Pete Buttigieg. He knows more than you, and he’s not afraid to say it very matter-of-factly.