As the economic fallout from Donald Trump’s war in Iran continues, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Friday to discuss how the administration’s policies are hurting everyday Americans and shared his advice for Democrats ahead of the midterms.
“There is something parallel to past times when there’s been economic pain, but there’s also something very different,” Buttigieg said, adding: “Usually, when you see something like inflation, you see an administration doing everything they can to bring it down. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t, but they’re doing everything they can to drive costs down.
“Right now, we have an administration doing everything they can to drive costs up, and it’s across every category of the economy.”
In addition to the Iran war, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said Trump’s tariffs and energy policies have increased costs across the board for Americans. “So it’s not just that they’re failing to get the cost of living under control in this country,” he said. “It’s that in case after case, every single turn, they are finding ways to actually drive it up. Because for them and their friends, it doesn’t matter. They don’t care.”
Buttigieg added: “There’s clearly a huge disconnect between the kinds of people who can pay the million-dollar entry fee to Mar-a-Lago, the kinds of people who can put millions of dollars into the building of a gilded ballroom at the White House for the president’s fancy dinner parties, and everybody else, from my neighbors in Michigan to the people that I’m meeting on the road.”
However, ahead of the midterms, the former Democratic presidential candidate cautioned members of his party about focusing their messaging too much on Trump and his failures, and not on their vision for the country.
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“The message is: Your everyday life could be better,” he said. “It’s not just everything that this president and this administration are doing wrong; it’s what you’re missing out on because of that, and what’ll happen if we do it right.”
While Buttigieg said he’s hopeful that Democrats will score wins in November, he added that he’s “worried” about what could come next.
“My kind of tough love medicine to fellow Democrats is that we run the risk of doing well in 2026 because of everything that’s going on, and then imagining that our job is just to put everything back the way it was,” he said. “And the old status quo was not working.”
“All of that is what led to all of this,” Buttigieg said, adding: “Not just politically, but in terms of what the right thing to do for this country is. We cannot get caught in the mode of saying we’re just going to piece together everything that they broke and give you the world the way it looked in 2022 or 2012.”
You can watch Buttigieg’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”