‘But Hold On!’ Pete Buttigieg Chafes at Chris Wallace’s Grilling About Inflation and Biden Relief Funds

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg chafed at CNN anchor Chris Wallace’s  grilling over inflation, and how much President Joe Biden’s policies are responsible for it.

The latest interviews from Wallace’s series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace on HBO Max feature Buttigieg, Sopranos actor Michael Imperioli, and media entrepreneur Byron Allen.

In his interview with Buttigieg, Wallace kicked things off with some questions about the midterm, but then pivoted to inflation after Secretary Pete referenced the “cost of living” in one of his answers.

Things got contentious when Wallace suggested the $3 trillion in relief spending caused the spike in inflation, and Buttigieg tried to interrupt him. He pushed back after Wallace had finished his question:

SEC. PETE BUTTIGIEG: But there’s no way that following the House Republican playbook of raising tact and the Senate Republican playbook of raising taxes on poor and middle income people, continuing to lower taxes and cut taxes on wealthy and the corporations, some of which pay zero. Siding with big pharmaceutical companies and doing nothing to hold oil companies accountable for the absurd profitability, even relative to the price of oil that’s come down. There’s no way that’s a winning formula. So any time anybody wants to debate what to do about inflation, I’m here for that debate. But we have heard nothing from the other side with anything actionable.

CHRIS WALLACE: Respectfully, sir, you have heard something, which is that spending more than $3 trillion in federal spending at a time when demand so outstrip supply because of supply chain problems.

SEC. PETE BUTTIGIEG: Well, but, but hold on!

CHRIS WALLACE: Let me –.

SEC. PETE BUTTIGIEG: I don’t — This is important…

CHRIS WALLACE: Let me ask the question. That, that spending $3 trillion added, boosted demand, boosted inflation, that the Inflation Reduction Act isn’t going to actually reduce inflation for the next couple of years. And that because you were so slow, you, the administration, the Federal Reserve, everybody, in terms of dealing with inflation, now you got to overcorrect and we’re going to get a recession.

SEC. PETE BUTTIGIEG: Well, look, the invest–

CHRIS WALLACE: Is that a formula for success?

SEC. PETE BUTTIGIEG: The investments in the infrastructure law are investments in the supply side. Yeah, the issue is demand came back, people got back to work. There was money in Americans pockets and supply struggled to keep up. Right. That’s the basic root of the inflationary pressure that we have here. But a big part of why supply has struggled to keep up is, for example, on the transportation side, the fact that our supply chains and our transportation infrastructure has needed to be updated for years. So do we regret rescuing the American economy? No. Do we regret the actions that brought unemployment below 4%? No.

CHRIS WALLACE: Do you regret 8 percent inflation?

SEC. PETE BUTTIGIEG: Nobody likes inflation.

CHRIS WALLACE: And the fact that the administration called a transitory for months when everybody else was saying, people like Larry Summers were saying, you got to start dealing with that.

SEC. PETE BUTTIGIEG: Look, obviously, inflation is a major concern. It’s the president’s identified as his top economic priority. But again, I’ve heard nothing, literally nothing by way of concrete proposals from the other side on what to do it. And what we’re doing concretely is creating more breathing room for American families by cutting the cost of everything from energy to prescription drugs.

Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace drops three full episodes each Friday morning, and CNN airs a version recapping highlights of the episodes every Sunday at 7 p.m.

Watch the full exchange above via HBO Max and CNN.