Is Trump All In on Biden’s Transportation Agenda?
A DOT press release shows that beyond the distracting claims and hyperbole, Trump's administration is piggy-backing on many of his predecessor's accomplishments.
On June 10th the U.S. Department of Transportation sent out a press release touting a large batch of infrastructure grants it had recently processed. It was written carefully, if histrionically, to create an impression of the current administration’s apparent accomplishments, of Biden’s supposed incompetence, and also to paint the previous administration as far left and out of touch with Americans’ priorities. It included a smattering of phrases that don’t refer to anything real, like “Green New Scam” and “radical political agenda,” as well as hyperbole such as “this historic administration” and “cynics in the press hysterically warned of doomsday delays.”
Beyond the nonsense, which is there to throw Americans off the scent of the truth, there is some less-than-truthful presentation of facts, also meant to obscure not only Biden’s role in advancing transportation infrastructure in this country, but also of the Trump Administration’s somewhat surprising enthusiasm for continuing it.
I’m going to break down the language in the release here, to give a better understanding of the distance between the current administration’s wording and the facts of the matter, and to hopefully uncover what it is really saying and doing.
Let’s start with the headline:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Clears 1/3 of Biden-Buttigieg Backlog in Lightning Speed to Get America Building Again