Pete Buttigieg takes the reins at DOT and brings his Twitter army with him.
Pete Buttigieg will be the next Transportation secretary, bringing his political celebrity and legion of super fans to a mammoth agency that’s not used to headlines — unless they’re jokes about “Infrastructure Week.”
After four years of leadership under former President Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, a Washington, D.C., insider who was notoriously unavailable to reporters, DOT has a new leader who made near-daily appearances on cable TV even before the Senate confirmed him in an 86-13 vote Tuesday.
The one-time presidential candidate and former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has fielded questions during cable TV appearances on everything from impeachment to the former administration’s transgender military ban, serving as what amounts to a surrogate for President Joe Biden’s policies writ large. Continue reading.