Pete Buttigieg didn't call Baltimore bridge 'racist.' Post distorts old remarks | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read
3

The claim: Pete Buttigieg said collapsed Baltimore bridge was ‘racist’

A March 27 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a photo of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg speaking at the White House.

“Pete Buttigieg says Francis Scott Key Bridge was racist,” reads the text in the post.

It was shared more than 80 times in a day. Other versions of the claim circulated elsewhere on Facebook.

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Our rating: False

Buttigieg didn’t call the bridge racist. The post misrepresents comments that predate the collapse by more than two years and refer to the design of some bridges and roadways across the country.

Claim distorts comments that predate bridge collapse

The 1.6-mile Key Bridge collapsed into the Patapsco River at around 1:30 a.m. ET March 26 after a cargo vessel leaving the Port of Baltimore struck one of its columns. Buttigieg joined Maryland Gov. Wes Moore later that day in Baltimore, then made subsequent public appearances where he expressed his desire to reopen the port and rebuild the structure.

But at no point has he called the bridge “racist,” as the claim states. The Facebook post distorts a comment he made more than two years earlier about how some bridges and roadways were designed. He did not refer specifically to the Key Bridge.

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After Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal in November 2021, a reporter asked Buttigieg about correcting the racist design of some roadways. He responded that "if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a Black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach – or that would have been – in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices."

Buttigieg, who launched a $1 billion pilot program in June 2022 to offer aid to reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated or divided by road projects, has made multiple media appearances in the aftermath of the collapse. But he didn't suggest in any of those that any component of the structure's design was racist.

Buttigieg has declined to speculate on what led to the crash and collapse, saying in an interview with CBS News that the National Transportation and Safety Board, which operates independently of the Biden Administration, will make that determination.

The bridge collapse has spawned an array of misinformation online. Among the false claims debunked by USA TODAY are assertions that “dynamite” was detonated on the structure and that a cyberattack caused the ship to crash into the bridge.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the claim but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact debunked a similar version of the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, Pete Buttigieg didn't call Baltimore bridge 'racist' | Fact check

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