Satirical headline about Pete Buttigieg and the Key Bridge taken out of context

A recent Facebook post shared a headline from a satire website but not everyone got the joke. 

"Buttigieg praises cargo ship for helping dismantle racism in American roads," the headline said alongside photos of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the cargo ship that crashed into  Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. 

"And these are the people running our country," one person commented. 

"I didn’t read the article … but it sounds like something he would say," someone else said.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Reading the article, from the Babylon Bee, may have clarified that this didn’t happen. 

Comments Buttigieg made in 2021 are being taken out of context since the Key Bridge’s collapse. PolitiFact debunked another social media post that claimed the transportation secretary blamed the bridge’s collapse on "racism." 

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Rather, in a 2021 interview, Buttigieg said racism has sometimes factored into highway planning and construction. 

"There is racism physically built into some of our highways, and that’s why the jobs plan has specifically committed to reconnect some of the communities that were divided by these dollars," Buttigieg said during the interview, which was published April 6. He was referring to President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan proposal, which would provide funding for infrastructure including roads, highways and bridges.

We rate claims that Buttigieg actually praised a cargo ship for helping to dismantle racism in American roads False.