Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg mocked Education Secretary Linda McMahon during an MSNBC appearance after she recently went viral for confusing AI with A1, the steak sauce brand.
McMahon slipped up during her appearance at the ASU+GSV Summit last month. While discussing the state of modern education, she brought up the role of AI in today’s classrooms.
She said:
“You know, [on the subject of] AI development. I mean, how can we educate at the speed of light if we don’t have the best technology around, you know, to do that?”
“I heard—I think it was a letter or a report that I heard this morning, I wish I could remember the source—but there’s a school system that’s gonna start making sure that first graders, or even pre-K, have A1 teaching every year starting that far down in the grades.”
“And that’s a wonderful thing. Kids are sponges. They just absorb everything. Wasn’t all that long ago that it was, ‘We’re gonna have internet in our schools. Woo!’”
“Now, OK, let’s see A1 and how can that be helpful? How can it be helpful in one-on-one instruction? How can it be helpful in absorbing more information for those fast learners?”
“It can be more one-on-one directed. Those are the kinds of things and innovations that I wanna see continue to develop.”
Oh my god. The Secretary of Education does not know the difference between the letter "I" and the number "1" and has no clue what Artificial Intelligence is.
She is so unqualified and grossly ignorant…that she fits right in the Trump administration.
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) April 11, 2025
Speaking with MSNBC’s Jen Psaki on Tuesday, Buttigieg mocked McMahon’s “A1” blunder and pointed to it as further evidence that she’s unfit for the role:
“You’ve got the Secretary of Education saying that we need to make sure kids are trained in something she calls ‘A1’ which means she doesn’t understand that it’s AI, which means she doesn’t understand artificial intelligence.”“Like I love A1 Steak Sauce, but A1 steak sauce is not one of the most important things confronting humanity right now. Artificial intelligence is. And somebody who doesn’t understand that probably should not be leading an important federal agency.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Many agreed.
Buttigieg also took the time to blast the Trump administration’s cabinet over “Signalgate” and the mishandling of classified information, calling it part of a troubling “pattern.”
He said sending “incredibly sensitive information to the wrong people” was more than just a mistake—it underscored that many officials “don’t know what they’re doing.”
Leading the Defense Department, he said—taking aim at Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has continued to downplay the scandal—is “one of the most important jobs of anybody in the human species,” and when you’ve got the secretary of defense “playing fast and loose with classified information,” it raises serious concerns.