In an era of increasingly childish politics, Pete Buttigieg is a breath of fresh air.
The Indiana native has been in the political arena for more than a decade now, and in that time he’s established himself as an intelligent and forward-thinking individual with a focus on the actual needs of American citizens. It helped him get elected (and re-elected) as Indiana’s mayor, and it could help him secure a position at Kamala Harris’ side as part of her 2024 bid for president.
Buttigieg is a class act, and that fact is all the more obvious when his political stylings are compared to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and of course Donald Trump. While his opponents rely on ad hominem attacks and brazenly offensive language, he maintains a mature and elegant approach to politics. He doesn’t belittle women without children, he doesn’t mock his opponents, and when asked questions, he actually answers them.
This was made clear in a clip posted to X, in which the 42-year-old favorite can be seen dressing down several Fox News interviewers without uttering a single vicious word or personal attack. Across three minutes and 11 seconds, Buttigieg can instead be seen pushing back on falsehoods and classily chiding his political opponents.
His response to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s blatantly homophobic statements about electric vehicles “emasculating” the American public? “My sense of manhood is not connected to whether my vehicle is fueled by gasoline,” paired with some gloriously mature shade when he noted that “there are other members of Congress that I pay more attention to.”
Now that’s a classy insult. It pairs well with several other included Buttigieg clips, in which he discusses Donald Trump’s “secret Chinese bank account,” and notes that peaceful protest is an inherent American right, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes elected officials.
It also pairs spectacularly with another Buttigieg clip that promptly went viral, in which the secretary of transportation reprimands Trump and his cabinet for violating precedent in abolishing Roe v. Wade. Chastizing the former president for failing to uphold almost every promise made on the campaign trail, Buttigieg gracefully notes that “he actually did keep two promises. He kept his promise to destroy the right to choose in this country, and he kept his promise on tax cuts for the rich. And if you want to know what a second Trump term would be like, I would start by looking at those rare promises that he actually managed to keep.”
If that’s not a mic-drop moment, I don’t know what is.