Pete Buttigieg wanted to blast the new DeSantis anti-gay Trump attack ad, but he held back. He instead ridiculed DeSantis’ attempt to prove his masculinity by parading between oiled-bodied men. He then pivoted to the good works the administration was concentrating on.
Buttigieg ridiculed DeSantis
CNN’s State of the Union host Dana Bash played a clip from primary MAGA Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. The ad is an attack ad associating Trump with supporting LGBTQ issues. Pete Buttigieg’s first response ridiculed Ron DeSantis and asked the prescient question that politicians should be concentrated on.
” I’m going to choose my words carefully, partly because I’m appearing as secretary,” Pete Buttigieg replied. “So I can’t talk about campaigns, and I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space. Who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve.”
And that is the issue. Republicans, and MAGA folks in particular, are busy concentrating on who can hate or malign the other ad nauseam. It is a contest of who has the ability to be the meanest. The secretary immediately pivoted to what the narrative should be. One of the administration’s accomplishments and doing the work to help all Americans.
“We are focused as an administration on how to get things done to make people better off,” the secretary continued. “I spent my week traveling around the country to places that are benefiting from infrastructure funding. We were in Appalachia and in an Eastern Kentucky community that’s been wiped out by floods repeatedly, and we’re bringing them highway funding that’s going to help them not only improve the road but also improve the dam and protect them from floods in the future.”
He continued enumerating the work the administration is doing to make people’s lives better. More importantly, he said the administration would be letting people know the genesis of all the good things happening that directly affect their lives.
