Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized former President Donald Trump's running mate J.D. Vance after being shown a clip on CNN of Vance lamenting to far-right pundit Tucker Carlson about "people without children," suggesting that people like Buttigieg are controlling the Democratic Party.
Buttigieg's high profile as a gay man in one of the government's top positions forced him to respond to attacks against him, his sexuality, his relationship with his husband, and the fact they have children.
The pushback against his decision to take paternity leave has long served as the basis for homophobic and sexist smears from Republicans who've since 2021 accused him of using the birth of his children as an excuse not to address the COVID-19-related supply chain crisis.
And that same year, Vance asserted to Carlson that the country is run by “Democrats… corporate oligarchs… a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
Vance then proceeded to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris, who is a stepmother to two children; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is engaged and has no children; and Buttigieg, who has twin sons with his husband, saying:
“It’s just a basic fact. You have Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)], the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does that make any sense when we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it."
Asked for a response, Buttigieg said:
“The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heartbreaking setback in our adoption journey. He couldn’t have known that, but maybe that’s why you shouldn’t be talking about other people’s children.”
"It's not about his kids, or my kids, or the vice president's family, it's about people's families whose wellbeing will depend on whether we go into a future led by somebody like Kamala Harris who is focused on expanding the prosperity, the freedom, the wellbeing of our families, especially if you have kids and you’re worried about climate, choosing between a party that has a plan on climate that creates jobs and a party that still calls it a hoax even as we went through the hottest day in world history.”
"Do you want your children to grow up in a country defined by a return to the chaos and recrimination and cruelty that was the hallmark of the Trump era?"
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Many echoed his criticisms of Vance.
Buttigieg appeared on CNN in part to stump for Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris as his successor.
Asked who Harris will pick as her running mate that could potentially make Trump “regret” picking Vance, he said:
“What I will say is the choice of J.D. Vance is a regrettable choice. Because he’s somebody who was at his most convincing and effective when he talked about how unfit for office Donald Trump is, and he’s not explained any reason, other than, of course, his obvious interest in power, why he would have changed his mind on that.”
Buttigieg said that Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about a childhood impacted by the opioid epidemic, was previously against Trump, noting that Vance once referred to Trump as "cultural heroin" unable to regard the needs of the working class.
Vance “compared Donald Trump to opioids,” Buttigieg emphasized, adding that Vance's remarks are "literally the darkest, most negative thing someone connected to Appalachia could possibly say about a politician. And that was in public! In private, he was comparing him to Hitler, reportedly.”
Buttigieg's CNN appearance came amid reports that some Republicans are regretting Trump's choice of Vance as his running mate.
GOP operatives have expressed concerns that Biden's decision to drop out of the race and Harris' ascendancy have been "scrambling the polls and detonating the Trump campaign's assumptions about the electoral playing field," per Axios.
Despite concerns about Vance's record, his prior attacks against Trump, and his viability as a candidate now that the race has been altered permanently, Trump reportedly "has shown no indication that he has buyer's remorse, and plans to dispatch Vance for solo rallies in Arizona and Nevada next week."
