With three states' primary votes already in the books, every 2020 Democratic Candidate hopeful is jockeying for any votes and endorsements they can get their hands.
All support builds toward securing a rightful place as the one to take on Donald Trump in November 2020.
That can become pretty awkward when one of those endorsements comes from Donald Trump himself.
Pete Buttigieg faced that exact predicament when President Trump engaged in some typically bewildering Twitter behavior.
After three state primaries Buttigieg, the former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, sits firmly in second place behind the leading Bernie Sanders.
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Trump's eyebrow-raising Democratic defection came in response to a tweet made by Fox News Pundit Eric Bolling.
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Bolling declared some lukewarm support for Buttigieg, to which Trump replied with overtly friendly agreement.
How about that first name basis those two are apparently on.
Donald Trump's confusing endorsement received the furthest thing from a warm welcome.
Instead, Buttigieg blasted the 45th President.
Buttigieg was hardly going out on a limb with such an adversarial response.
A good portion of Twitter responses vicariously rejected the endorsement as well.
Others took the opportunity to launch attacks on Trump's insecurity.
Others lauded Mayor Pete's ability to go toe-to-toe in an internet spat with Trump.
Far more, however, quickly concluded that Trump's secondary endorsement was not at all genuine.
These responses assumed it was either general trolling, Trump's attempt at hurting Pete in the eyes of Democratic voters or Trump's assessment that Buttigieg would be the easiest candidate to beat.
Though that infers quite a bit of shrewd strategy from the 45th President.
Whether Donald Trump indeed grasped what he was doing when offering this subtle endorsement is a complete mystery, as the motives behind many of his tweets are.
But Buttigieg's response makes it very clear that the sentiment does not go both ways.
The book Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future is available here.
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