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Pete Buttigieg Knows EXACTLY Why Trump Is Backing Out Of The Deb
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8/24/2024
Secretary of Tansportation Pete Burrigeige at the democratic National Convention 2024
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00:00
Mayor Pete, good to see you.
00:02
You have been bandied about as a possible running mate choice for Vice President Harris,
00:06
so have you been contacted by the campaign and would you be interested in serving in
00:10
that role?
00:11
Look, I think anybody would be flattered to be mentioned in that context.
00:15
I certainly am.
00:16
There's really not much more that I can or should say about that process other than that
00:20
she's going to make that decision and she knows what she's doing.
00:24
What I know is that I'm really excited in whatever capacity to be part of this campaign
00:31
and I'm one of millions of Democrats who are clearly energized and fired up.
00:36
There's just a new energy and it's been extraordinary to me how quickly she has gathered the party
00:41
around her with a sense of mission, a clear message just in a matter of days and of course
00:48
I'm thrilled to be part of that.
00:50
It seems as if that sense of mission and enthusiasm has rattled Republicans, at least
00:55
for the moment, and as we covered earlier in the show, Donald Trump and his campaign
01:00
have suggested that he may not follow through with the debate in September that had been
01:06
scheduled to be with President Biden, now of course would be the Vice President, assuming
01:10
she does wrap up the nomination as expected.
01:12
What do you make of that?
01:15
It's extraordinary.
01:16
Tough talk is this guy's calling card and now there's this extraordinary show of weakness.
01:23
He agreed to, you know, he said anytime, anyplace, but more than that, he agreed to this specific
01:28
debate on this specific network on this specific date and now he's pulling out and of course
01:35
it shows that he's afraid, it shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together
01:41
it's not going to end well for him.
01:45
So this is a campaign that really has struggled to be about anything but Donald Trump and
01:53
Joe Biden and I think that's the bigger pattern that you're seeing here and part of why the
01:58
Trump campaign is having such a hard time adapting.
02:02
Think about it, just in a matter of two or three days our campaign adapted to literally
02:07
the biggest possible change, which is a change in the top of the ticket and yet within a
02:13
couple of days that support consolidated and that message was clear.
02:18
They meanwhile have been flailing in a way that shows they're unable to adapt and to
02:22
me it's not just that their entire strategic apparatus was built around tearing down Joe
02:28
Biden.
02:29
I think there's something deeper, which is Donald Trump cannot conceive of a campaign
02:35
that isn't about the candidate.
02:38
You know, we're obviously very excited about our candidate, Kamala Harris is a leader that
02:42
everybody is pulling together around, but also she's articulating a message that isn't
02:47
about just about herself and certainly isn't just about Donald Trump, although she has
02:52
that contrast down.
02:53
It's about us and that's the kind of campaign that wins.
02:58
It's the right kind of campaign and it's also one that literally does not compute for somebody
03:04
like Donald Trump.
03:05
So you of course just mentioned the huge change at the top of the ticket, a seismic change,
03:09
a dizzying week of change.
03:11
For you yourself, on Friday night you appeared in real time with Bill Maher talking about
03:15
President Biden, advocating for his candidacy, wanting him to stay in the race and of course
03:20
two days later he announced he is bowing out.
03:23
What has this week been like for you?
03:26
Well obviously it's been intense, it's been emotional, especially watching President Biden's
03:31
Oval Office address, watching him do what is so incredibly rare, which is for a leader
03:38
with that kind of responsibility and power to lay it aside, to relinquish the nomination,
03:44
focus on leading the country.
03:46
And again, the words that most spoke to me was when he said that that sacred trust in
03:51
our democracy, he said it's not about me, it's about you and your families.
03:55
And it reminded me why I'm so proud to be part of that team.
04:01
But the other thing I would say is while the top of our ticket has changed, of course the
04:06
values have not.
04:09
And I'm especially excited to see the way she's leaning into freedom, a value and a
04:14
theme that as you know, really for years and back to my own presidential campaign, it's
04:19
frustrated me that conservatives tried to monopolize the language around freedom.
04:24
I think they have even more completely relinquished any claim to being able to talk about freedom
04:30
when they got into banning books.
04:33
And she has spoken so powerfully, as she did yesterday, when she was addressing America's
04:38
teachers to the fact that if you mean business when it comes to protecting our kids, you
04:42
shouldn't be protecting our kids from Tony Morrison, you should be protecting our kids
04:46
from assault weapons.
04:48
So Pete, historian John Meacham has the next question for you.
04:53
Mr. Mayor, quick question.
04:56
You are an anomaly in that you are a young person in politics and public service who
05:04
seems to actually enjoy it.
05:06
I'm wondering, given the course of the 21st century, given the fact that the public arena
05:14
again and again has proven to not be commensurate to what people want.
05:21
We begin with the terrible attacks, we go through insurrection.
05:26
What's the story now that you've been mayor, you've been in a big job, what's the story
05:31
you tell about why politics, why public service matters?
05:36
You know, it's a great point.
05:39
Like generationally, I think anyone my age and younger, especially in the first part
05:45
of this century, witnessed a lot of policy failure.
05:50
So part of my message, my antidote to that is to look at what's been achieved these last
05:55
few years, and most importantly, what that could point to for the future.
05:59
I think about my own trajectory, the fact that just the fact of somebody like me being
06:06
able to have a role like I do or run a campaign like we did would have been considered preposterous
06:11
just 10 or 20 years ago.
06:13
I think of the trajectory of South Bend, Indiana, where I served as mayor and where I grew up,
06:18
a place that in less than a decade changed the narrative about that from being written
06:24
up in national commentaries as a dying Rust Belt city to being a city that was growing
06:30
and was being regarded as a place full of innovation and energy.
06:35
And of course, I think about serving in a Biden-Harris administration and watching what
06:39
happened.
06:40
I mean, take infrastructure, right, where there was this belief that you just couldn't
06:43
even there was this thing that obviously needed to be done.
06:47
And yet it just couldn't happen.
06:49
No president could get it through.
06:50
Definitely couldn't happen on a bipartisan basis, only to see the Biden-Harris administration
06:54
deliver that.
06:55
And I think that lights the way toward what is possible.
06:58
And as you mentioned, there's also just something in this moment, just this week's moment, about
07:03
that idea of enjoying this a little more.
07:07
Politics doesn't have to be a death match.
07:10
You know, we have certainly seen and had cause for being extremely troubled and disturbed
07:17
by what's coming out of the other side.
07:19
I think we continue to be right to talk about the threat and the concern for our democracy.
07:25
If you have a guy like Donald Trump, who inspired the January 6th riots and attempt against
07:32
our democracy, somebody who talks about terminating the Constitution and said that a political
07:37
opponent of his ought to be brought before a military tribunal, that's really dark.
07:42
But the other side of the coin is the joy of the right and better kind of politics.
07:49
And we've seen that throughout the week.
07:51
And again, it's something that I think is animating our side, and that the other side
07:56
literally can't conceive.
07:57
And that's why some of their attacks that have fallen flat kind of reveal that there's
08:01
just a different energy, a different vibe over there.
08:04
The fact that they, for example, clip and tweet images of Kamala Harris laughing, as
08:12
if that's something that counts against her, shows that they literally are having trouble
08:17
just getting the idea of there being joy in the struggle and in the challenge.
08:25
But I think that's something that speaks more to the campaign than voters.
08:28
I think there are a lot of independents, and what I always like to call future former Republicans,
08:32
who would rather just sign up and be part of this project than continue to be part of
08:38
this doom-filled whatever-we-saw-at-the-RNC.
08:44
Pete Buttigieg, thank you for joining us this morning, again, in his personal capacity.
08:49
We appreciate it.
08:50
Thanks.
08:51
Come in.
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