On Tuesday, waiting for the votes in the New Hampshire primary to be cast, Pete Buttigieg bragged that President Trump can’t “figure out what to do with me.”
Buttigieg was being interviewed on NBC’s “Today Show” when he boasted, “I don’t think he can figure out what to do with me, and that’s fine by me. I’m not that focused on this president’s approach because they always do the same thing. He’s going to find a vulnerability, and if he can’t, he’ll make one up,” as The Daily Mail reported.
Buttigieg claimed he was at a disadvantage because fellow presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg was spending huge amounts of money, complaining to the “Today Show,” “I don’t have billions of dollars to put on the air waves. We have to earn every vote going through the process, beginning in the early states, where you show versus tell.”
On Monday night at a campaign rally, when a voter yelled out “F***” as Buttigieg mentioned President Trump, Buttigieg smilingly agreed, “Well said,” also stating, “The President thinks we are suckers. And this is our chance to send a completely different message that he will hear.’
The Daily Mail posited that at Friday night’s debate in Manchester, when former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Amy Klobuchar slammed him for his lack of experience and Bernie Sanders ripped him from accepting donations from wealthy contributors, “At times during the debate, Buttigieg … looked shocked to be under going the kind of criticism he probably rarely has heard from adults in the room.”
Buttigieg lamely replied to Biden and Klobuchar that “mayors get things done.”
Biden’s campaign launched an ad that opined that Biden helped get the Affordable Care Act passed while Buttigieg “installed decorative lights under bridges giving citizens of South Bend colorfully illuminated rivers.” The ad also stated that Biden saved the auto industry after the 2008 crash, while Buttigieg “revitalized the sidewalks of downtown South Bend by laying out decorative brick.”
Buttigieg has been displaying more arrogance lately; last week, he bragged about “my White House,” puffing, “So to me, the best use of that big blue-and-white airplane that comes with the Oval Office that the president uses mostly for the purpose of traveling among golf courses with his name on them — I don’t even golf so that’s not going to be how I use that airplane. I’m going to use that airplane to go directly into the backyard of senators who are not just defying my White House but defying their own voters, their own constituents, and require them to explain to the people who sent them to Washington why they refuse to enact the basic legislation that meets the expectation of their own voters.”
On February 2, when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Buttigieg, “Republicans have been seizing, including in a new Trump ad, on a statement you made, saying, ‘Anyone who supported this President is, at best, looking the other way on racism.’ You’ve also said that on my show. That’s almost 63 million Americans who you’re painting with a pretty broad brush. Do you regret saying that at all?”
Buttigieg answered, “No.”