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- [00:00]
Interviewer
So to lighten the mood a bit, you see the news recently? The Tucker Carlson statement?
- [00:03]
Pete Buttigieg
He was dating women just a few years ago.
- [00:05]
Interviewer
That's totally fake.
- [00:06]
Pete Buttigieg
He's not gay at all. Smart.
- [00:07]
Interviewer
He said that you are basically fake gay and you've created this Persona to appease the woke mob.
- [00:13]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, in a weird way, I guess it's progress. There was a time when I would have done anything to not be gay.
- [00:19]
Interviewer
Like you would have gone to conversion therapy maybe.
- [00:22]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [00:22]
Pete Buttigieg
And then I grew older, I matured, I went to war. During that deployment, I thought like, this is insane to like be a grown ass man with no idea what it's like to be in love. If I get through this deployment, okay, I'm going to come home, I'm going to come out and if it messes up my career, so be it. Pete Buttigieg interview.
- [00:39]
Interviewer
All right, thanks so much for making the time.
- [00:41]
Pete Buttigieg
Thanks for having me.
- [00:42]
Interviewer
Yeah, I appreciate it. So what's going on, man? What's on your mind?
- [00:46]
Pete Buttigieg
Big question. I mean, where do you start? I'm really thinking a lot about where we go from here as a country, but also in my party because we need to be able to talk in a different way about what's going to happen. That's on my mind. AI is on my mind. Preschool's on my mind. Chast and I have 4 year olds, so I don't know where you want to begin, but there's a lot to talk about.
- [01:06]
Interviewer
I mean, AI is a pretty good place to start. Are you concerned or optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence?
- [01:11]
Pete Buttigieg
Yes. I mean, of course you got to be concerned, right, because it's bringing all these upheavals and problems. But I also think there's an enormous amount of potential. I mean, one of the uses that I'm closest to is automated vehicles. This is a technology that has been developing for years and years, still not in widespread use. But when it is, if we do it right, it will save thousands and thousands of lives. If we do it right. Because human beings driving kill roughly 40,000 people a year in this country. We don't really think about it that much because we're so used to it. But the number of people who die in a car crash every day is about the same as the number of people who can fill an airplane. And if we had a plane crash every day, we'd all be up in arms.
- [01:52]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [01:53]
Pete Buttigieg
So the promise of something like AI in terms of safer vehicles is enormous. But we also have a lot of worries about what happens if that goes wrong. And you could say the same about medicine, you could say the same about any number of national security implications. But the thing that I think about the most is what's going to happen to our economy. Because I'm from a place in the industrial midwest where when I was growing up, these huge changes came. It was trade, it was automation, it was a bunch of things in the 90s and 2000s and people got left behind. And even when they found a new job, they didn't necessarily find something that fit them into their community the way that their old job in a tool and die shop or in some part of the auto industry did. And the result of that was they couldn't find the sense of belonging that they had before. And that led to this explosion of problems. Social problems, mental health problems, political problems. I would argue, like the moment we're in, I think is largely driven by that. So if that's what happened then, because of the kind of technology and things that happened in the 90s, think about the level of displacement that might be coming our way now. Like today, some companies are hiring less at the entry level because of AI, and that's now. So a year, three years, five years, 10 years from now, as the software gets smarter and smarter, what's going to happen to everybody? I think that's a massive problem that people in the political and policy world are not really preparing for the right way.
- [03:15]
Interviewer
Yeah, because I mean, trucking is one of the biggest employers in the country. So if you were to automate all trucks and vehicles that are hauling stuff across the country, you'd have a ton of people out of jobs. So you'd have to figure out where they're going to work after that.
- [03:25]
Pete Buttigieg
This is happening in transportation, it's been happening for a long time in manufacturing. But the other thing is it's happening more and more in the white collar job. So like 15 years ago, if somebody's job was at risk in, I don't know, trucking, one of the things that would happen is they would be told, well, what you should really do is you should learn coding and start working on software which may or may not fit for that person. But if they went off and did that because society told them to, now 15 years later, the AI is getting good at writing code. And that's one of the areas where there's questions about whether there's going to be hiring. We're talking about architecture, graphic design, law, like lawyers. So white collar as well as blue collar jobs that are on the line. And I really don't think that people have absorbed that. I think when we think about AI, we're thinking so much about the doomsday scenarios, which are also a thing.
- [04:11]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [04:12]
Pete Buttigieg
But I think we're less prepared for what is very, very likely to be on us, like, very soon, like by the end of this decade.
- [04:19]
Interviewer
What, you're talking about mass unemployment?
- [04:21]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. I mean, I don't think It'll be like 50% unemployment, but I do think that you'll see certain categories of jobs where suddenly, like a huge chunk of the jobs, especially the entry level ones, just aren't there. And then people who went to school and were told, study this, there's going to be a job waiting for you, and there isn't, you know, we've got to act fast to make sure that there's answers.
- [04:38]
Interviewer
Yeah. I used to selfishly believe that my job was irreplaceable as a journalist, like, as a street interviewer, because, you know, I have to actually talk to people in person. Then I saw an Instagram and TikTok page recently with 2 million followers or something like that, and it was all AI street interviews. And there's not a single comment, like, what? You're taking jobs away from the real street guys, man, on the street. It was all just praising the genius and the actual content within it. So it might come from my job, too.
- [05:02]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, it's hard to think of a job that isn't implicated in some way. Either something about the job changes or the entire job changes.
- [05:10]
Interviewer
Definitely. I mean, it's gotten to the point that they actually have AI Channel 5 episodes, that they're like, posting on Twitter and Instagram now. I'm at the abolishice rally. Shit is absolutely hectic tonight. Any sign with the word ice? From ice cream to ice machine has become a target. Slushy machines are being drained. Everybody is slipping. What the fuck is going on?
- [05:30]
Pete Buttigieg
Reddit told me I'm literally fighting Hitler.
- [05:32]
Interviewer
These niggas are absolutely insane. Where the fuck is the Kirkinator?
- [05:36]
Pete Buttigieg
Sir, the antifa has hit the second McDonald's ice cream machine. Pookie, wake up.
- [05:42]
Interviewer
We got a problem. So to lighten the mood a bit, you see the news recently? The Tucker Carlson statement never agreed to interview. But I'm gonna ask him, like, some very specific questions about gay sex and.
- [06:01]
Pete Buttigieg
See if he can even answer.
- [06:02]
Interviewer
He said that you are basically fake gay and you've created this Persona to appease the woke mob. Tucker Carlson claims peach buttigieg isn't really gay.
- [06:11]
Pete Buttigieg
He was dating women just a Few years ago.
- [06:13]
Interviewer
That's totally fake. He's not gay at all.
- [06:14]
Pete Buttigieg
Smart. So I said that on the air.
- [06:17]
Interviewer
People got all offended.
- [06:18]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I mean, in a weird way, I guess it's progress. Like, I spent a good chunk of my life believing, knowing that, like, being gay would be a career ender for me. I had two parts of my career when I was in my 20s. Public service and being interested in public office and being in the military, both of which could have ended because I was gay. And honestly, I don't like thinking about it now, but there was a time when I would have done anything to not be gay. Like, just like, tell me what I have to do and I would have done it.
- [06:53]
Interviewer
Like, you would have gone to conversion therapy?
- [06:54]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, if I thought it would have worked, the state of mind that I was in at a certain time in my life, when I was younger, maybe.
- [07:01]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [07:01]
Pete Buttigieg
Because I thought that the reality would just shut down my options. And then I grew older, I matured. I went to war. During that deployment, I thought, like, this is insane to, like, be a grown ass man with no idea what it's like to be in love. Like, if I get through this deployment, okay, I'm gonna come home, I'm gonna come out, and if it messes up my career, so be it. But that's how I live my life. And so to now be at a point where a right wing. Whatever you wanna call him. Personality.
- [07:31]
Interviewer
News Commentator.
- [07:31]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, commentator. His big conspiracy theory is that I'm secretly straight is, like, kind of hilarious.
- [07:39]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right? Yeah. Yeah.
- [07:40]
Pete Buttigieg
I just. I guess it's progress.
- [07:42]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [07:43]
Interviewer
Cause what would you possibly have to gain about lying about that? Yeah, I don't.
- [07:46]
Pete Buttigieg
But that's the nature of these conspiracy things, right? I mean, you know these much more deeply than I do, but I think it doesn't have to make sense in order for it to make sense to someone. And what is important is to say something that's like, outrageous enough to get attention. And like, here we are talking about it because it's actually like, of all the things you could say about me being gay, probably the most, like, novel and weird is to say that I'm actually not.
- [08:08]
Interviewer
I didn't know that you didn't come out until after your deployment.
- [08:11]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I was already mayor in South Bend. And part of what happened is when you get deployed, you write a letter or they tell you to write a letter just in case. I mean, I still have it in my desk drawer. It says just in case on the outside. And I'm sitting down to write this letter that's for my family to open up if I don't make it. And I'm taking stock of all these great things in my life, which really are these great things in my life. I mean, I'd become the mayor of this city that I loved. I owned a home. You know, Like, I, I. I had a good life, great friends. But, like, this huge part of what most people consider to be important in their lives just wasn't there for me because I had figured out long since that I was gay. And I didn't think I could or should, like, try to date and keep it a secret. So I just didn't have that as part of my life. And sitting down, writing that letter, I just thought, I can't. You know, I'm already into my 30s. Like, I can't. I can't go on like that. So that's. That's kind of when I made up my mind not about being gay, but about coming out for sure.
- [09:08]
Interviewer
And you feel like that was a really important thing for you to do.
- [09:11]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. And it opened up so many things in my life. I mean, you know, pretty soon after that, I met Chastain, who I married. You know, we're now raising two kids together in Michigan, where we live. And I just think about all of the most important things in my life, like our family and our home, and none of that's there in a world where I don't just decide, whatever the consequences, I'm gonna come out, be who I am, start dating, and, like, have that part of my life.
- [09:37]
Interviewer
So you expected some initial backlash, but it actually went the opposite direction.
- [09:41]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, there was both. There was definite, definitely both. I mean, as soon as I came out, there were people having press conferences denouncing me for whatever, but as some, like, nasty stuff online. But also, what was interesting was a lot of people did surprise me with their reaction in the other way. Some people, like, just found it, especially people I was in the military with, like, just found a reason to say hi, didn't say anything other than that, but it was kind of a way of, like, checking in or kind of a way of letting me know they didn't care. And then other people, including people I was in the military with, it turned out was in the same boat. And I never knew it. And they wrote to let me know that. And I got reelected. It was actually that same year with more votes than I did the first time around. And this is in, like, Indiana's a conservative place, right? This is while Mike Pence is the governor of Indiana. Just to give you a sense of how conservative. And it was okay. Like, you know, not perfect, but it was okay.
- [10:29]
Interviewer
Was there any reaction that really surprised you in a positive way?
- [10:32]
Pete Buttigieg
You know, one thing, that one story I tell a lot is someone I ran into who pretty soon after I started dating Chastain, who I knew was, like, more conservative. I ran into her, and she had this, like, almost, like, naughty look in her eye, and she's like, I ran into your friend, and he's fantastic. And it was this, like, moment of, like, I could have lectured her on, like, this isn't my friend, you know? But, like, the point was, like, she wanted me to know that she was, like, in this accepting place.
- [11:00]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [11:00]
Pete Buttigieg
Which I thought was really, really moving because I was, like, honestly pretty terrified about how many people would or wouldn't be accepting. The other thing that was surprising is that it wound up being the most. This thing that I was afraid would just, like, make me like, other. Just, like, alien to the world I grew up in, which is, like, a very straight, conservative culture. It actually became the most normal thing in my life. What was not normal was being somebody who worked 18 hours a day and didn't miss that he didn't have any kind of dating life.
- [11:30]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [11:31]
Pete Buttigieg
That might have been how I looked or tried to look normal, but that's not normal. What's much more normal, actually, is now where, like, I'm trying to have a presence as a public figure in a political life and also trying to do right by a home where I got a husband waiting for me and two kids and a dog, and, you know, we're getting the roof fixed, and, like, some of the most normal things that are my life are there because I open that door.
- [11:55]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [11:55]
Pete Buttigieg
And maybe that's been the biggest surprise.
- [11:57]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [11:57]
Interviewer
Speaking of Mike pants, do you think there's a pipeline between, like, homophobia and people being closeted?
- [12:02]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, you see these stories about, like, apps like Grindr, like, blowing up when the RNC comes to town, and all the. All the Republicans are in one place, Right?
- [12:12]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [12:12]
Pete Buttigieg
And look, I think a lot of people, even now, I'd like to think it's different than when I was in high school, but I think even now, a lot of people get the message that, like, you don't get to just be who you are and not have that define you. And that's the part I think we're still really working on in the gay community is, like, being able to have that just Be, like, a thing that's, like, true about you among, like, many other things that are true about you, like what your job is or, you know, having brown hair or whatever, and not have it have to be, like, the thing that everybody knows about you or sees when they see you.
- [12:44]
Interviewer
On a broader community level, how did you feel about the T getting removed from the Stonewall website?
- [12:48]
Pete Buttigieg
It's terrible. I mean, look, you know, if you look into the history of what made it possible for people like me to have rights, like, we do, like, to get married, like, a lot of that was advocates and activists who were transgender in the 60s or 70s, and it's hard imagine what it was like then. Can't even imagine who stuck up for everybody's rights. And so, you know, I get the politics of it. Like, I get that it would be politically convenient, honestly, for, like, people to pull up the ladder after them and leave out others, but that's not okay. Like, people have to stick together, and that's not just across the LGBTQ community. It's, like, anywhere somebody is getting beat up or having literally or figuratively because of who they are, I think everybody else has to stick up for that.
- [13:32]
Interviewer
Going back to the very beginning, you said you grew up pretty conservative.
- [13:35]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I grew up in a conservative state. I didn't grow up in a conservative household.
- [13:38]
Interviewer
Okay, so your parents were. They were Democrats?
- [13:40]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, they were definitely left to center right. I think they were kind of skeptical of the Democratic Party, too, but they were people who really cared about what was going on. The news. TV was always tuned to the news. My dad was always reading the paper. Like, I grew up with a sense that the most important things are the things that are happening in public life that kind of affect us all. We were politically connected. Like, I don't think I, like, met an elected official when I was growing up, but we were very politically aware. And so I also. That was something that made me always feel a little bit at odds with my surroundings, because our household was liberal. Our community, in a lot of ways, was not.
- [14:11]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [14:12]
Interviewer
One thing you mentioned, too, there kind of touches on what's going on in New York right now. You mentioned a bit of skepticism with the Democratic Party.
- [14:18]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [14:18]
Interviewer
And right now we're in New York City. There's a pretty contentious mayoral election. What's really not that contentious? You have an overwhelming groundswell of support between 18 and 32, especially in this neighborhood, for Mamdani, who's kind of considered to be the front runner. Yet you don't really see too many Democratic politicians openly supporting him. What's your stance on what's going on?
- [14:36]
Pete Buttigieg
I think he's doing so well because he's focused on the issues people care about, like affordability. And I think that's what we as a party should be doing. Look, there are things he's going to say and that he's going to do that are going to make more sense in a Democratic primary in New York than like a general election in Indiana or even a Democratic primary in Indiana. And that's just like politics are different in different places. But the core of his message, which is to focus on affordability, I think is the right message. I think also, you know, you see these maneuvers like the Trump administration apparently trying to put a thumb on the scale of election by getting Eric Adams a new job so he'll get out and clear the way for Cuomo. That's just, that's everything that people hate about politics, no matter where they are politically. And I think it's just, it's just supercharging people's frustration with that.
- [15:20]
Interviewer
But why is there the hesitancy to endorse him explicitly?
- [15:23]
Pete Buttigieg
I think there's a. There's a lot of folks who aren't so sure about what he said about the Middle east or some of his positions that are economically pretty far left. A lot of people who think of themselves as Democrats still aren't there on the. I also do think that my party should learn from the focus on everyday life, which I think is part of why he's been successful, and the style, the approach of just like getting out there and talking to everybody.
- [15:46]
Interviewer
Yeah, I think that specifically anti Trump rhetoric is kind of falling on deaf ears, especially with my generation, which I guess is Gen Z, mainly because most people, I don't, I mean, I'm 28 right now. I don't know a single person who owns a home, you know, and I've lived in California, in Pennsylvania and Washington, Seattle. Everybody's still renting. Most people are working two to three jobs, everybody's overworked. And then at the same time, I'm being told, you know, we open our phones and we see horrible videos and imagery of things happening in the Middle east. And then we're told that we're supposed to direct our anger toward Trump. And obviously there's not a huge, big support of Trump in my generation, especially in the city. But most people aren't waking up furious about the President every day. They're furious about economic circumstances in their day to day life.
- [16:26]
Pete Buttigieg
I think it's gotta be both. Like, it's really important to stand up to these things that are happening. Like the President sending military troops to militarize American cities like any other. We can go down the list. But yeah, I think especially if you're in a place where, like, not being on board with Trump is kind of a given, then, like, you can't use that to end the conversation like that. That's like a background of the conversation. What people really want to hear from the opposition or from Democrats is like, okay, what are you going to do? Look, I can make the case and I will all day for things that my party has done or tried to do that are going to be better for everyday life. But it's also clear that just collectively as a country, like the experience of young people is policy failure.
- [17:05]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right?
- [17:06]
Pete Buttigieg
Like you're supposed to be able to at least hope to purchase your home and that's not happening. And I have a whole set of ideas about things I think would help on that. But I think you're right. Like, I get that, like, people only want to hear it so much about Trump. If you don't have something that at least feels like a plausible answer on how you're going to be able to afford to get a home or how you're going to be able to afford to get an education, or like what your outlook is in life in terms of a job that's actually going to get you there.
- [17:33]
Interviewer
And it's also just like, we know that our tax revenue is going to the government, everybody, we go to urgent care, we have a doctor's appointment, we have to pay $500 to $1,000 for anything beyond a basic checkup. And we're simultaneously seeing that money that is involuntarily being sent to regimes that we generally disagree with as a generation. So there's kind of this fatigue. And I think that the Democrat party will have to lean a little bit more progressive to get young voters for next election, at least next primary.
- [17:56]
Pete Buttigieg
I think we gotta speak to what's on young voters minds and yeah, we gotta do more listening.
- [17:59]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right?
- [18:00]
Pete Buttigieg
Which is, I mean, it sounds obvious, but like, I don't think there's a sense that that's happened and the conversation's. I think the party, any political party, definitely mine, has a tendency to get into these very inside baseball conversations and people don't see themselves in it. What I'm trying to lay out is a case for how it doesn't have to be this way. We can make it better, but we have to make certain policy choices. We have to decide that wages have to be at a certain level you can actually live on. We actually have to decide to change certain things so it's easier to build housing, because if we build more housing, housing will become more affordable. We have to decide what our health care policy is. And yeah, part of that is anti Trump, because Trump, like ripping out Medicaid and making your premiums go up by getting rid of the Obamacare subsidies makes health care more expensive for you. We also have to explain what we're going to do to make it less expensive for you. We got to explain what it means to have a childcare policy where, like, you have a kid, you can afford to have a kid and you can get paid family leave that every other country has. But what I'm saying is that's not something where you can throw up your hands and say both sides are not doing anything. Like, Republicans have stopped paid family leave in this country. Democrats are trying to get it done, and if we had enough power, we would. Yeah. So there's a set of things where I believe right now that we're. We have the right position, and there's other things where we need to. We need to do some listening and some rethinking about our policy commitments.
- [19:17]
Interviewer
There's just this generational nihilism that set in. And I don't know if it was Obama that triggered that, but there's been all these moments of hope where it seems like things are heading in a positive direction, yet the baseline remains more or less the same. What are some imminent policy changes you think would trend things in the opposite direction?
- [19:31]
Pete Buttigieg
Well, again, my point is it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to settle for this. Politics is messy, and it's two steps forward and one steps back, and people disappoint you and it can suck. But it is the only way to make things better. And when you get it right, things do, in fact get better. Like, there are a lot of people in my life who went from not being able to have any health insurance before Obama to they have health insurance now. There's more problems with the health care system, for sure. We went from no insurance to insurance. People like me went from not able to get married to able to get married in the short span of my adult lifetime.
- [20:07]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [20:07]
Pete Buttigieg
So things can get better if we make them better. So one of the biggest things we want to make better, cost of living.
- [20:13]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [20:14]
Pete Buttigieg
Wages, in many cases, access to things like those family policies. I'm talking about like paid leave. A lot of things about education need to get better. Like I said earlier, with AI, we need policies to make sure that if AI is going to change the way way your job works, or change your job or cost you your job, that doesn't mean that you can't recover. Which means making sure that things like your healthcare are less connected to your job if you don't want them to be. Like if you're going to change jobs 13 times in your career, which the younger you are, the more likely that's going to happen, then you should have an option that isn't to have your health insurance change every time that happens.
- [20:46]
Interviewer
Like switching from another shield to a different one.
- [20:48]
Pete Buttigieg
Is that what you're talking about?
- [20:49]
Interviewer
The annoying clerical process of having to switch insurance providers?
- [20:52]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. And it's not just the clerical process. Right. It's the uncertainty and the fear if you're not sure the new one has different benefits than the old one, or you're not sure your new employer has good coverage. That's why there need to be alternatives. I think the government should provide alternatives. I don't think government should foresee in any plan, but I think there should be one that you can get that is still yours. Whatever your job is and you should be able to afford it. My point is there's this tendency to throw up our hands and say, all of this sucks because everybody's failed. But there are real, very major, important differences between how the two sides are approaching this. And you got one side that is taking the money out of health care and putting it into tax cuts for the rich. And you got another side that wants to make sure that the wealthy pay their share and then use it for things like health care. That's a real difference. And if you stay home, you're kind of choosing the first group.
- [21:40]
Interviewer
And I think that's back to what I was saying originally. All those points are why so many young people, especially in New York, resonate with Mamdani and the message that he is delivering. Because he kind of plans to address most of those things. Rent freeze. Pausing the insane cycle of Airbnb gentrification. Making it so people can afford basic groceries at city run stores and be able to not have to, you know, steal eggs. But there's probably someone stealing eggs right now near us.
- [22:02]
Pete Buttigieg
Well, what it's going to come down to is results. Right? Look, I was a young mayor that a lot of people said, like, who is this guy?
- [22:08]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [22:08]
Pete Buttigieg
But I got enough people to form a coalition to believe that the trajectory of our city should change and could change. Try to explain a little bit about what our city was up against. So we were a company town for Studebaker. Studebaker was a car company. It was a major car company like it was on the big three until it shut down in the 60s. And even though that happened two decades before I was born, it was still everywhere around us when I was growing up, like collapsing factory buildings all over. And 30 years after that, when I was running for mayor, people were still trying to go back to some past glory days. And my message was, it doesn't have to be this way. We can do something different. But then the day I won, the day I took office as a 29 year old mayor, then it's just all about results. And that's when the rubber meets the road and it cashes out for people. Yeah, like can you deliver or not?
- [22:55]
Interviewer
So to get kind of surgical with the exact disagreements that, you know, establishment Democrats have with Mamdani's platform. So you said it's Middle east and it's also some of the far left economic policies. What are those economic policies that are kind of red flags for the center?
- [23:09]
Pete Buttigieg
You know, first of all, you have a group that even now is just like frightened of the word socialism.
- [23:13]
Interviewer
Right, socialism.
- [23:14]
Pete Buttigieg
And he has identified himself as a socialist. You have obviously the language around the Middle east, like you gotta understand with something like globalized Intifada, like a lot of Jews understand that to mean open season on Jews, open hunting season on Jews. I don't think that's what it means to him. He's like taking steps to clarify that. But that's what a lot of people feel and think when they hear that. And his job, not just as a candidate, but definitely his job as mayor will be to bring together people in a city who share the city and don't share a lot of other things in terms of their values, their worldview or their experience. On the economic front. I think a lot of folks are skeptical about a government run grocery store just because if you look at the grocery business, there are a lot of businesses where there's tons of like profits sloshing around. You could say that in pharma, you could say that in a lot of businesses.
- [24:01]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [24:01]
Pete Buttigieg
Groceries operate on a very tight margin. So if you're proposing to make groceries more affordable, if you're saying you're going to subsidize food, that can make sense, right? We do subsidize food. That's what food stamps and snap are all about. Although you know, that's something else that Trump is actively getting rid of. His budget is cutting Snap.
- [24:19]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [24:19]
Pete Buttigieg
But if you're saying it's going to be better because the store is run by the government, I think a lot of folks are skeptical about why that would be better.
- [24:26]
Interviewer
I guess maybe the process of applying for food stamps is, you know, maybe just annoying for people. And then also there's a likelihood of it getting denied, especially if it's in the hands of the federal government.
- [24:34]
Pete Buttigieg
So that's something that is really important, like people's access to the benefits that they've earned. And that happens with food stamps. That happens with Medicaid. Remember, the people who are cutting Medicaid right now say that they're not cutting Medicaid. They say, hey, all we're doing is making sure that you're eligible. But what they're really doing is they're putting up so many pieces of red tape, so many steps that you have to go through to prove you're eligible, that a lot of people are going to fall out. And we know that's true because this happened in Arkansas. They did this exact move. What happened was they said, this is just about making sure that you can only get Medicaid if you're supposed to. What actually happened is a bunch of people who are supposed to aren't getting their care. So I agree on that. The system, the structure needs to be better. I just think a lot of folks are skeptical that having a business of that kind or an operation of that kind owned and operated by the government is going to work. But again, you win. You get a chance to prove it.
- [25:20]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [25:44]
Interviewer
You wear or what apps you download.
- [25:46]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [26:52]
Interviewer
What you gotta do.
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- [27:19]
Interviewer
Paves right over it.
- [27:20]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [27:29]
Interviewer
So you have the word socialism scaring people, and it sounds like a huge thing is Israel, Palestine. Yeah, where do you stand on that stuff?
- [27:35]
Pete Buttigieg
Well, I'm gonna put my coffee down. There's so many things that have to be said. And what I've learned is if you don't say all of them, people think you're abandoning them. So here's some things, in no particular order, that I know. I know that there are unspeakable horrors taking place in Gaza. I know that those unspeakable horrors are something that was unleashed by a war that started with unspeakable horrors being perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th.
- [28:03]
Interviewer
Well, I mean, that was at the beginning of the conflict, of course.
- [28:05]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, this goes back to 47, and it goes back before 47. But this is exactly my point. The moment you say anything about the moment I talk about disgust at babies being put in ovens and people being flayed by Hamas on October 7, somebody says, well, you're not talking about the history of the Nakba and what happened with the displacement of Palestinians. And the moment I expressed disgust at Watching people in Gaza being starved, somebody says, well, you must be excusing what happened with Hamas.
- [28:30]
Interviewer/Assistant
No. Yeah.
- [28:32]
Pete Buttigieg
Now, there is nothing intrinsically anti Semitic about speaking up for the rights of Palestinians. At the same time, a lot of people I know who lie awake at night worried about their kids going to college or walking the streets, you know, hear expressions of support for Palestinian civilian life and think about the fact that even though nothing about that makes you soft on antisemitism, the experience has been that those two things, expressions of support for Palestinian civilian life and expressions of antisemitism, have sometimes traveled together because there is in fact an explosion of antisemitism going on in this country. Here at Harvard, it's easily one of America's most anti Semitic hateful universities. I was one of the students who.
- [29:14]
Interviewer
Was doxxed after October 7th.
- [29:16]
Pete Buttigieg
There was like a student letter that 34 student organization signed and that ended up causing a huge, like global kind of uproar. And there were trucks and names and stuff leaked to the public. In terms of who signed, my name's right there.
- [29:27]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Oh, no way.
- [29:28]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah.
- [29:29]
Interviewer/Assistant
Damn.
- [29:30]
Interviewer
The perspective of our generation is it's really a matter of scale and mobility, you know, because obviously it's not good for someone to be targeted in an anti Semitic tirade on a college campus. But you look at, you know, 65,000 plus civilians killed in Gaza and then you think about somebody getting harassed on a college campus and it just doesn't seem like, it really doesn't seem like a fair shake to balance one and say, you know, someone's at Harvard, you know, and there's protesters who are hurting someone's feelings versus people who can't leave, stuck in an open air prison, haven't been able to leave since 2005. They're getting shot indiscriminately in aid lines. They want sovereignty. Even if you want to go all the way back. Like Israel was supporting Hamas through Qatar as a way to weaken the leadership in the west bank because they knew that Arafat and the PLO and the Palestinian Authority was a more secular organization with less radical goals. So now we're in this position and I would call it the Gaza genocide. That's what I would call, we can't believe that our tax money is going to this war that we don't consent to funding. And we have to wake up every day in this unaffordable reality. And thankfully I've been successful, but I still can't even afford a house because I just realized that 10% is actually the down payment, I don't have 10% liquid capital to put down. So I'm already have exceeded. And so it's just a bad situation.
- [30:37]
Pete Buttigieg
Look, I feel all of that. I also think it's a mistake to say that the reason that housing is unaffordable here is because we're aiding countries. The same Trump and Vance tried to do this with Ukraine. The reason we need to cut off Ukraine is because we could use that money better at home. If you look at what's actually happening with the money here at home, it's not like every dollar that comes out of foreign aid. Same thing with usaid.
- [31:01]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [31:02]
Pete Buttigieg
And cutting, not that it was that much to begin with, but cutting food that we're sending to save people from starvation and disease in sub Saharan Africa is going to somehow automatically wind up in your pocket. Most of the time it's not. It's winding up in the pocket of the wealthiest Americans who are getting tax cuts under this administration. So I don't think that frustration with affordability at home means that we cut off aid abroad. I do think that what we spend money on abroad has to align with our values. Which is why I think you see more and more people in my party saying, wait a minute, like, it's one thing to want to make sure that Israel can shoot down missiles that are being rained down on them by the Iranians, and it's another thing to be sponsoring Netanyahu going in to annex the west bank or going in to invade Gaza.
- [31:45]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [31:46]
Pete Buttigieg
But I really think we have to talk about what we're doing with our money here at home in a way that is accountable to the domestic side of the policy ledger. Because that's not. I'm sorry, but the reason it's unaffordable here at home is not because we're helping certain causes abroad. That's never been the biggest share of our funding. And the trade offs are real, but the trade offs are between people who live here and other people who live here. And mainly it's the wealthiest people who live here versus everybody else.
- [32:11]
Interviewer
So if the concern is antisemitism, I think that just to circle back, I have seen an insane explosion of anti Semitic comments on Instagram in a way that I thought would be impossible even five years ago. And you have people who are actually neo Nazis taking advantage of the post 10-7-discourse to sort of piggyback on that to push their own agenda, pretending they care about politics.
- [32:28]
Pete Buttigieg
It's a pretext. I mean, a lot of people use it as a pretext Right. And part of how you can tell that is a lot of us are so troubled by a whole generation.
- [32:37]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [32:38]
Pete Buttigieg
Focused on what we are seeing and rightly disturbed by what we're seeing every day in Gaza. But remember, some of these things, some of these expressions of anti Semitism happened on the morning of October 8th. Like, before Israel even responded to October 7th. There were some of these things happening, like, on US soil. Like, you know, the triangles being painted that are like a Hamas symbol. Like, so that's part of what I'm saying. Like, these two things in principle are not connect. They don't relate. Right. Antisemitism, by definition, is an unjustifiable racial hatred, a position on the conflict. And the effect that it's having, especially the effect it's having on men, women and children in Gaza, is concern for people. Those two things in principle should not have anything to do with each other. But in practice, a lot of people who are worried about their kids or worried about their family or worried about themselves see, it's not hypothetical. It's not just somebody getting yelled at on a college campus. It's people getting shot up. And, like a guy with a flamethrower thinking he's helping children in Gaza by attacking Jews.
- [33:38]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right?
- [33:39]
Pete Buttigieg
Like, this shit is real.
- [33:40]
Interviewer
No, I think there's a lot of misguided energy when it comes to what people see as support. But I will say most of the Jewish people that I know that are my friends are pretty anti Zionist, and they see, and I would agree with them, that every Israeli bomb dropped on Gaza, every bullet fired into an aid line, just ratchets up the anti Semitism a little bit more. And so you have to ask the question, was October 7th the driving force of anti Semitic outbursts? It really feels like the Israeli government and the IDF's military action is the driving force of anti Semitism.
- [34:06]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, there's no. I don't think it's okay to blame anti Semitism on. Like, it comes too close to making it sound like that makes the anti Semitism okay. I know that's not what you're saying, but I think we hear that at the same time. Yeah. Like, everything that Netanyahu government does right now, like everything you see the IDF doing in the food lines or the annexation or the ground movements into Gaza is incinerating a really important part of the moral fiber of what connects America to Israel and what I think connects a lot of American Jews to the Zionism Project.
- [34:38]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [34:38]
Pete Buttigieg
The Scientist Project is supposed to be about this moral Realization that something happened, like a near extermination event for American Jews happen. And part of how the world needs to respond is to recognize that Jewish people will not be safe anywhere unless they have self determination in their homeland.
- [34:55]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. The settler expansion into the west bank.
- [34:58]
Pete Buttigieg
Have been pretty crazy and again, designed to make it impossible for there to be a functional Palestinian state. Netanyahu's government is doing everything that it can to make it impossible. I mean, that's what the annexation, the settlements, that's what this is about. It's about spiking the two state solution, which also means defying what has generally been America's position, which is part of why a lot of people in America are saying, wait a minute, why am I sponsoring Netanyahu to defy what America views as the way forward? And I think what the establishment and those in power need to think about and the whole country needs to think about is are we actually ready to do what it would take for a two state solution to work? Is there any shred of hope? Or is two state solution just something that politicians can say to kind of end this very difficult question and move on to the next question without being committed to what it actually takes to make it happen?
- [35:45]
Interviewer
You think that it's possible?
- [35:47]
Pete Buttigieg
I have to believe that it's possible because I can't think of something that would be better. But we also want to be honest toward your question. Like it's never felt more out of reach in my lifetime than it does right now.
- [35:58]
Interviewer
We're looking at it like, how can anybody possibly talk about October 7th at this particular point when things have escalated to this horrific point? Well, like I said, you have 60,000 plus dead and most important, people can't leave. Well, first of all, they don't want to leave. But the lack of mobility I think is the scariest part. And so I think a lot of us Wonder Whenever we're 40, 50 years old and we're in positions of political power, are we still going to be in this situation or is there going to be this permanent political gridlock when it comes to Israel, Palestine?
- [36:24]
Pete Buttigieg
I think a lot of that does come down to leadership. And American leadership can make a difference. But I think the leadership there is what will make the most difference. And I think that this gridlock is being kept in place largely by Netanyahu, because it's his ticket to stay in power.
- [36:37]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right?
- [36:37]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, you see the people taking to the streets in Israel, what he's doing is obviously not good for the hostages either. And they're still hostages.
- [36:43]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [36:43]
Pete Buttigieg
Which also falls out of the discourse sometimes. Like, that's real. They are real. There's a lot of people who all they want is the bodies back of their loved ones, but there's also people who are alive. Right. None of that is getting better because of what Netanyahu is doing. He needs this to stay just as bad as it is so that he can stay in power and stay ahead of criminal charges and all the rest of it. So that has to change. And there needs to be American leadership that can do two things at once that can be committed to the security of people in Israel and unwilling to sponsor some of the things that defy American policy and prevent peace from becoming real.
- [37:15]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [37:15]
Interviewer
Do you think that there's any way that Israel will get back the right or the left? Because they lost the left first and it took about a year and a half for them to lose the right. Do you think that our relationship politically with them is going to be permanently severed or is there a bridge back to mutual understanding for them?
- [37:27]
Pete Buttigieg
What I know is that if it becomes just a partisan thing thing, then I think the relationship is destroyed. Because it used to be a bipartisan concern. I mean, it still is a bipartisan concern, but feels very different now in.
- [37:38]
Interviewer
Terms of the anger that's been brewing on both sides over the past couple years.
- [37:42]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. I mean, more and more people, I think, on both sides are pessimistic about a two state solution, but I can't think of anything better.
- [37:50]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [37:51]
Interviewer
As far as overall American intervention, one of the big things that Trump ran on was not being an interventionist. And they said, he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop war only. America first. America first. It's kind of letting people handle their own problems at least. You know, maybe we have some covert funding of CIA programs, but we're not gonna send any more troops explicitly to different countries.
- [38:14]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, but we'll blow up a boat off the coast of Venezuela and rename the DOD to the Department of War. Like, it's kind of weird how he came in saying he's the peace guy, and then he's posting Apocalypse now memes about making war on Chicago. Like, this guy's not exactly a peacenik.
- [38:30]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [38:30]
Interviewer
There's been a war in Chicago for a long time.
- [38:32]
Pete Buttigieg
Not like this.
- [38:33]
Interviewer
I don't think he knows about it. As far as your decision to volunteer to be deployed to Afghanistan, what prompted that decision for you?
- [38:39]
Pete Buttigieg
Part of what prompted it was I grew up like Hearing these stories about how Americans came together in a previous generation to serve. But I saw kind of the opposite in my generation. Like, if you look back at the generation, like JFK or even like George H.W. bush.
- [38:54]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [38:54]
Pete Buttigieg
These guys were in World War II together. They got to know each other. They became Republicans, they became Democrats. They were rich, working class. They all just kind of formed this sense of what it meant to be an American. While they were defending America in World War II, it cut across class. And by the time the Iraq war was erupting and I was a college student when that happened, very few people who I saw, like, on the campus of Harvard were going to wind up in uniform. I think the statistic is something like 50% of the graduating class of Princeton in the 40s went directly into the military.
- [39:27]
Interviewer/Assistant
Wow.
- [39:28]
Pete Buttigieg
Something like that.
- [39:28]
Interviewer
And that was the Pacific or Europe or something like that.
- [39:30]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah, yeah.
- [39:31]
Pete Buttigieg
And, you know, a couple generations later, I could like, count on one hand the people I knew in the Ivy Leagues who were gonna ever wear the uniform.
- [39:38]
Interviewer
And you feel like that was having a chilling effect on patriotism and camaraderie across the board.
- [39:42]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, because it meant you were farming out our wars to lower income people. And this started. Gotcha, Gotcha. You know, I mean, this largely started in the post Vietnam era, because in Vietnam, everybody. Well, everybody, but not quite everybody got drafted. Right. Like Donald Trump famously avoided. He was a millionaire's son. He avoided having to go to war.
- [39:58]
Interviewer
I also hear my grandma told me this yesterday, she was alive during the Vietnam War, that if you were enrolled in a university, you didn't have to be drafted.
- [40:04]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [40:04]
Pete Buttigieg
So imagine. Yeah, and imagine the resentment that comes out of that.
- [40:09]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right?
- [40:09]
Pete Buttigieg
And then you get to my generation and it's like, this is a working class war. And then I'm watching, I'm against the Iraq war as a student. I'm watching this stuff play out. I'm looking at who's serving, and I'm beginning to ask, like, if I'm not serving, am I part of the problem? And so I signed up for the Reserve, which is a way to kind of keep your day job and be in the military one weekend a month, two weeks a year, and then you might get deployed. The thing that really put me over the top, actually was when I was knocking on doors for Barack Obama. I was in the low income counties in Iowa, and I'm knocking on doors. It felt like every other house I knocked on the door of, there was this like, working class kid who mentioned to me that he was about to go to basic training or something. I'm like, well, if they're going, then I ought to be going. So I did. I signed up. I became part of the Navy Reserve. Loved the people that I served with, knew that it sooner or later would mean to getting deployed, and then it meant in the end getting deployed to Afghanistan while I was mayor. So that was a little complicated. I had to go on leave as being mayor to go be a lieutenant, but it was one of the most important experiences of my life.
- [41:05]
Interviewer
Do you think foundationally, 911 had an emotional impact on you?
- [41:08]
Interviewer/Assistant
Totally, yeah.
- [41:09]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, you know the way it felt watching the fighter jets go overhead that day. It happened on, like, registration day, my sophomore year.
- [41:17]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [41:17]
Pete Buttigieg
And there's people walking around outside trying to get a cell phone signal, trying to call their loved ones. It was, I think, I think the first time that my generation saw a chain of events that happened overseas impact us here at home directly. Usually it was the other way around. And we were trying to use our imagination to think, oh, like, okay, how is something that's happening, some policy decision here in America going down in Africa? But here, it's like this chain of events started in a cave in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden, and it ended with thousands of Americans getting killed.
- [41:44]
Interviewer
So it broke this invisible wall that existed.
- [41:47]
Pete Buttigieg
We kind of lost our innocence in a way, and then we lost our innocence again. Because after 9 11, there's this amazing moment where everybody comes together. American flags left, right and center. Everybody kind of feels a certain way, we're gonna help each other. We're gonna, like, stand up. But then that goodwill gets squandered in the Bush years by invading Iraq, which has nothing to do with 911 and a whole bunch of other things that happened.
- [42:10]
Interviewer
Yeah. I think part of why so many people were on board with the invasion of Iraq is, for one, people didn't know the geographic differences between the countries.
- [42:16]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, it's all like the middle. Afghanistan isn't even, strictly speaking, the Middle east, but to a lot people, it's like kind of the same general, get them.
- [42:23]
Interviewer
It's also the word terror became used so commonplace as a justification for so many things. They want to drag the modern world back to the past to a dark age of violence, fanaticism and terror. Terrorism, Terrorism, terrorists, radical Islamic terrorists. The terror network will have nuclear weapons. And the problem with the word terror is that it kind of evokes imagery of like, someone throwing a stink bomb in the bathroom or, like, you know, doing ding dong ditch. It's Just terror for terror's sake. Adrenaline seeking activities with no possible root cause that compelled them into violent action. And I'm not saying that you should ever advocate or condone terrorism, but when someone does something crazy, there's typically somewhere down there a valid grievance that was taken to the extreme degree.
- [43:08]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, but that's the difference between understanding something and justifying it. Or explaining something versus explaining something away.
- [43:14]
Interviewer
On September 11, enemies of freedom committed.
- [43:17]
Pete Buttigieg
An act of war against our country.
- [43:19]
Interviewer
Country.
- [43:19]
Pete Buttigieg
A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.
- [43:23]
Interviewer
It was a public relations campaign on behalf of the government to make sure we didn't know why Al Qaeda was actually upset with us.
- [43:30]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I think that's fair. Yeah, I think that nobody's really in the mood to put things in context in, in 2001. But also I think there is a correct awareness that like whatever missteps the U.S. made in Foreign policy, that doesn't mean it's okay to hijack aircraft and fly them in into buildings in New York City and murder everybody. I'm not saying.
- [43:47]
Interviewer
You're saying that made someone so mad that they were willing to do that.
- [43:50]
Pete Buttigieg
I would say a lot of things made them so mad that they were willing to do that. But yeah, US policy played a role, no question.
- [43:56]
Interviewer
And it's important because if you don't want to repeat those mistakes and be back in the same situation, you're likely to do something like perhaps invade Iraq, which will create the same kind of resentment that led to 9 11.
- [44:05]
Pete Buttigieg
But here's what I'm worried about from a Gen Z perspective where I see a lot of folks in Gen Z who are open to like an isolationist approach. So like none of this worked. All we do anytime we go abroad is we fuck something up. So let's just stay put.
- [44:17]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right?
- [44:18]
Pete Buttigieg
And I think Trump speaks to that actually, by the way, that's all bullshit. Like he was for the Iraq war and then later on pretended to be against it. And like I said, now he's doing these warlike things, but nevermind. I get that feeling. I think it's really important not to give into it because the world is gonna develop along some pattern and some set of values and a lot's going to depend on who's leading and who is projecting. I'm not saying we project force everywhere. I think we only project enough force to defend ourselves. But what else are we projecting in terms of leadership? Because if not, somebody else is. And I do not want the kind of world order if you want to call it that of the 21st century to unfold on Putin's terms. I don't want it to unfold on Xi Jinping's terms. I want it to unfold on terms that are a little more consistent with what I think of as, yes, American values, but also universal values, like things you don't have to be American to believe in, around freedom and self determination. It doesn't mean every country is going to be a liberal democracy that looks like America. Well, especially America now. I'm not sure I'd wish the current conditions in America on a lot of other countries, but I just don't think we can retreat and expect that to go well. I think Another lesson of 911 is whatever's going on in the world will come find us one way or the other.
- [45:26]
Interviewer
Did you see anything in Afghanistan where you felt like it was objectively wrong and needed to be correct in terms of societal behavior and cultural practices?
- [45:33]
Pete Buttigieg
You mean among the Afghans or you mean. Sure, but that doesn't mean. I thought it was my place to go in and like fix it.
- [45:39]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [45:39]
Pete Buttigieg
Like there are.
- [45:40]
Interviewer
You just mentioned a universal sort of moral code and that kind of was. I was thinking of certain practices and certain societies that are seen as objectively non democratic, oppressive, et cetera.
- [45:50]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. I mean there was an enormous amount of corruption. Like it was sort of like ingrained in the culture in a way. But you have to understand that that's kind of what it took to get things done. Doesn't mean no corruption is okay. But it's why I think an American would be shocked at some of these things that like police commanders would just be paid in cash. But also they personally would be expected out of their personal pockets to pay the salaries of all the people who reported to them because like none of the government machinery was working.
- [46:14]
Interviewer
Like a departed style Ponzi scheme, kind of.
- [46:16]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, that really takes me back. I forgot that one.
- [46:18]
Interviewer
They want to catch you off track here.
- [46:19]
Pete Buttigieg
That's the one with everybody getting shot in the face basically, Right? Yeah.
- [46:22]
Interviewer
I don't want to spoil it, but there's that scene in the apartment building and everyone basically dies. So we're talking about Afghanistan.
- [46:28]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, sorry.
- [46:29]
Interviewer
Sort of societal class.
- [46:30]
Pete Buttigieg
Suddenly I'm thinking about elevators.
- [46:31]
Interviewer
Anti isolationist. And in terms of terms of.
- [46:33]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, so like take the treatment of women. Objectively bad, obviously. Extremely objectively bad. Like Afghanistan now, like they don't think women should go to school. They're not going to let women have jobs. Like just bad. So what do they do what do women do? I mean, they're expected to be at home to produce and raise children, just like domestic servitude. Pretty much.
- [46:54]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [46:54]
Pete Buttigieg
Does that mean we invade them and make them change that?
- [46:57]
Interviewer/Assistant
No.
- [46:57]
Pete Buttigieg
It does mean that, like, leadership, American leadership, Western leadership matters.
- [47:01]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [47:01]
Pete Buttigieg
It matters especially as the economic leader, to the extent we can say, stay the economic leader. Like, we nudge things in the right direction and say, like, if you want to work with us, there's some things that we care about in terms of human rights in your country.
- [47:13]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [47:13]
Pete Buttigieg
So that's just one example, but that's kind of what I'm getting at.
- [47:16]
Interviewer
Yeah, but the strategic objective of the Afghan war, the Afghanistan conflict, was to disempower the Taliban.
- [47:21]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah. Although by the time I was there, it was getting a little harder to figure out out what the strategic objective actually was. The guy would go work out, and there's this room on the ISAF headquarters where I was stationed. It was like a gym workout room. And they had this thing on the wall, this poster that was like a PowerPoint of the mission. And it was so convoluted, like, there were so many things on there. It was meant, I think, for morale. It was meant to remind us why we were there. But the more I looked at it, the less I understood exactly why we were there. I think that's part of what made it very hard to get out. Because if you don't know exactly what your objectives are going to, especially once you've overthrown the Taliban, which happens super quickly, that's really hard to figure out what the terms are going to be for you to get out.
- [47:55]
Interviewer
So you felt like it went on for far too long.
- [47:57]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I mean, when I was there, that would have been year 1314. I was there in 2014, started in 2001. And by the way, we thought we were the ones turning out the lights. Like, I thought I was one of the last people there. And then it went on for years after that.
- [48:10]
Interviewer
Would you describe your deployment as? Was it calm or were you seeing combat?
- [48:13]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, I wasn't, like, breaking down doors, but, you know, it felt like combat when they were shooting rockets at us, for sure it was not. Yeah, usually on the base, and my job was to go outside the wire a lot, just like driving. We called a military Uber because the rule was you had to have two people qualified on a long gun, and not everybody there had a long gun. So some people just had pistols, some people had both. I was one of the ones who had both. So that meant like for my commander to go anywhere, the rule was I had to go with them or somebody had to go with them. So it meant that I wound up just driving around Afghanistan a lot and seeing through my windshield what was going on in these cities.
- [48:43]
Interviewer
What was going on?
- [48:44]
Pete Buttigieg
It was just a city. I mean, there's. There's this thing that happens when we hear about or see a place going through a war that you imagine that all anybody's doing there is war, right. But there's girls going to school and guys with watermelons on their shoulders coming back from the market and hardware stores and a froyo place and there's just life, right? It's a city. It's a city that's going through a lot. It's a city where every few days there's a bomb, but it's a city.
- [49:07]
Interviewer
That's one thing I noticed about Ukraine. I went there about 30 days after the war began and I was driving through the interior of the country where there were rockets being fired and there was a concentrated effort to maintain normalcy and, and just do your day to day routine. People were going to coffee shops. Of course the air raid sirens would make people go into bomb shelters for like five minutes, but it was almost like the only bars were closing at 8 instead of midnight. You know, it was just stuff like that where people don't want to lose their minds and they want to keep morale high and not give in to the trauma and stress of the situation. Was it a similar thing in Afghanistan?
- [49:35]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, because people have jobs to do. Like, unless you're literally in the military, like, just because there's a war in your country doesn't mean war is your job. Like you have some job in a coffee shop or whatever it is. And the biggest thing I took away, I think, was this sense of how people go about their everyday life when all of that is going on and happening to them.
- [49:51]
Interviewer
What was your opinion about the withdrawal?
- [49:52]
Pete Buttigieg
It was brutal. I mean, it was really, really hard to watch. It was hard to watch. Well, it was hard to watch the bombing because it was right. The bombing where American service members were killed, because that was right at a location that I drove through or at a lot of times and worried. I knew it was a high risk spot and I was worried that would be one of the places we would get hit. It was brutal to watch those images of the airplanes taking off and people clinging to them. And it's also brutal what's happened since. The way that a lot of people have been left behind who put their lives on the line.
- [50:21]
Interviewer
So there was no real exit plan for people or allies in the Afghan National Army.
- [50:24]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, clearly it was not executed in a way that took care of them. And then the decision by the Trump administration to just scrap all of these programs, there's a lot of people who are just high and dry.
- [50:33]
Interviewer
What do you think about what's going on with the border right now? Or I guess with ICE occupying cities and federal agents being sent to places.
- [50:38]
Pete Buttigieg
Like Chicago and detectives D.C. it's not okay to militarize an American city. And two things can be true. It can be true that we have immigration laws for a reason, and they should be upheld. And also, this doesn't justify militarizing an American city. Look, the border needs to be secure. Right. That's been an issue for a long time. It's also true that the system. The thing you're supposed to say to sound like you're right on this issue is you're supposed to say, I am for more legal and less illegal immigration, which is true. I mean, I'm for that, too. But if you go around saying that, you have to look at what we've actually done as a country, and one of the things we've done as a country is not made it possible for enough people to come in legally while having these economic poles that pretty much require our economy, requires a certain number of people or set up in a way that relies on a certain number of people to come to in illegally. And we expect that just to just work. And of course, it doesn't. And there have been attempts to reform it. There was a big one in 2005 or 2006. There was a bill a year or two ago that wasn't a complete reform, but it would have helped. The last time we had actual comprehensive immigration reform in this country was 1986.
- [51:48]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [51:48]
Interviewer
Under Reagan, of all people.
- [51:49]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, yeah. And I knew the congressman who. He was from Louisville, who was one of the people who did it. He was a big Notre Dame guy. And under Reagan, in 84, 86, they did that. Ron was old. This Democratic congressman from Louisville, Al Simpson is this very conservative senator from Wyoming. They got together and they made a plan. They did it. And we haven't done a comprehensive reform since that day.
- [52:07]
Interviewer
You know, for me, I could be wrong about this, but I see a pretty clear solution to the immigration issue, which is to dramatically increase the number of asylum judges and put a lot more funding into the immigration courts. Because right now, I've had some experiences at the Border. I keep in touch with some migrants that I've met in the Arizona desert and over the river in Texas. And most of the them, their asylum hearing, their first preliminary hearing, where they go to meet an immigration judge to figure out if they can stay or be deported, it's four and a half years. And so, especially now with Trump in office, it's like, okay, you're sending ICE to these cities. What message does that send to somebody who's already here illegally and thinks, hmm, should I go to my asylum hearing in three years? I think I'm gonna avoid doing that because I'm here already and I'm one of 380 million people, so I'm probably just gonna kind of bleed into society and not make myself an object of deportation.
- [52:50]
Pete Buttigieg
But that doesn't speak to the economic issue issue, which is a whole American economy almost designed to need more labor than we're able to supply.
- [53:01]
Interviewer
And one thing that I want to say, too, is that there's a notion that Americans wouldn't ever want to do farm labor. You know, they say only immigrants would want to do these jobs. No, only immigrants would do those jobs for that amount of money.
- [53:11]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [53:11]
Interviewer
I'm sure that if it was affordable, there would be tons of Americans, especially in the inner cities, who are like, I can move to the Central Valley of California and make 20 bucks an hour picking artichokes. Or, I don't know how you actually extract artichokes from the ground, but doing whatever you have to do to get artichokes onto plates from the people would do it. It's the fact that they're being paid almost nothing.
- [53:27]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, the whole thing about Americans is a willingness to do hard work for good money.
- [53:32]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [53:32]
Pete Buttigieg
I think. Right. If the good money isn't there, that's when things start to change.
- [53:36]
Interviewer
So would you ever run for president again?
- [53:38]
Pete Buttigieg
I don't know. I mean, I did once, so obviously, you know, it's crossed my mind. But it's not like I'm somebody whose life will never be complete unless I run for president again. What I'm trying to figure out is, like, how do I make myself use? And there's a lot of ways to do that. But what I'm doing right now is making the case for the values and the ideas and, in some cases, leaders that I believe in. I'm going to do a lot of that going into the midterms and writing about what I see happening in the world and speaking out about it, because I know that that's worth Doing no.
- [54:05]
Interviewer
Matter what, who's on your current Mount Rushmore of leaders that you think on the progressive side of the aisle, you think could lead us to victory.
- [54:11]
Pete Buttigieg
Mount Rushmore, controversial thing.
- [54:15]
Interviewer
Let's not think about the history of it.
- [54:16]
Pete Buttigieg
Right.
- [54:16]
Interviewer
Right now, a figurative symbol. Like, historically, right now, not dead or alive. We're talking right now Mount Rushmore.
- [54:24]
Pete Buttigieg
That's kind of twisted to put anybody who's alive on Mount Rushmore.
- [54:26]
Interviewer
But, like, it's a thought experiment.
- [54:29]
Pete Buttigieg
Okay.
- [54:30]
Interviewer
We're not building anything.
- [54:33]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, I don't know about Mount Rushmore, but I can tell the people I like to, like, call and see how they're thinking about things.
- [54:39]
Interviewer
Yeah, that's kind of like.
- [54:40]
Pete Buttigieg
And, you know, a lot of it is people who are my generation who are thinking about things a little bit differently. Senators in my generation, people like Andy Kim, who's new in the Senate from New Jersey, or Alyssa Slatkin, who's my senator right now in Michigan, who I think just have a different. They're not, like, captive to the, like, we're doing it this way because we've always done it this way kind of mentality. I would put John Ossoff in that bucket, too. In Georgia, I think there are a lot of people who. People probably haven't heard of as much because they're considered more junior in the House, but are, like, really just thinking with a level of firepower and originality. Some of them are more moderate. Some of them are more left. But from like, Jake Auchincloss in Massachusetts to Marie Glus and Camp Perez in the west, to Sarah McBride in Delaware, like, they're. They're just. They're thinking at a level that I think has the kind of imagination that we need. And then a lot of the best progressive leaders, I think, are mayors who get very little national attention, except when something goes wrong in their city, but are doing remarkable work. Like Mike Johnson in Denver has come as close as any big city mayor has ever come to. To figuring out housing. I'm not saying it's like a perfect solution.
- [55:44]
Interviewer
You decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms.
- [55:46]
Pete Buttigieg
Okay, I didn't know that, but good to know.
- [55:48]
Interviewer
Brandon Scott from Baltimore is doing great, too.
- [55:49]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, Yeah, I worked with him a lot, especially when the bridge collapsed a couple years ago. And, yeah, they've driven violent crime down in Baltimore. They're doing a lot to get the city to, like, a new and better place.
- [55:59]
Interviewer
What have they done to create that great result?
- [56:01]
Pete Buttigieg
Well, each city is different and each story is different. Cause it has to be very place based. But a few things that we know, work, I mean one again, again is to have compassion. Not let compassion take you all the way through to just anything goes. It's things like housing first, which is the idea that sometimes it doesn't work to say we're not going to get you shelter until you're clean. Because the reason you're not clean has something to do with you not having shelter. Breaking the cycle. It has to do with finding a way to build up the legitimacy of law enforcement, recognizing the problems that have come historically at the hands of, of law enforcement through the generations and also recognizing that like, if we do not make it possible for police to successfully do their job, we are not safe and we have to support that work and also not expect them to be the mental health provider of first resort.
- [56:49]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [56:50]
Pete Buttigieg
And that's another thing that I think Mandani's talked about here that's really important is the relevance of making sure you send in somebody who's qualified to help on mental health when there is a crisis. I think they've done a lot of work on the economic front to recognize, okay, some things are federal policies, policy, but like local leadership has a responsibility to make sure this place is livable. That's where clearing out some of the barriers to getting housing built. It takes local leadership to do that. I think it's really interesting to see what Daniel Lurie is doing in San Francisco because, you know, he came in at a time when people were really pessimistic about the city and it has kind of a back to basics approach. So again, I'm not mapping like these leaders aren't all good because they're more left or because they're more center. They're good because they're crafting solutions that make sense. Where they actually, I think what Baltimore.
- [57:32]
Interviewer
Did too, they have this group called Safe street that Brandon Scott has and it's a community intervention team. Mostly they look like local football coaches. They're like dads in their 40s and 50s who are all like super buff. But they're also trained in de escalation and some basic PTSD therapy tenants. And they'll go in and they'll intervene and talk to at risk youth who end up perpetuating inner city violence. And most of them just need somebody to talk to. They're not these like broken people who will never be fixed. It's possible to help somebody, somebody with kindness. You don't have to incarcerate them and teach them a lesson every time to do something wrong.
- [58:01]
Pete Buttigieg
Especially when you're dealing with teenagers whose brains are still developing. I think about this a lot more because I have kids and I'm watching the neurons firing in our four year old kids. That process is continuing well into your 20s. And being attuned to that is a really important part of how you do right by people and keep everyone safe.
- [58:20]
Interviewer
Yeah, I mean, when I was a teenager, I was insanely stupid.
- [58:23]
Pete Buttigieg
Weren't we all?
- [58:23]
Interviewer
I mean, we had this game when we were 16 where we would run into the grocery store and we would grab as much beer as we possibly could and we would race to the exit and whoever got there first with as much beer as possible would win.
- [58:32]
Pete Buttigieg
Did you win?
- [58:32]
Interviewer
I never won because I'm kind of slow. But I'm not gonna say his name. Cause he has a good job now, but he would win. And the point is, he has a good job. He wouldn't be able to have a good job if he was put in prison for a long time or jail or juvie or something. Not saying you should be able to do that, but just goes to show, the teenage boy mind is not exactly a diamond.
- [58:49]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah, but we grow up.
- [58:50]
Interviewer
You chisel away at the diamond.
- [58:52]
Pete Buttigieg
Is that how that works? I don't know a lot about diamond coding.
- [58:53]
Interviewer
I don't know. I just know it's a dark base. But anyways, you talked about the bridge collapse in Baltimore. I think now would be a good time to reflect on your time as Transportation Secretary. If you were to look back at that long period of time. What's the achievement that you're most proud of?
- [59:04]
Pete Buttigieg
Can I do three?
- [59:05]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah. All right.
- [59:06]
Pete Buttigieg
So the one that doesn't get a lot of coverage is the safety work. So like I said when we started our conversation, tens of thousands of people die every year in this country in crashes. We reduced that. We didn't end that, but we helped reduce it. And we had about 4 billion people get on an airplane on my watch. And zero crash fatalities in commercial airline crashes. So there's a safety one, two, the infrastructure bill. And we got 20,000 projects done and about 70,000 projects started. And that like, some of that's still playing out. Some of it'll take like decades. And some of it's already done. And they said you couldn't pass this big infrastructure. Trump tried and he couldn't get it done. We got it done. And I'm really proud of the projects that we did everywhere, like literally everywhere. I drive past some of them now, just like when I go Take the kids to school every day in Michigan. And then the third is the airline work, which they're trying to dismantle right now. But, you know, when we came in, it was so incredibly frustrating the way airlines would treat passengers. And we stepped in and did something about that. We enforced the rules that were already there. We had record enforcement actions against airlines that were leaving people stranded with no help.
- [60:11]
Interviewer
Who was the worst airline when you came in?
- [60:14]
Pete Buttigieg
I'm not going to pick like a single worst airline because each one had its problems. I think the worst single. The worst single acute moment was the Southwest meltdown. And we made sure there was accountability for that, like more than $100 million. But it wasn't all just like fines going back to us. It was money going back to passengers, which is the most important part. We put in rules and tools, things like flightrights.gov which is a website you can use to see how the different airlines are going to treat you, make sure that you can get your money back if you get stuck and you need a hotel or you need a meal. And we even started a process, which Trump just killed, to get compensation for your time. If it's the airline's fault and you have this extreme, like, many hour long delay. And the result is airlines started treating passengers better, partly because we made them, partly because they knew we were watching. And by the way, the airline business was going just fine by the time we left, so they were still profitable and they were taking better care of passengers. And one thing I'm really pissed about right now is, is that Trump's Department of Transportation is dismantling that. They got rid of the rule that we were developing that would get you that compensation. They are getting rid of another rule that says that the airlines have to tell you what the fees are. Not even like regulating the fees, just saying they gotta tell you what the extra fees are in terms of, like.
- [61:27]
Interviewer
Before you buy Spirit, Airlines will say it's $25, but then to get a bag is $35 and two bags is like 10 million.
- [61:33]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, yeah. The airfare's 29 bucks, but like, yeah, if you want a seat, it's 30. And if you want to sit in that seat, somehow it's an extra attempt. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
- [61:41]
Interviewer
One time I was on a Spirit flight and I said, hey, can I have some water? And they said, yeah, it's going to be like, you know, $2.50. I said, I don't have any money, I'm sorry. And they gave me a cup of ice. And they said, wait 46 minutes. They knew the exact time where ice would become water.
- [61:54]
Pete Buttigieg
Meaning they do that every day.
- [61:55]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [61:55]
Interviewer
And they weren't making a joke. They were being serious about it. Like, this is a way for you to get a discount. And it really made me think, yeah.
- [62:02]
Pete Buttigieg
That'S the kind of thing that we stepped in to do something about. But now they're going the other way. And this is part of what they're doing more broadly. You know, on banks, they're letting credit cards charge these junk fees that there was a rule that you could do that. Now you can do it. You know, with these companies, you have to go to to file your taxes. This administration killed the direct file that would allow you to just do it yourself and not have to go through one of these companies. And on the airline side, they're starting to dismantle the. I mean, I'm not super surprised. Like, my replacement at the Department of Transportation was literally an airline lobbyist inside baseball, but that's what they're doing. But anyway, if you ask me about the things I'm proud of, because some of those things are in law, so they'd be harder to take apart. So it's the safety work, it's the infrastructure projects we did in every part of the country, and it's what we did to make it better to be an airline passenger.
- [62:44]
Interviewer
And on the inverse, what are some things that you wish you had done differently or if you were to do it again, that you would change course?
- [62:49]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, there was a derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, where we had folks on the ground very quickly, but we did not understand that people were getting bad information and confusing information that left them even more terrorized than they were by way the. The chemical spill that had happened because of the derailment. And so even though there were no fatalities, it was just an incredibly serious incident that if I had understood the information issues sooner and gotten there, then I think I could have helped that community better deal with that. So that's an example of something that we learned the hard way.
- [63:21]
Interviewer
When you say bad information, what was that information?
- [63:24]
Pete Buttigieg
So there's a bunch of online stuff being pushed, making people question what they were being told by health authorities on what was and wasn't something to worry about. When you should hold off on drinking the water, when it was okay, okay.
- [63:36]
Interviewer
About the toxicity of materials.
- [63:38]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because there's a cloud of black smoke over them. They're saying, okay, is the air safe? Is the water safe? Is the soil safe? And it was hard enough for the government to get them good information. And then you had this flood of bad information coming in online and it turned out it was coming from all over the place. Far left, far right and other countries.
- [63:53]
Interviewer
Yeah, I remember that was a conspiracy charge time period.
- [63:55]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah, yeah.
- [63:56]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, it's just one of many, as we know. And more generally, I'd say it took us a while to understand the effect of some of these conspiracy things. So because that happened in Ohio, we were more attuned to what was going on when Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit. But there were a lot of things when those hurricanes hit, especially the North Carolina side, where people weren't applying for money that they should and could get because they had been told that it wasn't going to happen. Or they were being told that like, you know, money wouldn't go to you if you had a Trump sign in your house.
- [64:24]
Interviewer
Or just like that's like Facebook misinfo.
- [64:27]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right?
- [64:27]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, but it was everywhere. But by then we knew a little bit more about how to intervene and do something about it. Another thing that if I would, I mean, we cared about this, but I would be even more focused on it if I was doing it over again was the red tape that makes it hard to build anything in this country. So projects are incredibly expensive. Like in New York, we're trying to do the second Avenue subway. Billions of dollars, and the tunnel is already there. It's been there for years, just getting all the other stuff done. And I can point to a lot of smaller projects that have hit these same issues. And it turns out the federal government is not set up to make sure projects go quickly. It's set up to make sure they don't go wrong. And it's important to make sure they don't go wrong. But we've turned the dial so far in terms of making sure nothing goes wrong, because that might embarrass a politician, that we've had a hard time making it possible to actually get the thing done.
- [65:13]
Interviewer
So there's so much administrative bureaucracy and so much red tape that you can't get something basic done without about a four to six month paperwork process for.
- [65:20]
Pete Buttigieg
Years, which is making it harder. And this isn't just transportation. It's affecting how we build housing. It's affecting how we build clean energy infrastructure, which is super important if we want to at least like bend the curve on climate change and have it be less bad. So really important things are at stake in getting rid of some of that bureaucratic red tape that just Gets in the way again and again.
- [65:39]
Interviewer
And you wish that you had taken more steps to dismantle that jumbled.
- [65:43]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I mean, I pushed on it, but I know now more things that I wish I knew. Like there are things I figured out by year four that if I knew them in year one, I think we could have gotten more traction.
- [65:54]
Interviewer
So those are the main two things?
- [65:55]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, those are the first ones that come to mind. There's a whole bunch of other things, you know, an interview I would have done a little differently or a project that I have certain thoughts about or whatever, but those are the things. And then I guess the third thing I would say is, you know, we did improve the number of people who are dying in car crashes in this country. Like thousands less per year, but it's still like tens of thousands. So we didn't get the job done.
- [66:14]
Interviewer
Well, there's also certain states that have laws that make it more difficult.
- [66:17]
Pete Buttigieg
No question. Yeah. This part of what we were dealing.
- [66:18]
Interviewer
With, specifically Louisiana, they have drive through daiquiri locations.
- [66:21]
Pete Buttigieg
True.
- [66:22]
Interviewer
You know, I'm just saying there's places, there's a. There's certain cultural things that if you want to. I don't know if drunk driving fatality. If drunk driving is the leading cause.
- [66:29]
Pete Buttigieg
Of death behind the wheel, it's not the only thing to worry about. It's up there. But you know, a big one now is distracted driving where people. Yeah, totally. I think that's. I think phone companies and tech companies need to recognize that they have more responsibility to have features that make it harder to. We have this whole idea called foreseeable misuse. Like basically, even if the instruction manual says don't do this, if you know that everybody's gonna do this, then you have to do something to make it harder. Same thing with the so called self driving cars that weren't really self driving. Like the manual says, like you have to have your eye on the road at all times. But everybody knows that people are just sitting back and there are a bunch of problems with some of these cars.
- [67:02]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [67:03]
Interviewer
Also the internal display with the carplay setup is very distracting to older drivers. Like my grandfather just got a new Merced and it has this like big carplay screen inside and it might as well be like an iPad in the car.
- [67:13]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Interesting.
- [67:13]
Interviewer
He's like, look at this. You know, and he's really doing that.
- [67:16]
Pete Buttigieg
No, and you are seeing some things. Like, you know, I went four years without getting an Uber because there was a. Either I was driving the van to get kids to school or There was a security detail taking me somewhere. So now like I'm using Uber and Lyft again and the subway again. And now I've noticed some of those apps have like a senior mode that just makes it less complicated.
- [67:32]
Interviewer
That's awesome.
- [67:32]
Pete Buttigieg
I'm 43, but I think I'm going to start using the senior mode because I just don't want to and all these distractions. But there are some technical things you.
- [67:39]
Interviewer
Can do that would help layout wise. Do you think there should be more cities like Dallas and Phoenix or more cities like New York City, St. Augustine, Florida, South Philadelphia in terms of the urban design, in terms of walkability and not infinite suburban sprawl of bland corporate storefronts?
- [67:53]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm an urbanist. I love a city that is walkable, that has a lot of mixed use, that has a lot of vibrancy. I would say it's also possible to do that in more spread out or smaller cities. Like we did that in South Bend, Indiana. Not, you know, it doesn't look like Manhattan, but we found that that was a place where you could do mixed use. By which I mean like stores downstairs, apartments upstairs or something like that. It's not just a building for a store and a building to live in and so on. I mean, people didn't like it at first. Like, we did things like bike lanes and just more sidewalks and people were like, no one's ever going to use bike lane. But like it mattered and it helped. But one thing I think is interesting about Phoenix is, you know, I worked there in 2004. It was my first job out of college, working on a campaign there. And there was, was like nothing. There was nothing you could do as a pedestrian in the middle of. I thought I was reading the map wrong because I was supposed to report for work. This location that was like literally in the dead center of the city. And I got there and I was like, this isn't the middle of a city with a million plus people in it. Like, this is a parking lot. Now if you go there, there is transit, which is like, that was a lift culturally to get people in the Phoenix region to get into transit. There are places you can walk to. So again, it's not Manhattan, but they're showing that it can be done in a place like that. And I, I believe in that style, that pattern of development, but you got to plan for that. You got to fund the kind of transportation and transit that makes it possible to do that. You got to have a culture around that too. That's the other thing I think is really important is the culture. There's this idea in a lot of places that, like, if you're on the bus, that means you have no choice but to take the bus. And we should establish good bus options. So also, maybe you have a car at home, but you didn't feel like bringing 2,000 pounds of metal with you everywhere you go. So you take the bus.
- [69:22]
Interviewer
Riding the bus is. Is awesome. You can go on your phone. You can sometimes meet people. Not always, but you can. You see interesting things. You feel like you're a part of your environment. You know, the car is like a really isolating sort of cube where you have your music and you have your familiar items. And it's a lonely robotic experience that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
- [69:38]
Pete Buttigieg
I'm just kidding.
- [69:39]
Interviewer
I like driving a lot.
- [69:39]
Pete Buttigieg
No, but it can't be.
- [69:40]
Interviewer
I don't mind driving that much. It just sounded cool for me to end really dramatically. So my final question to you is an Indiana question. What can we do about Gary? How can we help Gary? I went to Gary recently.
- [69:49]
Pete Buttigieg
So Gary, Indiana, for folks who aren't following, this is like you're talking about the just conditions in the city. They're kind of an extreme version of what I was talking about us living through in South Bend, where they were this industrial center and then they weren't and they lost the majority of their population. I think the answer has to do with a better set of connections into Chicagoland without becoming as expensive as Chicago is. And I think good. Again, a lot of it all comes back to transportation, like making sure it's easier to come and go because you can get more quickly if you're in good Gary. You can get to downtown Chicago more readily if you have a car than getting from places on the north and west side of Chicago, in the city limits of Chicago, to the Loop. So there's a lot of, like, promise and potential there. But you've got to make sure that there's the right kind of connections, that people have access to those kinds of jobs, that you don't have to have a car to get those jobs. And there's just a lot of environmental work that has to be done because of the legacy of the heaviest days of some of the industries that polluted to make sure it's a place people want to live. But I actually think that northwest Indiana, I mean, if you're thinking about Chicago land, it's got nowhere to grow but in that direction. And I think northwest Indiana is one of the most underrated or undervalued coasts in America.
- [70:56]
Interviewer
It's beautiful. Oh, my actual last question is, do you have an ancestral connection to the island of Malta?
- [71:01]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, totally. Yeah. My dad immigrated from there. Actually, the original connection is Gozo, which is the island next to Malta, which is even smaller. I was there recently. We took the family there. I wanted to my kids to meet their relatives. Went to this little village. And there was a guy from there, Anton Buttigieg, same last name. He was the president of Malta. Not even related. And, like a bunch of people have the same last name there. So it's like the land of the Buttigieg.
- [71:20]
Interviewer
My mom's there right now and she called me yesterday. She's like, you're interviewing Mayor Pete tomorrow, right? I was like, yeah. She's like, I just saw Buttigieg Bridge and I'm in Malta. And so she said, ask him if he's ancestrally Maltese.
- [71:30]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, it's this incredible country. It's just like tiny, like, very unusual country. It's independent English speaking, but also malt Maltese speaking, which is a Semitic language. Been through everything from like the. The Crusades to World War II. It's just like very strategic spot. Like, I. I go on all day about Malta, but it's. I even like to claim that our people invented the building because some of the oldest freestanding structures in the world are these megalithic temples, like, older than Stonehenge. Much more interesting than Stonehenge. And they built those and they hadn't even invented the wheel yet.
- [72:01]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [72:02]
Pete Buttigieg
Like, they didn't even have algebra, and they're making these incredible structures.
- [72:05]
Interviewer
It's amazing. You know, my people, the Irish, actually invented spacing. Seriously? Yeah. There was no spaces between letters. If you look at old tablets, until the Irish poets of the fifth century.
- [72:13]
Pete Buttigieg
Well done.
- [72:14]
Interviewer
Do you believe in a united and free Ireland?
- [72:16]
Pete Buttigieg
I mean, I believe in peace in Northern Ireland, which is a good example to some of the stuff we were talking about earlier, of how something that seemed like, generationally intractable, like, changed in our lifetime.
- [72:26]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [72:26]
Pete Buttigieg
I'm not an Ireland expert, but I.
- [72:29]
Interviewer
Just got back from there.
- [72:30]
Pete Buttigieg
Right, and you were in Belfast, too. You're in Northern Ireland.
- [72:32]
Interviewer
I was in Belfast. And there's some 10 attention there still. Yeah, of course, West Belfast, they've got murals of IRA soldiers with ski masks and guns.
- [72:38]
Pete Buttigieg
You know, I went to Dublin one time and wound up talking with this guy in a bar who was incarcerated with Bobby Sands, who was one of the leaders who died in a hunger strike. Resisting in Ireland. And he talked about how Bobby Sands was so committed to building a sense of Irish heritage that he would make crosswords in Gaelic in Irish Gaelic on toilet paper and, like, secretly pass them around so that his fellow inmates could learn Irish and, like, understand, like, their heritage. Like, yeah, some of the stories are incredible.
- [73:08]
Interviewer
Yeah. My piece is about the Irish Language revival.
- [73:10]
Pete Buttigieg
Oh, really?
- [73:11]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [73:11]
Pete Buttigieg
So I know all about them.
- [73:12]
Interviewer
There's 56,000 native Irish speakers, but it's increasing because they're putting more and more kids in full immersion, what they call Gael schools, where they speak Irish from kindergarten to eighth grade. And so they're trying to get a resurgence, particularly in the South. But anyways, I know you got to get out of here. Thanks so much for your time.
- [73:25]
Pete Buttigieg
Enjoyed it.
- [73:26]
Interviewer
I really appreciate it. I hope you had a great interview. Not sure what you guys have planned today, but I hope everything goes well and I hope you like this background. This is a pretty nice view.
- [73:33]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, it is.
- [73:33]
Interviewer
I was hoping we could see the Freedom Tower, but it's being blocked by this damn urgent care building. Channel 5 live worldwide, Hollywood and Vine.
- [73:40]
Pete Buttigieg
Fuck the authority.
- [73:41]
Interviewer
Channel 5 news, channel 55.
- [73:43]
Pete Buttigieg
We don't fuck with custers and 5 is the best number. Hey, how you doing?
- [73:50]
Interviewer
Hey, how's it going?
- [73:51]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Okay. Hey, good seeing you.
- [73:52]
Interviewer
I know. Long time no see.
- [73:54]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Yeah, definitely. Lots happened since I saw you last.
- [73:56]
Pete Buttigieg
AI is on my mind. Preschool's on my mind. Chess and I have 4 year olds.
- [74:00]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Are you still out west?
- [74:01]
Interviewer
Yeah, I'm still out west. I'm at a motel in Arizona called Apache Junction Motel. It's pretty nice for 75 bucks a night. All right, so we did our interview in New York City about three weeks ago. Less than, I think, 48 hours later, Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah. Off the bat, what was your initial reaction to that?
- [74:17]
Political Analyst/Commentator
It's horrible. I mean, first of all, it is horrible for the reason that all political violence is horrible. A murder of a human being. And then the question was, what's going to happen next? Is this going to be a chance to unify people left, right and center against violence, which we saw a lot of leadership moving in that direction from, you know, people like the governor of Utah to people like Bernie Sanders, kind of speaking roughly in the same language, or was it going to become the occasion or the excuse for something else, which is what we saw out of the White House. I mean, both of those things have been playing out in the time since that happened very clearly. This is something that makes everybody less safe and trying to Respond to it in partisan terms misses the fact that all of us lose when there's political violence. It also obviously misses the reality, which is that the bulk of political violence in the last decade in this country has not come from far left sources. I mean, this same summer that's ending with the assassination of Charlie Kirk began with the assassination of a Democratic lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota. And these things are unfortunately accelerating or clustering. So it's beyond kind of parsing what went on in the mind of one disturbed individual. Like a disturbed person can be inspired or motivated by any number of things. And this person seems like a jumble of video game influence, political influence, we don't really know. But the point is, even when we do know more, the lesson will be the same. Same, which is that we have got to be a country where political violence is not frequent, not normal, not accepted, not legitimized, not excused, not celebrated, and also not exploited.
- [76:00]
Interviewer
As far as exploited, do you mean like, I guess, the conservative side of the aisle taking advantage of the situation to crack down on progressive groups by associating their cause with violence?
- [76:08]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Not just progressive groups, but anybody who is critical of them.
- [76:12]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [76:12]
Political Analyst/Commentator
I mean, it didn't take them long to. To get to Jimmy Kimmel, for example. Right. Which is a long way from any kind of law enforcement response to a specific act of violence. And we still don't totally know what the scope of some of what they're threatening to do will be, but we have a general sense of it. And the vital thing to do when you see that sort of thing is to stand up to it. And I think for the left, there's a bit of a false choice being presented that either we make good on our promise to do the right thing, lower the temperature and do our part to reduce anything that could inspire violence, or we stand up to these attacks on our freedoms. I don't think that's true. I think those two things actually travel together. We reject political violence for the same reason that we reject any attempt to repress free speech, which is that both of those are an assault on freedom.
- [77:03]
Interviewer
Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes with the broader trend of the thing that's been happening as far as, you know, there was the lawsuit leveraged against Paramount against CBS. The recent, I think what's a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times or some kind of defamation damage is ranking record that was hit. And so I think that it's been capitalized in that regard. But the precedent set is pretty dangerous because obviously when it comes to people who, I guess I don't want to say abused, but use the civil court system to their advantage by using high paid attorneys and trying to bleed people's pockets that way. How does an average person, a Democrat, a citizen, an independent reporter actually stand up to what's happening?
- [77:37]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Yeah, it's hard because even a lawsuit that gets laughed out of the courtroom, which looks like what's happening with the New York Times lawsuit, it's still expensive to deal with. And not everybody has the reserves of the New York Times to make mounted defense. And so that chilling effect goes way beyond the New York Times or the Jimmy Kimmels to just ordinary people who wonder if they're going to be targeted, if they're going to be silenced. But I think the other really important thing to recognize is that most Americans are not on board with this. I'm really worried that the president has created this smokescreen or this sense that most people think that it's okay for the government, government to be intimidating people who criticize the government. And that's.
- [78:18]
Pete Buttigieg
It's not.
- [78:19]
Political Analyst/Commentator
And that's something that should be unifying people across left, right and center. I mean, these kinds of things are something that, you know, I remember being younger, arguing with conservative and libertarian friends, you know, over beers in college, and this is the kind of thing they were saying could happen.
- [78:36]
Pete Buttigieg
Now it's happening.
- [78:37]
Political Analyst/Commentator
So we should be on the same side about this, even if we're not not on the same side about a lot of policy issues.
- [78:42]
Interviewer
Do you think the Trump camp's willingness to just crack down on their adversaries in the media and in politics, they see as a justified backlash from the way that, I guess, big tech and Democrat aligned companies silenced their free speech during the 2020 election era with COVID misinformation protocols. And also like the Stop the Steal movement being suppressed on Facebook and elsewhere.
- [79:01]
Political Analyst/Commentator
There is no comparison. And I think this is really important to understand. Look, we can argue about whether Facebook or any social media platform did the right thing as they were trying to make sure they weren't part of the problem on Code Covid, but also trying to foster free speech. I mean, we can have that argument, but what we're talking about here is the government threatening, in some cases appearing to threaten the broadcast rights of organizations that are politically criticizing the president. And so they may come up with these justifications for themselves.
- [79:33]
Pete Buttigieg
But I think it's really important to.
- [79:35]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Make clear that that is a false equivalence, that there is no comparison, not just from Democrats in early 2020. But really, at any point in modern American history, other than maybe a little bit the Nixon administration, but even then, there's no comparison between what they're doing right now and anything else that has happened.
- [79:52]
Interviewer
I guess I just mean psychologically, there's so much vengeance that's accompanying Trump's second term. And I feel like part of that has to do with that equivalency being drawn between 2020 and this current moment. They feel like it's their time to get even.
- [80:03]
Political Analyst/Commentator
It's possible. I mean, I don't want to, you know, overstate my ability to get into their mentality. What I know is that this isn't right and it's not going to make us any better off. The presidency is not for getting revenge. The presidency is for making our lives better. And I think another big part of what's happening right now is that public opinion is swinging pretty swiftly and strongly away from the President because of the basics things like what we talked about when we sat down a while ago about the cost of living and the.
- [80:37]
Pete Buttigieg
About being able to get a job.
- [80:38]
Political Analyst/Commentator
And just a lot of fundamental things in the country that have not gotten better. And I think the White House doesn't want to be talking about that, and they definitely don't want to be challenged on that. So they're going down this road. And yeah, they're using recent events as an excuse to do it. But again, if you look at the way the President talks about his desire to take comedians off the air, he was expressing that, including specifically about Jimmy Kim Camel, long before what happened to Charlie Kirk.
- [81:05]
Interviewer/Assistant
Yeah.
- [81:06]
Interviewer
Going back to something you mentioned, has there been a very clear cut motive established for the Hortman family murders?
- [81:11]
Political Analyst/Commentator
What we know is that this guy had a lot of nationalist motivation and he went around with a kill list that, as I understand it was all Democrats and liberals and he was looking for Democrats to kill. He found some killed Melissa Hortman and her husband shot. Not other electeds. And this is another example of something.
- [81:33]
Interviewer
Rest in peace to the dog that was also killed.
- [81:36]
Pete Buttigieg
And the dog.
- [81:37]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Yeah, I mean, this, this horrific thing happened and it was like a blip in, in right wing media.
- [81:45]
Pete Buttigieg
Actually, more than that, worse than that.
- [81:47]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Right here of a guy who was like, clearly, I mean, I don't know, all of the things that were in his twisted psychology, but clearly motivated by some kind of warp vision of right wing ideology going around killing Democrats and then because he was on some volunteer veteran committee with dozens of people that was appointed by the governor. If you were Only consuming right wing media. You would believe that he was like a card carrying Democrat, even though that could not have been further from the truth. So it's one more example of how we're in these different realities unless we get out of the media bubbles we're in and look for what actually happens happen.
- [82:24]
Interviewer
So you think that algorithmic hypnosis plays a, plays a factor here as far as, like media echo chambers controlling people's minds and taking them away from the truth?
- [82:32]
Pete Buttigieg
Yeah, it's not helping.
- [82:33]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Right, because everybody feels just the very moment when all of us should step back and take pause. Everybody just feels even more justified for whatever it is they believe. And, you know, you look at, I mean, Mike Lee of Utah, right. U.S. senator mocking the assassination of Melissa Hortman because he imagined that this was somehow something he could, he could use against Democrats. Shows you that this isn't just like, you know, somebody in their basement, like reading their own Twitter accounts. This is really important. Influential people who have had their own psychologies warped by the algorithm.
- [83:13]
Interviewer
On the inverse, how do you feel about all the people losing their jobs and stuff like that for mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk or celebrating it rather?
- [83:19]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Well, look, celebrating it is wrong. And I think that there is a whole spectrum of responses, right? From ones that would make, I think any employer think, wait a minute, like, do I have, do I, do I have a violent person on my team? Through to people who phrase something the wrong way or express politics in a moment that was not the right moment. And not all of that means that. That you should be stifled. There's like thousands of reactions. But I think all of us should step back and just again, agree on some basic things here, that political violence is wrong. Perpetrating it is wrong. Celebrating it is wrong. And trying to exploit it is wrong.
- [84:01]
Interviewer/Assistant
Right.
- [84:02]
Interviewer
But do you think it's justified for employers to terminate employees who have said things like, oh, you know, he got what's coming to him, or something like that?
- [84:10]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Look, again, like, I think there's a lot of different cases, but I think just because somebody was an asshole on Twitter doesn't automatically mean that.
- [84:17]
Interviewer
All right, great. Well, thanks so much for your time. Once again, I appreciate you making time for this follow up and we'll definitely be in touch. Should release this probably sometime this week, and I think that it'll be pretty well received.
- [84:25]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Looking forward to it.
- [84:26]
Pete Buttigieg
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me in.
- [84:28]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Good luck in your travels.
- [84:28]
Interviewer
Yeah, talk to y' all soon.
- [84:30]
Pete Buttigieg
Bye.
- [84:30]
Political Analyst/Commentator
Take care.
- [84:36]
Interviewer
He was recording on his own video, right?