Someone Did an Awful Thing to Pete Buttigieg's Family

Summary

Podcast Summary: Bulwark Takes – "Someone Did an Awful Thing to Pete Buttigieg's Family"

Date: June 27, 2026
Host/Panelists: Tim O (The Bulwark), Nicole Wallace, Ian Bassin
Main Theme:
A disturbing incident involving a politically motivated false child abuse report against Pete Buttigieg’s family is discussed as a warning sign of escalating tactics against public figures—particularly LGBTQ+ families—in an increasingly heated and polarized US political landscape. The episode explores the emotional, legal, and social implications of such harassment, while also covering connected issues like political hypocrisy, racism in immigration debates, and shifts in American political norms.

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Overview

This episode centers on the harrowing personal attack faced by Pete Buttigieg and his family: an anonymous, false report to Child Protective Services (CPS), allegedly motivated by political animus and possibly homophobia. The team unpacks the human toll, the precedent such actions set in a democracy, and how these tactics reflect broader patterns of intimidation, double standards, and hate in current US politics. The conversation is raw, emotional, and urgent, aiming to raise awareness and call for vigilance and accountability.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Details of the Incident Involving Pete Buttigieg’s Family

• Incident Summary (01:31):
  • An anonymous report leads CPS to Buttigieg’s home, resulting in his children being interviewed without him present and temporary family separation.
  • Ian Bassin (02:12):
    “An agent of the state coming to your home, trying to separate you from your child because somebody with a political agenda wanted to torment you, probably because you’re gay... It is something that is totally sickening and unacceptable.”
• Emotional Impact:
  • Both guests and hosts describe strong emotional reactions—distress, rage, and deep empathy.
  • Nicole Wallace (03:57):
    “I read this with a feeling of this could be any of us. This is a tactic... they are usually rolled out and scaled to all of their political enemies. But what a horrific, horrific experience for their kids and their family.”

2. Systemic Issues: Weaponizing Government & False Allegations

• Failure of Safeguards (04:43):
  • Discussion on how state apparatus can be abused for personal vendettas.
  • Noted lack of assurance that perpetrators will face consequences.
  • Tim O (04:43):
    “You would hope that there would be bipartisan condemnation of this. Think about the infringement on the liberty of their family and their children... to have the government come in and separate them from their four-year-old twins... just because one sicko made a phone call.”
• Hypocrisy and "Parents' Rights" Movements:
  • Contradicts the "parents' rights" messaging prevalent on the right (i.e., Moms for Liberty).
  • Illustrates selective application of principles: liberty when convenient, state intrusion when targeting marginalized populations.

3. Need for Accountability & Strong Response

• Criminal Referral Debate:
  • Tim O (04:43):
    Calls for the false accuser to be prosecuted to deter future incidents.
  • Nicole Wallace quoting Buttigieg (08:30):
    “‘Making a false report of this kind is a crime. That’s as it should be… if there is any way to press civil or criminal charges over this, we will, not just for our own sakes, but to draw a line that I thought everybody already recognized. Do not mess up with someone’s kids.’”

4. Broader Trends: Political Intimidation & Erosion of Democratic Norms

• Normalization of Criminality in Politics (11:12):
  • J.D. Vance’s comment minimizing Nixon’s crimes and Watergate is critiqued as emblematic of eroding standards.
  • Tim O (12:24):
    “The most notable thing, is just the blunt fact that the Vice President of the United States went on a stage yesterday and said... politicians doing crimes is not a big deal anymore. ...Now it’s all good. We can do as many crimes as we want, and nobody will care.”
• Danger of State Intimidation (09:10):
  • Tim O:
    “You get to live out the life that you so choose... this type of action tears at that. It says we’re going to use the power of the state to intimidate you if your political views are wrong... That’s a very scary place to go.”

5. Political Racism & Attacks on Immigrants

• Supreme Court Immigration Decision (13:27):
  • The panel analyzes the racially charged reaction to the Court’s ruling ending protections for Haitians and Syrians.
  • Nicole Wallace:
    Highlights hateful rhetoric, including conspiracy theories and explicit racism from right-wing figures.
  • Tim O (14:43):
    “Maybe she [Megyn Kelly] just has fully given way to her dark soul and is using it to target helpless Haitians… Haitians have added a lot to the culture. And these guys, for no reason except for their own hatred, are now going to send them all back... and rub their faces in the dirt while they do it. It’s sick. It’s just sick.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ian Bassin's emotional reaction to the Buttigieges’ ordeal:
  • “I was literally sweating, like palms and feet sweating, rage bubbling up inside of me... An agent of the state coming to your home, trying to separate you from your child because somebody with a political agenda wanted to torment you, probably because you’re gay... It is something that is totally sickening and unacceptable.” (02:12)
• Nicole Wallace on the broader implications:
  • “This could be any of us... What Pete and Chasten decided to do by publishing this today is maybe put it under such a bright klieg light that people know this is happening to people like Pete and Chasten.” (03:57)
• Tim O calls attention to the hypocrisy of “parental rights” activists:
  • “What an example of an infringement upon liberty is this... They didn’t want their kids to have to learn about gay people in schools... and here you have the state actually taking away the liberty of gay parents.” (04:43)
• Tim O critiquing political acceptance of crime:
  • “Politicians doing crimes is not a big deal anymore... We can do as many crimes as we want, and nobody will care. It’s an interesting bet.” (12:24)
• Tim O on pluralism and the American ideal:
  • “This is what is beautiful about our country... And this type of action tears at that, right? It says, ‘Oh no, we’re going to intimidate you and use the power of the state to intimidate you if you live a certain way...’” (09:10)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:31–02:10:
  Initial details of the CPS incident at the Buttigieg home.
• 02:12:
  Ian Bassin’s visceral reaction to the story.
• 03:57–04:43:
  Nicole Wallace and Tim O discuss implications for all political families and the risk of copycats.
• 08:30:
  Nicole Wallace reads Pete Buttigieg’s call for criminal/civil action.
• 09:10:
  Tim O’s commentary on pluralism and state intimidation.
• 11:12–12:24:
  J.D. Vance and Tim O on Nixon/Trump, normalization of political crime.
• 13:27–14:43:
  Nicole Wallace and Tim O discuss racist reactions to Supreme Court immigration decisions and call out right-wing media’s hate speech.

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Takeaways

• Pete Buttigieg’s experience is an extreme example of how political polarization and homophobia can manifest through state systems, posing risks well beyond normal “public figure harassment.”
• There is bipartisan responsibility—and currently insufficient action—regarding intimidation tactics, especially those leveraging state power or false accusations.
• The trend of normalizing criminality in public office and the mainstreaming of racist rhetoric are grave threats to American pluralism and democracy.
• Public discussion and exposure ("the klieg light") are vital tools to combat both copycat attacks and wider apathy.

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For those who haven’t listened:
This episode is a passionate, nuanced, and urgent conversation about a single, harrowing incident—and what it means for everyone at the intersection of politics, identity, and American ideals. The hosts and guests offer both empathetic support and cold-eyed analysis, with candid discussions about rage, fear, principle, and social responsibility.

Transcript

[Drewski]

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[Tim O]

Hey everybody. Tim O from the Bulwark.

[Ian Bassin]

I just got back from being on with Nicole Wallace and my buddy Ian Bassin over at Protect Democracy.

[Tim O]

We discussed a range of things, including

[Ian Bassin]

me expanding further about my loathing of Megyn Kelly and just the nastiness that her and others from MAGA World have expressed towards these poor Haitians who are being punished by a racist government. We also discussed a little bit more about the vice presidents pro crime position.

[Tim O]

Well, at least if you're the vice

[Ian Bassin]

president or the president, you can do crime. But at the beginning, we talked most about this horrific story that Pete Buttigieg wrote about on his substack about how an insane person or a partisan person or crazy person or a wicked person, I don't know, called child protective services on his family and said that Pete had done crimes to the kids. And so he had a CPS person show up to his house, separate him from his children for a night, interview his children without him there.

[Tim O]

It's a horrific experience.

[Ian Bassin]

Get into it. More in the clip about all the details of what happened. And I got to tell you, I can't really remember the last time sitting there doing a, a television hit, just having like this kind of physical reaction of, I mean I was literally sweating like palms and feet sweating, rage bubbling up inside of me. And Pete is such a calm, cool and collected guy and I just, I can't imagine my reaction if this were to happen. I know that threats are part of this business. And I've had weird shit happen. Colleagues have this thing. An agent of the state coming to your home, trying to separate you from your child because somebody with a political agenda wanted to torment you, because they wanted to torment you, probably because you're gay. It is something that is totally sickening and unacceptable.

[Tim O]

And I wish I had hoped that

[Ian Bassin]

this government would do their diligence in going after the person that perpetrated the real crime here, the person that made the false call. I would love to be pleasantly surprised about that, but I don't expect that. But you know, this is where we are right now and I think it's important that we are absolutely vigilant against it in every way that we can be. And so we discussed a lot more with Nicole. It's a real upsetting one. It's a real, real upsetting one. So we'll leave it there. I love to chest and, and, and Pete and the kids. Stick around, subscribe to the feed here and we'll talk to you guys soon.

[Nicole Wallace]

Tim, I read this with a feeling of this could be any of us. This is a tactic. And their tactics are never sort of customized for any one of their political enemies. They are usually rolled out and scaled to all of their political enemies. And I think what Pete and Chasten decided to do by publishing this today is maybe put it under such a bright klieg light that people know this is happening to people like Pete and Chasten. But what a horrific, horrific experience for their kids and their family.

[Tim O]

Hard to imagine. I just, I have this rage boiling inside of me having to listen to you read that for the last few minutes. Minutes I'm trying to gather my thoughts, but just thinking about the idea of being separated from your young child for a night by the government because a cruel, insane person called the police and said you're a monster. And then to think about having to have the police come and interview your 4 year old. I mean, my child's 8 now, but I'm just trying to think about that and ask these invasive personal questions because you are a person that is in the public eye because you committed to public service like that would that this is the punishment. You have to deal with that in a free country and it's totally unacceptable. You mentioned twice the comment about how this isn't being referred to a prosecutor. Maybe there's something else that just wasn't included in Pete's update there. But I think it should be referred to a prosecutor to prosecute the. I was about to cuss to prosecute the person that made the phone call. Like that is there's a hopefully that is ongoing. I just wanted to raise that as what I think should be the appropriate response to this, which is to prosecute the person that inflicted this on their family. And you know, you hate to go to politics and hypocrisy on this, but it does. The thing that just came to mind listening to all this and having been a former Republican is there was this big movement a few years ago going after families like Pete's and mine called Moms for Liberty. And it was this parents rights movement talking about how they didn't want their kids to have to learn about gay people in schools. And that's how they framed it, that this was about liberty. This is about parents rights. We shouldn't have things that we don't want forced upon our kids by the government. And the biggest picture, there's nothing wrong with that sentiment. A lot of their tactics were gross. What an example of an infringement upon liberty is this. And I'm not holding my breath, but you would hope that there would be bipartisan condemnation of this. Like think about the infringement on the liberty of their family and their children, that the government would come in and separate them from their four year old twins and invade their kitchen and ask personal questions to their children without them around just because one sicko made a phone call. I mean, it's totally, totally against how things should work in a free country. And I'm happy that Pete spoke out. And like you said, there should be real concerns about copycats here. The swatting thing is something that I hadn't heard about before 2015 and I know a lot of people who've been swatted. And so you do worry that this is something that expands.

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[Nicole Wallace]

Tim, you're right about where the crime may have happened and Pete addresses that, so let me read that part of it. Pete Buttigieg writes this quote, to be clear, making a false report of this kind is a crime. That's as it should be. Both to protect the innocent from false accusations and to preserve the integrity of a process designed to protect children from harm. I don't know how much we can do about it, but so help me God, if there is any way to press civil or criminal charges over this, we will, not just for our own sakes, but to draw a line that I thought everybody already recognized. Do not mess up with someone's kids. Tim, I'll give you the last word on this.

[Tim O]

I was just sitting there thinking about how I appreciate Ian calling for the turn to the better angels right now, because that's not my initial instinct, to say the least, in hearing the response to this story. But he's right. Look, and fundamentally this is, I think people sometimes roll their eyes when you talk about these high minded democratic notions about things like pluralism. But this is what it means living in a pluralistic society. This is what is beautiful about our country, is that you get to, you know, express. You get to live out the life that you so choose and have the beliefs that you choose as long as you're not harming anyone. And if you're contributing to the community and you know, you can go to whatever church you want or have whatever silly politics you want or, you know, have whatever interest you want. And this type of action tears at that, right? It says that, oh no, we're going to intimidate you and we're going to use the power of the state to intimidate you if you live a certain way, if you're gay or if your political views are wrong or if you're, you know, practice the faith. I don't like. And like, there's a lot of places in the world that that's how life is, that guys come to the door and bang on your door and intimidate you if you're not doing things right. And I think that's a very scary place to go and it's particularly unfortunate in this case.

[J.D. Vance]

I'm actually fascinated by Nixon as a character in history. I think that his historical legacy is Enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. And by the way, if you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration. There is a parallel.

[Tim O]

I do have a few nitpicks, if I can, about what JD Was saying about Nixon. I don't believe that Nixon is experiencing a renaissance. So just to be a fact checker on that, I don't think that that's actually happening out there. Number two, I don't know that J.D. vance actually knows what happened in Watergate and I think that might be limiting his comments there. Somehow this idea that the deep state took Nixon down, I guess I need to hear more what he means by that. Because the deep state was working with Nixon on the crimes. The CIA helped Nixon, Nixon asked the CIA and the Nixon White House has ciao to help them. You know, a fakocta lie that like their attempt to break into the DNC and spy on their political opponents was some intelligence operations. So the CIA part of the deep state was on board. The Justice Department was on board. The Attorney General ended up going to jail. So I don't know who in the deep state was taking Nixon down, but it was the point of Watergate was that it was the entireit was many figures throughout the government that were working together on this crime and on this cover up. That's why it was such a big story that lasted longer than 12 hours. Many people went to jail and were convicted of it. And as you mentioned in the lead in, the people that took him down were members of their own party who had actual courage and were able to have standards and say that something is wrong and like what we've seen from this Republican Party. So the thing for me, and I think the most notable thing, is just the blunt fact that the Vice President of the United States went on a stage yesterday and said, you know what guys? Politicians doing crimes is not a big deal anymore. Not a big deal. People don't care about that. Like the President and the Vice President. We can do whatever crimes we want. We're in a new era. It's not like the old days where people got all worried where their politicians were corrupt. We've moved on from that in the Trump world. We're making America, great again on our 250th anniversary. Now it's all good. We can do as many crimes as we want, and nobody will care. It's an interesting bet. It's interesting that he's saying that just that bluntly, but, like, that is what he said. Like, you know, he's basically said that there were all these crimes that Nixon committed that wouldn't be a big story anymore. I guess, you know, at some level, we've seen that was somewhat true with Trump's election in 2024. But it seems like they're going to continue to test that prospect following yesterday's

[Nicole Wallace]

decision by the Supreme Court that was described in scathing terms by the liberal justices who dissented, who argued that the evidence was everywhere that Trump's policies were racially motivated. That decision now basically allows the Trump administration to end temporary legal protections, which is what allows people from Haiti and Syria to be here. There was a flood of surprising but not shockingly racist react from the right. Stephen Miller's wife got in on the action. Her name's Katie Miller. She celebrated the ruling reviving a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were eating people's pets in parts of Ohio. And Megyn Kelly really outdid herself on her podcast telling Haitians who would lose their temporary protected status to, quote, go home, get out. We know our country's better than yours. Tim, your clapback won the Internet won my heart. And I wonder if you think she's just enraptured by the permission structure the Supreme Court gives her to say these racist things, or if this is who she always was, or if she's ignorant to all the contributions. I mean, just wanted you to react to it here.

[Tim O]

It's hard to get in her head because, you know, some people just want to be nasty. And it's fun to be nasty. It's fun to be mean. You know, we're all human. We all get it. I get a little thrill out of attacking Donald Trump's man boobs. You know, like, people like it. There's something. There's a dark part of all of us. And so maybe she just has fully given way to her dark soul and is using it to target helpless Haitians who came to the country because their country was in chaos and came here and worked and went to church and tried to make a life for themselves and their kids, and she wants to take out all her rage on them. I don't know. We do know it's at least somewhat performative, though, because she had a job at NBC where she has a completely different character just a few years ago where she had a morning show where she had trans kids on and talked about the importance of diversity and all this stuff. So we know it's a character. I don't know exactly what motivates it or what is true, but you know, the Haitians, this stuff really gets to me. And I live in New Orleans and it was part of the climb back you referenced. It's like her rant goes on way longer than what you played. And one of the things she talks about is how Haitians brought nothing to the culture that we built. I don't know what Megyn Kelly is adding to the culture. They're lasting. I don't know who the we is in that, but. But Haitians have added a lot to the culture. And New Orleans, we only have New Orleans because of Creole culture. Like New Orleans would be Mobile or Jackson or some other just perfectly fine city in the south on the Gulf coast that is like a lot of other cities in the country. But because of that Creole culture, it is like one of the most special places in the country. You could go down the list of all the ways that Basquiat or other Haitians have enriched us. And you don't have to be Basquiat, you know, like the person that's working at their job in Spring Springfield, working hard, wanted to come to this country, wanted to give a life to their kids. That person deserves dignity too. And these guys, for no reason, no purpose, except for their own hatred, are now going to send them all back, try to ruin their lives, and they're going to rub their faces in the dirt while they do it. And it's sick. It's just sick.

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