Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg opened his speech at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night with a nod to his recent television appearances on Fox News, telling the crowd, “I’m Pete Buttigieg, and you might recognize me from Fox News.”
He launched into criticisms of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, who he characterized as “one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life he has in mind for you, then you don’t count.”
“Choosing a guy like JD Vance to be America’s next vice president sends a message, all right: doubling down on negativity and grievance. A concept of campaigning best summed up in one word: darkness. That’s what they are selling. But I just don’t think America today is in the market for darkness,” he said.
Buttigieg also referenced a 2021 speech Vance gave, in which he said that people without children have “no physical commitment to the future of this country.”
“When I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids then, many of the men and women who went outside the wire with me didn’t have kids either,” Buttigieg said. “But let me tell you, our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical.”
Buttigieg said he believes politics can be “empowering and uplifting,” and accused Republicans of pushing a message that casts people of different political viewpoints as the enemy.
“I believe in a better politics, one that finds us at our most decent, and open, and brave,” he said.
Buttigieg spoke of the nation’s progress through his own story, where he and his husband, Chasten, are raising two children at their home in Michigan.
“This November we get to choose. We get to choose our president, we get to choose our policies, but most of all, we will choose a better politics, a politics that calls us to our better selves and offers us a better every day,” he said. “That is what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz represent. That is what Democrats represent. That is what awaits us when America decides to end Trump’s politics of darkness once and for all.”
