Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg on Thursday said he no longer said “all lives matter” following a report published in CNBC a day before surfacing his 2015 use of the phrase, which activists say is used to criticize the Black Lives Matter movement.
“What I did not understand at that time was that phrase was coming to be used as a sort of counter-slogan to Black Lives Matter,” Buttigieg told reporters after delivering an address on racial justice at the National Action Network conference in New York.
“Since learning about how that phrase was being used, I have stopped using it,” Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg said that it was unfortunate that it was not obvious to everybody that black lives had value, “so that is the contribution of Black Lives Matter,” he said.
This story is developing and will be updated.
