The Interview - Pete Buttigieg Thinks the Trump Fever Could Break

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

The Democrat talks about the election vibe shift and what a Kamala Harris win would mean for both parties.

From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. It has been, no exaggeration, one of the most consequential and dizzying periods in modern American politics. It began with President Biden's disastrous debate, then came an assassination attempt against former President Trump. A week later, President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. And now Harris is the de facto Democratic nominee. At warp speed, the dynamics of this entire election have changed, not just for voters, but for party leaders like Pete Buttigieg, who went from being a top Biden surrogate to a top Harris surrogate in hours.

Buttigieg is one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party. Nicknamed Mayor Pete, he shot into the limelight when he ran for president in 2020 as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He then joined the Biden administration as secretary of transportation. But he's also frequently on TV as one of the Democrats' top messengers. Reportedly, he's under consideration to become Harris's running mate. If it happened, and they won, he'd be the first openly gay VP. On Thursday, I sat down with Buttigieg to talk about how Biden's decision to drop out changed the race, what took so long, and what's next.

And if you notice that I'm not calling him Secretary Buttigieg or asking anything about his work in the cabinet, it's because there's a law, the Hatch Act, that prevents him from mixing his day job with campaigning. Here's my conversation with Pete Buttigieg. This has been a shocker of a week. And now Democrats find themselves having to kind of build the plane while they're flying it. They're sort of redefining the race. They're having to introduce a new candidate. They're building momentum in the electorate. What have you found most surprising as you've been out campaigning for Vice President Harris? Well, yeah, we've certainly had one surprise after another these last few

weeks. But what's been really interesting is to watch how she has built her campaign so quickly. Now, of course, part of that is that she was already part of the ticket. She's already part of this administration. The overall values are the same. The themes are the same. And yet she did a lot more than just create a campaign organization or rebrand a campaign organization in a day or two. You see her sounding themes that are distinctively hers. And I think seeing that happen so quickly has been really impressive. And it is remarkable that there's been this sudden vibe shift, if you will, in the Democratic Party since Biden dropped out. What do you ascribe that level of enthusiasm to? Well, I think they're excited about what she represents as a messenger. And it's been exciting to have a new focus on the things that we care about. Part of what President Biden did with his very

just extraordinary historic selfless choice was he tore down some obstacles that stood between voters and the media and commentators and all of us and focusing on a lot of the issues and the values that I think can propel Democrats to victory. And what I mean by that is all the things that the election is really about. The chance to have an election that is not just about two candidates, but is about us and how the choices that are going to be made by the next president affect our lives. That's something that is coming through with a new clarity right now. And that, as you described, vibe shift is really extraordinary. There's been kind of a level of joy to the campaign that I think is welcome. Not that it won't have incredibly tough moments in the weeks ahead, I'm sure. But it's become yet another point of

contrast, I think, between our ticket and the Republican ticket, which seems to really lean into this death match conception of what politics is. Tear down obstacles. I mean, the obstacle, many would say, was President Biden himself to this moment. A New Times poll shows that over 80 percent of voters are happy that Biden dropped out. Clearly, voters were hungering for something different. I mean, why did the party ignore that desire for change for so long? or not just the leader of a country, but the most powerful person in the world, to lay power aside. And it was really moving to watch in his speech the way he explained his thinking and said that this is not about me, it's about you. But at the same time, I also think his choice consolidated his standing,

his presidency, and his legacy in a way that makes me proud of him. I want to talk about that decision, but I first want to just ask you about how the decision came about because, you know, CNN reported that there haven't been any full cabinet meetings since late last year. And so I don't know how often you were meeting with President Biden himself, but as a surrogate, did you not have any questions or doubts about his abilities? You know, last time I was working with President Biden really closely was during a disaster a few months ago. I'm reminding myself I'm not supposed to appear in my official capacity, so I won't delve into that.

But look, nobody's denying that he's 10 years older than he was 10 years ago. And unlike what you see in the Trump personality cult, we're not going around saying that he leaps tall buildings in a single bound and as strong as an ox. The point is that he's really good at being president, and in my view, still is. Hearing you, you have framed it as he sacrificed for his country, that this was a noble act. But the reality was that he was facing sliding polling numbers. He saw a defection of donors and members of his party. He could have made that choice weeks ago, giving Vice President Harris or any eventual nominee

a much longer runway and time to defeat Donald Trump. And he didn't do it. Did he wait too long? One of the things you sign up for when you go into politics, and certainly when you're in high office, is everybody else telling you what you should have done. And we can all say he should have done this or he should have done the same thing but a different time or should have done it in a different way. But the fact stands that he did an extraordinary thing. In my view, a selfless thing.

And in my view, the right thing. You know, we in the media were raising legitimate questions about Biden's age and his ability to run, and yet reporters were being excoriated by the campaign for asking those questions, and by Biden in public. How do those attacks on the press sit with you, now knowing what we know? Well, look, I've never participated in an attack on the press. I think that it is natural to feel strong, passionate, defensive even, about the person you believe in when you feel like they're being attacked, especially when you feel like they're being attacked unfairly. And there were a lot of moments where there was a sense— But it wasn't unfair. Well, certain dimensions I think were unfair. For example, the fact that in a given day you might have almost identical flubbing of names by the two major candidates, but only one of them would have that be kind of plastered in certain people's commentary. So there was a sense.

And look, again, it's the nature of being passionate about the person you believe in to come to their defense. But at the end of the day, what happened was one of the most extraordinary and rare things ever. And look, I say this as somebody who has, I have launched campaigns. Uh, I know what it's like to end the campaign. And, um, and I also know that he did what he feels like is the right thing. And what I think is a decision that will allow him to concentrate on the presidency and allow the campaign and the party to concentrate on the campaign. We've seen just Democrats rallying around the VP, and we started this conversation by talking about how quickly everything has coalesced. There was a lot of discussion in the weeks

after Biden's disappointing debate about what another nomination process could look like. And at the end, it just doesn't seem like there's been any appetite for an open convention, a more competitive process among Democrats. Why do you think that is? I think a lot of people looked at her, looked at what she brought, looked at the importance of quickly bringing the party together and reached that conclusion that backing her was the best

way to do that. And again, I know a little bit about this. I remember making the toughest decision of my personal political career, which was the decision to end my presidential campaign and realizing that even though I wasn't a candidate anymore, what I did mattered. And I had a responsibility, uh, to try to do what I could to lead to a good outcome. And that, that led me to decide very quickly to back president Biden's campaign. And this felt like a similar moment where, uh, you know, whether it was by dint of being in office or just being somebody with a platform, there were a lot of people who had a lot of influence and therefore a lot of responsibility. And just about everybody decided the best way to use that influence and responsibility was to help bring the party together quickly. I mean, it's good politics. Do you think people actually came to these conclusions individually or was there a sense from the party leadership that everyone needed to fall in line? Well, Democrats are not exactly famous for falling in line when we do something like coalesce that quickly.

I think it's because there's a real sense up and down and throughout the party that it's the right thing to do. I've actually, I'm not sure I've ever seen us this quickly unify around anything. I mean, switching up the ticket has offered Democrats this chance to reset, not just on the person, but on the message and the policies. President Biden, for example, has taken a lot of heat for his handling of the war on Gaza, inflation, the border. Would you like to see the Harris campaign differentiating itself on those particular issues? Well, I'll leave it to her to indicate where there will be continuity and where she might have a different approach or maybe just a different emphasis. What would you like to see? Well, I'd like to see her reach those concerns that Americans have. So on something

like inflation, for example, I think she's well positioned not just to explain how she's contributed to the work that brought inflation back down to 3% in this country, but also the difference between her economic proposals and the clearly inflationary proposals of Donald Trump. And this is really important because it's actually an example of any of the issues you just mentioned, where even if there is impatience among the American people or the American people don't think we got it perfectly right, even on these issues, they disagree with Donald Trump's approach. And on terms of what to do next would generally favor what we propose more than what he proposes to do next. What you're saying, I mean, nothing has fundamentally changed about the Democratic message here, which is that things are getting better, that inflation has gone down under

President Biden. I mean, that's been something that the Democratic Party has been trying to run on and push over and over and over again. And yet, poll after poll shows that more people trust former President Trump on these issues than President Biden. Are you suggesting that now because it's a new candidate, Kamala Harris can reset and people will just forget that she was part of the administration? What I'm saying is that part of what a candidate does, part of what a messenger does, is convince people of things. And I think she's a very convincing leader. her for who she wants to be as the next president of the United States. And the right, meanwhile, is trying to portray Kamala Harris as this far left extension of the failures of the Biden

administration. And they're also using a lot of sexist and racist attacks. They're calling her a DEI hire and worse stuff that I don't want to repeat. And I just wonder as a surrogate, how you combat that? Well, I do think that those attacks have been a bad look for Republicans. And you can tell because when you got somebody like Mike Johnson, who is a very, very conservative figure, right, the Speaker of the House, telling his own caucus, like, hey, cool it. He's basically saying that they are embarrassing the party. And I basically saying that they are embarrassing the party, and I think acknowledging that they are diminishing the party's chances by indulging

in that kind of rhetoric. And the fact that they can't think of what else to do besides go right to race and gender isn't just revealing about some of the ugliest undercurrents in today's Republican party. It's also just profoundly unimaginative because it means that they can't speak to how any of this is going to make people's lives better. In other words, certainly not Trump's campaign or Trump's party. They can't conceive a politics that isn't just about the personalities. So everything he does is he beats his chest about his own persona and he tears down his opponent. None of that is about us. None of it's about you. And that's again, why their inability to do that, their inability to explain how your life as an American every day will be any different,

certainly any better, is revealed in the fact that they immediately reach for one of two things, saying she's too far left, which is what literally every Republican says about literally any Democrat who is running against the Republican. If Joe Manchin were the nominee, they'd say the same thing about him. It's just standard and therefore boring. Or these really ugly attacks, which maybe are meant to get attention, but they are very much telling on themselves when they go there. Okay, Pete, you are clearly one of the party's best communicators. You can deliver a message. You have been very on message while we've been talking. I am thinking about how you see your role right now, because, you know, while Biden rarely talked to the press, you not only engage with people like me, but you also go to Fox News. And I am wondering

why you do that. What is it about taking the message there that you find could move the needle? Well, the reason I think it's so important to take the message there is because I know that there are so many people who tune in in good faith. I don't always feel that the corporation that runs Fox News is acting in good faith, but I know that the viewers, because they're people I know, I mean, my neighbors in Michigan, might be tuning in in good faith and getting their information from this news source. So I, as a political figure, can hardly blame a voter for not being responsive to our message if they literally have never heard it.

And we're in a very fragmented environment. Honestly, we were lucky if we can get to somebody through TV versus just even more fragmented internet sources. And I know that if I'm on that network, I'm one of relatively few voices with our message. And so if I didn't go there to give that message, somebody might literally never hear it. I also know that you cannot assume who somebody is or how they're going to vote just based on what network they watch. Of course, there's a lot of strong patterns, but there's a lot of people who can be moved. And sometimes the person who picked the channel is not the same as the other person who's also in the house who's listening to what's being said. And so I think

there's a responsibility to take this message into those spaces. Just as, you know, when I was running for president, I did it geographically too. And in Iowa really kind of specialized in counties that had voted for Barack Obama, but then had turned around and voted for Donald Trump. And those counties were ones where I did well in because they were ready to listen because they suddenly became more progressive or because I pretended to be a full-throated conservative, which is because sometimes when you explain what you believe to somebody, even if they don't completely agree with you, they respect you more and are inclined to maybe trust you and give you the benefit of the doubt. So that's why I'm there. Do you think the vice president should go on Fox? Do you think she should debate on Fox? I would be skeptical of the fairness of a debate hosted by Fox, but that's a decision that I'm sure she and the campaign will think through. I do want to ask you about a specific shift in messaging I've noticed this week from the Democrats.

The Harris campaign is leaning into the idea that Trump is, quote, weird. I've seen this weird word floating around. It's very different from the way Democrats had framed him before, which is that he's an existential threat to democracy, this terrifying figure that is going to take away people's rights. Weird seems a different tack than that. What do you think of that strategy of basically laughing at him well to be clear i think we're doing both we're talking about the implications for democracy and noting that that he is obviously a uh a strange person who's getting stranger i mean i think one of the things that especially now that we have a generational difference between uh kamala harris and uh and donald trump who's a generation older is that we're watching his trajectory not

not that he was ever the most disciplined and straightforward person but you know four years ago even i would be still taken aback uh if he was uh like rambling about electrocuting sharks and all these other things you see him doing that really are weird and you got to ask yourself uh you know is that the kind of person you want in charge of the country especially because we we saw how not just weird but but chaotic it was last time and part of the promise of a of a kamala harris presidency is actually the prospect of a comparatively normal Republican party. What I mean by that is, you know, beating Donald Trump the first time in 2020

ended his term, but it did not end his grip on the GOP. Beating him twice would, I think, have a different effect on a lot of people in the gop who know better than to be on board with him he goes against their values too not just my values but they've gone along with it because they think it's the path to power and it would become abundantly clear that that is not true if we beat him not just the way we beat him in 2020 not just the way we indirectly beat him in 2022 in the midterms but beat him a second or, so to speak, third time. And we will always have fierce and meaningful disagreements between Democrats and Republicans, but there's a chance of that difference, those debates, being a little less ugly, or to put it another way,

a little less weird. What I'm hearing you say, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that if Donald Trump is defeated in this election, then perhaps the Republican Party can be freed from his grip? I think so. I think so. Look, I made myself watch the first couple Republican presidential debates, and we still had a lot of Republican candidates this cycle. And there were still some, some things that I thought were pretty fringe and just about everything I heard, I disagreed with, but apart from some of the, the, the darkness of Vivek's populism, most of what you saw on there, you could be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a, at a more normal Republican party, were it not for the fact that the entire thing was an undercard because Donald Trump wasn't

there and he was, was and is dominating the party. Look, we have fooled ourselves many times before into thinking that the fever would break. We thought it would happen before he was elected, when the Access Hollywood tape revealed that he had boasted about sexual assault. We thought it would happen when he was defeated, but he wasn't in 2016. We thought it might happen after January 6th, and it very, very nearly did. So many of the people who are now kissing up to him basically turned their back on him then. We got so close to the fever breaking, but it didn't quite break because Republicans found that their access to power still depended on their standing with Donald Trump. If he leads this party to defeat a third time after his defeat

in 2020 and his party's defeat in 2022, I believe that the self-interest, just the internal power dynamics of the GOP, the very power dynamics that have kept them enthralled to him, even though so many of them know better, notably including, by the way, J.D. Vance, who back when he was speaking truthfully and for himself, referred to Donald Trump as an idiot and compared him to an opioid, which is an exceptionally dark thing to say about somebody if you are from or connected to Appalachia as J.D. Vance is, right? And that was in public and private comparing him to Hitler and now turning around supporting. But my point is all of that finally breaks loose if they realize that attaching yourself to Donald Trump doesn't just destroy your character, it destroys your access to power. You know, you've talked about this fever breaking that you have an appetite for,

but we just had an assassination attempt against former President Trump. And he got off the floor and he raised his fist in the air with the American flag waving in the background. And he said, fight, fight, fight. And his popularity now in more recent polls has gone up. People see him as someone who takes his licks and keeps on ticking. And that speaks to, for some people, real fundamental American values about being tough and not caving into intimidation. And so I'm just wondering if you think that a moment like that, you know, really breaks through to people and makes him seem fundamentally different than the way that you're describing him, which is weird and aging and

vindictive, etc. I think lots of things can be true at the same time. That was an extraordinary image. And it is true that he was injured in an attempt on his life, and he got right back up. And that's why that image is so powerful. But it doesn't change the fact that he has shown himself to be vindictive and backward-looking and more interested in his past than in our future. And I would add, there was a moment in the wake of that horrifying moment. There was a sense that he would follow that up by taking the stage at the RNC in Milwaukee and demonstrating his capacity to help bring this country together. And for a few minutes, he stuck to the script, and it looked like that was going to happen. And then the next hour and a half happened. And it was as backward-looking and rage-filled and self-obsessed as

anything he would have been saying one year or three years or five years ago. More with Pete Buttigieg after the break. You mentioned J.D. Vance, and I do want to also ask you about him. Even though your politics are very far apart, you do share a lot on paper. You're both Midwesterners. You both served in the military. You ended up in elite places for school. And then you spent time in the business world before becoming politicians. Does that give you any special perspective on him as a person?

Well, I've certainly encountered a lot of people like him. And I think he and I both or each emerged at a time when a lot of people in the Midwest began to find that commentators and figures from the coasts were kind of approaching our part of the country, almost like we were these kind of, almost with exotic fascination. And at least in my case, I sought to engage that attention as a way to bring support to the city that I was leading as mayor, that I was trying to inspire people to believe in because there's actually a lot of creativity and innovation. I think in a different way, he chased that same vibe. It seems to have led him to Silicon Valley, but then it led him to this place where he's advancing a vision that is terrible for places like where I come from, and I would argue where

he comes from. But the other thing I would say is, you know, he has traded on fascination about Midwestern stories and Midwestern values, but the important midwestern value i know of is to be straightforward to be true to yourself to be true to your core and because he spoke unequivocally about how sinister and unfit donald trump was just a few years ago, only to flip around, embrace him, and be on his ticket so that he can have more power. People are wondering if he has any core at all. Have you read Hillbilly Elegy? It's one of those books that I own but haven't read, just to be honest. I've dipped into it. I haven't read it cover to cover Speaking of vice presidents

the next big decision of course for Harris is who her own VP is going to be and in a recent NPR PBS Marist poll, I'm sure you know this you are tied with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as the most popular person for the VP pick

I know you're not going to tell me if you want the job or not, but do you think you'd be a good vice president? I don't think it's appropriate for me to talk like that, knowing that the person who needs to make that decision is the person who's going to make it. And that's her, not me. What I will say is I'm going to do everything I can to help her become the next president. Would you like to be vice president? Again, I don't think it's appropriate for me to wander down that path with you right now. What would it mean, though, to have an openly gay vice president?

I think just as it does in the job I'm in now, just as it did as mayor or to run for president, as someone who's openly gay, it means that what used to be an indomitable barrier isn't anymore. As recently as 10 years ago, I think any knowledgeable person would have said that the idea of an openly gay person pursuing a presidential campaign and getting anywhere was not just uphill, it was preposterous. Fifteen years ago, when I took the oath of commission to join the military, it wasn't just some unfortunate prejudicial norm. It was the law of this country that I would be fired for being gay. That's changed. And like anybody who is a first, I'm mindful of what that means, and I try to live up to what that might mean to others. It's not why I'm doing this work, but it's one more reason to take it seriously. huge part in the race. Harris would be the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket. And I will say that, you know, many of the black and brown women friends that I have have said to me, you know what, there's no way that you'll be elected. There's like a fatalism

there, a cynicism about just how far we've actually come as a country. What would you say about that? I completely get where that comes from. And yet, even in my short career and life, I have seen these impossibilities turn into realities. Things that were, again, not just unlikely, but would have been considered ridiculous, have become the norm again and again and again. And not the easy way. I mean, through struggle and persistence. But it's happened. These things can happen. But if that isn't true, then why does she have to choose a white guy as a VP? I mean, that's who's being vetted.

Look, she's going to choose. Nobody knows more other than maybe Joe Biden. Nobody knows more about the vice presidency than she does. Nobody knows more about the job of running. That's not the question. The question is about why does she choose if it isn't true that there is a concern. But again, the other thing I would say, and certainly about her future presidency, which will be historic, is that before something like that happens, people always think it's impossible. So many people thought that in 2008. Anybody who is going to be a first has to overcome that skepticism. Last question. I assume at this point you know Kamala Harris very well. Do you have any specific story about working with her, something about her as a person that you think voters should know?

I think people do know this, but she is not just impressive, she's smart and funny. And the best chances I had to see this were when I was very involved in debate prep. I was asked to effectively play Mike Pence, which is a very strange psychological thing for me to do. But I'm so glad I got to do it because I got to see her in action. And what I love is that that is coming through. You know, so often you hear about politicians, I really, it is true sometimes.

I say, oh, this person's like really funny and loose, but it just doesn't come through on TV. Or, you know, this person's smarter than you would think just watching on tv but actually what's interesting not just tv but the internet has picked up on the fact that she has this great sense of humor and and i think it's by the way also revealing that the gop's tried to attack her for it and that's fallen flat i mean even just the this idea of you know sending around images of her laughing as if her joy is something that, you know, looks bad, when actually what looks bad is to be the doom and death march Republican Party against a Democratic Party that on one hand is very clear eyed about the enormous stakes of this election, and on the other hand, is visibly enjoying

ourselves right now. Pete Buttigieg, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Covered a lot of ground there. We did. I appreciate it. That's Pete Buttigieg. This conversation was produced by Annabelle Bacon.

It was edited by Alison Benedict, mixing by Athim Shapiro. Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. Photo illustration by Devin Yelkin. The rest of the team is Priya Matthew, Wyatt Orme, and Seth Kelly. Our executive producer is Alison Benedict. Special thanks to Jessica Lustig, Maddy Macielo, Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Thank you. to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash the interview. And you can email us anytime at theinterviewatnytimes.com. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and this is The Interview from The New York Times. Thank you.