Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg absolutely destroyed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for a bizarre anti-LGBTQ ad he released online, suggesting that the governor might be more than a bit insecure about his own manliness.
The ad, which as been roundly condemned, NBC News reports, left both Democrats and Republicans shaking their heads.
DeSantis’ campaign reposted a video to Twitter last week showing overtures to the LGBTQ community by Trump over the years, including footage of him saying that he would “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens” during a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016. Trump issued the remarks in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
The second part of the video shifts to a focus on DeSantis that appears to attempt to portray him as the paragon of masculinity. Thumping background music is accompanied by images of DeSantis, shirtless muscular men and headlines about the anti-LGBTQ policies DeSantis signed into law.
Here’s the ad in question:
Log Cabin Republicans, the largest LGBT Republican organization, condemned the ad, issuing a statement which reads, “Today’s message from the DeSantis campaign War Room is divisive and desperate. Republicans and other commonsense conservatives know Ron Desantis [sic] has alienated swing-state and younger voters.”
Buttigieg was asked for his take on the advertisement during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.
“You know, I’m going to choose my words carefully, partly because I’m appearing as secretary, so I can’t talk about campaigns,” Buttigieg told host Dana Bash.
“I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled up shirtless bodybuilders. And just get to the bigger issue that that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space — which is, again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?”
Buttigieg then referenced recent infrastructure initiatives he unveiled during visits to Kentucky and North Dakota.
“These are the kinds of problems that most of us got into government, politics and public service in order to work on. And I just don’t understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that he’s going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America.”
DeSantis may think his divisive rhetoric and ads will help him win in 2024, but he’s wrong. The vast majority of this country is sick and tired of bigotry disguised as patriotism and hatred wrapped in the guise of domestic policy.