Buttigieg Criticize DeSantis’s Video About LGBTQ Rights

Sunday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg talked about how “weird” a recent ad by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign against 2024 rival Donald Trump was. The ad said that the former president “celebrated pride month more than any other Republican.”

The ad starts by talking about Trump’s promise at the 2016 Republican National Convention to “protect our LGBTQ citizens.” It then shows old interviews with the former president in which he said similar things. Suddenly, the ad cuts to clips of commentators criticizing DeSantis’ policies for going after the same people. The video is full of memes that show Patrick Bateman from American Psycho in a good light. It also shows a bodybuilder posing on stage.

Buttigieg was asked about the ad State of the Union. The Log Cabin Republicans said they didn’t like it because it “went into homophobic territory.”

Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member, said, “I’m going to be careful with my words, partly because I’m speaking as secretary and can’t talk about campaigns.” He then said he didn’t think the ad was worth much.

“I’m not going to talk about how strange it is to try to prove your manhood by putting up a video with pictures of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders. Instead, I’m going to talk about the bigger question that comes to mind whenever I see this kind of thing in the policy space, which is, again, who are you trying to help?” he said.

“Whose life are you trying to improve? And when you wake up in the morning, what public policy problems do you think about how to solve?” Buttigieg asked.

As governor, DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which says that teachers in kindergarten through third grade can’t talk about sexual orientation or gender identity. Since then, he has tried to make the law stronger. The law, which DeSantis said was meant to stop the “indoctrination” of students, caused school districts to scramble to find out which seemingly harmless actions were now illegal. Teachers were worried about their jobs and the safety of their students, Rolling Stone reported last summer.