Democratic presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg clapped back at Donald Trump after the president attempted a new nickname for the mayor.
In an interview with Politico, Trump dismissed the 37-year-old White House hopeful by referencing the freckled, gap-toothed Alfred E. Neuman character of Mad Magazine fame.
“Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States,” said the Trumpster.
When asked about the verbal slap, Buttigieg responded without a pause.
“I’ll be honest, I had to Google that, I guess it’s a generational thing,” said the mayor. “I didn’t get the reference. It’s kind of funny I guess, but he’s also the president of the United States and I’m surprised he’s not spending more time trying to salvage this deal with China.”
Political news site The Hill has obtained military documents that offer some insight into Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s time spent in Afghanistan as a Navy intelligence officer.
Buttigieg has mentioned on the campaign trail he took a seven month leave during his first term as mayor to serve in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom launched by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
According to The Hill, the documents show the then-32-year-old served in the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell (ATFC) in Kabul from March to September of 2014. The files indicate that assignment put him in “an imminent danger pay area.”
The focus of the ATFC was to identify and disrupt “insurgent financial support networks in Afghanistan” related to the Taliban and Al-Qaida.
The Hillreports his duties included representing ATFC at “high level briefings, and he also “coordinated intelligence sharing and targeting deconfliction” methods with several organizations.
As Buttigieg mentioned in his book Shortest Way Home, he imagined he would spend most of his time in Afghanistan “behind a sophisticated computer terminal in a secure area.” But it turned out he had to venture some 119 times “outside the wire,” which meant leaving his fairly secure base. During those trips into Kabul, he served as vehicle commander on convoy security detail.
While he’s never claimed to have engaged in direct combat, Buttigieg did describe in his book the dangers unpredictable Kabul neighborhoods could present.
“In a ritual to be repeated dozens of times, I would heave my armored torso into the driver’s seat of a Land Cruiser, chamber a round in my M4, lock the doors and wave a gloved goodbye to the Macedonian gate guard,” wrote Buttigieg.
“My vehicle would cross outside the wire and into the boisterous Afghan city, entering a world infinitely more interesting and ordinary and dangerous than our zone behind the blast walls at ISAF headquarters,” he added.
Even in an armored vehicle, he was trained to be on the lookout for possible explosive devices hidden along the roads, or a number of telltale signs of a surprise ambush around any corner. “A suddenly empty neighborhood. A nervous-looking lone driver of a vehicle with a heavy trunk load. An obviously male hand coming out from underneath a woman’s blue burqa.”
Mayor Pete is one of the few Democratic presidential candidates whose resume includes active duty military experience.
During a speech to Democrats in Dallas, Texas, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was interrupted five different times by hecklers in a 10-minute period.
The group was organized by Randall Terry, who also followed Buttigieg in Iowa last month.
Pausing while one of the hecklers was escorted out, Buttigieg resumed speaking about his military career recalling “that moment when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan for the purpose of defending that gentleman’s freedom of speech.”
Fellow candidate Beto O’Rourke, who had a campaign appearance in nearby Fort Worth, denounced the hecklers, tweeting: “Texans don’t stand for this kind of homophobia and hatred. Mayor Pete, we are grateful you came to Texas and hope to see you and Chasten back again soon.”
Texans don’t stand for this kind of homophobia and hatred. Mayor Pete, we are grateful you came to Texas and hope to see you and Chasten back again soon. https://t.co/IhRDtIBREb
Ever since his husband, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, announced his candidacy for president, Chasten Buttigieg has been charming many political followers either in person, on the campaign trail, or on social media.
But, in a new profile by the Washington Poston the man who hopes to become the nation’s first ‘First Gentleman,’ Chasten shares some of the challenges he’s faced in his 29 years.
Chasten has grabbed people’s attention not just because he’s the spouse of the first Democratic gay White House hopeful, although that does factor in. But he’s also a millennial married to a millennial. And, he and Mayor Pete have only been married less than a year.
According to the Washington Post profile, he grew up in a typical conservative Midwestern family. His parents, Sherri and Terry Glezman, worked hard to make ends meet while raising Chasten and his two older brothers, Rhyan and Dustin.
But, while his brothers liked to play sports and go hunting, Chasten admits he was happier “reading Harry Potter or singing Celine Dion” at the top of his lungs while helping his mother with housework.
By the time he got to high school, he realized there was something ‘different’ about him.
Although he didn’t come out at the time – he admits there were no openly gay students at his school – he was the target of bullies who called him homophobic slurs and would physically assault him.
So when the opportunity came up for him to spend his senior year of high school abroad in Germany, he took it. “The further away I could get, the safer I felt,” he told the Post.
It was during that year he began to confide his ‘secret’ to others in the exchange program. And by the time he returned to his home town, it was “his truth.”
A post shared by Chasten Buttigieg (@chasten.buttigieg) on Sep 8, 2016 at 9:23am PDT
Chasten shares that he opened up to some friends during the summer after graduation, receiving mixed responses.
Some said they loved him and it didn’t matter; but others told him while they loved him it did matter.
In recounting the coming out process, he shares that one friend brought up God and implored him to change his mind. “Like it was a choice,” says Chasten. “This thing I had decided to do.”
His family got the news last. He found he couldn’t say the words out loud, so he wrote a letter to his parents and handed it to them in their living room.
“I remember my mom crying,” he recalls. “And the first thing she asked me was if I was sick. I think she meant, like, did I have AIDS?”
Chasten recalls a silence loomed over home life, although he remembers at one point one of his brothers said, “No brother of mine…”
Feeling like an outcast, he decided to leave home.
With his packed bags, he bounced from one friend’s couch to another; sometimes he slept in his car in the parking lot of the community college he was attending.
After some months, though, his mother called and asked him to come home. He says, “I cried, and I went home immediately.”
Over time his parents came to terms with his being gay, and even walked him down the aisle at his wedding last summer.
Rhyan Glezman, currently a pastor of a church in Clio, Michigan, told the Postthat Chasten’s coming out wasn’t a surprise, and that he loves his youngest brother. While he wants the best for Chasten, he admits, “I just don’t support the gay lifestyle.”
Chasten would go on to earn a degree from the University of Wisconsin in theater and global studies, eventually working at a youth theater academy in Milwaukee. But even with a full schedule he didn’t have benefits.
So, he got a second job slinging coffee and lattes 20 hours a week at a Starbucks to get health insurance.
The Starbucks gig led to his moving to Chicago. And it was while living in the Windy City that he met Mayor Pete on the dating app Hinge.
A few weeks of FaceTime chats with the young mayor convinced Chasten to make the drive to nearby South Bend, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Chasten says he laughed when Mayor Pete first broached the subject of running for president. But that quickly turned into total support for the idea.
He shares that the campaign trail is trying on many levels. Having lost 20 pounds since the holidays, he finds he’s worn out at the end of most days from what he calls “vulnerability fatigue.”
“You put yourself out there so much,” he admits. “And we’ve invited the world to scrutinize us.”
And while much of the country is interested in the first gay presidential contender with what looks like a decent shot, there are homophobic, nasty letters that arrive at their home.
But the Buttigiegs just keep moving forward.
“It’s just so important to go out there and do a good job right now,” he tells the Post. “Because for the first time in many people’s lives, they see someone on a national scale that makes them say, ‘Oh, that’s me, too.’”
Buttigieg is a gay Episcopalian veteran in a party torn between identity politics and heartland appeals. He’s also a fresh face in a year when millennials are poised to become the largest eligible voting bloc. Many Democrats are hungry for generational change, and the two front runners are more than twice his age.
But Buttigieg’s greatest political asset may be his ear for languages. He speaks eight, including Norwegian and Arabic, but he’s particularly fluent in the dialect of the neglected industrial Midwest. Buttigieg is a master of redefinition, a translator for a party that has found it increasingly difficult to speak to the voters who elected President Donald Trump.
The son of an English professor and a scholar of linguistics, he roots his campaign in an effort to reframe progressive ideas in conservative language. “If the substance of your ideas is progressive but there’s mistrust about them among conservatives, you have three choices,” Buttigieg tells TIME, sitting on his living-room couch in South Bend.
“One is to just change your ideas and make them more conservative. The second is to sort of be sneaky and try to make it seem like your ideas are more conservative than they are. And the third, the approach that I favor, is to stick to your ideas, but explain why conservatives shouldn’t be afraid of them.”
[snip]
Some of Buttigieg’s fellow officers who had used gay as an epithet in his presence reached out to express their support. “I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know?” he says. “Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people.”
All this informs his belief that it’s still possible to reach across America’s political divide.
“We’ve got to get away from this kill-switch mentality that we see on Twitter,” he says.
He has seen once disapproving parents dance at their gay son’s wedding and homophobic military officers take back their words, and so he believes in the power of redemption and forgiveness.
“This idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil,” he says. “The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”
It’s a terrific read. Definitely click over and learn a bit more about Mayor Pete.
US presidential hopeful ‘Mayor Pete’ and his husband Chasten Buttigieg made the cover of TIME. Regardless of which Democratic candidate you support for president, this is historic and awesome! 👏 👏https://t.co/qtbKqoRJwJ
A serious US presidential candidate and his husband (Mayor Pete & Chasten Buttigieg) on Time Magazine cover. I wish I could go back in time and show baby gay me this. pic.twitter.com/kKueRbeIzh
Yesterday I reported on some shady shenanigans by Republican operatives who attempted to smear Democratic presidential contender Mayor Pete Buttigieg by alleging false accusations of sexual assault.
The allegations were made in the name of Hunter Kelly, a Michigan college student, but more details have come to light about the right-wing trolls who plotted the scheme.
Kelly tells The Daily Beastthat he had been communicating with known hoax-ster Jacob Wohl for several weeks. But last week, Wohl invited Kelly to the home of Jack Burkman in Baltimore to discuss gathering dirt on Mayor Pete as part of a “task force” set up by the Trump administration.
Wohl and partner Jack Burkman apparently paid for Kelly’s ticket to Baltimore and the duo picked him up shortly after midnight.
According to a statement posted on his Facebook, Kelly says the two revealed a “draft” of an article that was to be posted on Medium accusing Buttigieg of sexually assaulting Kelly. Kelly says he wasn’t feeling comfortable about the idea, but Wohl told him to sleep on it as they had talked until about 4am.
(statement via Hunter Kelly’s Facebook – click image to enlarge)
But when Kelly awoke the next morning, Wohl allegedly informed the Michigan college student that the article had already been posted in Kelly’s name. Burkman apparently told Kelly that he was a “star” and people were “eating” him up.
After a lunch of Subway sandwiches, Kelly writes that he was feeling regretful about the lie, but was told with the article already posted “turning back on what had been published would look bad.”
Kelly asserts that Burkman promised to buy him “any house I wanted” to stay involved with the scam. It was during those discussions that Kelly says he was pressured into signing a ‘script’ about the fake sexual assault which was to have taken place in February at “the fancy Mayflower Hotel” in D.C.
Kelly’s statement goes on to say he spent the next hours dodging “hate mail and reporters left and right while getting dozens of texts from friends and family asking why the media was contacting them.”
He eventually ‘escaped’ from Burkman’s home by faking a nap, and calling his family to come pick him up. When he was informed his family had arrived, Kelly says he rushed downstairs and left saying he couldn’t take part in the scheme because “that is not the type of person I am.”
Kelly says Wohl posted more fake tweets on an account Wohl and Burkman had created where Kelly appeared distraught.
This isn’t Burkman and Wohl’s first trip to the fake scandal rodeo.
Additionally, The Daily Beastreports a second man has come forward saying Burkman & Wohl approached him about a similar scheme. He says he not only met with the two, but recorded the conversation. The Daily Beastconfirms they’ve heard the recording.
Kelly says he traveled to meet with the conservative provocateurs with the intention of “seeing what LEGITIMATE dirt we could get on Buttigieg.”
In his statement, he says he was never in D.C. in February; never met Buttigieg; and never been a victim of sexual assault.
“Jack Burkman may have promised me a lavish lifestyle, but at a price that would cost me the two most important things to me: honesty and integrity,” writes Kelly. “Had I gone forward with this despicable scheme they concocted, I would have lost both of those things and became another one of their useless pawns.”
Kelly also calls Wohl and Burkman “the real danger to our country.”
In response, Burkman alleges that it was Kelly who reached out to him to meet.
Burkman posted a copy of the signed ‘script’ along with a photo of Kelly holding his ID with the caption, “1. Very first thing Hunter Kelly did is sign a statement attesting to his accusation 2. He was in full control of all public disclosures, even taking a selfie with his ID to confirm his identity to @MediumSupport MSM bullied him & his family into submission”
Burkman has also tweeted calling Kelly his “former client” who was “pressured out of telling his truth.”
1. Very first thing Hunter Kelly did is sign a statement attesting to his accusation 2. He was in full control of all public disclosures, even taking a selfie with his ID to confirm his identity to @MediumSupport MSM bullied him & his family into submission pic.twitter.com/myXPc1YegL
jacob wohl: i have an idea jack burkman: shoot jacob wohl: u know that thing we tried to do to mueller and got caught? jack burkman: yeah jacob wohl: lets do that exact idea to pete jack burkman: u are a prodigy and have surpassed mozart
The guy Jacob Wohl allegedly roped into accusing Pete Buttigieg of sexual assault has a WILD story about how it happened. Subway sandwiches are involved. https://t.co/6iBlFaZkj6
• InstaHunk Bremen Menelli, currently in Palm Springs, is all smiles. I know a whole lotta gays are in the PS, so lots to smile about.
• Judith Light, Emmy and Tony Award winner, will be honored with the 2019 Isabelle Stevenson Award, presented to theater community members in recognition of their humanitarian contributions.
Light has worked tirelessly for decades as an advocate for LGBTQ rights; she’s been there for the fight against HIV/AIDS; and she continues to work with the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Truly a more-than-worthy recipient.
• Fourteen states currently have pending legislation that would require all presidential and vice presidential candidates to release their individual tax returns in order to appear on the ballot during the presidential or general election. The fourteen states are Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Donald Trump – they’re looking at you.
• One day after former Vice President Joe Biden announced he is running for president in 2020, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, has issued a statement saying he will no longer accept campaign donations from federal lobbyists. Additionally, he will be returning the $30,250 he had received from those who had donated.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced in an email on Friday that the campaign will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists, and plans to return $30,250 to those who have already donated.
• Woofy Pennsylvania state lawmaker Brian Sims started a conversation on his Instagram posting a photo of a Truvada pill, with the caption:
“PrEP/PEP: Starting this day off smart, proactive, and in control! Think this is an invite to talk about my sex life? It’s not. Think it’s an invite to shame me or anyone else? Grow up. “Stigma” is the thing our enemies want us to be stunted by. It literally kills us. It’s stupid and we control our own fate. No shame in this game. Just Pride. #PrEPsavesLIVES”
Just when I think I’m totally impressed by Mayor Pete Buttigieg, he does something like this.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg posted a video in sign language on Wednesday thanking a deaf supporter for the American Sign Language (ASL) sign he created for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate’s name.
“Hi Andy — thank you for your support, thanks,” Buttigieg signed in a video posted on Twitter.
