Pete Buttigieg cites his military service to criticize JD Vance: “Our commitment to the future of this country was damn physical”
Pete Buttigieg had jokes ready for the DNC on Wednesday night. “Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d say. I’m Pete Buttigieg and you may know me from Fox News,” he began. Buttigieg then wasted no time and jumped straight into his first topic: Trump’s selection of vice presidential candidates.
Of Trump’s former vice president, Buttigieg added: “At least Mike Pence was polite. JD Vance is one of those people who thinks if you don’t live the life he envisions for you, you don’t count. Someone who said if you don’t have kids, you have, quote, ‘no physical commitment to the future of this country.'”
“You know, Senator, when I was sent to Afghanistan, I didn’t have any children,” Buttigieg continued. “Many of the men and women who were with me outside the barbed wire fence didn’t have any children either. But let me tell you, our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical.”
Choosing Vance as the country’s next vice president would be “doubling down on negativity and resentment,” he added. “They’re selling darkness. The thing is, I just don’t think America is in the market for darkness today. I think America is ready for a better kind of politics. Yes, politics can be ugly, crushing and demeaning at its worst, but it doesn’t have to be. At its best, politics can be empowering and uplifting. It can even be a kind of soul art.”
The hope, he continued, is that our elected leaders will help us bring out the best in ourselves. “Right now, the other side is appealing to the smallest part of you,” he said. “They’re telling you that greatness comes from going back to the past. They’re telling you that anyone who is different from you is a threat. They’re telling you that your neighbor, nephew or daughter who disagrees with you politically is not only wrong, but is now your enemy.”
Buttigieg acknowledged that the idea of voting for a candidate who promotes joy might sound naive, but he came to that conclusion based on a typical dinner experience in his home: “When the dog is barking, the air fryer is beeping, and the macaroni and cheese is overcooking, and I feel like all the political negotiation experience in the world isn’t enough to get our 3-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter to just wash their hands and sit down at the table,” he said.
“It is the time of our day when politics seems furthest away, and yet the composition of our kitchen table, the existence of my family, is just one example of something that was literally impossible just 25 years ago, when an anxious teenager growing up in Indiana wondered if he would ever belong in this world.
“This kind of life went from impossible to possible, from possible to real, from real to almost commonplace in less than half a lifetime,” Buttigieg continued. This kind of change did not happen overnight, but “was brought about by idealism and courage, by organizing and persuasion and storytelling and yes, by politics, by the right kind of politics.”
“I do not presume to know what goes on in your kitchen, but as sure as I stand here, I know that everything in it, the bills you pay at that table, the makeup of the family that sits there, the fears and dreams you talk about there late into the night, all of this compels us to demand more from our politics than the replay of some wrestling death match on television,” he added.
This November, voters have the opportunity to “choose better politics.”
“This is what Kamala Harris and Tim Walsh stand for. This is what the Democrats stand for. This is what awaits us when America decides to end Trump’s politics of darkness once and for all. This is what we are choosing when we embrace the leaders who are out there building bridges and reject those who are out there banning books. This is what we will work for every day until November and beyond. So let’s win!”
You can watch Buttigieg’s speech in the video above.
