Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday he didn’t understand the rationale behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) latest campaign ad championing his efforts to restrict the freedoms of LGBTQ+ Americans.
The video, released Friday, overlays former President Donald Trump’s comments of support after the devastating mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016 with headlines of DeSantis’ own efforts to limit the rights of trans people, ban pride events and punish drag queens. Clips of DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, smiling and laughing play in the background.
“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 a bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again, who are you trying to help?” Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, asked on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Who are you trying to make better off?”
“We’re focused as an administration how to get things done to make people better off,” he added.
The ad, shared by the DeSantis War Room account on Twitter, sparked immediate and fierce condemnation from both sides of the aisle. The Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ GOP group, said the clip was “divisive and desperate,” adding the DeSantis campaign had “ventured into homophobic territory” and alienated swing-state and younger voters.
Former New Jersey governor and fellow 2024 GOP candidate Chris Christie (R) also said he wasn’t “comfortable” with the clip, adding he didn’t believe it’s what “leaders should be doing.”
Buttigieg told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday he didn’t buy the Florida governor’s attempt to recast his ongoing attacks on vulnerable Americans as strength.
“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,” he added.
DeSantis’ camp has rejected any criticism, saying the governor’s ad on the heels of pride month wasn’t homophobic.
“We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either,” Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for the DeSantis campaign, said on Twitter. “It’s unnecessary, divisive, pandering. In a country as vast and diverse as the USA, identity politics is poison.”