Pete Buttigieg’s shut down of anti-gay commentator Rush Limbaugh is so perfect it belongs in a museum
Pete Buttigieg hit back at Rush Limbaugh, who recently received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Getty)
Pete Buttigieg said he doesn’t take “lectures on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh” after the right wing pundit asked how parents would explain a gay president to their children.
Limbaugh was widely criticised last week after he suggested that America was “still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president”, with some calling for the removal of his recently-bestowed Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Buttigieg gave a direct response while doing the media rounds on Sunday, February 16, telling Fox News that: “America has moved on and we should have politics of belonging that welcomes everybody.”
“That’s what the American people are for,” he continued, adding that he was “saddened for what the Republican party has become if they embrace that kind of homophobic rhetoric”.
Figures from both sides of the political spectrum chastised Limbaugh after his derogatory comments.
Speaking on his radio show, Limbaugh referred to an advert in which Buttigieg discusses “how parents in America are struggling to explain President Trump to their children”.
He held up a picture of Buttigeig and his husband Chasten Buttigieg and said: “He says Trump causes problems for parents, what about that?”
Pete Buttigieg says he loves his husband ‘very much’.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Buttigieg gave a simple explanation.
“Well, I love my husband,” he said.
“I’m faithful to my husband. On stage we usually just go for a hug. But I love him very much.”
Among those to offer Buttigieg their support was former vice president Joe Biden, who will go up against the former South Bend, Indiana Mayor in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, February 22.
“I mean, my God,” Biden said, calling such anti-gay remarks “part of the depravity of this administration”.
Pete and I are competitors, but this guy has honour, he has courage, he is smart as hell.
Donald Trump appeared to distance himself from Limbaugh’s remarks in a Fox News interview, saying that although he “thinks” there are Americans who wouldn’t vote for a gay president, “I wouldn’t be among that group.”
Mayor Pete will be tested in the Nevada caucuses.
Nevada will decide which Democratic presidential hopeful it will lend its support to this weekend.
While Buttigieg has been neck-and-neck with Bernie Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire (the first two states in the primaries contest), a Las Vegas Review-Journal/AARP Nevada poll puts him in joint fifth place.
The poll predicted a win for Sanders, forecasting 25 per cent of the vote. Biden was in second place on 18 per cent, followed by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren (13) and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer (11). Buttigieg and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar were both forecast to win 10 per cent of the vote.
Las Vegas Review Journal stressed that Nevada is a notoriously difficult state to poll accurately.
