WATCH: Mayor Pete Goes Face-to-Face with Writer Who Called Him ‘Lying Motherf*cker’
South Bend Mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg took a chance and sat down for a face-to-face interview with The Root’s Michael Harriot, who recently went viral with an article calling Buttigieg a “lying motherf**ker.”
It has been two weeks since a clip of Buttigieg speaking about education during the 2011 South Bend, Indiana mayoral race went viral, and not in a good way. Buttigieg, during a discussion of mentoring, said that “there are a lot of kids, especially the lower income, minority neighborhoods, who literally haven’t seen it work, there isn’t someone they know personally, who testified to the value of education.”
That clip prompted Harriot to write a viral post entitled “Pete Buttigieg Is a Lying MF,” in which Harriot wove a critique of Buttigieg’s remarks into his own story of educational attainment. Mayor Pete responded by calling the writer personally, spending the 18-minute phone call mostly listening to Harriot.
The phone call alone was a pretty risky move, but it went well enough that Buttigieg agreed to a face-to-face interview with Harriot that’s just been published online. Over the course of twenty minutes, Mayor Pete took some tough questions from Harriot.
But the exchange that appears to have stuck out for Harriot was one in which Buttigieg talked about the threat of racism and white supremacy to our country.
“So you speaking specifically to Black voters, what message are you trying to get to them, and what are you trying to get from Black voters aside from votes? What are you trying to learn about and what are you trying to seek out in having these conversations?” Harriot asked.
“Well the real conversation I want to have – Of course, first of all, it is my job running for office to make sure that I earn the support of Black voters,” Buttigieg said, and added “But the deeper need right now, I think is to make sure that my campaign and all of American politics is more responsive to the need to deliver equality in this country because systemic racism and white supremacy in particular, I believe, is the force that is most likely to destroy the United States of America.”
He went on to say that “white supremacy can’t just be a Black issue, or an issue that candidates of color talk about, or an issue that white candidates talk about only when we’re talking with Black voters.”
“Earlier today, we were at the memorial here in Montgomery, and it was a reminder of the connection between what has happened at the earliest moments of this country’s founding and what is going on right now,” Buttigieg said, adding “I’m convinced that if we don’t wrestle down white supremacy in our lifetime, that it could kill the American project in our lifetime.”
Watch the full interview above, via The Root.
