Mayor Pete to Fox & Friends: Trump’s Declining a Virtual Debate is a ‘Reflection of the Weakness of his Campaign’

Pete Buttigieg shared a remarkably harsh assessment of the Trump campaign, particularly for viewers of Fox & Friends unaccustomed to seeing anything critical of President Donald Trump on what is well known to be the commander in chief’s favorite cable news show.

Host Steve Doocy opened the interview by asking the former South Bend Mayor to opine on new that Trump is refusing to participate in a second presidential debate that the Commission of Presidential Debates had just announced would be virtual in the interest of safety for all participants. President Trump is just a few days out of a Covid-19 related hospital stay, and there is great opacity surrounding his current health and negative coronavirus tests.

Doocy asked, “So what do you make of the president saying ‘if it’s going to be virtual, it’s not worth my time’?”

Mayor Pete simply replied, “Well, it’s too bad,” before noting he didn’t know why the president won’t participate in a debate. “All of us have had to get used to virtual formats, right?” he explained, connecting to viewers surely tired of working remotely or virtual learning.

But it was his pivoting to the current state of the Trump campaign that was unique for the wildly pro-Trump opinion-based cable news morning show. “It’s also a reflection of the weakness of his campaign,” Buttigieg noted, obliquely referencing recent polls that show Trump down double digits.

There is a time-honored adage in the world of sports that states that the only participants that complain about the referees are the losers, which Buttigieg implied by saying, “When you see campaign’s getting the kind of bad news that he’s been getting through this month, a lot of times you’ll see these kinds of increased arguments over rules, withdrawing from opportunities, a little bit of flailing there.”

“Of course, the only reason we’re here in the first place is that the President of the United States is still contagious, as far as we know, with a deadly disease which reflects the overall problem,” Buttigieg added. “I don’t know why you’d want to be in a room with other people if you were contagious with a deadly disease, and you care about other people.”

“But maybe the president doesn’t care about other people,” he wrapped.

Watch above via Fox News.

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