Tucker Carlson Slams Pete Buttigieg, Who Joined the Military During ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ For ‘Lying’ About Being Gay

Fox News’s top-rated opinion host, Tucker Carlson, ripped into Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday night and claimed that Buttigieg “hid” and “lied” about his sexual orientation “for reasons he has never been asked to explain.”

Buttigieg very publicly came out as gay while serving as mayor of South Bend, Indiana in 2015, writing an article in his local newspaper. Buttigieg who joined the military in 2009, later wrote about the toll “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” took on him while serving in the reserves as the policy, which ended in 2011, barred military personnel from being openly gay.

Carlson brought up Buttigieg while railing against the response to the mass shooting in Colorado Springs at an LGBTQ bar that killed five people and injured dozens more.

“Pete Buttigieg, of course, couldn’t pass up a moment like this. It’s not like Pete Buttigieg wants to talk about how things are going over at the Transportation Department, which he supposedly runs. Short answer not well,” Carlson said, adding:

No, Pete Buttigieg wants to talk about identity. He always wants to talk about identity. And the funny, ironic thing is and the tell just a few years ago, Buttigieg wouldn’t even admit that he was gay. He hid that and then lied about it for reasons he has never been asked to explain. Why not?

But whatever. Now he is happy to use his sexual orientation as a cudgel to bash you repeatedly in the face into submission. Quote, here’s his latest, ‘If you’re a politician or media figure who sets up the LGBTQ community to be hated and feared, not because any of us who ever harmed you, but because you find it useful that don’t you dare act surprised when this kind of violence follows.’

“Don’t you dare act surprised. Don’t you dare,” repeated Carlson in a sing-song voice.

“All right, fair enough. We won’t dare. But honestly, we’re a little surprised to learn that the anti-trans shooter is himself trans. Were you surprised by that?” Carlson said of the shooter’s lawyer claiming their client identifies as non-binary.

“Buttigieg, now that you’re admitting you’re gay after lying about it, since we’re talking about identity. What do you have to say about that? Well, nothing. Weirdly, Pete Buttigieg hasn’t said anything, nor has he apologized for attacking other people on false pretenses,” Carlson concluded.

Buttigieg did address why he waited until his thirties to come out, writing, “I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay. It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am.”

Later when writing about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Buttigieg wrote about the policy, “For individual servicemembers, that meant hiding who they were from the people they trusted with their lives. In some cases it meant living a life that was less than whole.”

“For partners, it meant that when a promotion came up, they wouldn’t be there to celebrate a new rank being pinned on. And should the worst happen, they wouldn’t even be contacted,” he added, noting that for him personally, it meant at that point in his life, while being deployed, “I could die without ever having known what it felt like to be in love.”

Watch the full clip above via Fox News