Mayor Pete Is Everywhere on TV This Week, Even… TMZ Live?
If you think you’ve been seeing a lot of former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg lately, it’s because the Democratic presidential candidate has racked up about 20 national television appearances this week, including an interview on TMZ Live.
The Buttigieg Blitz began Sunday with a Mostly Full Ginsburg (the media’s nickname for appearances on all five major Sunday news shows): Mayor Pete appeared on Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, and CNN’s State of the Union — an appearance that caused Jake Tapper to observe that former Vice President Joe Biden has yet to do a Sunday show interview this cycle.
Buttigieg fell short of an actual Ginsburg because he didn’t appear on Fox News Sunday, but he rounded out the day with an appearance on MSNBC’s AM Joy. Fellow candidates Senator Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang were the only others to do interviews Sunday, with one appearance each.
On Monday, Mayor Pete hit the air with three appearances ahead of the Iowa caucuses, doing interviews on CNN’s New Day, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and Fox News’ America’s Newsroom — where he told Ed Henry that he stands by his criticism that Trump supporters are at best looking the other way at President Donald Trump’s racism.
He was also beamed to households across America on every cable network when he seized the moment shortly after midnight to declare victory in the still-resultless and chaotic caucuses. The final results would vindicate him days later, as he earned a slim victory over Bernie Sanders in the state delegate equivalent race.
On Tuesday, Pete took an extended victory lap with six television news appearances, including on MSNBC’s post-State of the Union coverage.
Three of Mayor Pete’s five appearances Thursday were on non-news programs. He did several segments on The View, where he stood his ground against Meghan McCain on reproductive rights and responded graciously to the viral video of an Iowa woman who was horrified to learn, for the first time, that he’s gay.
He also did a lengthy interview on CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and the aforementioned appearance on TMZ Live, all in addition to an appearance on MSNBC and an hour-long CNN town hall.
All of this exposure will allow Buttigieg to test the premise that some of his weakness with voters beyond the first two states is because they don’t know him. Nationally, about a third of voters have either never heard of Mayor Pete or have no opinion of him. That number is even greater — 55 percent — among black voters nationally, a group with whom Buttigieg has struggled mightily to gain support.
Watch the interview above via TMZ.
