Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg excoriated Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) in a recent interview, becoming the latest potential running mate to join Vice President Kamala Harris‘s campaign who is attacking Donald Trump’s running mate.
In an interview with the New York Times, Buttigieg sought to distance himself from Vance, who is also from the Midwest and shares other similarities with the transportation secretary.
“I’ve certainly encountered a lot of people like him. He and I both emerged at a time when a lot of people in the Midwest began to find that commentators and figures from the coasts were approaching our part of the country almost with exotic fascination,” Buttigieg said, conceding that he and Vance have a shared background before going on to slam the Ohio senator.
“He has traded on fascination about Midwestern stories and Midwestern values, but the most important Midwestern value I know of is to be straightforward, to be true to yourself, to be true to your core,” Buttigieg continued. “And because he spoke unequivocally about how sinister and unfit Donald Trump was just a few years ago, only to flip around, embrace him and be on his ticket so that he can have more power, people are wondering if he has any core at all.”
Buttigieg also claimed that Vance was “advancing a vision that is terrible for places like where I come from, and I would argue where he comes from.”
Since Harris has become the likely presumptive Democratic nominee in the wake of President Joe Biden‘s announcement he was ending his 2024 campaign, party leaders have coalesced around slamming Trump and Vance as “weird,” with the potential running mates for Harris leading the charge.
“These are weird people on the other side,” Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), another top running mate for Harris, told MSNBC. “They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room … these are weird ideas.”
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Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), also on the short-list to join Harris’s campaign, said Trump “chose someone in his own image” when choosing Vance as his vice presidential pick.
“Sort of a mini-me. When you look at someone who supports an abortion ban across the board, with no exceptions; some of the tapes that have come out on him talking about childless parents,” Cooper said during a campaign event on Thursday. “Those kinds of things are not going to play well in North Carolina or anywhere across the country.”
