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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday took aim at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for a video attacking former President Donald Trump on LGBTQ rights.
DeSantisâ campaign reposted a video to Twitter last week showing overtures to the LGBTQ community by Trump over the years, including footage of him saying that he would âdo everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizensâ during a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016. Trump issued the remarks in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
The second part of the video shifts to a focus on DeSantis that appears to attempt to portray him as the paragon of masculinity. Thumping background music is accompanied by images of DeSantis, shirtless muscular men and headlines about the anti-LGBTQ policies DeSantis signed into law.
âIâm going to choose my words carefully, partly because Iâm appearing as secretary, so I canât talk about campaigns,â Buttigieg, who is the first openly gay Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, said during an interview on CNNâs âState of the Union.”
âIâm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders,â he added. âAnd just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again: Who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?â
After noting his recent travels to places around the country that are using funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021, Buttigieg said: âI just donât understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that heâs going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America.â
DeSantisâ campaign did not immediately respond to NBC Newsâ request for comment.
However, Christina Pushaw, the DeSantis campaign rapid response director, brushed off backlash over the video in a tweet Friday night: âOpposing the federal recognition of âPride Monthâ isnât âhomophobic.â We wouldnât support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either… Itâs unnecessary, divisive, pandering.â
The video has drawn criticism from both Democrats and some Republicans.
In a Friday tweet, Buttigiegâs husband, Chasten Buttigieg, snarked: âThis is actually very gay.â
Log Cabin Republicans, a group that represents LGBTQ conservatives, tweeted that the video âventured into homophobic territory.
“Desantisâ rhetoric will lose hard-fought gains in critical races across the nation. This old playbook has been tried in the past and has failed – repeatedly,” the group added in a follow-up tweet, also calling his policy positions “dangerous and politically stupid.”
Chris Christie, another Republican presidential candidate, also took issue with the video.
âIâm not comfortable with it, and Iâm not comfortable with the way both Gov. DeSantis and Donald Trump are moving our debate in this country,â the former New Jersey governor said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, adding that âtheyâre trying to divide us furtherâ by avoiding âbig issuesâ such as inflation.
âAnd this type of video does nothing to address those issues. And it is a teenage food fight between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump,â he said. âAnd I donât think thatâs what leaders should be doing.â
DeSantis signed a series of bills restricting LGBTQ rights this year, including a measure that expands what critics have called the stateâs âDonât Say Gayâ law and another that will ban transition-related care for minors.
The Florida governor and the stateâs Board of Education have also been sued by LGBTQ students and parents, who said the Parental Rights in Education bill would âstigmatize, silence, and erase LGBTQ people in Floridaâs public schools.â
During his presidency, Trump also took heat from LGBTQ rights advocates for some of his policies, including banning transgender people from the military, withdrawing Title IX protections for transgender students and reversing plans to count LGBTQ people on the census.
