Chasten Buttigieg has fired back at Tucker Carlson’s recent criticism of his husband, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The Fox News opinion host brought up Sec. Buttigieg while discussing the recent mass shooting in Colorado Springs at LGBTQ destination Club Q – an event that resulted in five deaths and 18 injuries.
Carlson felt that Buttigieg’s response to the tragedy, in which he framed partisan media personalities like Carlson as culpable to the intensifying physical violence against the LGBTQ community, was hypocritical. He also claimed that Buttigieg “hid” his sexual orientation while serving in the military — he served as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve from 2009 to 2017 — and building his political career and “then lied about it for reasons he has never been asked to explain.”
Buttigieg served under the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, which prohibited its personnel from being openly gay. The policy ended in 2011.
“In the clip, Tucker Carlson goes on to talk about how it seems that my husband only wants to talk about identity rather than this job. And I would just love for him to follow Secretary Pete on Twitter,” Chasten Buttigieg told CNN’s Don Lemon on “CNN This Morning” Friday. “He can follow along on all of the things that are happening at the [Transportation] Department. But remember this kind of rhetoric is easy. It’s so easy to attack people and to go on your talk show and fire people up about something that’s not actually happening.”
“I love my husband deeply. I know that he’s a committed public servant and he has everyone’s best interests at heart,” he added. “I just think these people again with these megaphones, they have a big platform, and rather than focusing on real issues, people’s lives, making them better, they’ve decided to focus on hate.”
Lemon then asked Buttigieg about his Thanksgiving, to which he responded that it was a “lovely” time to spend together with his young children and husband. He also had a message for lawmakers slated to vote on the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act and protect valid same-sex and interracial marriages.
“Without bringing too much politics into it, I know we’re on the precipice of a marriage equality vote. And for any senator out there whose wondering whether they should vote yes or no, I invite them to get to know my family,” he said. “Spend some time with us the way we spent our Thanksgiving yesterday. Just a family doing everything that everybody else was doing, you know, spending time on the floor, playing with toys, eating a good meal and enjoying our time together.”
Watch the full segment in the video above.
