Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg defended his reasons for continuing to appear on Fox News, but added that he understands why many of his Democratic peers choose not to.
“There’s a lot of reasons to hesitate, right? If you’re going into a place that you know is not ideologically friendly or not aligned with you, there’s reasons to think twice about it and I think a lot of people in my party do,” Buttigieg said during a an interview on Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett’s podcast “Smartless.” In the Monday episode, the trio praised the politician for his intelligence, wit and debating skills. Bateman added that he loved the fact that he makes appearances on conservative news channel Fox, but questioned why other Dems don’t.
“My take on it is you can’t blame somebody for not embracing your message if they’ve literally never heard it,” Buttigieg explained. “And a lot of people will never hear what we have to say if we’re only talking to people who are friendly to us.”
Throughout the years, Buttigieg has made headlines by breaking down Democratic talking points on the conservative-leaning Fox News on series like “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace” and “Special Report With Bret Baier.” He’s also opened up his schedule to podcast spots, like his visit to Andrew Schulz’s series “Flagrant.” He said on “Smartless” Monday that he’s strategically taking bookings on platforms where he knows audiences, particularly younger Americans, receive their news.
“I’m doing more podcasts, more digital stuff, just because I know that’s where a lot of people get their information,” Buttiegieg said. “I’ve been teaching one day a week at the Institute of Politics in Chicago, at the University of Chicago there, and one of the things I do is I’m always asking my students when we sit down, a lot of times I’ll do a show of hands: Where do you get your news? The number of students who raised their hands when I asked how many of them get their news from television was zero. Literally zero.”
He continued: “They might see a clip from TV if it goes into their TikTok feeds or Instagram or something like that, but, you know, I don’t think of myself as that much older than them, but I grew up in a world where you watched a TV story about some controversy, you heard the conservative opinion, you heard the liberal opinion, and maybe hearing the other side made you feel the way you feel even more strongly, or maybe it made you change your mind a little bit or ask another question. But the point is, you’d think about it. You’d stop and think about it. And it’s very hard for that to happen now the way our media works, so I’m trying to cut through some of those categories.”
Check out Buttigieg’s full interview on “Smartless” here.
