Secretary of Tansportation Pete Burrigeige at the democratic National Convention 2024
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00:00Mayor Pete, good to see you.
00:02You have been bandied about as a possible running mate choice for Vice President Harris,
00:06so have you been contacted by the campaign and would you be interested in serving in
00:10that role?
00:11Look, I think anybody would be flattered to be mentioned in that context.
00:15I certainly am.
00:16There's really not much more that I can or should say about that process other than that
00:20she's going to make that decision and she knows what she's doing.
00:24What I know is that I'm really excited in whatever capacity to be part of this campaign
00:31and I'm one of millions of Democrats who are clearly energized and fired up.
00:36There's just a new energy and it's been extraordinary to me how quickly she has gathered the party
00:41around her with a sense of mission, a clear message just in a matter of days and of course
00:48I'm thrilled to be part of that.
00:50It seems as if that sense of mission and enthusiasm has rattled Republicans, at least
00:55for the moment, and as we covered earlier in the show, Donald Trump and his campaign
01:00have suggested that he may not follow through with the debate in September that had been
01:06scheduled to be with President Biden, now of course would be the Vice President, assuming
01:10she does wrap up the nomination as expected.
01:12What do you make of that?
01:15It's extraordinary.
01:16Tough talk is this guy's calling card and now there's this extraordinary show of weakness.
01:23He agreed to, you know, he said anytime, anyplace, but more than that, he agreed to this specific
01:28debate on this specific network on this specific date and now he's pulling out and of course
01:35it shows that he's afraid, it shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together
01:41it's not going to end well for him.
01:45So this is a campaign that really has struggled to be about anything but Donald Trump and
01:53Joe Biden and I think that's the bigger pattern that you're seeing here and part of why the
01:58Trump campaign is having such a hard time adapting.
02:02Think about it, just in a matter of two or three days our campaign adapted to literally
02:07the biggest possible change, which is a change in the top of the ticket and yet within a
02:13couple of days that support consolidated and that message was clear.
02:18They meanwhile have been flailing in a way that shows they're unable to adapt and to
02:22me it's not just that their entire strategic apparatus was built around tearing down Joe
02:28Biden.
02:29I think there's something deeper, which is Donald Trump cannot conceive of a campaign
02:35that isn't about the candidate.
02:38You know, we're obviously very excited about our candidate, Kamala Harris is a leader that
02:42everybody is pulling together around, but also she's articulating a message that isn't
02:47about just about herself and certainly isn't just about Donald Trump, although she has
02:52that contrast down.
02:53It's about us and that's the kind of campaign that wins.
02:58It's the right kind of campaign and it's also one that literally does not compute for somebody
03:04like Donald Trump.
03:05So you of course just mentioned the huge change at the top of the ticket, a seismic change,
03:09a dizzying week of change.
03:11For you yourself, on Friday night you appeared in real time with Bill Maher talking about
03:15President Biden, advocating for his candidacy, wanting him to stay in the race and of course
03:20two days later he announced he is bowing out.
03:23What has this week been like for you?
03:26Well obviously it's been intense, it's been emotional, especially watching President Biden's
03:31Oval Office address, watching him do what is so incredibly rare, which is for a leader
03:38with that kind of responsibility and power to lay it aside, to relinquish the nomination,
03:44focus on leading the country.
03:46And again, the words that most spoke to me was when he said that that sacred trust in
03:51our democracy, he said it's not about me, it's about you and your families.
03:55And it reminded me why I'm so proud to be part of that team.
04:01But the other thing I would say is while the top of our ticket has changed, of course the
04:06values have not.
04:09And I'm especially excited to see the way she's leaning into freedom, a value and a
04:14theme that as you know, really for years and back to my own presidential campaign, it's
04:19frustrated me that conservatives tried to monopolize the language around freedom.
04:24I think they have even more completely relinquished any claim to being able to talk about freedom
04:30when they got into banning books.
04:33And she has spoken so powerfully, as she did yesterday, when she was addressing America's
04:38teachers to the fact that if you mean business when it comes to protecting our kids, you
04:42shouldn't be protecting our kids from Tony Morrison, you should be protecting our kids
04:46from assault weapons.
04:48So Pete, historian John Meacham has the next question for you.
04:53Mr. Mayor, quick question.
04:56You are an anomaly in that you are a young person in politics and public service who
05:04seems to actually enjoy it.
05:06I'm wondering, given the course of the 21st century, given the fact that the public arena
05:14again and again has proven to not be commensurate to what people want.
05:21We begin with the terrible attacks, we go through insurrection.
05:26What's the story now that you've been mayor, you've been in a big job, what's the story
05:31you tell about why politics, why public service matters?
05:36You know, it's a great point.
05:39Like generationally, I think anyone my age and younger, especially in the first part
05:45of this century, witnessed a lot of policy failure.
05:50So part of my message, my antidote to that is to look at what's been achieved these last
05:55few years, and most importantly, what that could point to for the future.
05:59I think about my own trajectory, the fact that just the fact of somebody like me being
06:06able to have a role like I do or run a campaign like we did would have been considered preposterous
06:11just 10 or 20 years ago.
06:13I think of the trajectory of South Bend, Indiana, where I served as mayor and where I grew up,
06:18a place that in less than a decade changed the narrative about that from being written
06:24up in national commentaries as a dying Rust Belt city to being a city that was growing
06:30and was being regarded as a place full of innovation and energy.
06:35And of course, I think about serving in a Biden-Harris administration and watching what
06:39happened.
06:40I mean, take infrastructure, right, where there was this belief that you just couldn't
06:43even there was this thing that obviously needed to be done.
06:47And yet it just couldn't happen.
06:49No president could get it through.
06:50Definitely couldn't happen on a bipartisan basis, only to see the Biden-Harris administration
06:54deliver that.
06:55And I think that lights the way toward what is possible.
06:58And as you mentioned, there's also just something in this moment, just this week's moment, about
07:03that idea of enjoying this a little more.
07:07Politics doesn't have to be a death match.
07:10You know, we have certainly seen and had cause for being extremely troubled and disturbed
07:17by what's coming out of the other side.
07:19I think we continue to be right to talk about the threat and the concern for our democracy.
07:25If you have a guy like Donald Trump, who inspired the January 6th riots and attempt against
07:32our democracy, somebody who talks about terminating the Constitution and said that a political
07:37opponent of his ought to be brought before a military tribunal, that's really dark.
07:42But the other side of the coin is the joy of the right and better kind of politics.
07:49And we've seen that throughout the week.
07:51And again, it's something that I think is animating our side, and that the other side
07:56literally can't conceive.
07:57And that's why some of their attacks that have fallen flat kind of reveal that there's
08:01just a different energy, a different vibe over there.
08:04The fact that they, for example, clip and tweet images of Kamala Harris laughing, as
08:12if that's something that counts against her, shows that they literally are having trouble
08:17just getting the idea of there being joy in the struggle and in the challenge.
08:25But I think that's something that speaks more to the campaign than voters.
08:28I think there are a lot of independents, and what I always like to call future former Republicans,
08:32who would rather just sign up and be part of this project than continue to be part of
08:38this doom-filled whatever-we-saw-at-the-RNC.
08:44Pete Buttigieg, thank you for joining us this morning, again, in his personal capacity.
08:49We appreciate it.
08:50Thanks.
08:51Come in.