Former President Barack Obama (Adam Schultz / Biden for President) and Secretary for Transportation Pete Buttigieg (Gage Skidmore)
Former President Barack Obama joked that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg couldn’t win the 2020 election because he is “gay” and “short,” according a new book.
TheHill has published an exclusive excerpt from Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, the latest book from journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, who co-wrote 2017’s bestselling Shattered, about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign.
Lucky — which received a middling review from the Washington Post — documents the campaign of President Joe Biden, whom Allen and Parnes called the “process-of-elimination candidate” after he emerged from a crowd Democratic field and ultimately won the 2020 election.
Allen and Parnes write about a private, Oct. 2019 meeting between Obama and a number of Black corporate donors, including executives from American Express, Citigroup, and Merck.
The former president, who reportedly spent most of the meeting trying to convince the donors to get behind a potential Sen. Elizabeth Warren presidency, called Buttigieg a “rising talent” and said he liked him.
However, Allen and Parnes claim that Obama then listed a number of reasons why Buttigieg would not win the presidency. (Buttigieg dropped out of the Democratic primary prior to Super Tuesday, throwing his support behind Biden.)
Allen and Parnes write that Obama was “on a roll” during the meeting, “using the tone of light ridicule he some-times pointed at himself— ‘big ears’ and ‘a funny name,’ he’d said so many times before.”
“He’s thirty- eight, but he looks thirty,” Obama allegedly said of Buttigieg, drawing laughter from the crowd. “He’s the mayor of a small town. He’s gay, and he’s short.”
Obama’s jokes came, according to the book, only months after Buttigieg had visited the former president “seeking counsel on how to maintain equanimity in the face of homophobia on the campaign trail.”
“Now, behind his back, Obama was riffing on him to some of the wealthiest Black men in America at a time when Buttigieg had been dubbed ‘Mayo Pete’ by critics who believed he couldn’t connect with African American voters,” Allen and Parnes write.
After leaving the 2020 race, Buttigieg became a key surrogate for the Biden campaign, including viral appearances on Fox News slapping down right-wing talking points.
Buttigieg was later nominated by Biden to be Secretary of Transportation, becoming the first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate to a presidential cabinet.
Reacting to his confirmation last month, Buttigieg said he could “feel the history swirling around us when [Vice President Kamala Harris] was swearing me in with my husband, Chasten, at my side.”
Gina Ortiz Jones was elected mayor of San Antonio in a runoff election on June 7.
The victory was historic, as Jones is not only San Antonio's first out LGBTQ mayor but the first Asian-American female mayor of a major city in Texas and the first female mayor in Texas to have served in a war.
(She's a former Air Force officer and Iraq War veteran who previously served as Under Secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration.)
Jones is also the first mayor since 2005 to not have previously served on the city council and will serve a four-year term.
In a clear jab at LGBTQ Pride Month, U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) introduced a resolution last week to declare June as "Family Month" — a move right-wing outlet The Daily Wire hailed as an effort to "reclaim the first month of summer from LGBTQ ideology."
The American family is under relentless attack from a radical leftist agenda that seeks to erase truth, redefine marriage, and confuse our children," Miller told The Daily Wire.
"By recognizing June as Family Month, we reject the lie of 'Pride' and instead honor God's timeless and perfect design. If we truly want to restore our nation, we must stand united to protect and uphold the foundation upon which it was built — the family."
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously revived a 2020 lawsuit by Marlean Ames, who claims she was discriminated against for being heterosexual by the Ohio Department of Youth Services.
The 61-year-old had worked for the department since 2004. A decade later, she was promoted to administrator of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. But she claimed that the conflict started after she began reporting to a lesbian woman, according to The Hill.
In 2019, Ames interviewed for another position within the department but was not hired. Her supervisor suggested she retire, and days later, Ames was demoted, with a significant pay cut. A 25-year-old gay man was subsequently promoted to her old position. Months later, a lesbian woman was chosen for the position for which she had applied.
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