Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg sat down for an excellent interview with The Breakfast Club, the hip-hop morning show on New York’s Power 105.1 to talk with hosts Charlamagne tha God and Angela Yee.
Buttigieg spoke on changes in technology, Trump’s election, public education (“I think we’ve got to respect teachers, we’ve got to treat them more like soldiers, and we’ve got to pay them more like doctors.”), health care, his education and his superpower, millennials, and his black agenda.
Buttigieg was asked if he encounters homophobia, and replied: “There’s a lot of ugliness, especially online.”
He then spoke about coming out: “I wanted to start dating … If you’re a sitting mayor, and you’re not out, you’re gonna get spotted. And I didn’t want to live a life that was in hiding, either. So I didn’t have much of a personal life.”
He continued: “I’m in my 30s, I’m a veteran, I’m a sitting mayor, and I got no idea what it’s like to be in love. And I just thought, I’ve got to put an end to that.”
Buttigieg said “it took some getting used to” for his husband Chasten when he told him he wanted to run for president.
Charlamagne then brought up the fact that Buttigieg has said he’s a fan of Eminem, and asked Mayor Pete if that’s a contradiction.
“It kind of is,” said Buttigieg. “I think a lot of us, especially recently, have been trying to figure out when there’s artists that we respect their art but there’s something in it or there’s something in them that we can’t get on board with, how are we gonna deal with it? The thing I appreciate about Eminem is there’s a sense of militant pride – about Detroit. … But it’s not like you can excuse the homophobia.
Charlamagne then asked him about Chick-fil-A, which was just in the news for giving $1.8 million to anti-LGBTQ groups in 2017.
Said Buttigieg: “I do not approve of their politics, but I kind of approve of their chicken.”
“Maybe, if nothing else, I can build that bridge,” Buttigieg added. “Maybe I’ll become in a position to broker that peace deal.”
“We’ve got to find a way to use our identities to reach other people,” Buttigieg went on. “There’s two things that can happen when you’re conscious of your identity. One, is it turns into all these ways we separate ourselves from each other, and it turns into one big ‘you don’t know me.’ But the other way we can do it is say, ‘I’ve got this experience, you’ve got that experience, what can we talk about that brings us together?”
