Pete Buttigieg may be the best campaign surrogate Joe Biden could ask for in this moment. As a Christian, he’s able to question Mike Pence’s hypocrisy and religious convictions. As a vet he’s able to criticize Trump’s treatment of the military. He’s able to land a punch on any member on the Trump/Pence ticket. All that coupled with the fact that he’s a good debater who stays on message, makes him uniquely suited to speak to the Trump friendly audience at FOX News and flip the script on their anchors who aren’t accustomed to dealing with a top Democrat with his unique skill set.
In the course of the past week, Mayor Pete has gone viral for his deft deflection of FOX News hosts pro-Trump questions and rattling off a series of anti-Trump arguments that FOX viewers are unaccustomed to hearing on the network’s airwaves.
This Wednesday, before the start of the Vice-Presidential debate, Buttigieg appeared on the network and silenced their hosts after expertly swatting away a question from Martha MacCallum about the differences between Sen. Harris and Joe Biden on the idea of Medicare For All.
“This is a classic parlor game of trying to find a little bit of daylight between running mates,” Buttigieg began. “And if people want to play that game, we could look into why an evangelical Christian like Mike Pence wants to be on a ticket with the president caught with a porn star; or how he feels about the immigration policy that he called ‘unconstitutional’ before he decided to team up with Donald Trump. Folks want to play that game, we can do it all night.”
On Thursday he went back on the network and confidently told a visibly uncomfortable Steve Doocy that Trump was lying after the host interrupted him to point out that Trump denied calling troops “loser” and “suckers”. Mayor Pete calmly reminded FOX viewers that Trump was the same guy who attacked John McCain, and used his connections to avoid the draft.
Plus, we know from past experiences that Trump does not like that the network gives airtime Buttigieg.
During the Democratic primary Buttigieg was one of just three candidates in the crowded field to participate in a stand alone town hall on the network. Trump tweeted his opposition to the move in one of his tantrums:
“Hard to believe that @FoxNews is wasting airtime on Mayor Pete, as Chris Wallace likes to call him. Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems. They got dumped from the Democrats boring debates, and they just want in,” he wrote.
Buttigieg should definitely appear more on FOX not only is he a great surrogate for Biden as he tries to appeal to more moderate and center-right Republicans who tune in to FOX for their news. But, his presence has the added benefit of aggravating Donald Trump and that’s also a win for Democrats.
