Pete Buttigieg Opposes Death Penalty for ‘Defenseless’ Terrorists

Mayor Pete Buttigieg opposes the death penalty for prisoners, even if that prisoner happens to be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

“If you mean it, you mean it,” Buttigieg said in an interview with The Hill. “There are people who may deserve to die. I just don’t know anybody who deserves to kill them.”

Mohammed is scheduled to face trial for 2,976 counts of murder before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2021.

Buttigieg argued it was wrong to kill anyone who was “defenseless.”

“I do believe that the moral consequence of killing somebody who is defenseless for any reason goes against certainly what I’ve been taught about the way we’re supposed to treat human life,” he said.

Buttigieg has tried to sell himself to voters as a religious leader of conscience, despite his unwillingness to set any limits on abortion right up until the moment of birth.

When discussing abortion during a radio interview in September, Buttigieg argued life only began “at first breath” and not in the womb.

“You know, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath,” he said. “So even that is something we can interpret differently.”

Buttigieg criticized the evangelical right for supporting Trump, despite his moral failings, describing them as making a “deal with the devil.”

“Certainly you look at not just the political mobilization but also the mobilization of money that went on with the organized religious right, especially in the ’90s, or beginning in the ’90s, and what you see is an alliance that over time, in my view, has begun to resemble more of a deal with the devil in the current administration,” he said.