Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson mocked the media fascination with South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Carlson first noted how Buttigieg had supplanted former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) as the new media favorite.
“Imagine how it must feel to be Beto O’Rourke right now,” he said. “If you’re O’Rourke, you’re out there running for President really hard or at least running for Vice President. You’re running anyway. You’re given speech after speech every day. ‘Children are our future. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’ Inspiring stuff like that. Deep stuff like that. And there’s a physical component to the job, too. You’re riding your skateboard for the camera. You’re taking God knows how many selfies for your fans on Snapchat and Instagram. It’s not an easy gig. Then one morning, you wake up and discover that your one true love — the American news media — have called it off. They’ve left you for a younger, hotter candidate. Went out for a pack of cigarettes that just never came home. They split with some guy from Indiana. You can’t even pronounce the guy’s name.
After a montage of media fawning, including a clip of MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace calling Buttigieg “chicken soup” for her soul, Carlson questioned how Buttigieg had successfully managed to woo the media despite being relatively unknown.
“This is a new level of political commitment,” Carlson said. “They don’t just want to vote for this guy. They want to consume him like a hearty stew — every last drop of Buttigieg, yum. They’re all in. What’s going on here exactly? Who is this guy? There are a lot of liberals running for President right now. Why would the 37-year-old mayor of some third-string Midwestern city — no offense, but that’s what it is – – why would that guy stand out? Why is he more impressive than, I don’t know? Senator Cory Booker or former Governor John Hickenlooper, or for that matter any of the approximately eleven thousand progressive Democrats running for President at the moment. Why is this guy better than them?’
“That’s a pretty tough question actually,” he continued. “We checked. Nobody knows. Least of all, Buttigieg himself. His website gives you his bio and then tells you how young he is — very young — it says pretty much nothing about what policies he might support. That’s not an accident, but we can’t just talk policy points all the time, Buttigieg said recently, “As Democrats, we have to figure out how to tell a better story about our principles,” end quote. And actually, that’s not a crazy point. Storytelling does matter, but first, you have to know what your story is. You have to know what your principles are, and suddenly neither party knows this. They’re not sure what they stand for, and that’s really why things seems so bizarre right now in this country politically, why they are so chaotic.”
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