Mayor Pete Buttigieg warned voters in South Carolina on Sunday the United States would fail if President Donald Trump was re-elected.
“Our country cannot make it, I think, with four more years under this president,” Buttigieg said during a town hall event in South Carolina.
The South Bend, Indiana mayor urged voters to meet the “urgency of the moment” in the country.
“We are living in a moment, that even now, I think we might be under-reacting to the stakes, and its an even bigger deal than the challenge or threat that the president represents,” he said.
He called for Americans to rediscover and act on the values that founded the country.
“Values like freedom are not conservative values, they are American values, and if you take them seriously they’re going to lead us in a progressive direction,” he said.
Buttigieg ridiculed Trump for “literally” hugging the flag to demonstrate his patriotism.
“There’s a lot more to that than just hugging the flag, literally in some cases,” he said, as his supporters laughed.
Buttigieg referred to the flag while speaking about Trump’s ongoing feud with members of the freshmen Democrat “squad” of leftists such as Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
“Last time I checked, it (the flag) stands for a country where you are free and indeed obliged to speak up when your leaders do wrong, and when you do, nobody’s going to question your loyalty to the Republic for which it stands,” he said. “Let alone tell you to go back where you came from and tell other countries not to let you in.”