Comedian Jon Stewart expressed befuddlement on “The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart” on Thursday about former Vice President Kamala Harris writing that she chose to pass over former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate due to his homosexuality.
Harris wrote in her new memoir, “107 Days,” that she decided not to select Buttigieg because it was “too big of a risk” for a black woman to run with a gay man. Stewart suggested on his podcast, which featured an interview with Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin, that her decision was “reverse affirmative action” and an example of Democrats not believing their own rhetoric.
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“The reason we’ve lost trust is because people don’t believe that we actually believe the shit we’re selling them, that we’re saying, we’re telling them what they want to hear,” Martin said before Stewart interrupted him.
“To my point in the book, when she says, ‘I didn’t go with Pete Buttigieg ’cause he’s gay and that’d be too far,’” Stewart said. “And you’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s actually reverse affirmative action.’ It’s like, ‘What!?’”
Harris also appeared to blame President Donald Trump for her selection of Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over Buttigieg on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Monday.
“No, no, no, that’s not what I said, that, that’s, that he couldn’t be on the ticket because he is gay. My point is, as I write in the book, is that I was clear that in 107 days, in one of the most hotly contested elections for president of the United States against someone like Donald Trump, who knows no floor, to be a black woman running for president of the United States, and as a vice presidential running mate, a gay man,” Harris said. “With the stakes being so high, it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk.”
The former vice president hastened to assure host Rachel Maddow that she supported the “LGBT community.”
“You know, I’ve been an advocate and an ally of… of the LGBT community my entire life,” she said. “So it wasn’t about it wasn’t about… so it wasn’t about any, any prejudice on my part, but that we had such a short, we had such a short period of time and the stakes were so high.”
“I think Pete is a phenomenal, phenomenal public servant and I think America is and would be ready for that,” she continued. “But at when I had to make that decision with two weeks to go, you know, and maybe I was being too cautious, you know, I’ll let our friends, we should all talk about that.”
Moreover, Buttigieg told Politico on Sept. 18 that he was “surprised” to read what Harris wrote and that he believed in “giving Americans more credit” than presuming they were unwilling to vote for a presidential ticket featuring a black woman and a gay man.
“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” Buttigieg told the outlet.
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