Pete Buttigieg opens up on why Joe Biden should not have sought reelection

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg used a nationally televised interview Sunday to both condemn the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and deliver a strikingly candid critique of former President Joe Biden’s failed reelection bid.

Speaking to Kirsten Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press, Buttigieg, who served in Biden’s cabinet until President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, said Biden’s decision to run again was a mistake that left Democrats vulnerable. “He should not have run,” Buttigieg said. “And if he had made that decision sooner, we might have been better off, but it literally was his decision. Nobody else was able to make that decision.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, in a forthcoming memoir, has also described Biden’s decision as “recklessness.” Buttigieg echoed that sentiment, conceding that while he was not part of Biden’s inner circle on the reelection question, he believed the president should have stepped aside much earlier. “We are where we are as a country and as a party right now,” he said, “and what matters now is how we build a different kind of future.”

Related: Wall Street Journal quietly walks back false claim Charlie Kirk shooter had pro-trans messages on his bullets

The former secretary’s comments came during a week of political violence. Kirk, 31, was gunned down last Wednesday during an outdoor event at Utah Valley University. His killing, following the June assassination of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, has become a flashpoint in debates about politics in America.

“First and foremost, a man has been murdered. His family is grieving. Charlie Kirk had children,” Buttigieg said. “This should not have happened to him, and this should never happen to anyone.” He warned that every American, not just public figures, is endangered when violence replaces politics. “It’s an attack on an individual and an attack on a country whose entire purpose, entire way of being, is that we can resolve what we need to resolve through a political process.”

Buttigieg pointed to what he described as a “societal sickness” fueled by toxic online culture and the radicalization of young men in “dark and twisted corners of the internet.” He noted how quickly some Americans rushed to hope the shooter would turn out to belong to the opposite political camp. “That is not healthy and that is not a way forward,” he said.

Republicans and right-wing extremists have pointed the finger at the trans community, including false reports that the alleged shooter had pro-trans messages on his bullets.

Kirk’s death has rattled conservatives, but it also reopens long-running debates about his own legacy. As the co-founder of Turning Point USA, he rose to prominence as a brash culture warrior who repeatedly spread disinformation about LGBTQ+ people. He targeted transgender youth in schools, railed against corporate “wokeness,” and advanced conspiracy theories about gender-affirming health care.

Civil rights watchdogs such as GLAAD have long identified Kirk as one of the most prolific amplifiers of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in America. That rhetoric has become more pronounced after high-profile acts of violence in recent years, even as LGBTQ+ people remain disproportionately victims, not perpetrators, of crime.

Buttigieg also rebuked a Trump Oval Office response to the assassination. Trump vowed not only to pursue the shooter but to target organizations and critics he accused of fomenting unrest. Buttigieg called that approach corrosive. “We’re not getting the leadership that we need to bring this country together from the White House,” he said. “The government should not be cracking down on its political opponents because they are political opponents, not in the United States of America. Not ever.”

Watch Pete Buttigieg’s Meet the Press interview below.

- YouTube www.youtube.com