Pete Buttigieg Is 'Almost Certain' We've Already Had Gay Presidents

Mayor and serious presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is truly in the thick of his campaign for the Democratic nomination. The party recently announced Buttigieg will qualify for the first primary debate of the campaign, making him the first openly gay candidate to do so. Plus, just this weekend he celebrated his wedding anniversary with his husband Chasten Buttigieg. But in a recent interview he clarified that he doesn't think he would be the first gay president.

"Republicans claimed that John Kerry was a traitor in Vietnam, that Barack Obama was a Muslim; if you were to win the nomination they'll say you're too young, too liberal, too gay to be commander in chief," Mike Allen says in an interview on Axios to Buttigieg. "You are young, you are liberal, you are gay, how will you respond?"

"I will respond by saying where I want to lead this country," Buttigieg says. "People will elect the person who will make the best president. We have excellent presidents who have been young, we have had excellent presidents who have been liberal, and I would imagine we have had excellent presidents who were gay, we just didn't know which ones."

"You believe we've had a gay commander-in-chief?" Allen asks.

"I mean, statistically, it's almost certain," Buttigieg says.

"In your reading of history, do you think you know who they were?" Allen probes.

"My gaydar doesn't work that well in the present, let alone retroactively but one could only assume that's the case," Buttigieg finishes.

And when you think about it, it's true. If the Williams Institute's numbers are true and 4.5 percent (or about one in 20) of Americans are LGBT, then statistically we have probably already had two that we just don't know about.

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