For the last month or so, Pete Buttigieg has been a pretty key part of the Biden-Harris campaign. He has been sent into the lions den that is Fox News time after time to push the campaign's talking points to conservative viewers. Along the way, he's developed a new name for himself: Slayer Pete. And it looks like Slayer Pete is going to be continuing his role in some capacity now that Biden has won.
In September, reports surfaced that Buttigieg would be a part of a 15-person team that would help the transition between presidential administrations. In a Fox News interivew, when asked whether he would want a permanent role in the administration.
"I will go wherever I'm useful," he said at the time. But many want Slayer Pete out on the front lines givng interviews to Fox News. In a recent The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, he spoke to the nickname.
"I just think it's important to reach people where they are," Buttigieg said of the appearances. "People are tuning into that network in good faith. I don't believe that their opinion hosts are always speaking in good faith, but the viewers might be. How can I be mad at a voter or a viewer for not supporting my perspective if they've literally never even heard it? So it's my job to get that perspective out there and hopefully that wins some people over."
Scroll on to see a few of the clips that have given Buttigieg his new name.
When a host tried to infer that Trump's campaign was in some way better because the candidate has hit more stops than Biden, Pete flipped the conversation to the effectiveness of those stops.
When Fox News decided to carry water for the Trump-Pence campaign and center the faux scandal around Hunter Biden's email and alleged business dealings, Buttigieg turned pointed.
"If they want to make this about the business deals of a government official, let's talk about the president of the United States having a secret Chinese bank account," he said. "That's not like something somebody said that used to work with somebody related to the president, that's a matter of documented fact. And they won't even tell us what bank it was with? Does that bother Americans? I'm pretty sure it bothers Americans a lot more than what they've been trying to whip up for the last 12 days of this election season."
Chris Wallace was set on using Buttigieg's own old quotes against Biden to rope the surrogate into a trap. But Buttigieg was just as set on staying on message.
"Well what I know is we definitely need to turn the page even more now than when I was running for president a year ago," Buttigieg said. "And what we need to turn the page from is a president who is incapable of handling a public health crisis that has now cost almost a quarter of a million, thrown our economy into a total wreckage and has clearly no plan to do anything about it. So yes, let's turn the page."
When Brian Kilmeade brought up the fact that Trump had decided to not attend the virtual debate (it was virtual because Trump had contracted the virus at the center of the ongoing pandemic) Buttigieg went on the attack. And what an attack it was.
Before the vice-presidential debate, Fox News decided to have hosts double team Buttigieg, peppering him with a few hostile inquiries but the former presidential candidate held his ground. The sweetest moment? When they tried to call Kamala Harris a hypocrite and Buttigieg flipped it all around.
"Well there's a classic parlor game of trying to find a little daylight between running mates," Buttigieg began. "If people want to play that game then we could look into why an Evangelical Christian like Mike Pence wants to be on a ticket with a president who has been caught with a porn star, or how he feels about the immigration policy before he decided to team up with Donald Trump. If folks want to play that game, we could do it all night but I think what most Americans want to hear about is are our families going to be better protected than they have been by this president whose failed to secure America in the face of one of the most dangerous things to happen to our country."
Mayor Pete warns Martha MacCallum that Trump's super spreader events could put even more American lives in danger.
When reports surfaced that Trump had disparaged U.S. military, Fox News helped push a talking point that Trump denied the report (as did his administration.) But Buttigieg was right there with the facts: this was a part of a pattern of behavior.
"This is a pattern we've seen from the president throughout his whole life," he said. "When he was a young man he faked a disability so he could avoid serving when it was his turn. We've watched him refer to prisoners of war, like John McCain, as losers with our own eyes. Look, if you're watching this at home, here's how willing Donald Trump is to insult your intelligence. Today, he denied that he ever called John McCain a loser. Now, again, if you're watching this at home, grab your phone, go on Google. You can see video of him doing it, you can see a tweet of him doing. I think it's pretty easy to see who to believe."
