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The secretary of Transportation blasted the Georgia congresswoman's remark that "he and his husband can stay out of our girls' bathrooms."
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's comment about Pete and Chasten Buttigieg and "girls' bathrooms" was "literally nonsensical," Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday on Yahoo! News' Skullduggery podcast.
Greene, a far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ Republican from Georgia, made the remark at a so-called Save America rally held Saturday in her home state. She ridiculed Buttigieg, the U.S. secretary of Transportation, and his husband by saying, "You know what? Pete Buttigieg can take his electric vehicles and his bicycles, and he and his husband can stay out of our girls' bathrooms."
"The reason you hear somebody like that making nonsensical, literally nonsensical comments like that -- I don't know what you'd do with an electric vehicle in any bathroom -- they don't want to talk about what we're actually working on," Buttigieg said when Skullduggery host Daniel Klaidman asked him about Greene's rant. "So they're going to keep tripling down on anything that can divide and demonize and demoralize, and through that capture attention."
Buttigieg added that Greene isn't worthy of the attention she gets. "If I were to make a list of the 10 or 20 or 50 or 200 members of Congress whose commentary or thoughts or words it would be the most constructive to be debating or weighing right now, it wouldn't be the two or three members of Congress who get the most attention on Twitter for whatever outrage they try to outdo each other on," he said.
Buttigieg, the first out Senate-confirmed Cabinet member, also denounced Florida's new "don't say gay" law, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis Monday. The law restricts classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity, outright banning them in early grades.
"Look, bottom line, it's hurting kids," he said. "I think about what life might be like for our kids when they start school. If they were in a place like Florida, it might stop them from mentioning they had a great time over the weekend with their dads." Buttigieg and his husband are fathers of twins.
He went on to criticize the spate of anti-LGBTQ+ and often specifically anti-transgender legislation in states around the nation. "This is part of a very familiar political playbook," he said. "And I think the reason that this playbook is being pulled off the shelf is you have a lot of folks who don't have actual plans for the things that are affecting so much of everyday life. They're looking for somebody to target, to change the subject to these culture wars. And they're really doubling down on these culture wars. Look, we're going to stand our ground and stand with people who are vulnerable. At the end of the day, they're busy worrying about which books to ban and we're here trying to figure out which bridges to fix."
