The New Yorker Radio Hour5 Apr 2019

The Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg on Coming Out: “I Realized I Couldn’t Go On Like That Forever”

During an exit interview with President Barack Obama in November, 2016, just weeks after the election, David Remnick asked who would be the leaders of the Democratic Party and the contenders to oppose Trump in 2020. Obama mentioned people like Kamala Harris, of California, and Tim Kaine, of Virginia, along with a very surprising figure: Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was only thirty-five at the time. In recent weeks, Buttigieg has been raising his profile dramatically, and raising money at a surprising clip, considering that he lacks the national profile of a senator or a governor. In a huge field of candidates, the mayor stands out. He’s a Navy veteran, and was born and raised in South Bend, so he brings heartland credibility to his campaign. But he’s also the youngest candidate in the field, and the first openly gay person with a real shot at the nomination. Buttigieg had not yet come out when he took office and when he joined the Navy Reserves, but deployment in Afghanistan changed his perspective. “I realized I couldn’t go on like that forever. . . . Something about that really clarified my awareness of the extent to which you only get to live one life and be one person,” Buttigieg tells Remnick. “Part of it was the exposure to danger,” he notes, but there was more to it: “I began to feel a little bit humiliated about the idea that my life could come to an end and I could be a visible public official and a grown man and a homeowner and have no idea what it was like to be in love.”

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(1052)

Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed Is “Not a Burn-It-Down Kind” of Candidate

Michigan’s Senate seat is a must-win for Democrats hoping to take control of the Senate in 2026. The midterms are reflecting a surge of energy behind left-leaning Democratic candidates—sometimes known...

31 Jul 35min

A Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the Blowback from Mass Detention

Though President Donald Trump came back to the White House with broad support for his border policies, his Administration’s immigration crackdown has been broadly unpopular. The staff writer Jonathan ...

28 Jul 16min

One Refugee’s Journey Through ICE Detention

In 2025, as ICE was struggling to meet an impossible goal of three thousand immigration arrests per day, the agency took an unprecedented step: picking people up when they arrived at immigration court...

24 Jul 34min

Pick Three: Richard Brody on “The Odyssey” and Other Summer Films

The film critic Richard Brody talks with David Remnick about three notable films this summer: Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” an epic adaptation of Homer’s poem, arriving amid buzz and huge advance...

21 Jul 13min

Rahm Emanuel Says Israel’s Path Is “Not Sustainable Politically”

Rahm Emanuel is a Democratic Party elder, having served in the Clinton and Obama Administrations and as mayor of his native Chicago for two terms. He’s a centrist known for valuing political wins over...

17 Jul 36min

How an Estimated Seven Hundred Thousand People Have Died from DOGE’s U.S.A.I.D. Cuts

The Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, has officially been terminated. Its July 4th sunset date was part of Donald Trump’s original executive order that created the agency, whi...

12 Jul 31min

The World Cup, the Knicks, and LeBron James’s Fate: An All-Time Summer in Sports

With all the sports news at play this summer, from the New York Knicks winning the N.B.A. Finals to Donald Trump having a direct impact on FIFA’s decisions during the World Cup, it’s time for a deep d...

10 Jul 18min

The Sounds of Summer, with Fred Armisen

The comedian Fred Armisen has a thing for sound: he’s a former punk-rocker who gets a lot of comic mileage from doing accents, and he released an album of sound effects—a modern update of a novelty ge...

7 Jul 17min