For all of the damning revelations about President Donald Trump and those who surround him in the long-awaited release of the Mueller report on Thursday, at least one major Democratic presidential candidate doesn’t think it will change the calculus for 2020.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg sat down with Seth Meyers on NBC’s Late Night and appeared to downplay its impact when the host asked him for his initial reactions.
Buttigieg predicted that even though it confirmed “we have a president who acts in a self-serving way” and engaged in behavior that was “at best unethical” and “legally problematic, to put it charitably” that “politically” he doesn’t “think it will change much” for Trump.
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“It’s one more reminder that if we really want to send Trumpism into the history books, the best thing we can do is defeat it decisively at the ballot box in 2020,” he added.
As the crowd cheered wildly, Meyers joked, “I’m very good at judging how the audience feels about something and they’re split right down the middle on that one.”
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who served as a Naval Intelligence Officer, took more offense at the way President Trump has routinely dismissed and disregarded military intelligence while trying to frame himself as a bigger supporter of the military than Democrats are.
“To see the way that intelligence is being politicized, to see the way that military families are being used as props by this president is demoralizing,” Buttigieg said. “And it’s one more reason why it might not be a bad idea to have someone in the White House who actually served.”
