Pete Buttigieg has once again invoked religious language as he attempts to sure up his faith-based support and hike up his chances of becoming the youngest President in American history.
“Mayor Pete,” as he is commonly known, has seen his chances of becoming the first sub-40-year-old Commander-in-Chief marginally increase after rival Kamala Harris announced she was dropping out the race yesterday.
A military veteran, an Oxford-educated academic and an eloquent speaker, Buttigieg has forged a relatively successful campaign thus far. But it is his incessant use of religious soundbites, usually wielded in order to prove a political point, that has shocked many.
Buttigieg has followed the same strategy in his latest, 30-second-long ad which is titled “Welcomed Me.”
“In our White House, you won’t have to shake your head and ask yourself, whatever happened to ‘I was hungry and you fed me, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,'” Buttigieg bellowed.
Mayor Pete has used this phrasing many times during his campaign, which of course is taken from the words of Christ as recorded in the gospel of Matthew:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ — Matthew 25:35-40.
In his bid to wrangle away Christian voters from the Republican party, Mayor Pete has, on many occasions, harnessed scriptures like this one to paint the GOP as some sort of corporate conglomerate completely void of compassion. In June, he insisted that the Republican party “likes to cloaks itself in the language of religion” and had “lost all claim to ever using religious language again,” because of the position taken by certain GOP Representatives on the crisis at the Southern Border.
However, despite his devotion to scriptures such as the one quoted above, Buttigieg also insists that the Bible cannot be read with a literal interpretation — a discernment that he argues is “not so much cherry-picking as just being serious.”
“There’s simply no way that a literal understanding of Scripture can fit into the Bible that I find in my hands,” he said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, because “Jesus speaks so often in hyperbole and parable, in mysterious code.”
On other issues, he has shown himself to be a master at evading some scriptures and embracing those which suit his political leanings. In his Rolling Stone feature, he doubled down on the notion that life begins “with breath,” and that there is a scriptural basis for this argument. Of course, he is confident in this assertion because it suits his party’s position on abortion.
Should he win, Mayor Pete would also be the first openly homosexual man to take the highest office in the land. However, according to a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, it is still unclear as to whether or not America is ready for a gay President.
The poll found that “50 percent of respondents said they were either definitely or probably ready to have a commander in chief who is openly gay, compared with 37 percent who said they were either definitely or probably not ready.”
When it came to whether America, as a whole, was ready for a gay president, respondents were less optimistic — “40 percent said they thought the country was ready, with 45 percent saying the country was not ready,” the report noted.
Buttigieg married Chasten Buttigieg (née Glezman) in June of last year.