Buttigieg rips Democrats: ‘Too attached’ to status quo

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says Democrats suffered major losses in 2024 because they’ve grown “too attached” to the political “status quo.”

Buttigieg interview

In a recent interview with NPR, Buttigieg warned that Democrats shouldn’t aim to restore everything being dismantled by President Donald Trump. “You’ve got an administration that is burning down so many of the most important institutions that we have in this country, which is wrong,” he said. “It is also wrong to imagine that we should have just kept everything going along the way it was.”

Democrats’ next move

Buttigieg argued that Democrats’ priority after regaining power should not be to patch up institutions damaged during Trump’s first term. He said his party has remained “too attached to a status quo that has been failing us for a long time.” Said the former mayor, “It is wrong to burn down the Department of Education, but I actually think it’s also wrong to suppose that the Department of Education was just right in 2024. … You could say the same thing about USAID. It is unconscionable that children were left to die by the abrupt destruction of USAID. Unconscionable. But it’s also wrong to suppose that if Democrats come back to power, our project should be to just tape the pieces together just the way that they were.”

Epstein case

Buttigieg also addressed why the scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein continues to resonate with the public, saying it reflects a “breakdown in societal trust.” He noted that many Americans still question whether the full story has come to light, given Epstein’s ties to powerful individuals. While he acknowledged that Epstein “was historically more of an area of interest for the MAGA base” than for Democrats, he defended the scrutiny placed on Trump. “You shouldn’t have to be a Republican or a Democrat to care about making sure there’s transparency on something as horrific as the abuses that happened. And to want to understand why an administration that promised to shed light on this decided not to,” he said.

Joe Biden’s health

Buttigieg was asked about prior concerns surrounding former President Joe Biden’s age, to which he pushed back, “I told the truth, which is that he was old. … You could see that he was old. And also, when it came to my ability to do my job and have my boss, my president, support me in that job, I always got whatever I needed from him, from the Oval Office.”

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