Chasten Buttigieg has clapped back at recent right-wing attacks on his husband, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, especially Tucker Carlson’s assertion that Pete Buttigieg “lied” for years about being gay and now wants to talk only about that.Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host lambasted the Cabinet member by saying, “Pete Buttigieg, of course, couldn’t pass up a moment like this,” referring to Buttigieg’s comments about the connection between anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric such as Carlson’s and the mass shooting at queer nightspot Club Q in Colorado Springs.“It’s not like Pete Buttigieg wants to talk about how things are going over at the Transportation Department, which he supposedly runs — short answer: not well,” Carlson said.“No, Pete Buttigieg wants to talk about identity.
He always wants to talk about identity. And the funny, ironic thing is, until just a few years ago, Buttigieg wouldn’t even admit that he was gay.
He hid that and then lied about it for reasons he has never been asked to explain. Why not?”Actually, Pete Buttigieg has explained several times why he did not come out publicly until 2015, when he was running for his second term as mayor of South Bend, Ind. “You’re ready when you’re ready, and I was ready,” he told The Advocate in 2019, when he launched his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
It had taken him several years to come to terms with being gay, and he first came out to family and friends until making a public announcement in the South Bend Tribune.