WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday shrugged off criticism he been given and defended what the White Household termed a “homophobic” joke he told about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg having parental depart and about postpartum melancholy.
“The Gridiron Dinner is a roast and I experienced a lot of jokes directed to me. I directed a lot of jokes to Republicans and Democrats,” Pence advised reporters in Keene, New Hampshire, when questioned about his earlier remarks. “The only factor I could determine is Pete Buttigieg not only won’t be able to do his work, but he won’t be able to just take a joke.”
Pence, who was in Keene to converse to Cheshire County Republicans as he considers a 2024 presidential operate, doubled down on remarks he manufactured at the once-a-year Gridiron Club meal very last weekend. At the celebration, Pence mentioned that Buttigieg’s two months of “maternity leave” to undertake newborn twins in 2021 with his spouse led to transportation woes nationwide previous year, The Washington Put up noted.
“When Pete’s two little ones had been born, he took two months’ maternity leave whereupon hundreds of tourists were stranded in airports, the air visitors procedure shut down, and airplanes practically collided on our runways,” Pence explained, in accordance to the Post. “Pete is the only human being in human background to have a baby and everybody else gets postpartum melancholy.”
Buttigieg has been a vocal critic of Pence’s cultural and religious conservatism since Buttigieg’s bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Buttigieg, previous mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Pence, former Indiana governor, overlapped in the state’s politics for four many years.
Buttigieg’s spouse, Chasten Buttigieg, responded to Pence on ABC’s “The See” on Thursday.
“I consider it’s not ‘woke,’ you know, to say that a thing is homophobic or misogynistic,” he mentioned. “Does not make you woke. It does not make you a snowflake to explain to another person they have produced a oversight.”
Chasten Buttigieg spoke about how he and his spouse had to commit time in the neonatal intense treatment unit since their son was prematurely born.
“We all have an obligation to keep persons accountable for when they say one thing mistaken, specially when it is really misogynistic, particularly when it’s homophobic,” he mentioned. “And I just never choose that when it’s directed at my spouse and children, and I don’t assume anyone else would, in particular when you deliver a pretty modest, medically fragile child into it.”
Before this week, White Household push secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ripped Pence in a statement, expressing, “The former vice president’s homophobic joke about Secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate, all the far more so because he dealt with females struggling from postpartum melancholy as a punchline.”
“He must apologize to women and LGBTQ people, who are entitled to be addressed with dignity and regard,” she added.
Chasten Buttigieg stated on “The Check out” that he hadn’t read anything at all from Pence considering the fact that he produced all those remarks.
