Well hello, and welcome to another episode of “A Gay is Running for President,” a minute-by-minute freakout by the conservative right — sponsored by Homophobia and The Dumb.
The gay in question is Pete Buttigieg, the current mayor of South Bend, Ind., and his last name is pronounced: boot-edge-edge.
And right-wingers are losing their minds over him. First, he’s gay, so they’re against him existing, let alone running for the country’s highest office. But he’s also a white male, which polls well in this country, and he’s getting a lot of buzz in what is a very crowded Democratic field.
Would Buttigieg be a good president? Probably. Would he be a better president than Trump? For sure. Though that’s an awfully low bar. My 10 lb.-dog, who freaks out whenever he sees any living creatures not in his immediate family, is scared of his metal food bowl because his tags once clanged against the side of it, and who sometimes eats his own poop would be a better president than Trump. Because at least he isn’t racist and has never stolen anyone’s children.
But apparently, Buttigieg has some folks on the right nervous enough that they’re trying to sabotage him by drumming up false accusations of sexual assault.
According to The Daily Beast, right-wing smear team Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were caught on tape trying to get a guy to accuse Buttigieg “of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent.”
If you’re not familiar with Wohl, then I congratulate you because you don’t need that kind of negativity in your life. Wikipedia calls him “an American far-right conspiracy theorist, fraudster and internet troll,” a description that would be right at home on the page for Donald Trump.
As for Burkman, he’s a Republican lobbyist and professional homophobe. He thinks that Trump is too nice to immigrants, so that says a lot.
Wohl and Burkman also tried to drum of false accusations of sexual misconduct against Robert Mueller in retaliation for investigating their Lord and Savior Donald Trump.
And now they’re doing it again! Only to Buttigieg this time because, according to an April 22 Tweet by Burkman, “2020 is shaping up to be more exciting than 2016. Looking like it will be Trump vs. Mayor Pete! Get the popcorn ready!”
Now, will 2020 yield a Trump v. Buttigieg race? I don’t know. But the fact that Wohl and Burkman seem to have gone to an awful lot of trouble to try to damage Buttigieg is pretty telling. Although it might be more telling about Wohl and Burkman than it is about Mayor Pete.
It’s interesting to me that Wohl and Burkman want to get people to accuse Buttigieg of sexual assault, something their Dear Leader Trump has not only been accused of but has admitted to. It’s almost as if one party, the Democrats, believes that sexual assault is wrong and that we need to reverse the trend of thinking everyone who comes forward with charges of sexual assault is lying, and the other party, the Republicans, does not give a fuck about sexual assault at all unless they can use it as a weapon against their political foes. It’s especially clear that sexual assault against women not only doesn’t interest them, but it’s something they are totally fine with so long as their political agenda is being carried out. Ah, but if a GAY does the sexual assaulting then that’s super badly terrible and must be punished right away.
In reality, ALL sexual assault is wrong and should be punished. But the Republicans can’t possibly expect anyone to take their concerns about assault seriously while they do everything they can to prop up Trump, the Sexual Assaulter in Chief.
As for Buttigieg, he told The Daily Beast about the foiled Wohl/Burkman plot, “It’s not going to throw us. Politics can be ugly sometimes but you have to face that when you’re in presidential politics.”
No matter what you think of Buttigieg, the man has class. Seriously, he’s so patriotically wholesome I suspect he bleeds gay apple pie, which is just regular apple pie with rainbow sprinkles added for fabulousness.
Oh, also, while I was looking for info about this story online I wasn’t confident that I’d be able to spell Buttigieg off the top of my head so I just Googled “Wohl Butt” and have learned that said search turns up a LOT of links to porn. And so I’m putting it in writing in case my wife has questions about my search history.
D’Anne Witkowski is a poet, writer and comedian living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBT politics for over a decade. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.