KEENE, NH- Former Vice President Mike Pence is defending a joke he told about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was later criticized by the White House and Buttigieg’s husband, during a recent exclusive dinner and roast attended by politicians and journalists.
“Pete is the only person in the history of mankind to have a child, and everyone else gets postpartum depression,” Pence said Saturday at the Gridiron Dinner, an annual white-tie-only gathering in the nation’s capital where invitees meet Speakers humorously make fun of themselves and others.
Pence, who has said he will decide in the spring whether to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, commented on the family leave Buttigieg took after he and husband Chasten adopted newborn twins in 2021.
“The Gridiron Dinner is a roast. I’ve thrown a lot of jokes at myself, and I’ve thrown a lot of jokes at Republicans and Democrats,” Pence told reporters Thursday night after chairing a fundraising dinner hosted by the Republican Party in New Hampshire, which holds the second contest in the president’s nomination calendar GOP.
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Side-by-side with former Vice President Mike Pence (left) and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. (Getty Images)
“All I can think of is that not only can Pete Buttigieg not do his job, but he can’t take a joke,” he added.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told The Washington Blade, a liberal LGBTQ magazine, on Monday that Pence’s joke was “homophobic,” “offensive,” and “inappropriate,” urging him to “talk to women.” and LGBTQ people”.
Marc Short, a senior Pence adviser and former chief of staff to the then-vice president, responded by arguing that the White House was being hypocritical and that “the Biden administration should spare America the false outrage … The White House would be wise to focus less.” focused on bank failures, mid-air plane collisions, train derailments and the ongoing supply chain crisis.
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Chasten Buttigieg said in an interview on ABC’s The View Thursday that Pence’s comments are “part of a much larger trend that is attacking families.”
“I spoke up because we all have a duty to hold people accountable when they say something wrong, especially if it’s misogynistic, especially if it’s homophobic, and I just don’t take that when it comes to mine Family goes, and I don’t think anyone else would, especially if you bring a very small, medically challenged child,” he said.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, a potential Republican presidential nominee for 2024, speaks to party activists in New Hampshire before delivering the Cheshire County GOP’s annual Lincoln-Reagan fundraising dinner March 16, 2023 in Keene, New Hampshire. (Fox News)
Pence, a former Indiana governor, and Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, appeared to have a cordial relationship during their overlapping tenures in Hoosier state politics. However, Buttigieg described his relationship with Pence as “complicated” in his memoir about his career and his 2020 Democratic run for the White House.
The former vice president, long known as an advocate of social conservative values and friend of evangelical voters, said in a 2019 interview with CNBC that he and Buttigieg had a “great working relationship” and criticized Buttigieg’s characterization of his religious beliefs.
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At the Gridiron Dinner, Pence made headlines by emphatically repeating his criticism of former President Trump’s actions during the January 6, 2021 attack on the US capital by far-right extremists and other supporters of the then-President – including some chanting “hang Mike Pence.” . — which aimed to reverse the then-vice president’s oversight of congressional certification of President Biden’s electoral college victory.
Former President Trump speaks at a campaign event Monday, March 13, 2023 in Davenport, Iowa. (AP Photo/Ron Johnson)
However, Pence also took some jabs at Trump – who started his third campaign at the White House in November – over the beliefs of his former running mate.
“I once invited President Trump to a Bible study,” Pence said in his speech at the event, which is closed to cameras and audio recorders. “He really liked the passages about beating and destroying your enemies. As he put it, ‘You know, Mike, there’s some really good stuff in there.'”
Noting the current legal controversy over Trump’s post-presidency keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida estate that he was not legally allowed to keep, Pence said, “I’ve read that some of those classified documents that they found in March, a-Lago were actually stuck in the President’s Bible… proving he had absolutely no idea they were there.”
On Thursday, Pence appeared to take aim at Trump again, this time about politics and politics, in his speech in New Hampshire at the Cheshire County GOP’s annual Lincoln-Reagan fundraising dinner.
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“I think as Republicans we must resist the temptation to prioritize the popular over the wise. We must resist personality politics, the lure of populism,” Pence said. “We must return to the timeless conservative principles that made New Hampshire and America strong.”
Fox News’ Aubrie Spady contributed to this report
Source : www.foxnews.com