Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a podcast released Saturday that attacks aimed at Vice President Harris, claiming she was hired because of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, are “a bad look for the Republicans.”
When asked about the attacks by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, from The New York Times, she said in outlet’s “The Interview” podcastButtigieg argued that the move will likely backfire on Republicans.
“Well, I do think these attacks were a bad look for Republicans,” responded Buttigieg, who is seen as a possible running mate to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Harris.
“And you can tell because when you have someone like [House Speaker] Mike Johnson [(R-La.)]who is a very, very conservative figure, right, the speaker of the House, saying to his own caucus, like, ‘Hey, calm down,’ he’s basically saying that they’re embarrassing the party, and I think recognizing that they’re lowering the chances of the party indulging in this type of rhetoric.”
“And the fact that they can’t think of what else to do, other than get straight to the issue of race and gender, is not only revealing about some of the ugliest tendencies in today’s Republican Party, it is also profoundly unimaginative, because it means that they can’t talk about how it will improve people’s lives, in other words, certainly not [former President] The Trump campaign or the Trump party.”
Earlier this week, Johnson told a press conference that the next “election… will be about policy, not personality.”
“This is not personal when it comes to Kamala Harris,” the House speaker said of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “Your ethnicity, your gender, has nothing to do with it.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who had previously labeled the vice president as a “DEI contractor,” said Wednesday that he regretted calling her that, “but it was the truth.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
