Buttigieg Defends Harris' Qualifications Against Criticism on Fox News
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00:00today. Okay, so you've been on the trail. A week ago, we were doing the show. President Biden was
00:04still in the race. We now have a presumptive new nominee. But less than a week later,
00:09Bret Stephens is writing this in The New York Times, saying the one thing the Democratic Party
00:13is not supposed to be is anti-democratic, a party in which insiders select the nominee from the top
00:18down, not the bottom up, and which expects the rank and file to fall in line and clap
00:23enthusiastically. That's the playbook of ruling parties in autocratic states. You know the optics
00:29of this, that it was donors who pulled the plug on President Biden, and they're the ones calling
00:32the shots about how this proceeds. Well, it's true that the Democratic Party is not famous
00:39for falling in line. That's part of why it's so remarkable that in a matter of days, Kamala
00:44Harris has consolidated our big tent party. And this is something that is coming from the ground
00:50up. You can feel it. I was in a field office in Michigan yesterday close to our home and saw an
00:56extraordinary energy. So many people from different corners of our party ready to support Kamala
01:02Harris, ready for her to defeat Donald Trump. And it's a level of energy that, frankly, I haven't
01:07seen on the campaign trail in a long time. You actually have gotten more delegates, though,
01:11than she has. I mean, when you ran back in 2020, you accrued them. She didn't get any delegates.
01:16She dropped out of that race. A former staffer of hers says she worries about this coronation
01:20she wrote about in The Atlantic, saying she wasn't tested and tried. Are you worried about that?
01:25Because Bret Stephens also says this. He says she's unpopular. She's been a bad campaigner.
01:30She's been a bad manager. She's a blue state Dem who's got to win purple states. She's anchored to
01:35the president's record. He worries that, well, maybe Democrats should be more worried, that there
01:39hasn't been a thorough vetting. So when she gets into this head to head with President Trump,
01:43there will be wishes that she had been vetted. The idea that somebody hasn't been tested or
01:47vetted when they have been the vice president of the United States for nearly four years just
01:52doesn't make any sense. She is in, obviously, one of the most visible leadership roles in the
01:58country. And she's demonstrated both her effectiveness in that job and a vision for
02:04the country that Americans agree with. And that's a real reason I think she's going to win, is that
02:09most Americans already agree with her on the issues that they care about the most, that affect
02:15them the most, whether we're talking about choice and her stance on defending a woman's right to
02:20choose versus Donald Trump, who eliminated a right to choose in this country. Well, he sent
02:24it back to the states, to be fair. No, let's be very clear. He is proud of the fact that he
02:29demolished the national right to choose in this country, period. But there are states that are
02:35figuring this out. I mean, there are some that are, I mean, it's nearly impossible, a six-week
02:38ban or less. But there are others, there are states in this country that allow no restrictions
02:42up until the due date of a child. There was a national right to choose in this country,
02:47law of the land, for 50 years, which the vast majority of Americans believed was the right
02:51thing to do. But Donald Trump made a promise when he was a candidate, one of the few promises he
02:56actually kept, by the way. You know, he didn't keep his promise of 6% economic growth. He didn't
03:01keep his promise to drain the swamp. Well, he did have a pandemic to deal with. Well, but even before
03:05the pandemic, even before the pandemic, America went into a manufacturing recession, which really
03:11hurt places like where I come from in the industrial Midwest. But anyway, my point is,
03:16he broke his promise for that kind of economic growth. He broke his promise to pass an
03:21infrastructure bill, right? He said he would do that. He failed to do it. The Biden-Harris
03:26administration got it done. He even broke his promise to that January 6th mob when he said,
03:30I will be at your side when you march down to the Capitol. But he actually did keep two promises.
03:35He kept his promise to destroy the right to choose in this country. And he kept his promise on tax
03:40cuts for the rich. And if you want to know what a second Trump term would be like, I would start by
03:45looking at those rare promises that he actually managed to keep. He did say that he wanted to get
03:50rid of Roe v. Wade, but again, send it to the states where they are. Empower the states to
03:55eliminate women's access to abortion. And also, as you know, the Republican party continues to
03:59be interested in a national abortion ban. Which he's disavowed completely. Yeah. He's disavowed
04:03a lot of things. I don't believe him because he lies all the time. You think that his pledge that
04:09he would not pass a national ban is one that. It's one that's going to go down with most of
04:14the promises that he's made and broken.