Donald Trump at pains to pronounce Pete Buttigieg’s name
Pete Buttigieg and Donald Trump (Getty)
Donald Trump gave Pete Buttigieg a laboured name-check during a MAGA rally on Wednesday night (May 8).
“We have a young man, Buttigieg,” Trump said, before repeating: “Boot-edge-edge. They say edge-edge.”
“He’s got a great chance, doesn’t he? He’ll be great representing us against President Xi of China.
“I want to be in that room, I want to watch that one,” Trump added at the event in Panama City Beach.
.@PeteButtigieg getting name-checked by President Trump at his #MAGA rally tonight. (No nickname, yet.) pic.twitter.com/nAiSD9Wfpd
— ɐpoqoʌs ʎɐɾ (@jaysvoboda) May 9, 2019
Trump’s jibe came after Buttigieg, currently the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, argued that he is better suited to govern than the current president.
“I have more government experience than the President of the United States,” he told NBC’s Today Show on Tuesday (May 7).
“That might be a low bar, but I also have more executive government experience than the Vice President, and I have more military experience than anybody who’s walked into that office on day one since George HW Bush.”
Earlier, on April 19, Buttigieg told NBC News that he’s “pretty sure Trump deserves to be impeached,” following the release of the Robert Mueller report.
How to pronounce Pete Buttigieg’s name
Buttigieg’s surname comes from the Malta, where his father was born.
“Most people have trouble pronouncing my name, so they just call me Mayor Pete,” the Democrat wrote in a 2016 Medium post.
“My surname, Buttigieg (Boot-edge-edge), is very common in my father’s country of origin, the tiny island of Malta, and nowhere else.
“Most people have trouble pronouncing my name, so they just call me Mayor Pete.”
—Pete Buttigieg
“Dad came to America in the 1970s and became a citizen; he married my mother, an Army brat and umpteenth-generation Hoosier, and the two of them settled in South Bend, Indiana, shortly before I was born.”
Recently, the Democratic presidential hopeful was given a new nickname by Oprah Winfrey.
“I call him Buttabeep, Buttaboop,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
“The name’s either going to really hurt or [really help] — I think it’s going to help, actually.”
The media mogul added that she is “quietly figuring out” which candidate to give her backing to.
In 2008, she was widely credited with helping Barack Obama secure the Democratic nomination after lending her endorsement.
Pete Buttigieg slips in latest polls
After taking an early third place in a couple of polls, Buttigieg is now vying for third with Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, with Joe Biden taking a storming lead and Bernie Sanders in second.
The latest poll average from RealClear Politics, which looks at a number of different surveys, puts Buttigieg on 6.8 percent support, behind Harris’ 7.2 and Warren’s 7.7.
The next round of polling may be influenced by Buttigieg’s recent TIME magazine cover.
TIME Magazine dedicated the cover to Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten Buttigieg
The Indiana mayor posed with his husband Chasten Buttigieg under the headline “First Family” for the May 13 issue.
Buttigieg spoke about his experiences with homophobia while serving in the armed forces.
“I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know? Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people,” he reflected.
Buttigieg was deployed to Afghanistan in 2014 as a lieutenant in the US Navy Reserve, an experience he revisited at an event in Texas on Friday (May 3).
