Buttigieg applauds Harris for ‘tough, smart, focused’ Fox News interview

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg praised Vice President Harris’s interview Wednesday evening on Fox News, calling the Democratic nominee’s conversation “really impressive” and saying she would be a “very effective” president.

“Well, it was really impressive on her part. She was tough, smart, focused, disciplined, the same qualities that made her a very effective prosecutor and, I think, are going to make her a very effective president,” Buttigieg told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” following Harris’s interview.

Buttigieg also applauded Harris for getting her point across during the interview on the conservative network — even though she frequently sparred with Fox’s Bret Baier.

“And she did it in territory that’s obviously not ideologically friendly. I think she’d have many reasons to think twice about whether she was going to get fair treatment on Fox News. But even as they were interrupting her, preventing her from speaking, she got her point across,” Buttigieg said.

“And she called out things, like that moment, that exchange that we just saw, where they attempted to sidestep the shocking fact of someone wanting to be president, calling Americans, the enemy from within,” Buttigieg added, referring to Trump’s remarks in another interview in which he called his Democratic opponents the “enemy within” and suggested the military could quell unrest, which drew backlash and quickly became a centerpiece of one of Harris’s campaign rallies.

Though Buttigieg, a frequent guest on Fox News, said he did not help Harris prepare for the interview, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., specifically complimented the vice president’s ability to focus on the question at hand.

“What I will say is that one principle I try to remember, that I thought she demonstrated, is making sure not to allow them to kind of change the subject, or the framing of the question at hand,” Buttigieg said, citing her response to Trump’s “enemy within” comments.

“She also made sure to continue to get her point across, even when she was being repeatedly interrupted. As somebody who has a lot of batting practice myself, on that network, really proud of how she represented her views, her values, and this ticket, in front of a conservative audience,” he said.

“Something I might add, by the way, that is a show of strength,” he added.

Collins also asked Buttigieg about Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s claim that former President Trump did not lose in 2020 “by the words that I would use” — some of his most extensive comments yet on the subject of the last presidential election results.

“Now that he’s given a straight answer, JD Vance is officially on the record as an election-denier, something that is shameful. But also something that, if, certainly, if we look at 2022, and have pretty much anybody who is an election-denier, who is on the ballot, in so many swing states, statewide races lost, I think that’s something that that’s a setback,” Buttigieg said.

“But look, one of the most profoundly important things, in a democratic process, is that when you lose an election, you say so. I mean, it’s one of the most fundamental parts of how democracy works. It’s no fun to lose an election. I know what it’s like to lose an election. But you do it,” he added.