Former South Bend Mayor and Biden surrogate Pete Buttigieg appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden on the eve of the U.S. presidential election, and shared his hopes about Tuesday.
Asked how close he thinks the race is, Buttigieg said “it could be very close,” pointing out that the critical states in the electoral college are running tight races.
“It's all going to come down to getting out the vote,” said Buttigieg.
Corden asked Buttigieg about the Trump caravans around the country that have been intimidating drivers on the highway, including one that swarmed a Biden/Harris campaign bus.
Said Buttigieg: “There's a level of panic on his side. This behavior that you're talking about. This is not the kind of thing you do when you're winning. It's a show of desperation and it's not going to help. If there's one thing we've learned in recent years it's that shutting down bridges in New Jersey has not exactly worked well for the Republican Party.”
Buttigieg also talked about the plan to rebuild the country over the next four years and Republicans who have crossed over to support Biden.
“We've got to find ways to build common experiences that cut across political lines and build that kind of trust in one another that's needed not just for politics but for our country to run, for things to be able to work. At the end of the day we live in the same reality … we're going to rise and fall together.”
Buttigieg also talked about his multiple appearances on FOX News: “This is a network that is not very friendly to my party or my perspective but I know how many people get their news from this network and they're watching in good faith. And I can't be mad at somebody for not supporting my perspective if they've literally never heard it. So it's my job to cross that line, to poke through the walls of that media bubble. And as long as they're gonna have me on I've gotta get on there.”
Buttigieg also talked about the “really disturbing” behavior at Trump rallies, including chants of “Fire Fauci” and Trump blaming doctors for the pandemic. He followed that up with some discussion of his new book Trust, which he wrote during the pandemic.
Corden's final question: “No matter what happens, are we going to be okay?”
“Yes, we will,” Buttigieg replied. “We have to. We have to find a way to get through this. This is a country that has been through pandemics, it has been through wars, at one point half the country broke off and declared war against the other half, and this country still stands. We have got to find a way through this and I believe that starts with electing new leadership. … I actually think that we could live to see something incredible in this country. We're just a couple of decades away from being a country that has no racial majority. A country that by mid-century could have solved some of the toughest problems around racial and economic justice, around climate, could be a full-scale, large, multi-racial, pluralistic democracy with a place for everybody, where everybody could belong. We're the generation that could see that happen.”
“Now, we're also the generation that could blow it,” added Buttigieg. “That's part of the reason this election is so high stakes. But if we get it right in the next few years, the 2020s could go down in history as the time America stood up and turned in a better direction and by the middle of this century could be delivering to humanity something as important as the founding of America itself. I really believe that – if we do the work, and that's why we're doing the work.”
Corden asks all his guests to share something from their homes that we otherwise would never get to see. Buttigieg pulled out a baseball that he got during a game on his first date with Chasten, and melted Corden and the audience's hearts.
“See, this is why he should be President of the United States!” shrieked Corden after Buttigieg finished his tale. “Mayor Pete, I don't know if you're busy for the next few years but could you come on the show every day?”
