U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has spoke back to former Vice President Mike Pence’s extensively criticized comic story about him.
On Saturday, on the Gridiron dinner for newshounds in Washington, D.C., Pence took a shot at Buttigieg, who’s homosexual, for taking two months of “maternity depart” after his twins had been borns in September 2021. Referencing air trip disruptions in fresh months, Pence added, “Pete Buttigieg is the one individual in human historical past to have a kid and the entire remainder of us get postpartum melancholy.”
In a clip from an interview with ABC’s Gio Benitez that used to be launched Tuesday on “The View,” Buttigieg used to be requested if Pence owed him an apology.
“You already know, I’ll let others discuss to that,” Buttigieg mentioned. “It’s a abnormal factor to me, as a result of final time I noticed him, he requested me about my children like an ordinary individual would.”
“I assume, you already know, at a political match and white tie, it’s slightly other. However once more, there’s no longer numerous time for me to concentrate on the Washington recreation as a result of we have now actual paintings to do right here.”
On Monday, Pence’s comic story drew condemnation from the White Space.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White Space press secretary, known as the comic story homophobic, offensive and beside the point, and he or she criticized him for treating postpartum melancholy as a punchline.
“He will have to make an apology to girls and LGBTQ other people, who’re entitled to be handled with dignity and admire,” she mentioned.
Chasten Buttigieg, the transportation secretary’s husband, slammed Pence on Twitter as he highlighted the well being struggles their in advance born young children, Penelope and Gus, went thru within the first months in their lives. The babies reduced in size a respiration virus, and Gus wound up on a ventilator in a pediatric in depth care unit.
Buttigieg has confronted repeated assaults from conservatives, similar to Fox Information host Tucker Carlson, for taking parental depart, which coincided with a countrywide provide chain disaster. Buttigieg maintains that he used to be entitled to take it and were to be had all the time for main choices all the way through his day without work.
From 2012 to 2020, Buttigieg used to be mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Pence used to be governor of the state from 2013 to 2017 and is reportedly mulling a run for president in 2024.
Pence has rebuffed requires an apology. Marc Quick, his aide and previous leader of team of workers, posted a tweet Monday accusing the Biden management of “pretend outrage” and “placating the woke police.”