Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg shut down “Fox and Friends” host Lawrence Jones’ intense questioning on Tuesday over the fallout Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) is facing after she endorsed a Republican over Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan.
“You have a sitting congresswoman that is just pointing out her objections, and it seems like your party has pushed her out. Why is she not welcome in the big tent of the party?” Jones grilled Buttigieg during an Election Day interview.
Buttigieg told Jones that “she can do and say whatever she likes.”
“But I think most Democrats and most Michiganders disagree with her, just like most people in this country right now disagree with the president,” he said.
Stevens has come under fire this week for giving Mike Rogers, President Donald Trump’s pick for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat, a last-minute endorsement following her fiancé’s vocal disdain for El-Sayed and a dispute over an ad his team did not produce and has since distanced itself from.
The progressive’s campaign team ultimately told Stevens to steer clear of any future events. Not long after that, she endorsed Rogers, a candidate she once warned would just rubber-stamp Trump’s agenda.
She struggled to explain her switch-up in an awkward interview with Anderson Cooper on Sunday, and later posted a lengthy essay on social media amid the fallout.
“The party has threatened to remove her from her committee signed this as well. So my question to you is, why is she not welcome in the party because she wants to have some objections to one of the candidates?” Jones grilled his guest.
“I mean, look, if a member of a party attacks another member of the party, sometimes there are gonna be some repercussions to that,” Buttigieg responded.
He argued, “That’s definitely not something that my relatives and neighbors in Michigan are talking about.”
“That’s fine. You can make that argument, but they are following the candidate that narrowly lost in the primary,” Jones responded. “It was razor-thin, and her objections to antisemitic comments that are happening.”
The Fox News host told Buttigieg he “can’t approach this conversation in good faith,” bringing up the ad Stevens interpreted as antisemitic.
“So how are you talking about a campaign of hate with Rogers still to this day? This is the whole point, why you lost Ms. Stevens? Address that,” Jones demanded.
Buttigieg calmly replied, “Sure, Abdul rejected that ad. It’s that simple. He didn’t produce it.”
“And when he was asked about the contents of it, he rejected it,” Buttigieg said. “And the ads he’s actually producing, from what I can tell, as somebody who gets a lot of ads on TV when you’re just trying to watch a football game in Michigan, are about the fact that Mike Rogers voted to cancel the Affordable Care Act.”