Cable news continued hailing Democrat Mayor Pete Buttigieg as the second coming Tuesday after he officially tossed his hat in the ring for the 2020 presidential race, Monday. Over at MSNBC, “center-right” columnist for the New York Times, David Brooks touted Buttigieg as the anti-Trump that America needed right now, in the wake of the “moral and spiritual crisis” that President Trump had created.
MSNBC afternoon host Andrea Mitchell began by gushing with her guests over Buttigieg’s “stunning” and “moving” interview with Rachel Maddow about “coming out” as gay.
Afterwards, she asked David Brooks to weigh in on Buttigieg and his own new book, about America’s moral “crisis” (which he blames on Trump.) Brooks compared Buttigieg to the President unfavorably and personally attacked him as someone who is “incapable” of love:
Just think about the interview we saw with Rachel Maddow and Pete Buttigieg. There's a guy with fundamental decency. I met him months ago before I knew he was running for president, was seated next to him at a dinner, and there was just a basic humility and deference and you look at Donald Trump and you look at a man who is about ego, who worships career success, financial success. A man who in some ways was not loved and is incapable of receiving or giving love.
From there, the NYT columnist argued that a Democrat President like Buttigieg was what America needed to “morally cleanse” itself from Trump’s bad influence:
So I think we should be prepared for how much the country is going to want to take a reset after the Trump presidency or even when they make the decision about 2020. They are going to want not only policy changes a lot of people, but a moral cleansing. To me, Trump grows out of a moral and spiritual crisis in the country and the answer is a moral and spiritual response.
While he was speaking, images of Trump at rallies with the chyron, “NYT Op-ed columnist on the cultural roots of our political problems,” appeared in the background.
Mitchell followed up by slamming the “narcissism” America faces, tracing it back to Trump, with the caveat that it wasn’t just about Trump:
“In fact, The country in so many ways has been moving toward a profound narcissism which we see perhaps epitomized some would say in our president but it goes beyond just this president. It's the culture and the political conversation,” she argued, letting her guest go on to explain the cultural problems of “disconnection” and “distrust” that he talked about in his book.
