When Democrat reporters interview Democrat politicians, the tone of the interview can sound brotherly. Never mind the parlous state of Democrats in the polls. Perhaps there are some tweaks and fixes, but no crisis.
On Wednesday’s Morning Edition, NPR host Steve Inskeep interviewed potential 2028 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. The headline on the 37-minute YouTube video was “Pete Buttigieg says Democrats can’t go back to status quo after Trump.”
His first words on the video are: “We have a president who really is attempting to become an autocrat and in some ways has succeeded.”
This was condensed down to 11 minutes on the radio. The toughest two questions were on Biden’s decline, and the answers were weak:
Spoken nebulously, like a presidential candidate. NPR anchor Steve Inskeep says Republicans allege you didn't say all you knew about Biden's condition.
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) July 29, 2025
Pete Buttigieg: "That's not true, in my case, at least. I told the truth, which is that he was old." pic.twitter.com/ITaNQbcHSf
INSKEEP: There are also Republicans alleging that you and others in the administration did not say all you knew about President Biden's condition, how his age has affected him over time.
BUTTIGIEG: That's not true, in my case, at least. I told the truth, which is that he was old. You could see that he was old. And also, when it came to my ability to do my job and have my boss, my president, support me in that job, I always got whatever I needed from him, from the Oval Office.
INSKEEP: You never had a moment before that famous presidential debate where you worried about whether he was all there?
BUTTIGIEG: There were moments where I thought, he's looking tired today, or where I noticed that he was aging, but there was never a moment where I thought this decision, this policy or this process is going worse or is wrong because of the fact that he's old.
Libs of TikTok featured a clip from the YouTube interview that did NOT make the cut in the radio edit. What a lame non-answer:
Watch Pete Buttigieg avoid answering if boys should be able to invade girls' sports and go on a whole roundabout rant to basically say he supports it
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 28, 2025
This isn’t hard.
Boys can’t become girls. Boys and girls are different. Boys don’t belong in girls’ sports.
Why is this so… pic.twitter.com/mOoZRJi8lm
Instead, NPR listeners heard Inskeep threw a series of questions about Democrat political tactics:
INSKEEP: Let me put a proposition on the table, and we'll see if you agree with it or not. The country has changed. Politics have changed. Republicans figured that out and captured the moment, and Democrats have failed to do so up to now. Do you agree with that?
...One of your fellow Democrats, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, has talked a lot about this recently, and I can summarize his argument by saying Democrats need to be more populist, need to be tearing things down, need to be talking about the very few people who seem to be benefiting in this situation. He also wants Democrats to be louder, a little more disruptive in government. What do you make of his approach?
What is the cultural change in America that you said you felt Democrats had missed?
Then they turned to the How Awful Is Trump portion:
INSKEEP: I want to zoom back and ask how you think about the president that your party is now facing. I presume you don't think Trump is a good president.
BUTTIGIEG: No.
INSKEEP: Do you see him as a bad president who's wrong about a lot of things or as an existential threat to democracy in this country?
Wow, Steve, that's not playing teeball, huh? Inskeep closed with these beauts:
INSKEEP: Democrats warned that the president would do a lot of these things if he was elected. He has done a lot of these things, and a lot of other people don't seem that alarmed. Don't seem as alarmed as you are about what the president is doing. Why do you think that is?
....I hear conversations from people who bring up the factor of fear. Political leaders, Republicans as well as Democrats, who are afraid of crossing the president, afraid of future consequences to their careers, afraid of the future ability to get a job, afraid even of physical violence. In your conversations with people in your party, how large a factor is fear?
This set up the Buttigieg answer that's their friendly featured quote: "The thing about politics of fear is, the more you give into it, the worse it gets. The only antidote to a politics of fear is the politics of courage."
PS: One could compare Inskeep's interview with Buttigieg with Inskeep's April interview with MAGA strategist and podcaster Steve Bannon. Both segments were 11 minutes. But the Bannon one is much more contentious -- the transcript shows 35 Inskeep questions or interjections in the transcript, while Mayor Pete drew only 16. (Bannon's was actually a minute shorter, since they took a minute to mock him about "media psyops" afterward.)
Bannon's longest answer in the transcript was nine lines (well, eight lines plus one word). Six Buttigieg answers measured nine lines or longer, and the one about people not being "alarmed" was given a 22-line answer on air.
PPS: It's interesting to juxtapose the two YouTube interview with their text:
