Pete Buttigieg laid out his vision and priorities for Americans on a MAGA-friendly podcast this week, seemingly winning over the show’s hosts.

The out former transportation secretary waded into the “manosphere” on Wednesday, April 23, appearing on comedian Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant podcast. In a wide-ranging three-hour conversation with Schultz, co-host Akaash Singh, and company, Buttigieg touched on everything from his coming out story and raising his biracial kids to Donald Trump’s failure to deliver on key economic promises made during the 2024 campaign and Democrats’ struggle to connect with young male voters.

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Buttigieg’s appearance on Schulz’s show is significant considering that, since her defeat last November, former Vice President Kamala Harris has been criticized for failing to reach out to young men by appearing on influential “manosphere” podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience and Flagrant, both of which hosted Trump during the campaign. As the Advocate notes, the Associated Press VoteCast survey found that 56 percent of young men voted for Trump in 2024 compared to 40 percent of young women.

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However, as Schulz noted in his intro, Buttigieg has in recent years emerged as a “secret weapon” for Democrats, proving himself to be one of the party’s most effective communicators of its policies and ideals to potential swing voters with his frequent appearances on Fox News. By sitting down with Schulz, Buttigieg seemed to be trying to make up for Harris’ perceived misstep.

“We have to be encountering people who don’t think like us and don’t view the world the way we do both in order to actually legitimately become smarter and better and make better choices and have better positions and just in order to persuade,” he explained.

Buttigieg argued that most Americans agree with Democrats’ positions on issues like taxing the rich, access to abortion, gun control, and healthcare, but the Flagrant crew pressed him on Democrats’ messaging failures compared to Trump and Republicans. Schulz pointed to Trump’s 2016 “Build the Wall” campaign slogan, but Buttigieg countered that Trump never actually built a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, nor did he deliver on his infrastructure promises during his first term, while the Biden administration did with the “Build Back Better” plan. In fact, Buttigieg said, the only major promises Republicans have delivered on have been on unpopular issues like overturning Roe v. Wade and cutting taxes for the rich.

“A galvanizing statement that’s all bulls**t is not good enough,” Buttigieg argued.

“I want everyday life to be better,” he said in response to Schulz’s assertion that he still didn’t understand what Democrats care about. Buttigieg explained that every American should have access to affordable electric vehicles or reliable public transportation, to well-paying jobs that provide parental leave; that those who don’t want kids should have access to abortion and contraceptives.

“If you already have a kid, when you pick them up at school, I want that school to be good, not having its funding slashed while [Republicans] set fire to the Department of Education,” Buttigieg continued. “And then when you get home, I want you to be in a neighborhood that is safe and where you can breathe the air because we didn’t let [Republicans] get rid of the Clean Air Act … And then when you go to bed, I want you to know that your family’s going to be fine, even if it’s a family like mine, despite there being some Supreme Court Justice who wants to obliterate your family because it doesn’t match his interpretation of his religion. That’s the life I want everybody to be able to live. And I think we can deliver that.”

While the Flagrant crew responded enthusiastically to Buttigieg’s vision, Schulz continued to press him on messaging.

“It seems you know exactly what we’re feeling because that was beautiful,” Schulz said. “But I need the statements that are going to satisfy those feelings because that’s what gets people to sway over, and that’s what [Republicans] are f***ing good at.”

When asked what the “Democratic bumper sticker” version of those policy priorities would be, Buttigieg said he’s “working on it.”

As Schulz and co. suggested, such a message will be crucial if Buttigieg chooses to run for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028. A recent Yale Youth poll of 4,100 registered Democratic voters showed the former secretary getting 14 percent of respondents’ support, coming in third place behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (21 percent) and former Vice President Kamala Harris (28 percent).

Asked whether America is ready for an out gay president on Flagrant, Buttigieg said that it was “definitely a thing” when he ran for the nomination in 2020.

“There’s only one way to actually find out, and that’s to like go to voters and see what they’re ready for,” he said. “Whenever there’s some, like, artificial barrier people make up for why somebody can’t run or can’t serve, I think you just got to test it.”

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