Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been getting positive attention on social media this week following an appearance on a “manosphere” podcast where he explained his vision for the Democratic party.
Fox News, though, had a problem with a gay man appearing on Flagrant, a podcast geared towards men, and one person in particular took issue with Buttigieg’s beard: Buttigieg’s replacement’s wife.
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Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy is the wife of current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and she did a segment on Buttigieg’s appearance on the Flagrant podcast. She started by calling Buttigieg a “beta,” a slang term to refer to a weak and submissive man.
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“Mayor Pete has an idea,” she said. “He’s clearly gotten the masculinitty problem memo. He’s pretending not to be a beta. He grew a beard and he hit the manosphere, the male podcast world.”
Frequent Fox contributor Raymond Arroyo was invited on and he mocked Buttigieg for presenting his political vision to young men while being gay.
“Pete is not exactly the one you sent out to get the young bro crowd,” Arroyo said. “You might as well send Dylan Mulvaney doing a makeup class.” Mulvaney is a trans woman who drank a beer on Instagram in 2023, leading to years of rightwing rage.
Campos-Duffy agreed with Arroyo and then brought up Buttigieg’s new beard: “It’s funny how he thought growing the beard would somehow change everything.”
One person on X joked that Fox News is mad that Buttigieg and Flagrant host Andrew Schulz mocking the rightwing cable news channel for not inviting him back much anymore after he made numerous appearances on the network where he responded effectively to its narratives on political issues.
“They don’t seem to be inviting me as much lately,” Buttigieg said, laughing.
“He just called y’all ‘p***y,’” Schulz joked.
“Oh they saw this and got mad,” the X user joked.
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