Chasten Buttigieg gave Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) a piece of his mind after her recent “shout out to dads across America.” Pete Buttigieg’s husband called out the hypocrisy of Boebert’s Father’s Day tweet after she slammed the out Transportation Secretary for taking time off to be with his newborn son in the hospital this past fall.
“Our two-month-old son was on a ventilator at the children’s hospital when you attacked my husband for being with his family,” Chasten tweeted on Wednesday. “I watched him take calls and Zooms from our hospital room all day, managing crisis after crisis while our son’s heart monitor beeped in the background.”
Related: New dads Pete & Chasten Buttigieg scrambled to feed their babies because of the formula shortage
Our two-month-old son was on a ventilator at the children's hospital when you attacked my husband for being with his family. I watched him take calls and Zooms from our hospital room all day, managing crisis after crisis while our son's heart monitor beeped in the background. pic.twitter.com/zRkLiAANgV
— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chasten) June 22, 2022
Boebert was one of a chorus of conservatives who criticized the former Democratic presidential candidate for taking paternity leave after the birth of his adopted twins last October. The criticisms were frequently peppered with homophobic rhetoric.
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“Mayor Pete was on a 2-month maternity, paternity, whatever the heck you want to call it leave,” Boebert said at the time. “The guy was gone. The guy was not working, because why? He was trying to figure out how to chest feed.”
Mayor Pete's 2-month-old son was on a ventilator.
"Mayor Pete was on a 2-month maternity, paternity, whatever the heck you want to call it leave. The guy was not working, because why? He was trying to figure out how to chest feed."
pic.twitter.com/D66Jjsayxn— Island Girl 🇺🇦 (@DearGoodPeople) June 22, 2022
“Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked. “Paternity leave, they call it, trying to figure out how to breastfeed. No word on how that went.”
Buttigieg dismissed Carlson’s remarks in an appearance on MSNBC that same month. “This attack is coming from a guy who has yet to explain his apparent approval for the assassination of Harvey Milk, so obviously, we know there’s some dark places where some of these attitudes come from,” Buttigieg said, referencing the fact that Carlson’s 1991 Trinity College yearbook listed him as a member of the Dan White Society, a group that ostensibly honored the San Francisco politician who assassinated Milk in 1978.
Despite her repeated attacks on Buttigieg and his family, Boebert recently requested $33 million in funding for a new bridge in her district from the Transportation Secretary. She has also consistently used her Twitter account to mock transgender people, spread malicious far-right rhetoric about LGBTQ people “grooming” children for abuse, and even suggested that it should be illegal for people to come out before age 21.
