Interview: Pete Buttigieg’s Warning For His Own Party—And The Country

Mo News

@mosheh / tentwentytwo

News, News Commentary, Daily News

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joins the Mo News Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation just months after leaving the Biden administration, to talk politics, democracy, aviation, fatherhood—and his latest thinking on a potential 2028 presidential run. Buttigieg weighs in on Trump’s second term, his budget cuts, the flood of executive orders, and how worried he is about the state of American democracy. Why he thinks it is not a certainty that Democrats may be able to win the White House back in the coming years. He also shares what he’s learned from his recent podcast tour (including stops popular on the right), what Democrats keep missing in their message, and his perspective on Trump’s war on institutions like the media, universities, and major law firms. We dig into the Democratic Party’s struggles with young and working-class voters, the rise of Democratic Socialists, and a generational shift to the right already underway. Buttigieg also reflects on his time in the Biden administration—including what he observed about Biden’s cognitive state, whether he should’ve run for reelection, and whether Buttigieg wishes he said something earlier. Plus, we press him on his tenure as Transportation Secretary—from airline safety to the air traffic controller shortage. And, we look ahead at his growing alarm over AI’s potential to destabilize American society. Finally, we discuss 2028 election plans: What he’s weighing, what it would take to run again, and whether America is ready for another Buttigieg campaign. 🐝 This podcast was recorded from the Mo News office at ⁠Industrious at Midtown on 50th St.⁠ Mosheh Oinounou (⁠@mosheh⁠) is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist. He has 20 years of experience at networks including Fox News, Bloomberg Television and CBS News, where he was the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and launched the network's 24 hour news channel. He founded the @mosheh Instagram news account in 2020 and the Mo News podcast and newsletter in 2022.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to a special edition of the Mo News podcast.
0:06.7	I'm Oshuununu.
0:07.6	Today we're joined by Pete Buttigieg, the former U.S. Secretary of Transportation,
0:11.7	former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, former 2020 presidential candidate and someone widely seen
0:16.6	as a top Democratic contender in just a few years for the presidency in 28. He's just a few months
0:22.5	out from the end of the Biden administration. He's been making the rounds on podcasts,
0:27.5	talking about how his party needs to do a better job of going to new media outlets in new places.
0:33.2	And that's one of the reasons he joined us here in New York at the Mo News podcast. We talk about
0:37.0	what he's learned from that, his media diet, but we also cover a lot about what's been going on in Trump's
0:42.6	second term, what he thinks is effective, what he thinks is ineffective, you know, given that he was a
0:48.4	consultant for McKinsey, and it was also a cabinet secretary, how government is inefficient,
0:53.4	how it's serving and not
0:54.6	serving the American people and his critique of Doge, along with a number of other things that
0:59.5	Trump has been up to. We also talk at length about the challenges in the Democratic Party.
1:04.0	Their struggles with young voters. He gets very candid about this. What do you think the party has
1:08.1	been doing wrong? The rise of Democratic Socialists, like Zoran Mamdani in New York City, why young voters are moving to the right. I also press him on his time in the Biden administration, both as Secretary of Transportation, in particular, his record when it comes to air traffic controllers, his record when it comes to aviation safety. We talk about that. I also press him about his relationship with Joe Biden, especially as has come to light, that there were people within the White House
1:30.9	with concerns about Biden's cognitive abilities, what Buttigieg said he witnessed and what he would
1:36.8	say if they could do it over again. And whether Biden was the right pick to run for re-election in 2024.
1:42.9	We also talk about AI. It's an especially concerning
1:45.7	issue for him. He thinks it's going to overhaul American society, but not necessarily
1:49.8	entirely for the good and why he thinks is an urgent issue that the government needs to address.
1:56.4	We also talk about his plans for 2020. I ask him bluntly if he's ready to announce his run for
	...

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