Dem Presidential Aspirant Makeovers: Mayor Pete’s Lumberjack LARP

Ah.

Pete Buttigieg.

Last time we saw the erstwhile Biden administration Secretary of Transportation, wasn’t he larping then, as well? I seem to remember something about SecTrans being a J-O-B, but strangely enough, no one could ever find Pete.

Weirdest damn thing. The train goes off the rails in East Palestine, spewing horrible toxic chemicals everywhere. Ohio senator J.D. Vance was there constantly as he should have been. 

SecTrans Pete didn’t get there for three weeks.

And the argle-bargle he spewed about why he didn’t was almost as toxically insulting as whatever had spilt out of those busted freight cars.

AGAIN, I WAS TAKING PAINS TO RESPECT THE ROLE THAT I HAVE AND THE ROLE THAT I DON’T HAVE

 

THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE STOPPED ME

Vurt da furk even

 is that?

That’s not the only skeleton in his closet. Much like when he was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, whose residents had much the same experience with the ‘here today, gone for months’ vapor known as Mayor Pete.

‘I ain’t ever seen the dude’ – residents of South Bend’s poor neighborhoods say Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg left them behind

…White said that he remembers seeing the city’s previous mayor, Steve Luecke, around his neighborhood. But Buttigieg, he said, has stayed away.

“I ain’t ever seen the dude,” White said. “Tell him to chill with us for three or four days.”

The absence stings. But, in neighborhoods away from downtown, so does the lack of investment.

Buttigieg has claimed that one of his economic initiatives, a project to make downtown more friendly to pedestrians, has attracted $90 million in private investments in the downtown area. It’s a boast that smacks of unfairness in other parts of the city.

“That’s the worst thing they’ve ever done,” said Steve Conard, a white man in his 60s who has lived in the northwest for 25 years. “They should have taken that money and paved the road. People come into this neighborhood — they look at the curbs. They look at the streets. Who is going to move in here?”

…“I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to have a chance to run for president,” Bey clarified. “But he’s got to take care of here first.”

…Local data on South Bend is limited, but what official figures exist paint a bleak picture.

Four years after the 1000 Houses initiative ended, there are fewer occupied homes in South Bend than there were when Buttigieg was elected, according to American Community Survey data, despite a rising city population.

The ALICE Project by United Way calculated that between 2010 and 2016, the number of households in South Bend shrank by 8%. The number living in poverty increased 2% in that period to 54%, by the group’s measure.

Yeah. Not so hot.

Kind of like the way he ran the Department of Transportation when he could be bothered to go to the office.

…By the numbers: In December 2021, Buttigieg cautioned that some projects in the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill Congress passed that year would take many years to complete.

He’s got quite a bit to answer for concerning the Federal Aviation Administration lapses that contributed to the horrific DCA crash between the Army helo and that inbound passenger jet.

BOOM!! DEI hire Mayor Pete was a disaster.

Sec.Duffy: “Pete was AWOL.”

pic.twitter.com/HBsNOJqE1X

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) November 12, 2025

They didn’t see him around the DoT for months, and everyone was like, ‘Hey! Where’s Mayor Pete?‘

Turns out he and the Mister were off to buy themselves some campaign aids.

Pete Buttigieg says there’s a “discount” for adopting Black kids (Around 1:15)

He catches himself and then says he means there’s no deposit, but…YIKESpic.twitter.com/OBGEMaiGvN

— J.P. Hasson (@SonofHas) April 23, 2025

Couldn’t buy him polling love, though.

That can’t be right. I am assured everyone loves Mayor Pete. https://t.co/vqSL7aOKm6

— tree hugging sister 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) June 28, 2025

He really wants to be president, so there has to be a way to be more appealing, which is where the beard comes in.

Manly appeal, you know. Even Tim Walz didn’t have one, and look how that turned out.

Mayor Pete should sit this one out. This is the same guy who:

• Ignored 85 near-misses at Reagan airport alone
• Blew $80 billion on DEI & climate scams
• Lowered FAA academy standards
• Obsessed over pilot pronouns

The only way to cut endless delays is to… pic.twitter.com/VqcIaJ4uub

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) September 6, 2025

…The only way to cut endless delays is to FIX our broken air traffic control system. Biden and Buttigieg did NOTHING!

But, as of December, Pete’s in.

BREAKING: Pete Buttigieg just announced his 2026 plans. More town halls all across the country. The Democrats best communicator is hitting the road to help win the midterms. Let’s go. pic.twitter.com/3eMDFEuP9f

— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) December 30, 2025

He knows he’s got some clean-up to do, so The Atlantic decided they’d help out. They sent Annie Liebowitz around to take her usual, pensively moody style picture of a serious candidate, then get some AWFL to write some gag-inducing, swoony prose about him, and it’d all be golden.

This is what they got for their trouble, and I included the bonus Iowahawk commentary because I love you all that much.

LUMBERJACK PETE TAKIN’ A LOAD OFF A’ HIS FEET

Rugged Lumberjack Pete sits at authentic rustic diner awaiting a heaping breakfast plate of carburetors, while Annie Leibovitz captures him in a moment of deep reflection https://t.co/52OgDhd5we pic.twitter.com/Unz6GxyyQQ

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 3, 2026

I have to admit, it set me back for a second when I read ‘SPITTING MAW’ vice ‘splitting maul,’ and I thought Buttigieg had developed some sort of drooling affliction.

For his sake, I was relieved I was wrong.

Nonetheless, I feel this blatant attempt to turn Mayor Pete, a lackluster individual and epic mediocrity in every regard other than his gift of gab, into ‘everyman’ is an obviously phony and misguided effort…and they should do more of it.

It’s paywalled, but you get the idea in the first few sentences… barf.

Pete Buttigieg in the Wilderness

He has a beard, a splitting maul, and a house in Michigan. Is that enough to convince America that he’s a man of the people?

In May 2001, at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, a 19-year-old freshman named Peter Buttigieg asked David Gergen, a Harvard professor and horse whisperer to five presidents, a question that he might have reserved for himself, a couple of decades later. Peter (he had not yet transformed into “Pete,” let alone “Mayor Pete”) said he loved The West Wing but could feel the idealism reflected in the show slipping away from politics in real life. “The presidency has now devolved into what’s called ‘the MBA White House,’ or ‘the corporate model,’” he said, with the plaintive tone of a child asking about the spirit of Christmas. “Is that magic really gone forever?”

I can’t wait until they wrap Pete in Walz’s cast-off plaids.

The authenticity meter will peg right out.

The Harris campaign managed to find a magnificent specimen – The All-American Country Truck Liker – looking fierce on that tailgate. pic.twitter.com/2DLkAp2jKh

— Keir Anderson (@KeirAnders23204) March 3, 2026

Someone in the comments on Dave’s Xweet also pointed out that having Liebowitz shoot you as a candidate makes you as successful as any Cramer stock pick, so there’s that, too.

Has everyone noticed Jasmine Crockett no longer speaks in slang-laced overtones?

As I said earlier, moar please, and do I ever anticipate some humdingers.

Honestly, I don’t care that Mayor Pete ate that cinnamon roll with his hands but crinkling the nose like that, the 2 fingers, my man looks like a rat lol https://t.co/jzCbITHJPU

— Forrest Miller 🎥🏆 (@AlwaysFlacko) August 13, 2025

There are just some things that all the flannel and face-fuzz in the world won’t fix.

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