Buttigieg: I wouldn’t have pressured Franken to resign

By Elena Schneider
Nearly all of the Democratic senators who are running for president had called for Franken to step down.

Pete Buttigieg said on Monday he wouldn’t have “applied that pressure” to Al Franken to resign from the Senate after allegations of sexual misconduct in December 2017, separating himself from several other Democratic presidential candidates who did call for his resignation.

“I think it was his decision to make” to resign, Buttigieg said. “But I think the way that we basically held him to a higher standard than the GOP does their people has been used against us.”

Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., faced a lightning round of questions from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Monday night in an hourlong town hall event in Fresno, Calif. He addressed questions on gun control, President Donald Trump’s tariff policies and his views on impeachment.

But when pressed about Franken, Buttigieg said that if he had been in the Senate then, he “would not have applied that pressure at that time, before we knew more.” Buttigieg added that “it’s not a bad thing that we hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

Nearly all of the Democratic senators who are running for president, led by Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, called for Franken to step down after eight women accused the Minnesota senator of sexual misconduct and inappropriate touching. Gillibrand defended her stance on Sunday in a Fox News town hall, saying: “If a few Democratic donors are angry because I stood by eight women, that’s on them.”

Buttigieg also explicitly called for Trump’s impeachment, and confirmed that he would vote for beginning those proceedings if he were serving in the House. But, Buttigieg added, “even though I have revealed myself to be ambitious in that I’m a young man running for president, I’d also think twice before offering strategic advice to Nancy Pelosi,” the House speaker.

During the town hall, Buttigieg fielded several questions on why he is the best presidential candidate, particularly when he is competing against several women who one questioner said “are kind of more qualified.”

“We ought to have a woman in the White House right now,” Buttigieg said. He then pivoted to his own qualifications of leading a city in the industrial Midwest and his military service, noting that his résumé is a “little bit different.”

Buttigieg also ticked off his policy commitments to women’s abortion rights, including a pledge to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which limits the use of federal money for abortion, and implementing a litmus test to ensure that Supreme Court justices “are those who share my view that freedom includes freedom to make decisions about your own body.”