Pete Buttigieg Defends Husband, Protesters Who Interrupted Brett Kavanaugh's Dinner

FILE - Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, center, speaks during a briefing at the White House in Washington, May 16, 2022, as Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, left, and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan, right, listen. Buttigieg says he is pushing airlines to hire more customer-service people and take other steps to help travelers this summer. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) (Photo: via Associated Press)

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is defending his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, who mocked Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a tweet after the justice left a Washington D.C. restaurant when a group of women’s rights protesters showed up.

After Politico reported that Kavanaugh fled the Morton’s The Steakhouse through a rear door, Chasten Buttigieg tweeted in response to the story: “Sounds like he just wanted some privacy to make his own dining decisions.”

When asked whether his husband’s tweet was appropriate during an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Pete Buttigieg said that public officials should expect to be criticized.

“Look, when public officials go into public life, we should expect two things — one, you should always be free from violence, harassment, and intimidation, and two, you’re never going to be free from criticism or peaceful protests with people exercising their first amendment rights,” Buttigieg explained.

Buttigieg also said the protestors were “exercising their first amendment rights” and noted that Kavanaugh reportedly “never even came into contact with these protesters” and “didn’t see or hear them.”

Kavanaugh was one of six conservative Supreme Court justices who struck down Roe v. Wade in June, which sent shockwaves across the U.S. and activated multiple states’ trigger laws that automatically made abortion illegal due to the fall of the ruling.

While Kavanaugh was eating at the popular steakhouse on Wednesday, protesters showed up in front of the restaurant and called the manager of the restaurant to remove the justice, according to Politico.

The protesters were a part of ShutDownDC, a liberal advocacy group in Washington D.C., according to Axios. The group later reported that Kavanaugh had “snuck out the back” of the restaurant with security.

A representative for Morton’s The Steakhouse told Politico that Kavanaugh and other patrons at the restaurant were “unduly harassed by unruly protestors while eating dinner at our Morton’s restaurant.”

“Politics, regardless of your side or views, should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner,” the statement reads. “There is a time and place for everything. Disturbing the dinner of all of our customers was an act of selfishness and void of decency.”

ShutDownDC is also targeting other conservativejustices, including Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts by offering D.C. service workers $50 for a confirmed appearance of any justice at a restaurant and $200 if that particular justice is still there after 30 minutes.

The group then encourages protesters to show up at the confirmed locations to protest their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

This isn’t the first time Pete’s husband has been vocal on Twitter about his perspective on pertinent situations. On Father’s Day, Buttigieg criticized Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) for a celebratory tweet she posted because of previous comments about his husband taking paternity leave to care for his newborn who was on a ventilator in November of 2021.

“The role of the father is absolutely fundamental to the family and to society as a whole,” Boebert said. “On this Father’s Day, I want to send a shoutout of gratitude to all the dads across America. 

“Our two-month-old son was on a ventilator at the children’s hospital when you attacked my husband for being with his family,” Buttigieg said on Twitter. “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.”

Boebert also made homophobic comments when she said Buttigieg was “still at home trying to figure out how to chest feed,” at an event in November of 2021.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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