Pete Buttigieg Shuts Down Homophobic Author and Mike Johnson Who Endorsed His Book

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg addressed the fact that Republican Speaker Mike Johnson recently wrote a praising forward to a recently-released book written by a homophobic conspiracy theorist in which Buttigieg is repeatedly demeaned.

The book in question, The Revivalist Manifesto, was written by Scott McKay, a conservative Louisiana blogger who promotes the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

Essentially the progenitor of the Qanon movement, Pizzagate is a debunked conspiracy theory which emerged in 2016 alleging that Democratic politicians were part of a child trafficking cabal based out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria.

In his book, McKay repeatedly takes shots at Buttigieg, declaring that he is a “rather queer choice for Transportation Secretary. Not just because he’s a member of the LGBTQ community, and obnoxiously so.”

Pete Buttigieg is openly gay, married, and the father of two children.

McKay also characterizes Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign in bigoted terms by saying he “ran on the fact that he is openly, and obnoxiously, gay—the central precept of his campaign being that Christians objecting to his lifestyle were bad at religion while he is not.”

The book’s foreword, written by the homophobic Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, praises it and the author: “Scott McKay presents a valuable and timely contribution with The Revivalist Manifesto because he has managed here to articulate well what millions of conscientious, freedom-loving Americans are sensing.”

“Where do you even start with this, right?” Buttigieg said when asked for his reaction, “It’s 2023… and we’re still talking about people this way? Based on who they are and who they love? America, most of America, at least, has moved on from this kind of thing.”

He added that McKay’s criticisms of Buttigieg and others lacked substance: “All kinds of things that mostly seem to come back to an obsession with identity, with either who you’re married to or what your race is, and very little, certainly very little of use about how to make this country a better place.”