DURHAM, New Hampshire — Pete Buttigieg sympathized with voters who are overwhelmed by news coverage of a Senate impeachment trial in the weeks leading up to the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire.
“If you are watching the news right now, if you’re watching what I’m watching right now, and feeling exhausted — I know I am. I live and breathe politics, and I feel exhausted,” the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor told a crowd of more than 500 people at a town hall event on Friday.
“And it’s almost designed, I think, to make us want to switch it off and walk away,” Buttigieg said. “It’s almost designed to give us that sense of helplessness or hopelessness, especially with the Senate GOP telling us that this is all a foregone conclusion, that we would just walk away from it all.”
Buttigieg, 38, then transitioned to a positive message, asking the audience to “put away the hopelessness, to reject the cynicism, take things into our own hands, and build that better future.”
Democratic House impeachment managers concluded their opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial on Friday.
After the event, Buttigieg told reporters that he had seen some of the trial and that the impeachment managers are “certainly making an extremely convincing case on the merits.”
“My message to voters is, if you’re as disgusted with what they’re doing in the Senate GOP as I am, if you’re disgusted with what the White House has done as the rest of us, this is our chance to take it into our own hands and do something about it,” Buttigieg said.
