Pete Buttigieg Remarks Endorsing Joe Biden

BUTTIGIEG: Well it's a treat to be with Mayor Rawlings and Mayor Adler, a great friend of our campaign, and it is an honor to be here with Vice President Biden. 

When I ran for president, we made it clear that the whole idea was about rallying the country together to defeat Donald Trump, and to win the era for the values that we share. And that was always a goal that was much bigger than me becoming president, and it is in the name of that very same goal that I'm delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for President.

And I do it with great pleasure, knowing just how much we need to do, not only to win, which is so very important—and when I say win, not just win back the White House, but make sure we bring those vitally important House and Senate and local races with us, but also that we've got to do it in a way that starts to change the toxic and divisive nature of our politics right now. We can't go on like this, and we got a politics right now that makes it sound like being loudest is tantamount to being right. We need a politics that's about decency, a politics that brings back dignity, and that is what we sought to practice in my campaign. That's what Joe Biden has been practicing his entire life. So, what we see right now is an opportunity not just to meet that imperative of getting a new and better president, but of doing it with a leader who will practice that way of rallying people together with ideas that are big enough to unite the American people of all generations.

And if you think about it, on some of the most important issues affecting my generation and the next generation—climate change, gun violence—Joe Biden has been delivering on those very priorities, from taking on the NRA and winning, to negotiating the Paris Climate accord, to shepherding the passage of the Affordable Care Act. This is what has made it possible for us to achieve what has been achieved, and that is why I have such confidence that as President Joe Biden will take the ball further as it needs to go.

But it's even more than that; it's the need to bring back dignity to the White House, when we have a president who's tearing this country apart.

And the country already knows without me having to say so, but I want you to know how unbelievably and unfailingly decent I've known Vice President Biden to be, from his visits to South Bend while he was vice president to my visits as a mayor to the White House during the Obama Biden administration to, perhaps especially, the experiences that I have had getting to know him while competing with him. He is somebody of such extraordinary grace and kindness and empathy, from taking time to talk to somebody who struggles to speak to taking time for a family that's struggling with loss. He will bring the exact kind of empathy that is so badly lacking in this White House, and along the way in his campaign will draw us together as we need a leader to do.

I commented last night and I've often said that politics at its best is more than policy. It's soulcraft. And so it's fitting that I am joining to support a campaign that speaks so often about the soul of this nation. I don't believe the world is divided up into people who are all good and people are all bad. I don't believe that how you voted in the past makes you good or bad, I believe that each of us can have good things and bad things brought out of us and that's why leadership is so important.

I'm looking for a leader. I'm looking for a president who will draw out what is best in each of us, and I'm encouraging everybody who was part of my campaign to join me because we have found that leader, invice president soon to be President Joe Biden.


BIDEN: Folks, I'll tell you what. Folks, this is—  I can't tell you how much I appreciate Pete's endorsement. And I know for Pete's supporters from the mayor to many other people who are here this is also a bittersweet moment, because you, you've supported a man of enormous integrity, a fellow who has as much moral courage as he has physical courage. I really mean that. There hasn't been a harsh word between us since we started to compete and, and I think that it's clear to everyone that this is a man who is not only brilliant, but is decent.

And this is a man who as I, when I called Pete when he got out—which surprised me when he said he's was going to suspend his campaign—I didn't ask Pete to endorse me, but I called him and told him that we needed him to stay engaged. We needed him badly to be involved. Because when he talked in the campaign, in the debates about passing the torch to the next generation, that's absolutely essential. And I am absolutely confident with further exposure to the nation to Pete and to all he stands for and all he'll do and all he can do, that there is no limitation on what this man can get done. And the fact that he's prepared to help me Is, means a great deal to me.

I don't think I've ever done this before, but he reminds me of my son Beau. And I know that may not mean much to most people, but to me it's the highest compliment I could give any man or woman. And that is that like Beau, he, he had a backbone like, he has a backbone like a ramrod. I really mean this. Think about it. You've heard me, some of you have heard me say this before. When I got elected the same age Pete got elected, 29, people would come up to me and say, because if I won there must have been some secret, and they'd come up to me and say what's the secret? And I said, there's one secret. You shouldn't get engaged unless you know what's worth losing over, what's worth losing over.

Pete knows knows what's worth losing over. Pete knows why he got engaged, knows why he's there, and why I'm confident, absolutely confident, he will stay engaged.

I warned Pete that if I were lucky enough to get the nomination, that I would be asking him to join, I would be asking him to be involved in this process, because there are a generation of leaders Pete's age, like my son Beau, who have unlimited potential, unlimited potential. The only thing that stands in the way is access and opportunity to be able to be known nationally.

If Pete had been around another six years, I wouldn't be standing here. Pete'd be standing; I'd be endorsing Pete. No, I really mean it; I really mean it.

So folks, you know, The other point I want to make is this. That the reason I—and we'd talk after debates, we'd talk during the during the interim periods when we were backstage—the reason that I admire him so much and the reason why I think we're so simpatico even though we represent two different generations, is that Pete knows that the role of the president is not just to fight, is not just to win, but it's to heal. This country needs to be healed. The president needs to be a healer. No, I really mean it. It's not hyperbole. And Pete gets it.

You know I was— I talked many times about the [inaud.], I think it's things like Pete does. It's all about you, it's all about family, it's all about community. And it really is. That's what got Pete engaged; that's what got him involved. That's what got me involved. And it's never changed.

When I left the vice presidency, when our term ended, I thought a long time about what to do. And I had opportunities to take advantage, some significant opportunities for a kid who was listed as the poorest guy in the Senate for all those years, but I decided that having a conversation, I'll end with this, with my son Beau. I'm sorry to talk about my son Beau so much, but he was my soul.

And I remember him knowing that he only had a little time to live and asking me whether—we go home every weekend Jill and I, because he only lived as the crow flies a mile from us. We'd have dinner on Friday night and spend the weekend with him. And he asked his, his wife to take my two grandchildren upstairs because he wanted to talk. And he said, Dad, I know no one loves me more than you do. and he said but dad, I want you to know I'm gonna be okay. Even though we knew it was a matter of months. It's gonna be okay. And he looked at me and he said, he said, Dad, I want you to promise me you're gonna be okay. Some of the press has heard me say this. I wrote a book about Beau, Promises to Keep. And when I went on to talk about that was the first book I wrote. And thenI wrote another book about Beau, Promise Me Dad.

And what it was all about is what Pete's all about. He said promise me, Dad, that you're going to stay engaged. He knew I would take care of his family and do whatever needs to be done, but he thought I would withdraw, and move away. And he looked at me and he said, Dad, look at me. Promise me. Give me, give me your word as a Biden, Dad, you're gonna be okay. I know what that meant. It meant he wanted. he didn't want me to walk away. I've done my whole life being engaged in policies that are designed to lift people up no matter what their background, no matter what their circumstances, to reach out.

I'm no hero by any stretch of imagination. But I stayed engaged. And when I stand on the stage sometimes, and a couple people in the press has been assigned to me. They've heard me say it. I just hope he's proud of me. And I look over at Pete during the debates, and I think, I think, you know, that's a Beau because he has such an enormous character, such intellectual capacity, and such a commitment to other people. And folks I can't tell you how much it means to me that he would step up and endorse me. He didn't even tell me when we spoke he was going to endorse me. And, but I just can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Because I promise you, you're going to end up over your lifetime seeing a hell of a lot more of Pete than you are of me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.