US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comment about Pete and Chasten Buttigieg and “girls’ bathrooms” was “literally nonsense,” Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday on Yahoo! News’ Skullduggery Podcast.

Greene, a far-right anti-LGBTQ+ Republican from Georgia, made the remark at a so-called Save America rally held in her home state on Saturday. She ridiculed Buttigieg, the US Secretary of Transportation, and her husband saying, “You know what? Pete Buttigieg can take his EVs and bikes, and he and his husband can stay out of our daughters’ bathroom.

“The reason you hear someone like that making nonsense, literally nonsense comments like that – I don’t know what you would do with an EV in any bathroom – they don’t want to talk about this what we’re actually working on,” Buttigieg said when Skullduggery host Daniel Klaidman asked him about Greene’s rant. “So they’re going to keep tripping up on anything that can divide and demonize and demoralize, and through that grab attention.”

Buttigieg added that Greene didn’t deserve the attention she was getting. “If I were to list the 10 or 20 or 50 or 200 members of Congress whose comments, thoughts or words would be the most constructive to debate or weigh in on right now, it wouldn’t be the two or three members of Congressmen who get the most attention on Twitter for any outrage they try to outwit each other on,” he said.

Buttigieg, the first Senate-confirmed cabinet member, also denounced Florida’s new “don’t say gay” law, signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday. The law limits classroom discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity, banning them outright in the early grades.

“Look, ultimately it hurts the kids,” he said. “I think about what life might be like for our children when they start school. If they were in a place like Florida, that might keep them from mentioning that they had a great time over the weekend with their dads. Buttigieg and her husband are fathers of twins.

He went on to criticize the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ and often specifically anti-transgender legislation in states across the country. “It’s part of a very familiar political playbook,” he said. “And I think the reason this playbook is being pulled from the shelf is that a lot of people don’t have real plans for the things that affect daily life so much. They’re looking for someone to target, to change the subject of these culture wars. And they are stepping up their efforts in these culture wars. Listen, we will stand firm and support the vulnerable. At the end of the day, they’re busy worrying about which books to ban, and here we’re trying to figure out which bridges to fix. »