LA Times Journalist Apologizes For Misquoting Pete Buttigieg

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (image via campaign/Instagram)

A reporter for the Los Angeles Times has issued an apology for misquoting Democratic presidential hopeful Mayor Pete Buttigieg in an article published on Sunday.

Evan Halper seemed to have gotten a newsworthy quote from Buttigieg where the midwestern mayor appeared to blame President Barack Obama for the election of Donald Trump.

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At the end of Halper’s article, he quoted Buttigieg as saying, “The failures of the Obama era help explain how we got Trump.”

What the openly gay mayor actually said was, “The failures of the old normal help explain how we got Trump.”

Halper took to Twitter early Monday morning to apologize saying he misheard what Buttigieg as a “result of transcribing a noisy recording.”

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Buttigieg was responding to being compared to former Vice President Joe Biden and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

“My message is not about going back to where we were,” said Buttigieg. “I think because I come from a part of the country where ‘normal’ has been a real problem for a very long time, and I think the failures of the old normal help explain how we got Trump period.”

“So, I’m much more interested in running on building a future that is going to have a lot of differences,” he added.

Apparently, the communications team for Buttigieg records and archives his interviews. They’ve posted the audio recording to YouTube.

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Buttigieg’s statement comes at the 45 second mark:

https://youtu.be/51Wx-Y-rzPg

Buttigieg accepted the apology via Twitter:

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Apologies are nice, but in the time that the article was published and the apology was issued, the hashtag #ByePete had begun trending on Twitter.

Some folks in the Twitterverse were not happy:

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Once seen as a ‘long-shot’ candidate, Buttigieg has continued to rise in the polls. And with higher polling positions, he has attracted closer scrutiny to his policies and public statements.

The Real Clear Politics average of national polls currently shows Buttigieg in 4th place behind Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

RCP average of polls for first-in-the-nation Iowa, however, indicates he trails only Warren. A first or second-place finish in the Iowa caucus’ for Buttigieg would give even more credibility to his candidacy.

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