'We cannot be mesmerized': Pete Buttigieg lays out how Democrats can fight Trump

Pete Buttigieg wants Democrats to pull themselves together and carefully think about how they'll fight over the next four years, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor, who through a meteoric rise became President Joe Biden's secretary of transportation, oversaw a number of key issues like the buildout of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and reform of the airline industry, spent much of his off time taking the fight to Fox News to push back on right-wing talking points.

In a speech given to young Democratic leaders, he said he wants his party to recognize how to be effective communicators.

First of all, he said, “We cannot be mesmerized by the worst things that we see happening. We will be inclined to react with shock by some things that are done precisely with the intent of shocking us, we need to move very quickly through the shock.”

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Another thing Democrats have to do, he said, is figure out how to take debates they're having online, into the real world to talk to the everyday people who were not hearing their message in the 2024 campaign.

“We’ve got to figure out how to take online conversations offline at scale,” said Buttigieg. “While it is not obvious how to do that, that is something that through human history until about 15 years ago, we all did. And so we’re going to have ways to do that that might on some level be a return to form but on other levels, entail information environment work that is unfamiliar to people who have taken a free press in a democratic society for granted.”

As for his political future, Buttigieg — who ran for president once before in the crowded 2020 primary, and also ran an outside campaign for Democratic Party chair a few years before that — kept it close to his vest.

“I know that I will make myself useful again later,” he said simply.