Buttigieg ‘more inclined than not’ to run for president in 2028

Campaign Buttigieg ‘more inclined than not’ to run for president in 2028 Comments: by Max Rego - 08/03/26 11:23 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Max Rego - 08/03/26 11:23 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he is leaning toward running for president again in 2028.

“I think I’m more inclined than not, but there’s so much we don’t know,” Buttigieg told Steven Bartlett on an episode of “The Diary of a CEO” published Monday.

“There’s so much I don’t even know about what’s going to happen this year, let alone … what we need to know later,” he noted.

Buttigieg referenced the personal considerations that go into deciding whether to run for office — he and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, adopted twins in 2021. The former mayor of South Bend, Ind., told Bartlett he did not “fully understand” the “weight” of such a decision until he was a father.

“That’s changed all of my equations. It’s just something that you really sit with and take seriously, which you should,” Buttigieg added.

Six years after Buttigieg finished fifth in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, early polling shows the 44-year-old would be one of the leading contenders for the party’s nomination in 2028, should he seek it.

A survey from the Manhattan Institute last month found Buttigieg in third among a crowded field of Democratic candidates, with support from 13 percent of nearly 500 likely primary voters.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) were the two candidates ahead of Buttigieg, with support from 19 percent and 15 percent of respondents, respectively.

But there are still more than 17 months until the party’s first primary in South Carolina, and 16 percent of respondents in the poll said they were unsure who they would support.

During his interview with Bartlett, Buttigieg touched on many topics, including the Iran war, the impact of AI on workers and the national debt.

Regarding the war, Buttigieg said President Trump has “painted himself and the country into a corner,” as the conflict surpassed the five-month mark last week.

“There was a moment where it seemed to him that he was better off politically if we were at war, even though he promised that we wouldn’t be, even though a lot of his supporters didn’t want the war and certainly the American people as a whole don’t want it,” Buttigieg remarked.

“But he was under a lot of heat over cost of living, over the Epstein files, which was dominating the conversation every day,” added the former Biden administration official, who also said the president listened to advisers and foreign leaders who “would really like to see him go to war.”

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