Anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson wants to ask out former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg “very specific questions about gay sex” because he thinks Buttigieg is a “fake gay.”

Carlson said this on the Wednesday installment of The Tucker Carlson Show while speaking to Michael Knowles, an anti-LGBTQ+ Daily Wire host who once acted in a film as a man who sleeps with another man.

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When Knowles mentioned Buttigieg’s name, Carlson responded, “The fake gay guy?”

Knowles then responded, “I have a friend who thinks he’s a fake gay.”

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Carlson replied, “My gay producer was always like ‘he’s not gay.’ He was with a girl like 20 minutes ago, and like he wants to be the Democratic nominee, it’s like ‘Time for a gay guy!’”

Knowles then claimed that Buttigieg is “playing the long game,” and Carlson said, “Well, it’s suffering for your art, I’ll say that.”

The insinuation is absurd. Buttigieg began dating his now-husband, author Chasten Buttigieg, in 2015. They married in 2018 and are now raising two children together. There’s absolutely zero proof to suggest that Buttigieg has ever not been gay. Moreover, there has never been a Democratic presidential nominee who wasn’t straight and cisgender, so it’s unlikely anyone would think that being gay is a requirement to win the nomination.

Knowles then said that he knows “100 Pete Buttigieges” (presumably, straight men who act gay for social advancement), adding, “I know this character, the kind.” Knowles noted that Buttigieg went to an “elite school.” Carlson then said that Buttigieg “[found] some benighted Midwestern town that he can just like become mayor of,” referring to Buttigieg’s eight years serving as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020. Buttigieg was born and raised in South Bend.

“The town kind of sucks, actually,” Carlson said. “He didn’t do a good job. He didn’t have a college there.”

It’s worth mentioning that South Bend has a population of just 103,713 people, and that only five new colleges have opened in the United States since 2001, according to College Raptor, an informational website for college-bound students. The newest U.S. college, Florida Polytechnic University, opened in 2012.

“I’ve always wanted to interview him,” Carlson said. “He’s never agreed to interview, but I’m gonna ask him like some very specific questions about gay sex and see if he can even answer. I doubt he even knows!” Carlson didn’t explain how he allegedly attained his knowledge about the finer points of gay sex.

Pretending to talk with Buttigieg, Carlson said, “Yeah. No, totally. Yeah. You’re not gay dude, stop!”

Knowles then said, “Think about Pete Buttigieg. If [right-wingers] controlled the universities, if we controlled the culture, and if the incentives in the corporations and all of the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] offices – we can rename them – if all the incentives were not to be like America-hating, gay, liberal, Pete Buttigeig, I am convinced – look this is purely my gut telling me this – he would be like waving the stars and bars, like whatever incentive were there he would go to it.”

In short, Knowles believes that Buttigieg wouldn’t “pretend to be gay” if liberal society didn’t reward him for it. His belief ignores all evidence of the anti-gay animus that persists in U.S. society.

Tucker Carlson is anti-gay & weirdly fixated on Buttigieg

This isn’t the first time that Carlson has implied that Buttigieg isn’t really gay.

In a July 2024 episode of Carlson’s show — hosted on X, the social media platform owned by transphobic right-wing billionaire Elon Musk — Carlson called Buttigieg “supposedly gay” and said that one of his show’s gay producers told him that Buttigieg “is not gay.” “Gays all keep close track of that stuff,” Carlson said, offering no real proof of his absurd claim. 

“My producer goes, ‘It’s totally a pose. He was dating women just a few years ago. It’s totally fake. He’s not gay at all,’” Carlson said. He added that he once said this previously on the air, and “people got all offended. I thought it was kind of hilarious.”

Carlson has previously described Buttigieg as effeminate and told viewers that Buttigieg “breastfeeds” his adopted twin babies. Buttigieg responded by saying, “I guess he just doesn’t understand the concept of bottle-feeding.”

Carlson’s 1991 Trinity College yearbook lists him as a member of the “Dan White Society” and the “Jesse Helms Foundation.” White is the person who assassinated Harvey Milk, the groundbreaking out politician who urged gay people to “come out.” Helms, the late Republican senator from North Carolina, was notoriously racist and viciously anti-gay.

In 1990, Carlson wrote in his college newspaper that homosexuality was“unnatural and unhealthy.” In 2007, Carlson went on MSNBC Live to brag about the time he beat up a gay man in a bathroom.

In his 2023 book Network of Lies, journalist Brian Stelter said that Carlson was dismissed from Fox News in April of that year because “Carlson’s escalating toxicity, which included an undercurrent of white supremacy and a penchant for demeaning women and minorities, led Lachlan Murdoch, the then chief executive of Fox Corp, to [fire Carlson],” The Guardian reported. 

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