Buttigieg makes gay community look 'weak,' says Trump Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been widely panned for his mishandling of a growing list of disasters, from the Southwest Airlines holiday travel fiasco to the recent Ohio train derailment resulting in the release of toxic chemicals. 

While hailed as a trailblazer by the left for being the first openly gay cabinet secretary, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., does the gay community no favors by harping on gay victimhood, believes Ric Grenell, an openly gay man who served as ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration.

"When I see Mayor Pete come forward and talk about issues, it's never a smart talk about transportation," Grenell said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "It's always about these irrelevant characteristics about subgroups. To me he creates division, because he keeps pretending like we're all in different boxes."

Buttigieg-style identity politics pandering reduces a varied community of individuals to a stereotypical, one-dimensional victim class, Grenell argues.

"We've fought very hard in the gay community to be accepted as a whole human being — as someone who should be held to account on our liabilities and take responsibilities for everything just like everyone else," he said. "And yet I see Mayor Pete working really hard to try to create the gay community as a fringe group that is so weak that it needs to be protected."

Hiring preferences based on membership in a protected class instead of relevant qualifications not only undermine meritocracy, Grenell argues, they also demean the beneficiaries themselves. 

"When you give someone a job because of their skin color or when you give someone a job because they're gay or for any reason that is an irrelevant characteristic, you really create not only a problem for the country, but you're also doing a disservice to the minority groups," he explained. "I mean, who wants to be given a job simply because they're gay? I can't think of anything that's more offensive."

Buttigieg was criticized for evading the subject of the Ohio train derailment and the dangerous resulting chemical spill during an appearance Monday at the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference. He did, however, manage to elicit a few laughs from his audience with a quip about the safety risks of balloons.

The transportation secretary was also ripped for doing nothing to head off the Southwest travel debacle, when thousands of flights were canceled, despite reports that he was warned days before the holidays of a possible airline crisis.

"I think we're seeing another example of just how dangerous it is to give people jobs because of characteristics about them that are irrelevant and that somehow politics puts as a priority," Grenell said.