OXONIAN | Mayor Pete Buttigieg

Mayor Pete Buttigieg,
Harvard '04, Oxonian

WASHINGTON, DC, May 11, 2019–On Thursday President Donald Trump made fun of several Democratic presidential candidates, starting with Joe Biden and ending with the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana — Oxonian Pete Buttigieg (pronounced Boot-Edge-Edge).

On Friday, President Trump compared the young man, Harvard '04 and Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College (where fellow Hoosier Richard Lugar resided), to the freckled mascot of Mad Magazine.

"Alfred E. Neuman cannot become president of the United States," Trump said. 

To an interviewer from Politico, the Capitol Hill insider newspaper and podcaster, Mayor Buttigieg expressed his puzzlement over the reference to Alfred E. Neuman, and why the President would be making the comparison:

I’ll be honest. I had to Google that. I guess it’s just a generational thing. I didn’t get the reference...  I’m surprised he’s not spending more time trying to salvage this China deal.

Mad Magazine's Alfred E.
Neuman gives President 
Trump a poke in the eye.

The China deal is President Trump's long-standing, and so far unsuccessful, attempt to win significant concessions from China.

Meanwhile, his high tariffs on Chinese imports are being paid by American consumers and have met with retaliation from China that is interfering with American exports.