Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell slams Kamala Harris over her explanation for passing on Pete Buttigieg as a running mate in 2024, accusing her of hypocrisy and political convenience.
“Typical Lefty. Talk loudly. Take our money. Demand our vote. Scream that the other side is homophobic. But then don’t actually pick us because it might hurt YOU. Hypocrite. For the professional gays like Maddow and Pete, they sure look dutiful,” he said on X.
Grenell, who served in the first Trump administration as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), was also nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017 to be the U.S. ambassador to Germany, becoming the highest-ranking openly gay U.S. ambassador.
He now serves as president of the Trump-run Kennedy Center and as the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions since 2025, remaining one of the most prominent openly gay Republicans.
Typical Lefty.
Talk loudly. Take our money. Demand our vote. Scream that the other side is homophobic.
But then don’t actually pick us because it might hurt YOU.
Hypocrite.
For the professional gays like Maddow and Pete, they sure look dutiful. https://t.co/Y1oBr7BFr5
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) September 23, 2025
His criticism followed Harris’s interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who pressed her about passages in her new book 107 Days. In it, Harris recounts her belief that selecting Buttigieg could have posed too great a political risk.
“I guess I’d ask you to just elaborate on that a little bit. It’s hard to hear,” Maddow told her, noting that Harris herself broke barriers as the first woman and first black and South Asian American elected vice president. “To say that he couldn’t be on the ticket effectively because he was gay, it’s hard to hear.”
Harris denied dismissing Buttigieg solely on those grounds.
“That’s not what I said, that he couldn’t be on the ticket because he is gay,” Harris said.
Instead, she argued that the short campaign timeline and the stakes of running against Trump made it too risky to pair a black woman and a gay man on the same ticket.
“My point is … it made me very sad. But I also realized it would be a real risk,” Harris said, emphasizing that she has always supported LGBTQ rights.
In 107 Days, Harris wrote that Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight White man.”
She ultimately chose Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), though his candidacy later drew scrutiny over questions about his military service record, his relationship with China, and various progressive legislative actions as governor.
Buttigieg, asked about the book’s account, said he was surprised.
“I just believe in giving Americans more credit than that,” he told Politico. “My experience in politics has been the way that you earn trust with the voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories.”
Political observers are already eyeing Buttigieg as a likely contender in the 2028 Democratic primary.
Harris, meanwhile, told Maddow she may have been “too cautious” but stood by her decision: “Maybe I was … but that’s the decision I made.”
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Grenell, however, dismissed her defense as nothing more than political convenience.
“Don’t pick us because it might hurt you — hypocrite,” he said.
