Pete Buttigieg Flew to Oklahoma to Demand We Scrap the System That Let Trump Win Twice

May 7, 2026 Cat2, The Media
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The man who ran for president and lost is now telling you the rules are wrong.

Now he's in Tulsa – deep red Oklahoma – arguing America should hand the presidency to whoever racks up the most raw votes.

There's just one problem: Trump won that contest too.

The Most Embarrassing Hypocrisy in American Politics

Last weekend in Tulsa, Buttigieg called eliminating the Electoral College "a really good idea."

His argument was that a national popular vote would force candidates to campaign everywhere – even flyover states like Oklahoma.

There's just one problem nobody in that room apparently brought up.

In the 2020 Iowa caucuses, Bernie Sanders beat Pete Buttigieg in the popular vote.

Buttigieg claimed victory anyway – on delegate math.

His own campaign website declared "It's official: Pete won the Iowa Caucuses!" even as Sanders had more raw votes.

Rolling Stone – not exactly a conservative outlet – called it out directly at the time, noting that Buttigieg was "claiming victory while losing on the metric Buttigieg has argued should count."

The man who says most votes should win refused to apply that standard the moment it stopped working in his favor.

That's not a policy disagreement.

That's a con.

He Also Abandoned His Post While America's Shelves Went Empty

Before Buttigieg started lecturing Oklahomans about democracy, he was Transportation Secretary watching the supply chain collapse.

Container ships stacked up off the California coast.

Grocery store shelves went bare.

Americans couldn't find basic goods for the holidays.

And Pete Buttigieg was nowhere to be found.

FOIA records obtained by the government watchdog Protect the Public's Trust told the whole story: his official calendar was completely clear from the moment he left in mid-August until October 6, 2021 – while ships stacked up off the California coast and store shelves emptied out.

His own spokesperson admitted he was "mostly offline" for the first four weeks and would "continue to take some time over the coming weeks."

Senator Tom Cotton put it plainly: Buttigieg's performance "has been so bad that Americans didn't even realize he spent the last two months absent."

Now this same man – the one who abandoned his job during a national crisis – wants to rewrite the rules of American democracy from a town hall in Tulsa.

His Proposal Would Have Changed Nothing

Set aside the hypocrisy for a moment and examine the actual argument.

Buttigieg told the crowd a national popular vote would force any Democrat to campaign in Oklahoma and any Republican to campaign in Brooklyn.

Sounds reasonable.

Except Donald Trump won the 2024 national popular vote by more than 2 million ballots.

He also won 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris's 226.

Under Buttigieg's own proposed system, Trump still wins – by a larger margin.

Buttigieg flew to Oklahoma to propose a rule change that would have produced the exact same result.

And the Heritage Foundation has documented what a pure popular vote system actually does to flyover America: it doesn't expand their influence, it obliterates it.

Without the Electoral College, candidates stop competing in Oklahoma and Wyoming entirely and pour every resource into running up the score in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

The Electoral College is the only thing forcing candidates to care about Tulsa.

Buttigieg's pitch to Oklahomans – that scrapping the Electoral College would make their votes matter more – is the exact opposite of true.

Trump Actually Did What Buttigieg Only Pretended to Want

While Democrats spent years demanding the rules change, Trump changed the map.

He rallied at Madison Square Garden.

Early in the 2024 cycle, he told Breitbart News he planned to make a serious run at New York, New Jersey, Virginia, New Mexico, and Minnesota.

That's what competing everywhere looks like.

Not demanding a new system.

Actually going to the voters.

Trump didn't just win the Electoral College.

He won the popular vote argument Buttigieg has been losing for years.

Why He's Really in Tulsa

Buttigieg told a local NBC affiliate he believes Democrats have written off places like Tulsa too quickly.

"To have this capacity proud in this big space, in a place that I think too many around the country have maybe written off as so conservative," he said.

On that narrow point, he's right.

Democrats have written off flyover America for years – and they keep losing because of it.

But the answer to losing isn't to change the rules.

It's to change the platform.

Pete Buttigieg can't say that because the platform is the problem.

The open borders agenda, the green energy mandates, the gender ideology pushed into schools – none of it sells between the coasts.

So instead of honestly reckoning with why tens of millions of Americans rejected his party twice in a row, the man who went MIA during a national crisis flies to Oklahoma and tells the crowd the system is rigged.

Sanders had more votes in Iowa.

Pete Buttigieg still hasn't figured that out.

Sources:

  • Hannah Knudsen, "Pete Buttigieg: Candidate Who Gets the Most Votes Should Be President," Breitbart News, May 4, 2026.
  • Tessa Stuart, "Pete Buttigieg Lost the Popular Vote in Iowa. Is He Claiming a Win?" Rolling Stone, February 8, 2020.
  • "Records Confirm Pete Buttigieg was Absent During Supply Chain Crisis," Protect the Public's Trust, 2021.
  • "Pete Buttigieg Back from Two-Month Paternity Absence," The Washington Times, October 20, 2021.
  • "The Benefits of the Electoral College," The Heritage Foundation, accessed May 2026.
  • "Trump Plans Aggressive Expansion of Electoral Map," Breitbart News, January 2, 2024.
  • "Trump's Madison Square Garden Rally Sold Out in Less Than 3 Hours," Breitbart News, October 20, 2024.