Buttigieg ‘doesn’t care’ about Trump’s trolling, slams tax cuts

What, Pete worry?

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg on Sunday evening shrugged off trolling by President Trump — who likened him to “Mad” magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman last week — during a Fox News town hall Sunday where he laid out stances on abortions and taxes.

“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace asked Buttigieg how he would handle insults from Trump.

“And if you say, ‘What, me worry?’ right now I’ll give you $10,” he quipped in reference to the big-eared character’s catchphrase.

Buttigieg sighed: “The tweets… I don’t care.”

Still, he said Trump’s online behavior is “grotesque” — though “a great way to get the attention of the media.”

The televised town hall from Claremont, New Hampshire came just hours after Trump blasted Fox News and Wallace on Twitter for hosting the Democrat, as he repeated his “Mad” mag jab.

Buttigieg also took aim at two of the network’s most prominent hosts, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson.

“A lot of people in my party were critical of me doing this [on Fox], and I get where that’s coming from, especially when you see what goes on with some of the opinion hosts on this network,” Buttigieg said, citing Carlson’s comment that immigrants make the country dirtier and Ingraham “comparing detention centers with children in cages to summer camps.”

Wallace didn’t address Buttigieg’s attack on the hosts.

The South Bend, Ind., mayor was well received by the Fox audience, though, earning repeated rounds of applause and a standing ovation — even as he defended his call to abolish the electoral college.

During the event, Buttigieg called abortion a “national right” and an “American freedom” and said he “trusts women to draw the line” about limits on when the procedure should be conducted.

When asked about how he would handle the federal budget, Buttigieg knocked Trump’s signature tax cuts passed in 2017, saying: “First of all, you don’t blow a hole in the budget with unfortunate or unnecessary tax cut for the very wealthiest.”

He said he would enact a “reasonable” wealth tax and close corporate tax loopholes.

In a closing lightning round, Buttigieg downplayed his comments from a Friday interview, calling for the removal of Thomas Jefferson’s name from buildings and events.

“You would have thought I would proposed blowing up the Jefferson Memorial in D.C.,” Buttigieg quipped.

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