'Will deal with this later': Bizarre Trump bullying gets epic shrug from Pete Buttigieg

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg shrugged off a bizarre attack from President Donald Trump Tuesday after the president launched a confusing rant mocking Buttigieg’s name and leadership over the Transportation Department under the Biden administration.

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump was asked if he expected air travel to “go back to normal” once the government re-opens, as the Senate prepared to pass a spending bill that is now set to be voted on in the House.

Trump said that it would be “much better than normal” in part due to his Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy.

Then he launched into a wild comparison between him and his predecessor, Buttigieg.

“We had a guy named Buttigieg: ‘boot-edge-edge’ they say is the best way [to say his name], just say two ‘edges’ like off the edge of a cliff, which is where they were taking us by the way,” Trump told reporters.

“‘Boot-edge-edge’ was the secretary of transportation, and he spent billions of dollars trying to patch together our air traffic control system, which was a conglomeration of all different systems and all different cities. They had hundreds of countries – companies – working on it and they were spending billions of dollars, and when they turned it on, it didn’t work, it didn’t even work a little bit. That’s why you had a helicopter crashing into an airplane!”

A clip of Trump’s remarks went viral on social media, amassing more than 2.5 million views. Buttigieg – apparently preparing food for his children when he came across it – shrugged off the bizarre attack with a tongue-in-cheek response.

“Just getting dinner onto the table for the kiddos,” Buttigieg wrote on social media in response to Trump’s remarks. “Will deal with this later.”

Air travel has seen major disruptions during the ongoing government shutdown, with Duffy warning Americans over the weekend that thousands of flights ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday would likely be cancelled. Dozens of air traffic control sites are still struggling with a shortage of air traffic controllers, all of whom had not been paid since mid-October.