-Did you have a good Mother's Day?
-Yeah, it was great.
Yeah, I had a family brunch yesterday.
Mom's actually right here.
-She's at the show today? -Where is she? Yeah.
-Is that right? -There she is.
-Hey, there's your mom. Hi, mom!
Hi, mom. Aww. She's beautiful. Oh, great.
Is mom from -- Where's mom from?
-She grew up in Southern Indiana and then all around the country.
Her dad was in the Army, so she's from
a little bit of everywhere, but settled in South Bend
about 40 years ago with my dad,
and I came on the scene pretty soon after that.
-Yeah, exactly.
You've been busy this past week.
You got insulted by the President of the United States.
-Yeah. That's how you know you've made it.
-Yeah. Absolutely.
He compared you -- He called you Alfred E. Neuman.
-Yeah. What do you think?
-The President of the United States called you that.
Wow. What goes through your mind when that happens.
-You know, we talk a lot about elevating the dialogue,
so I guess the fact that I inspired him
to make a literary reference possibly for the first time...
[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪
-Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Not bad.
Everyone is talking about your age and how young you are.
You're 37 years old. -Yeah.
-But you were mayor at when? 29?
-Yeah, I was 29 when I got elected,
so it's my eighth year now.
-Wow! And when you -- This is a dumb question,
but when you're the mayor, do you give out
keys to the city and stuff still?
-Oh, yeah. Yeah.
It's one of your most important ceremonial duties.
-They still do that?
-Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, it's nice.
It's kind of gold plated or at least it looks like it.
-Is there anyone famous you've ever given the key to?
-Yeah. Well, one of the first ones I did
was for Jerry Seinfeld, but I had to trick him
into accepting it.
-He didn't want it? -Yeah, yeah.
So, I found out he was coming to South Bend.
He was performing at our Morris Civic Auditorium.
It's this beautiful theater we have in South Bend.
And I thought, "This is a major American cultural figure.
I'm a new mayor."
I'm like, "I'd better give him a key to the city."
So we had it made up.
I had a little plaque.
It said, "Thanks for all the laughs, Jerry," you know.
And we said to his team, "You know, it's cool if he
wants to do a low-key backstage thing.
That's fine. However Jerry wants to do it."
For me to give him the key.
And then the day the event rolls around,
and we haven't heard back.
And, finally, they say, "Oh, no. He doesn't want to do it.
You know, it's an election year.
He doesn't do anything political."
-Jerry Seinfeld said no to the key to the city?
-Yeah. So, then I went back to the office
and I checked with our secretary,
who had been there for like 15 years.
I was like, "Is there any record of someone
ever refusing a key to the city?"
-This is such an episode of "Seinfeld."
[ As Seinfeld ] He's like,
"I don't want the key to the city.
I don't want to able to get in. I want to be locked out.
I want to be locked out of the city.
I don't want to be in. You keep the key."
-Yeah, but now it's like a crisis of civic prestige, right?
Because I don't want to be the first mayor ever
to have the key to the city refused.
And I'll be dammed if Jerry Seinfeld
is going to do that to me, right?
So I'm thinking, "All right, what do we do?
What do we do?"
And I got a ticket to the show. I had the key with me.
Got there, got a nice seat close to the front.
He gave this great stand-up. His stand-up is fantastic.
-Oh, he's one of the best.
-And at the end, there's a -- You know, people loved it,
so he comes back out, but there's no encore.
He just started taking questions.
The first question is like -- I don't know --
You know, "What was Kramer like off the set?" or whatever.
And then I thought, "Now is my chance."
So I wave my hand real high, and he calls on me.
And my question, of course, was,
"Will you accept the key to the city?"
[ Cheers and applause ] -Yes!
This guy gets it done. He can't say no, right?
-No. He's like, "What's that? The key to the city?"
And then, I think by the time he said that, I was up there.
They couldn't stop me, 'cause it was a city facility.
Gave him the key, gave a wave, got out of there.
Nobody refuses a key to the city.
-No, exactly right. Don't mess with this guy.
-You're very proud about your time in the military.
You spent some time in Afghanistan.
Is this -- What's -- -Oh, yeah.
-This is -- What year is this? -That was 2014.
-And do you remember this scene?
-Yeah, that was probably the best day of my deployment.
So, one of the side projects we did --
I was stationed in Kabul,
but I worked with the chaplain's office.
People kept sending humanitarian goods,
and so they needed people who were qualified on a rifle,
'cause you had to have that qualification
for some of us to take a vehicle outside the wire
in order to get these goods to this orphanage.
We had -- I can't remember how much.
It was like 600 or 800 pounds of stuff people sent --
you know, school supplies and clothes.
And, so, we went into the city
and we wound up meeting all these kids.
There was a Boy Scout program going on at this orphanage.
It was just a reminder that, you know,
even in the middle of a war, you know, most people's
full-time job during a war is not to be in a war.
They're going about their lives.
And it was a reminder of just kind of the humanity
that is there in this hauntingly beautiful city
even as this awful situation was going on around it.
-Yeah. I mean, what do you do as a kid?
-You know, the thing is -- they're just kids, right?
They behave like kids anywhere.
They're running around. You know, they've got candy.
They're joking.
And you just think about,
"What's the future for a child in a country like this?"
But there was a lot of really good work going on
with some of the organizations, like the group called PARSA
that ran this orphanage.
And I wonder what happened to some of those kids
that are in those pictures.
-Oh, that's nice that you did that and gave us your time.
Now that you're on the road and you're talking to everybody
and you're campaigning, what is the big issue
that is being brought up?
-Yeah. Well, we're talking a lot about democratic reform,
just because I think all the issues we care about,
of which I think climate is probably the most pressing --
But it's gonna be hard to deal with any issue
as long as Congress is set up with districts where, you know,
politicians are choosing their voters,
instead of the other way around.
For my dime, we ought to elect our president
just by a national popular vote and just count up the votes
and give it to the person who gets the most votes.
So... [ Cheers and applause ]
So, there's a lot of structural reform we got to go,
but also climate.
Climate's a life-and-death issue,
you know, especially for my generation
and those coming after.
For the rest of our lives, you know, our chances in life
will be partly decided by whether or not our economy
can survive all the climate disruption going on.
As a mayor, we've already had to deal with historic flooding.
You know, we had a once-in-a-1,000-year flood,
followed by a once-in-a-500-year flood, they told us,
two years apart, so it's a huge issue.
-What can we do?
-Well, there's a lot of things we could do right away.
Major federal investment in renewables,
carbon storage, energy storage.
There's also a plan called a carbon tax and dividend.
Basically, you set a price on things that put carbon
into the atmosphere, but then you can rebate that
back out to the American people, so most of us
would actually be economically better off if we did it.
Meanwhile, it would help change the economic incentives
so that you'd see less activity that hurts the environment,
because the true cost is not reflected in the price of,
for example, energy that comes from coal.
If you're facing the true price of it,
you'd have to set that price a lot higher.
-Is there it money?
Is that what you're really fighting --
-That's part of it.
You know, there's, obviously, a fossil-fuel industry,
that is really committed to keeping things the way they are,
which is why our campaign signed a pledge that we're not going to
accept any funding from the fossil-fuel industry.
-Really? [ Cheers and applause ]
-Final question. Very important.
Who do you think will be on the throne
at the end of "Game of Thrones."
-All right, so, we've been campaigning pretty hard,
so no spoilers.
I'm an episode behind. -Me too. Oh, good.
-Okay. All right. Good. We're in the same boat.
-This is fantastic. We could talk all night.
-Up until this year, this season,
I was pretty much on Team Daenerys.
I felt like she was really growing in her leadership style.
-Of course.
-I'm a little concerned now, based on what I've seen
in the last few episodes,
that her kind of management approach
has kind of got some issues.
-Her management approach. -I'm kind of back to square one.
I don't know.
I'm rooting for Jon Snow -- maybe not the brightest,
but definitely, you know, got a good heart.
-Wow. -Tough to say.
-What a great answer to a "Game of Thrones" question.
You put a lot of thought into it.
I appreciate that. Thank you. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, everybody.