‘Amateur hour’: Pete Buttigieg criticizes Trump over war planning, fundraising off war dead

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized President Trump on Sunday after his political operation used images of him receiving the remains of fallen troops at Dover Air Force Base to raise money.

“Any politician who does that has no business leading American troops in a war,” Mr. Buttigieg said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “If the president is willing to raise campaign funds over the bodies of America’s war dead, he is unfit to be the commander in chief.”

The criticism followed a fundraising email sent by Never Surrender Inc., Mr. Trump’s leadership PAC and the direct successor to his 2024 presidential campaign committee.

The email included a photo of Mr. Trump saluting during a March 7 dignified transfer of remains at Dover for six service members killed in an Iranian drone attack in Kuwait. It offered donors “private national security briefings” from the president in exchange for contributions from $26 to $3,300.

The email has drawn stiff criticism from Democrats.

“Trump never misses a chance to make a quick buck off the backs of the American people, even if it means turning a dignified transfer of fallen service members into a fundraising opportunity,” Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted Saturday on social media. “Deeply shameful.”

At least 13 U.S. service members have been killed in the war.

Mr. Buttigieg, a likely 2028 presidential contender, also criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the war, saying it was unprepared for the fallout, including Iran’s push to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping.

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“And yet they’re talking about this and clearly acting as though they didn’t think this would happen,” he said. “[Defense] Secretary Pete Hegseth went so far as to say that the Straits of Hormuz is open, other than the fact that there would be fire against vehicles transiting the strait. This is clearly amateur hour at the Pentagon and in the White House.”

Mr. Buttigieg also took aim at the administration’s framing of the conflict, accusing it of treating the war like a political spectacle.

“You can just tell from the administration’s attitude toward this war — the fact that they’re putting out videos treating this like a video game,” he said. “It’s not a video game for the families of the fallen.”

The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate argued that Iran’s nuclear program had previously been contained through diplomacy — without military force — and that Mr. Trump’s failure to secure a better deal than the Obama-era nuclear agreement left him with no good options.

“He failed to get that better deal,” Mr. Buttigieg said of Mr. Trump. “And he went off and launched a war without planning, without being ready for even some of the most basic things.”

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• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.