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Getty Images Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks as South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg listens during Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate.
Who should pick the next president of the United States? Not “billionaires in wine caves,” says Elizabeth Warren.
That expression from the Massachusetts senator during Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles was a direct shot at Pete Buttigieg’s recent fundraiser held in a Napa Valley, Calif., wine cellar. Her attack drew a barbed response from the South Bend, Ind., mayor in one of the most fiery moments of the seven-candidate debate.
“Senator, your presidential campaign right now, as we speak, is funded in part by money you transferred, having raised it at those same big-ticket fundraisers you now denounce. Did it corrupt you, senator? Of course not,” said Buttigieg.
Buttigieg has risen in polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire and Warren’s star has faded somewhat. Warren has relied more on small donors than Buttigieg has. Thursday night, Buttigieg said “we’d like to bring everyone in,” while Warren said anyone’s donations are fine “but don’t come around later expecting to be named ambassador.”
The tense back-and-forth between Buttigieg and Warren led Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to quip that she’d never been to a wine cave, but she had been to a “wind cave” in South Dakota.
