Pete Buttigieg has been forced to respond to Tucker Carlson‘s wild allegation that he was posing as a ‘fake gay’ man in a duplicitous plot to help his political career.

The one-time presidential hopeful has been happily married to his husband Chasten since 2018, and the pair are parents to four-year-old twins Penelope and Joseph.

But that hasn’t stopped rumors – most recently perpetuated by podcast host Carlson – that Buttigieg is a straight man who lied about his sexuality to run for president.

Speaking to Kara Swisher for her podcast, Buttigieg laughed off the absurd allegation, noting: ‘I suppose it’s a sign of progress that their idea of a conspiracy is that I’m actually secretly straight.’

Swisher addressed the rumors after Buttigieg said he wasn’t familiar a meme she said was widely known within the gay community, joking she was ‘starting to agree with Tucker Carlson on this fake gay thing.’ 

‘Chasten, my husband, has threatened to have my gay card revoked so many times. This is just going to be the latest,’ Buttigieg replied.

Carlson bizarrely said he wanted to grill the former US Secretary of Transportation with ‘very specific questions about gay sex’ in a September 3 episode of his podcast.

‘My gay producer was always like “he’s not gay.” He was with a girl like 20 minutes ago and like he wants to be the Democratic nominee, it’s like “Time for a gay guy!” Carlson said. 

Pete Buttigieg has been forced to respond to Tucker Carlson ‘s wild allegation that he is a ‘fake gay’ man

The one-time presidential hopeful has been happily married to his husband Chasten since 2018, and the pair are parents to four-year-old twins Penelope and Joseph

But Buttigieg said he could think of little worse than discussing intimate details of his life with Carlson.

He said he wouldn’t want to ‘discuss anything with Tucker Carlson’, before adding: ‘I cannot think of a topic I would like to discuss less with Tucker Carlson than that.’

‘Even though I will admit some level of morbid curiosity on what in the hell he thinks,’ he said, before changing his mind. 

‘Actually, no,’ he added.

Buttigieg’s comments come just days after it emerged that he was Kamala Harris’ first pick as running mate in the 2024 presidential election, but she went in a different direction because of the optics of his sexuality paired with her gender and race.

He ‘would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man,’ Harris wrote in a portion of her memoir of the presidential race.

‘Chasten, my husband, has threatened to have my gay card revoked so many times. This is just going to be the latest,’ Buttigieg joked

Buttigieg’s comments come just days after it emerged that he was Kamala Harris’ first pick as running mate in the 2024 presidential election, but she went with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz because of the optics of his sexuality paired with her gender and race

The former vice president claims that picking a gay man would have been ‘asking a lot of America’ at the time.

‘But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,’ she said.

‘Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk,’ she wrote. ‘And I think Pete also knew that – to our mutual sadness.’

Harris instead chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential nominee. The pair would go on to lose every single battleground state to Trump and JD Vance.