Mayor Pete Buttigieg is having his moment, and the media love is flowing like the St. Joseph River through South Bend, Indiana.
The 37-year-old officially announced he was running for president on Sunday, and the floodgates opened, particularly on Morning Joe. The MSNBC program decided that Tiger Woods's Masters victory and Buttigieg's announcement happening on the same day Sunday was nothing less than fate.
After a montage played of Woods and Buttigieg discussing, respectively, their 15th major victory and their entry into a gigantic Democratic presidential field, host Joe Scarborough declared that "everybody" watching television on Sunday was watching both Woods and "Mayor Pete."
"America stopped," Scarborough said. "For some reason yesterday, everybody stopped. They were watching Tiger, and they watched Mayor Pete, and I don't know, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, just may be a day that a lot of people look back on and see history being made."
Co-host Mika Brzezinski added "my mom loves Mayor Pete" and said her phone rang off the hook with people who were moved by Buttigieg.
Frequent guest Donny Deutsch called them both "heroes," and contributor Mike Barnicle intoned, "In one Sunday spring afternoon, in Augusta, Georgia, and South Bend, Indiana, you had two stories that combine to truly represent part of what this country's all about."
The hosts also gushed over him after he appeared on their show last month, and Scarborough said the kind of people who call and text Joe Scarborough were saying "this guy is the real thing. We love Mayor Pete."
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace called him "chicken soup for my soul" who makes her "feel better" after his recent remarks criticizing Vice President Mike Pence, the former governor of Indiana, for his stance on LGBTQ rights. Fellow MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell asked a reporter what the "magic" was like as Buttigieg gave his remarks on Sunday and wondered, "Audacity of hope?"
CNN's Ana Navarro, a Republican who supports Democrats, said she was "thrilled" by his surge in polls and fundraising, and The View's Joy Behar was enthused at the idea he may be the next Barack Obama. One of Obama's former speechwriters, Jon Lovett, said on the podcast Pod Save America that he's "really f—king smart."
Buttigieg, in addition to being the first openly gay presidential candidate for a major party, sports a considerable resume. He's an Afghanistan veteran, graduate of Harvard and Oxford, Rhodes scholar, speaker of multiple languages and concert pianist, in addition to being viewed as the potential solution to the Democrats's longtime problem of getting slaughtered in "flyover country." He's also embraced fringe ideas like packing the Supreme Court, slavery reparations, and eliminating the Electoral College.