Jonathan Chait wrote :
Naming something after somebody confers a certain amount of honor,” the mayor opined. “One of the main reasons to be in politics today is to try to change or reverse the harms” of racism, so “we’d better look for ways to live out and honor that principle, even in a symbolic thing.” If that’s what he thinks, then why stop at renaming dinners? It seems Mr. Buttigieg would also want the U.S. to rename cities, counties, streets and colleges named for slaveholders — including Washington and Madison as well as Jefferson.
Note that Rove does not have anything even close to a quote from Buttigieg saying what Rove claims it said.
What Buttigieg actually said:
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg says Americans should not be honoring Thomas Jefferson by naming events and places after the founding father.
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” Friday and said he believes removing — not celebrating — Jefferson is “the right thing to do.”
The subject came up when Buttigieg was asked about the name of the annual Indiana Democratic dinner that used to commemorate the statues of Jefferson and Andrew Jackson within the party, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“Well, let’s go to policy now—a very blunt question because you talk about going to every Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Indiana when you were running statewide. Should Jefferson-Jackson dinners be renamed everywhere because both were holders of slaves?” Hewitt asked.
“Yeah, we’re doing that in Indiana. I think it’s the right thing to do,” Buttigieg said. “Over time, you develop and evolve on the things you choose to honor … Jefferson is more problematic. There’s a lot of course to admire in his thinking and his philosophy, but then again if you plunge into his writings, especially the notes on the state of Virginia, you know that he knew slavery was wrong.”