Presidential Hopeful Pete Buttigieg Talks Jerry Seinfeld with Jimmy Fallon

Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Monday night, where he discussed his campaign, what it’s like being the mayor of South Bend, Indiana and how he tricked Amagansett’s Jerry Seinfeld into accepting a key to the city.

First, Buttigieg “slow jammed” the news with Sagaponack’s Fallon, giving him the opportunity to cleverly outline his beliefs and core values with a humorous bent. Then, during the sit-down interview, Buttigieg addressed an incident in which Seinfeld performed in South Bend in 2012 and didn’t want to accept a key to the city.

“It’s a crisis of civic prestige, right? Because I don’t want to be the first mayor ever to have the key to the city refused, and I’ll be damned if Jerry Seinfeld’s going to do that to me!” Buttigieg said. “I got a ticket to the show, I had the key with me, and I got a nice seat close to the front…At the end, people loved it and he comes back out but there’s no encore, he just starts taking questions. I thought, ‘Now’s my chance,’ so I wave my hand real high and he calls on me. My question, of course, is ‘Will you accept the key to the city?’” Seinfeld accepted the key.

If elected, Buttigieg, 37, would be the youngest president in the history of the United States. He is also openly gay and married to Chasten Glezman Buttigieg, who would be the first-ever “first gentleman.” Buttigieg is one of many in a particularly crowded pool of Democrats running for the seat in 2020, but has gotten a lot of attention thanks to his unconventional profile.