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US Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg encourages Americans to visit Malta

He had the sweetest things to say!

Way to go, Mayor Pete! Half-American, half-Maltese US Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is well into his campaign trail at the moment, but what has people intrigued is his surname and heritage. He is seen discussing all this in a “candidate café special” where voters sit down with the candidate for a chat.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pete Buttigieg (@pete.buttigieg) on Jan 18, 2020 at 8:32am PST

One voter was very curious about Pete’s genealogy, asking him about his roots. “My father immigrated to the US from Malta, which is one of the smallest countries in the world. If you draw a line from Sicily to Tunisia it will go through Malta,” he explains. “The funny thing is over there, [Buttigieg] is like Smith, it’s one of the most common names. So much so, I wouldn’t be the first president Buttigieg in the world! There was a president Buttigieg in Malta who was next door neighbours with my family Buttigieg and they weren’t even related.” Story of our lives!

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pete Buttigieg (@pete.buttigieg) on Jan 16, 2020 at 11:49am PST

He then goes into his surname’s (somewhat funny) meaning. “Tigieg means ‘chicken’ so it probably means 'owner of poultry' or 'lord of the poultry,' or something like that,” he quibs. “If you go over there and go in a crowded diner and say ‘Ey Buttigieg!’ a bunch of people would turn around.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pete Buttigieg (@pete.buttigieg) on Jan 8, 2020 at 7:44pm PST

One other voter asked him about his travels to the island to which he admits he hasn’t been a while. “We used to go every couple of years. I don’t know if anybody here has had a chance to go, it is beautiful,” he remarks. “You actually see it a lot on TV because it can be made to look like Italy, Greece or the Middle East. A lot of Game of Thrones was filmed in Malta. A lot of times they sub it in as Jerusalem.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pete Buttigieg (@pete.buttigieg) on Dec 29, 2019 at 7:16pm PST

Being a popular filming location, Malta has had quite a few sets here – and Pete actually wandered onto one of them! “Remember World War Z? The zombie movie? I literally wandered onto the set of World War Z in the scene of Jerusalem. Yeah, I’m looking around, I go into this neighbourhood, suddenly all the street signs change to Hebrew and there were these zombies walking around. There was a zombie smoking a cigarette, you know they were extras waiting for their turn.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pete Buttigieg (@pete.buttigieg) on Dec 12, 2019 at 6:08pm PST

He discusses other things including the family values that his father, the late professor Joseph Buttigieg and his mother, Jennifer Anne Montgomery instilled in him, and coming out as “openly gay,” his faith, his wedding, his military career.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pete Buttigieg (@pete.buttigieg) on Nov 4, 2019 at 5:11pm PST

Watch the full café chat here: