Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor who is running for president, understands how Joe Biden might think Vice President Mike Pence is a “decent guy.” But he believes that Pence’s demeanor is covering up something else.

“I mean to your face, if he were sitting right here, you'd think that this guy is very polite,” Buttigieg told BuzzFeed News’ Profile of Pence after being asked about Biden’s comments in an interview filmed from SXSW last weekend. “But that masks this absolutely fanatical view about how the world works or how the universe works that has led to these incredibly hurtful, dangerous, and harmful policies, and that's what we have now in the White House. And I think it chills a lot of us, especially in the LGBTQ community, to see that somebody like that can be in that kind of position of power.”

Biden tried to clarify his comments about Pence soon after making them during a speech last month, but seemed to brush off the criticism he's received on the left during a speech this week. "If you notice, I get criticized for saying anything nice about a Republican," he told a firefighters convention in Washington Tuesday. "Folks, that’s not who we are.”

Buttigieg, who is 37 and a self-admitted long shot for the Democratic presidential nomination, has gotten some viral hype this week in the aftermath of a CNN town hall performance, where he gave open answers and dug into Pence, the former governor of his state. In the 24 hours after the town hall, his presidential campaign said it raised more than $600,000 from more than 22,200 donors.

Part of what has moved his campaign so far is his identity — he is pitching himself to voters as a millennial candidate who represents a new generation that is “walking away from the politics of our past.” Buttigieg, who publicly revealed that he is gay in 2015 in response to Pence-approved policies in his state, argues that identity “is part of our story.”