South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic candidate for president, joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” program to talk about his run. He was in the Boston area earlier this week speaking at Northeastern and Harvard universities.

Mayor Pete, we saw you on CNN and some other appearances and you stand out from the pack. You seem to be your own man philosophy-wise, although you did embrace the Green New Deal and so for listeners in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, what does that mean? What is your vision for the Green New Deal?

I still want to drive my car someplace to get a cheeseburger, I just don’t want to have to drive through floodwaters when I do it, so look — I think we need to be honest that the Green New Deal framework right now represents a set of goals more so than it does a fully designed plan. I actually think that’s OK. One characteristic of our country is that we embrace very aggressive goals when it’s the right thing to do for our country, as we did on everything from conquering the Great Depression to winning the World Wars to putting somebody on the moon. But we shouldn’t be afraid of progressive goals and we should also recognize — and this is the thing I most appreciate about the Green New Deal — that when we get it right that there’s a lot of economic opportunity in that. Now some parts of this I think are very clear to us even today. We know that we can make major R&D investments to improve technologies and affordability of things, like renewables and battery technology. We also know that we can create a lot of jobs in the building trades right now by mounting more efforts to retrofit buildings in order to make them cleaner and greener.

What about nuclear? Nuclear seems to have been put aside by the Green New Deal. Is that back on the table as far as you’re concerned?

To me, our priority when it comes to energy has to be carbon. And nuclear has problems but it has the advantage that it does not create carbon emissions, so if we got to choose our pros and cons I think that nuclear certainly is preferable to anything like coal. And while it might not be the best solution for the very long term, and I certainly prefer in the short to medium term doing everything that we can with renewables, I definitely think by the end of the day what we’ve got to care about most is cutting CO2 emissions and, at least for now, nuclear is part of that.

As mayor of South Bend, Ind., you’ve had to work with Mike Pence of Indiana when he was governor. What is your current relationship? What was your relationship like then with the current vice president?

Well, I think every mayor’s responsibility is to work with any governor when you can to get good results for the city, and so I’ve tried to do that with each of the three Republican governors that I served with. I will say that working with Gov. Pence was more challenging than his predecessor or his successor because he has a pretty extreme, in my view, social ideology. I was still able to team up with his administration on certain initiatives, particularly an effort to create economic development opportunities in our city, and I am proud of that cooperation. But it’s really unfortunate that that was overshadowed in many ways by things like the pretty extreme anti-LGBT legislation that the governor passed and signed, was obviously a blow to our relationship, and I can’t say that I have been able to keep in touch with him since he went to the White House.

Speaking of the White House, is there anything positive that you can say about President Trump?

Well, he certainly has seemed to have brought my party together, so I guess there’s that. I would like to live in a country where both sides are committed to decency, where both sides are committed to building up their political values without tearing others down and I think the hostile takeover of the Republican party by this president has been bad, not only for the country, but for also that party. I’d love to be debating who’s got a better climate change plan instead of debating whether we ought to have one. I’d love to be debating who’s got a better health care plan instead of having to point out that they’re trying to demolish the one we have but apparently incapable of proposing anything else. The Republican party being in bad shape is not good for anybody, even if it may create short term political advantages for my side of the aisle.