Updated on February 27, 2020:

As noted in the original version of this post, Teen Vogue reached out to Pete Buttigieg's campaign to clarify his comments on "revolutionary politics of the 1960s" and why a tweet was deleted including that phrase. Following the publication of this piece, they responded.

"Viewing the full context of this moment at last night's debate, it's clear that Pete was not talking about American movements during the 1960's [sic] at all, but rather the autocratic regimes and military coups d’états that cropped up abroad across Latin America, Greece, and Indonesia during this decade, to name a few," wrote Rodericka Applewhaite, who is on Buttigieg's rapid response/research team. Buttigieg's comment did come after Joe Biden had pointedly asked Bernie Sanders about condemning authoritarianism in Cuba and Nicaragua (which Sanders did), but at no point during the South Carolina debate were Greece or Indonesia mentioned.

Applewhaite went on to clarify that the lack of context is why the tweet with the quote was deleted, writing to Teen Vogue, "Tweeting the line itself removed context from the statement, which is why you saw it blow up on Twitter as it got circulated by users that likely weren't watching the debate in real time."

Sean Savett, Buttigieg's rapid response director, added in a statement to Teen Vogue, "We deleted the tweet because it did not capture the full context of Pete's comments, which clearly referred to Bernie Sanders' nostalgia for the coups and revolutions that were taking place in Cuba and around the world. Pete was making the important point that if Bernie Sanders is the nominee, it will hurt Democrats up and down the ballot if we have to spend our time explaining why our nominee is encouraging people to look at the bright side of the Castro regime."

Buttigieg did mention "coups" happening in the '70s and '80s immediately after his line about the '60s during the debate, but his team's response ultimately raises some other questions. For example, the Cuban Revolution was in 1959 and overthrew a dictator following his own 1952 military coup. There was a coup in Greece in 1973, but that was itself a response to a military coup in 1967 that installed leaders so far right, they apparently continued to inspire the country's far-right ethnonationalists for decades to come. And in Indonesia, a failed 1965 military coup sparked a brutal crackdown on communists. It's believed hundreds of thousands were killed in a massacre the United States government backed.

It is unclear if these are the exact uprisings against repressive right-wing governments that Buttigieg is worried about as "coups."

Previously...

At the South Carolina Democratic debate, Pete Buttigieg made his latest play to paint Bernie Sanders as too big of a risk because of the democratic socialist’s revolutionary politics.

On the debate stage just days ahead of the “first in the south” presidential nomination contest, where Black voters made up 61% of the Democratic Party electorate in 2016’s primary, Buttigieg said, “I am not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump, with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s, and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.”

Buttigieg also tweeted the sentiment, though the tweet was later deleted, as Gizmodo reported. This abrupt pullback illustrates how off-base Buttigieg’s concern about the spirit of the '60s really is.