“I don’t think you need a lot of advice for me on bravery. You seem pretty strong to me,” said former South Bend Mayor Buttigieg, the nation’s first openly gay presidential candidate, to his would-be protégé. “It took me a long time to figure out how to tell even my best friend that I was gay, let alone to go out there and tell the world and to see you willing to come to terms with who you are in a room full of 1,000 people, thousands of people you’ve never met, that’s, that’s really something.”