1. What a journey it’s been, @PeteButtigieg: a 38-year-old, gay, former mayor of a midsized, Midwestern city in #Indiana who rose from obscurity to presidential frontrunner in less than one year, before winning the Iowa caucuses.
@PeteButtigieg 2. He’s personified the optimism of youth politics, the urgency of defending democracy, the possibility of unity. Thank you for championing the kind of progressivism that recognizes the nuances of issues without resorting to populism and for trying to restore U.S. leadership.
@PeteButtigieg 3. His improbable candidacy caught my attention last May when he and his loving husband, @Chas10Buttigieg, were featured on the cover of TIME magazine under the heading, “First Family.” Like many, I couldn’t even pronounce his name and thought he didn’t stand a chance.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg 4. The anti-extradition protests began in #HongKong the following month, and he began speaking up for us.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg 5. He also criticized the mass incarceration in #Xinjiang and demonstrated his understanding that dealing with China‘s threat to the liberal international order required more than waging a trade war.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg 6. “The Chinese Communist Party’s repressive treatment of the Uighurs and other minorities, and growing pressure on Hong Kong, are symptomatic of a broader, and intensifying, ‘systems’ competition,” he told @CFR_org in July.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 7. “Beijing seems committed to consolidating and legitimizing authoritarian capitalism as an alternative to the democratic capitalism embraced by the United States and its closest allies and partners.” cfr.org/article/pete-b…
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 8. Here was him offering a glimpse of how he’d respond to the Hong Kong crisis if he were in the White House.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 9. On the campaign trail throughout the summer, he talked about Hong Kong often and tied its developments to his core message about why American withdrawal from the world was dangerous.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 10. His foreign-policy expertise and ability to analyze the Hong Kong-China relationship in television interviews were even more impressive considering the demands of his only elected office was more about pothole patching and trash pickup above all else.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 11. Then there were the fall debates. This was him in Houston on Sept. 12.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 12. And this was him in Westerville, Ohio on Oct. 15.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 13. When Hong Kong protesters competed with the Chinese leadership — who’d carefully and lavishly orchestrated celebrations of the Communist regime’s 70th anniversary — for global news coverage, he knew what to watch.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 14. Of course, Xinjiang hadn’t slipped his mind either.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 15. These attempts to put China front and center culminated in my all-time favorite presidential debate moment, when, in Los Angeles on Dec. 19, he vowed to lead an isolation of Beijing from the free world in case of a military crackdown on Hong Kong.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 16. Indeed, not since President George H. W. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton wrangled over America’s China policy in 1992, following the Tiananmen Massacre, had Hong Kong been given this much significance in a presidential debate.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org 17. When Taiwanese President @iingwen — under whom the first country in Asia legalized same-sex marriage — was decisively reelected with 57.13 percent of the vote in a three-way race this January, he didn’t shy away from congratulating her.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen 18. That’s why I’ve been so proud to join @Hoyas4Pete at Georgetown, where I befriended a group of fellow students just as enthusiastic about his candidacy. My face here shows how excited we were to meet him at a G.W.U. event.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen @Hoyas4Pete 19. In addition to the selfie, he shook my hand and autographed my copy of his very excellent mayoral memoirs, Shortest Way Home. It was a night I’ll remember for many years to come. 
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen @Hoyas4Pete 20. As he announced in South Bend earlier tonight that he’d suspend his presidential campaign for the good of his party, he found his shortest way home once again, but his future is brighter than ever.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen @Hoyas4Pete 21. Most of the country knows him very well by now. Still, it’s worth contemplating once more just how smart, talented, and dedicated he is: a Harvard graduate who went on to study at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and work for McKinsey before entering public service.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen @Hoyas4Pete 22. As a naval intelligence officer, he was deployed to Afghanistan during his first term as mayor. Then he returned, came out as gay, and won a landslide reelection. He plays piano and guitar; he speaks seven or eight languages.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen @Hoyas4Pete 23. In college, he read a coming-of-age novel entitled Naïve. Super by @erlendloe. He loved it and wanted more, but the rest of the author’s oeuvre hadn’t been translated into English, so he decided to teach himself Norwegian. That‘s the intellectual curiosity we all need.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen @Hoyas4Pete @erlendloe 24. Others have applauded the meaning of his triumph to the L.G.B.T.Q. cause. I’m sure this is personal to so many out there — anxious and feeling like there’s no place in the world for them — the way what he stands for when it comes to Chinese imperialism is personal to me.
@PeteButtigieg @Chas10Buttigieg @CFR_org @iingwen @Hoyas4Pete @erlendloe 25. I’ll keep fighting for my hometown that’s Hong Kong; I’ll keep fighting for Pete Buttigieg no matter where tomorrow leads him. So much lies ahead ❤️🐝🌈🇺🇸🇺🇸
