Hey Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Is A Hot Dog A Sandwich?

Pete Buttigieg is a singular presidential candidate in one important sense: He is the only to candidate to have answered the question of whether a hot dog is a sandwich in advance of his interview with The Takeout. We applaud his forethought in tackling this question from the get-go. His answer: No.

The rest of his biographical details are as follows: At the wizened age of 37, Buttigieg has served as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, since 2012. He served in the War in Afghanistan; attended Harvard University; studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship; and is the first openly gay Democratic candidate to run for President.

Though he's already weighed in on the question of a hot dog's inherent sandwichness, The Takeout needed to confirm Buttigieg's stance for ourselves. Would he prove himself to be a hot dog flip-flopper? We reached him by phone in South Bend, Indiana, to ask.

The Takeout: Are you still of the mind that a hot dog is not a sandwich? And if so, what elements of the hot dog make it inherently not a sandwich?

Pete Buttigieg: My position on this has been very consistent throughout the campaign. It's about form. It's about symmetry. It's about the fact that if you put a toothpick through a sandwich, it should go through bread, and through meat or other filling, and then through bread again. And you just can't say that for a hot dog.