Not many presidential candidates are asked how they would act in the event of an invasion by space aliens, but one candidate who just announced that he’s in the race did answer it – and gave a surprising response.
Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts announced Monday morning that he’s running for president in 2020, bringing the number of candidates in the Democratic race above 20. Appearing Monday on Buzzfeed’s online talk show BuzzFeed News ‘ AM to DM, Moulton said that he would go with diplomacy first if extraterrestrials were to attack Earth.
“I would not build a wall between here and Mars,” the Congressman said, adding that he would offer the aliens a “classic American meal” of a burger and beer.
“No you got to start, and this is serious guys, you got to start with diplomacy. You always have to start with diplomacy.”
He did say, however, that if the meeting with the aliens didn’t go well, he would inform them that the burger they just ate was “the last aliens who visited.”
Moulton, a 40-year-old Iraq War veteran, was elected to Congress in 2014 from Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District. Moulton is seen as more of a moderate than some of the other Democrats who are running in the 2020 race. He was part of a faction that challenged Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s ultimately successful bid to return as Speaker of the House following last November’s election.
“I’m running because we have to beat Donald Trump, and I want us to beat Donald Trump because I love this country,” the candidate said in his launch video, per Fox News. “We’ve never been a country that gets everything right. But we’re a country that, at our best, thinks that we might.”
With the announcement, Moulton becomes the third candidate from Massachusetts to join the 2020 race, joining Senator Elizabeth Warren – who endorsed Moulton when he ran for Congress – and Republican William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor who is challenging President Trump in the Republican primaries.
The candidate, who served four tours in Iraq and later turned against the war, Moulton’s campaign website says that he was inspired to serve in the Marines, and later in politics, by the late Rev. Peter Gomes, the famed theologian who ministered to him at Harvard University.
“It’s not enough to just support those who serve,” Rev. Gomes said to Moulton, per the site. “You have to go out and do something yourself.”
