Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is seen onstage during the fourth Republican presidential primary debate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on December 6, 2023. | Source: JIM WATSON / Getty
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is really going far out of his way to prove he is a true-to-form member of today’s GOP. Like other Republican candidates, he vehemently defends Donald Trump despite the fact that he’s running against him for the presidency. He says things as if they’re widely accepted as true when, in reality, they’re thoroughly debunked as false. And, despite being a brown person himself, he apparently believes white people are intentionally being replaced by non-white people as part of an agenda by Democrats to boost their voting demographics.
During Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, Ramaswamy appeared to solidify himself as the chief spreader of absurd conspiracy theories, racist dog-whistling and alarmist nonsense, which is actually pretty impressive given all the competition he had on that stage for that role.
Ramaswamy kicked things off by defending Trump and attacking the other candidates for criticizing the ex-president because, apparently, Ramaswamy was hit with a sudden head rush of MAGA dopamine that caused him to completely forget how primary debates work. Then he went on to imply that the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was the work of some nameless, faceless government insider.
“Why am I the only person, on this stage at least, who can say that Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job?” Ramaswamy said.
So, just to recap, Ramaswamy doesn’t understand why his fellow opponents in the GOP primary are criticizing the—*checks notes*—frontrunner in the GOP primary, and he doesn’t understand why none of his opponents are unwilling to make claims that there is zero evidence to support. To be fair, that has pretty much been Republican’s bread and butter for galvanizing the MAGA base, propagandizing “wokeness” and justifying voter impression laws under the guise of securing elections that don’t need securing.
Speaking of elections, Ramaswamy went on to parrot Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential race was stolen from him by “big tech,” which is exactly the kind of factless nonsense that got lawsuits filed against right-wing media and prominent members of Trump’s former legal team. Ramaswamy also claimed the election was “stolen from him by the national security establishment” because of the investigation into allegations that his campaign had colluded with Russia. (Somebody really needed to check and make sure Trump wasn’t on the catwalk above the stage pulling puppet strings the whole time.)
Ramaswamy was clearly on a mission to check all of the conservative looney-toon boxes, because next up was his claim that the “great replacement theory” is real and it’s a “basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.” He even retweeted loud and proud white nationalist Nick Fuentes‘ co-sign of his statement regarding the theory.
For those who are unfamiliar with the great replacement theory, also referred to as the “white replacement theory,” it’s classic white nationalist propaganda meant to scare white people into believing they’re being systematically replaced in America by non-white people. It’s a theory that was referenced in a manifesto left by Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron, who, of course, went on to target and gun down 10 Black people in cold blood. It was also a favorite talking point of former Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson, and, last year, a poll showed that 70% of Republicans agreed with the theory.
It might be surprising that Ramaswamy, who is of Indian Hindu descent, would tout white supremacist propaganda that advocates for the preservation of a white majority at the expense of non-white people like himself, but you have to consider what a generic right-wing tool he is. This is the same guy who called Juneteenth a “useless” and “redundant” holiday because Martin Luther King Day already exists and, apparently, America isn’t big enough for two Black holidays that have nothing to do with each other. And despite his shouting out a theory that has no place in academia or basis in reality, Ramaswamy is an anti-woke conservative who thinks critical race theory is a “secular religion” and also “psychological slavery for children.”
Speaking of theories, one could easily speculate that Ramaswamy is stumping for Trump because it’s the popular thing to do in MAGA world and he’s secretly hoping Trump goes to jail behind one of his numerous criminal indictments, which would prevent the ex-president from running again, making himself the new MAGA bae.
Ramaswamy is either really dumb or smart enough to play dumb for an audience that’s eager to consume dumbness. Either way, he’s just another clown in the clown car and this is going to be one long 2024 election race.
And some of us are already tired.
SEE ALSO:
Congressional Black Caucus Checks Vivek Ramaswamy Over ‘KKK’ Comment To Ayanna Pressley
Vivek Ramaswamy Copies Obama’s Whole Flow ‘Bar For Bar’ During GOP Debate
