Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was in full beast mode during Wednesday night’s GOP primary debate. Generally speaking, I like Ramaswamy, and he often says the right things. But during the debate, he lost me with a few words.
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On the issue of Ukraine, Ramaswamy took a major risk by challenging his opponents to name three provinces in Eastern Ukraine and then attacking Nikki Haley’s intelligence. At that point, Chris Christie jumped in to defend her. Then Ramaswamy launched into a brutal assault.
“I think we just learned something from Chris Christie,” he said. “We learned three things. We learned three things right there. First of all, Chris Christie also doesn’t know what provinces in eastern Ukraine he actually wants us to fight for. Chris, your version of foreign policy experience was closing a bridge from New Jersey to New York. So do everybody a favor; just walk yourself off that stage, enjoy a nice meal, and get the hell out of this place. When it comes to Nikki, I think if you’re going to actually send your sons and daughters to go die in somebody else’s war—”
“I haven’t heard a time when you weren’t speaking,” Chris Christie interjected.
“I’m speaking, and I’m not done yet,” Ramaswamy insisted. “You had your chance. So listen up to this. If these people want to send your sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine, they’ve been arguing for it for a year. $200 billion of our taxpayers’ money was sent over. Neither of them could name for you the provinces that they actually want to protect. And this is the people who have been touting their so-called ‘foreign policy experience.’ It is intellectual fraud.”
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“These people are lying to you,” he continued. “The same people who told you about weapons in [sic] mass destruction in Iraq to justify that invasion didn’t know the first thing about it, yet they sent thousands of our sons and daughters to go die. The same people who told you the same in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is still in charge 20 years later. $7 trillion of our national debt due to these toxic neo-cons. You can put lipstick on a Dick Cheney; it is still a fascist neocon. You can see that today it’s Dick Cheney all over again!”
Vivek Ramaswamy: “You could put lipstick on a Dick Cheney, it is still a fascist neocon.” pic.twitter.com/iivlcRsTQO
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 7, 2023
Ramaswamy has certainly shown that he’s a force to be reckoned with — be it on the debate stage or in an interview with unfriendly media — but no good can come from calling a fellow Republican, Dick Cheney, a “fascist neon.” When he does that, he sounds like a Democrat. Democrats and their allies are constantly calling Republicans Nazis and fascists. The GOP doesn’t need its own party members using the same rhetoric.
His rhetoric about Iraq was flat-out wrong. Whatever one feels about the war in Iraq today, the fact is that the Bush administration, with the approval of Congress, responded to the intelligence community’s conclusions about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Not only did the CIA believe that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, but the intelligence agencies of France, Germany, Israel, and other countries reached the exact same conclusion. Bipartisan post-war investigations also found that, contrary to the claims of many on the left, there was never any political pressure on the intelligence community to alter its assessments of Iraq’s chemical, biological, or nuclear capabilities.
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Is Ramaswamy going to join in with the Democrats chanting “Bush (and Cheney) lied; people died,” or is going to heed his own advice and learn about the issue he’s talking about before speaking of it?