Campaign

Ramaswamy: X should host January GOP debate with ‘someone like’ Tucker Carlson as moderator

Republican presidential candidate businessman Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a Republican presidential primary debate hosted by NBC News, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, should host a January debate with a moderator akin to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson Friday.

“If there’s a January GOP debate, it should be hosted on X, not on cable TV, moderated by someone like @TuckerCarlson who might just ask questions that primary voters actually care about,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “The [Republican National Committee] says they want to reach younger voters & new audiences? Well, that’s how you do it.”

Ramaswamy’s Friday post seems to mirror his recent criticisms of Republican party leadership. The 2024 GOP presidential candidate has been confrontational with Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel, calling her out in the most recent GOP presidential primary debate on stage.

“We’ve become a party of losers at the end of the day,” Ramaswamy said. “Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022, no red wave, that never came. We got trounced last night in 2023,” he added. 

He then offered for the RNC chair to “come on stage” to announce her resignation. 

Ramaswamy has positioned himself as the GOP candidate that knows how to attract younger voters to the party. He has said he joined the platform TikTok to connect younger audiences in the 2024 race, in the face of widespread concerns about its ties to China. 

“I have a radical idea for the Republican Party: We need to win elections,” Ramaswamy said at the second GOP primary debate. “And part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are.”

“So while the Democrats are running rampant reaching the next generation 3-to-1, there’s exactly one person in the Republican Party that talks a big game about reaching young people, and that’s me,” he added.