Over the weekend, the entrepreneur-turned-politician caused a firestorm when he compared Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Black Democrat, to “modern grand wizards” of the Ku Klux Klan. The Hill’s Cheyanne M. Daniels and Julia Mueller reported on the fallout from his remarks.
“They’re speaking to their base, which is hungry for that type of red bait,” said CliffAlbright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter. “They’re certainly not speaking to Black voters, they’re not really speaking to any reasonable or serious voter outside of the base that just wants more of the same.”
Ramaswamy’s comments opened him up to criticism from fellow GOP presidential hopeful and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who said Ramaswamy is “not really looking at real life in America.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has also hit Ramaswamy since the debate, referring to him as the “worst of what politicians are characterized to be.”
“Someone who says one thing, does another, and then when you call them, like I did on the negative things he said about Donald Trump on Jan. 6, in his book, he didn’t say it,” Christie said on CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
Ramaswamy is also getting backlash for using Nikki Haley’s maiden name on his campaign website, a move that GOP pundit Alyssa Farah Griffin has called “a dog whistle.”
“Of course Vivek is referring to Nikki Haley by her maiden name — Namrata Randhawa — on his his website,” Farah Griffin, who is a political analyst for CNN and co-host of ABC’s “The View,” wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Reminder: Nikki is her name on her birth certificate & this is a dog whistle. Crazy to see it coming from a fellow Indian American.”
Haley responded to Ramaswamy by calling his actions “childish.”
“I’m not going to get into the childish name-calling or whatever, making fun of my name that he’s doing,” she told Fox News Digital on Monday. “I mean, he of all people should know better than that. But I’ve given up on him knowing better than anything at this point.”
And on Monday, rapper Eminem asked Ramaswamy to stop using the musician’s music in his campaign. Music licenser Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) told Ramaswamy’s campaign lawyer it was contacted by Eminem “objecting to the Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign use of Eminem’s musical compositions (the ‘Eminem Works’) and requesting that BMI remove all Eminem Works from the Agreement.” BMI has since removed all of Eminem’s music from Vivek’s presidential campaign license.
While many observers concluded Ramaswamy had a good debate night due to the screen time he received during and after, one post-debate poll shows him slipping. A Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday showed Ramaswamy’s unfavorability rating spiking to 19 percent after last week’s primary debate. It was 12 points prior to the forum.
