Vivek Ramaswamy has sparked a firestorm of criticism since launching his 2024 presidential campaign for comments that some have called racially charged.
Recently, the 38-year-old entrepreneur faced backlash for comparing Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Black Democrat representing Massachusetts, to modern grand wizards of the Ku Klux Klan. He has said that the U.S. education system is a modern ghetto system, that the government pays women in inner cities to be single, and has argued with former CNN anchor Don Lemon on what it was like to live as a Black person in America.
I think there is a pattern here, but to be honest, I will go one step further and say that this is a cornerstone of his campaign, said Brandon Weathersby, presidential communications director for the American Bridge PAC.
Just because you deliver it with a smile, just because its a little more palatable, doesnt mean that its not going to have a lot of the same negative implications for folks or literally feeling like theres a target on your back when you go outside or when you go into certain communities, because that rhetoric has been normalized.
Ramaswamy, who is Indian American, announced his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination in February, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his announcement video. But much of his rhetoric has echoed that of former President Trumps.
Though Trump remains the front-runner for the GOP nomination, Ramaswamy has been rising in the polls with some showing him posing a real threat to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has consistently polled in second place.
Earlier in August, Ramaswamy promised that if he secured the GOP nomination, he would bring along voters of diverse shades of melanin in droves to win the general election.
But his rhetoric on race only continues to draw criticism, with some experts saying his comments do not speak to Black voters at all.
A spokesperson for Ramaswamys campaign told The Hill that people are welcome to disagree with his statements but that he will always say what he believes.
Vivek says what most people are feeling,he doesnt even really speak in partisan terms, said Tricia McLaughlin, senior adviser and communications director for the campaign. Most of the things hes talking about are not Republican or Democrat, its American issues.
Many have argued that American politics has seen an increase in racialized political rhetoric since the 2016 election, but Ange-Marie Hancock, executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, says the trend goes back decades.
What has changed, Hancock said, is how explicit the comments have become in the political world.
For instance, she said, Ramaswamys comments about single mothers are reminiscent of former President Reagans speech that introduced the term welfare queens to the nation.
The difference between what President Reagan said in the 1980s in that speech was that it was coded, Hancock argued. Welfare queen didnt say Black, didnt say African American, didnt say women of color or something to that effect. So the change that Ramaswamy is doing is hes being explicitly racist as opposed to using coded language.