Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy also said he’d pardon Donald Trump – because Nelson Mandela.
Vivek Ramaswamy's appearance on Fox News yesterday was a great argument for why he should never be president.
Fortunately, Fox host Neil Cavuto called out a lot of Ramaswamy’s BS.
As Donald Trump faces a third round of indictments, this time for trying to overturn our democratic presidential election (previously for stealing and flagrantly mishandling classified material and before that for fraud over hush money payments to a porn star) Ramaswamy suggested Trump should get away with it all.
“I think it would be a disaster if this did proceed to an indictment,” Ramaswamy said about the federal charges likely to drop soon against Trump over the January 6th insurrection. “I just think we’re setting a terrible precedent, Neil, of the party in power using police force to indict its lead political opponent in the middle of an election, and I think that this one is even more serious in its consequence than the prior indictments because of Section Three of the 14th Amendment.”
Ramaswamy said it would be a “disaster for the country” if Trump became ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment which prohibits someone convicted of insurrection. He didn’t seem to mind that it might be a disaster for the country to have a president who had fostered or led an insurrection against it.
Cavuto said, “That’s very different than - take no offense - to how you sounded days after the attack on the Capitol when you said or tweeted, I believe, ‘What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.’ ... I’m just wondering what changed.”
“Nothing changed Neil,” Ramaswamy insisted. “I would have made different judgments than Donald Trump did on January 6th, 2021.
Cavuto pressed. “No, no, no. You said what Trump did was wrong. What he did then was wrong. You were unequivocal,” Cavuto said.
“Absolutely, and I’m unequivocal today that there’s a difference between doing something wrong, as he did, versus doing something that’s illegal,” Ramaswamy claimed.
Cavuto wasn’t buying it. “This is potentially more than just a bad judgment, isn't it?” he responded. Cavuto asked if it’s true Trump “galvanized a crowd to do what he did and what they did, does he bear some responsibility for that as the leader of the country, the commander in chief?”
“I don’t think he should bear criminal responsibility,” Ramaswamy replied.
Then came the Ramaswamy doozy: “I think what really fueled January 6th, Neil, was a year of censorship, systematic censorship, telling people they couldn’t talk about COVID lockdowns, telling people they couldn’t talk about the Hunter Biden laptop story on the eve of a presidential election.”
“If you tell people they cannot speak, that is when they scream. If you tell people they cannot scream, that is when they tear things down,” Ramaswamy continued.
Cavuto still wasn’t buying it. He said Ramaswamy was “quite right” that there was “rampant frustration with the system.” But, Cavuto added, that doesn't justify storming the Capitol.
“Should it disqualify him from running for president again?” Cavuto asked.
No, Ramaswamy is just fine with an insurrectionist and classified documents stealer running and potentially moving into the White House. First he dithered, saying, “I think it should be an issue that the voters weigh.”
But when Cavuto pushed, Ramaswamy answered, “I don’t think it should disqualify him legally from running. I think it should affect the decisions that voters make in the ballot box.”
“I want to win by convincing voters of why they should vote for me, not by having the federal police state eliminate my competition,” Ramaswamy said.
Cavuto was not done. “You’ve also been on record as saying that you would pardon the president should you assume office,” he said.
Yes, Ramaswamy would. Then he claimed he’d let Trump off the hook because “what I really care about is moving our country forward.”
“As President Ramaswamy, you’d have a lot to pardon him for,” Cavuto shot back. “Three cases, maybe a fourth that could build with Georgia and his alleged role there, trying to influence that election. Would you pardon him for all of those?”
Ramaswamy claimed he would pardon Trump “for the two indictments that have been brought” and the Jan. 6 case as he knows it and had the nerve to suggest he’d be following in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela. Ramaswamy said he admired Mandela, “the way he actually reunited a nation that was badly divided.” He claimed, with a straight face, that to pardon Trump would be putting principle over self-interest, because pardoning Trump would unite the country.
Likening a Trump pardon to Nelson Mandela, “human rights lawyer, prisoner of conscience, international peacemaker,” is outrageous. Maybe Ramaswamy is hoping for a job in another Trump administration.
You can watch Ramaswamy argue that Trump should be allowed to break the law, betray our country with impunity and still be eligible to be president below, from the July 18, 2023 Your World.