Donald Trump praised Vivek Ramaswamy’s performance at this week’s GOP primary debate, crowning the businessman the winner in a Truth Social rant in which he savaged everyone else involved, including the moderator.
Calling former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson “dead” due to his failure to qualify for the debate, Trump suggested that then again, “so is Ron, whose weird bobbing head and fresh mouth, make his high heels look good,” the 'high heels' remark being a reference to unverified reports that the Florida governor wears lifts.
“Birdbrain looked different and lost, but I give her second place,” Trump said, referring to former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley. “Vivek WINS because he thinks I’m great,” Trump added.
But the “biggest loser” was the debate moderator, Megyn Kelly, in Trump’s estimation. “What the hell happened to her? She has lost whatever she once had, which wasn’t very much. Some things never change!” the former president wrote, harking back to a feud he has had with the television presenter going back to 2015, when he first announced his candidacy for president as a Republican.
Trump, famous for the epithets he uses to attack his political opponents, has yet to come up with one for Ramaswamy, who is polling in fourth place behind himself, DeSantis, and Haley with a RealClearPolitics estimated average of
five percent support.
The 38-year-old businessman has been labeled “Trump-lite” by the Haley campaign, and called the 77-year-old former president’s
“most obvious heir” by some media pundits after saying his disagreements with Trump are “very small” and that policy wise, the two men are aligned “90-plus percent.”
“There are some small differences. I would rescind affirmative action. I would militarize the southern border instead of just building the wall. I would shut down the US department of Education, not just put a good person, [former Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos, on top to reform it,” Ramaswamy said in an interview earlier this year.
Instead of targeting the front runner, Ramaswamy spent most of Wednesday night’s debate attacking Haley, DeSantis and Christie, accusing them of “licking Donald Trump’s boots for years, for money and endorsements.”
The businessman concentrated on Haley, holding up a placard with the words “Haley = Corrupt,” and calling her career an example of the revolving door dishonest dealings that plague Washington.
“And when I said they were bought and paid for, I meant the Republican establishment, not the Democratic establishment. Now you have Reid Hoffman, the person who’s effectively George Soros junior, funding lawsuits across this country against Donald Trump to keep him off the ballot, funding left-wing causes. We discovered this week that he was one of Nikki Haley’s largest supporters. Larry Fink, the king of the woke industrial complex, the ESG movement, the CEO of Blackrock, the most powerful company in the world now supporting Nikki Haley. And to say that that doesn’t affect her is false because after that meeting later that day she says that every American needs to be doxed by having their ID, their government issued ID tied to what they say on the internet,” Ramaswamy added.
Haley clarified that her husband went bankrupt but that she did not, and admitted that she served on the board of Boeing for ten months, and that she “loves” and is “proud of” the company. “And in terms of these donors that are supporting me, they’re just jealous. They wish that they were supporting them,” the politician said.