Vivek Ramaswamy, the 2024 presidential candidate who is going all in on the MAGA talking points and rhetoric that sent Trump to the White House in a likely attempt to be picked as Trump’s Vice President in 2024, just tore into Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley during a campaign stop.
At the campaign event, Ramaswamy blasted Rep. Pressley for her 2019 comment about not wanting people who are “black” or “brown” in politics unless they advocate for their ethnic group as a “black voice” or “brown voice.”
Ramaswamy said, “Ayanna Pressley, she’s in the Congress today. She’s a member of the squad, her words not mine. ‘We don’t want any more black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t want any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.’ These are the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.”
Rep. Pressley’s office attacked Vivek for that comment, saying, “We typically don’t engage in these bad-faith attacks but yesterday a line was crossed. A GOP candidate referred to Ayanna as ‘a modern grand wizard of the KKK’ because she speaks out against racial injustice. This is backwards and harmful, but that is the point.”
But Vivek didn’t back down. He later stood by that comment, telling CNN’s Dana Bash, “I stand by what I said to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country. Because there is a gap, Dana, between what people will say in private today and what they will say in public. I think we need to close that gap. I think we need to have a real open, honest, raw conversation as Americans.”
He also said, “I think it is the same spirit to say that I can look at you and based on just your skin color, that I know something about the content of your character, that I know something about the content of the viewpoints you’re allowed to express.”
here's Vivek's KKK comment for those curious about what exactly he said pic.twitter.com/uPyVTAX1MC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 27, 2023
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Well, Ramaswamy’s comments about Rep. Pressley, namely the KKK comment, drove one CNN personality off the edge. That was CNN analyst Bakari Sellers, who spoke about the issue on Friday’s edition of CNN’s The Situation Room.
He said, “Ramaswamy is kind of idiotic when he says that. This is why his campaign has caught fire amongst some fringes on the right because he uses these kind of slogans, he uses these tag words. But, again, he has no depth. I mean, Ayanna Pressley doesn’t need me to explain what she was saying, but if you want to represent minorities in this country, if you’re going to be a voice and represent them on the largest platform in the world, then you must actually speak truth to power about those issues that directly affect them. That is what Representative Pressley is saying, that you have to be true to yourself, that you have to be uplifting of your community and you cannot act like the ills that affect black and brown people don’t affect you.”
Continuing, he added, “And for him to call her all types of names is just beneath the dignity of this type of civil discourse. Race is a very, very difficult issue for this country to grapple with. Ramaswamy in that comment showed that he’s unable or unwilling or simply doesn’t have the intellect necessary to tackle that issue of race by those comments that he made.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video