Milwaukee — During the Trump-less GOP presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy stood out for his efforts to be the Trumpiest of the eight candidates on stage. The 38-year-old wealthy entrepreneur from Ohio insulted every other GOP candidate at the debate by saying they are all “bought and paid for.” Taking a more isolationist position than Trump himself, Ramaswamy was the lone candidate who said categorically that he would cut off U.S. aid to help Ukranians repel the Russian invasion of their country. He mocked Ron DeSantis as a calculating politician for trying to split the difference by saying U.S. support should be conditional on Europe contributing more.
In the spin room after the debate, Trump surrogate and Florida GOP congressman Matt Gaetz confidently predicted that “Ramaswamy will assume second place in just about every major poll after this debate, because he was something different.”
When I briefly caught up with Ramaswamy in the spin room, I asked the candidate a question posed to several of his rivals during the debate—whether Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6, 2021, when he rebuffed Trump’s order to delay or reject the counting of Electoral College votes. Ramaswamy told me he “had a detailed answer to that question” but was trying to be “respectful of [debate] rules” when he was skipped over. “I look forward to taking that [question in] a future debate because we’re on the run right now, but tell Bret [Baier] to ask me that in the September debate.”
When I asked Ramaswamy a second time whether Pence did the right thing on January 6, he said he “would have done it very differently” and proceeded to offer a meandering answer that did not directly address how he would have handled the counting of electoral votes.
Rather, Ramaswamy suggested he would have somehow forged a national compromise about voting rules. Here’s his full, convoluted response after being asked a second time if Pence did the right thing on January 6:
I think I would have done it very differently. I would have done very differently. So I think that there was a historic opportunity that was missed to settle a score in this country to say that we’re actually going to have a national compromise on this—single-day voting on Election Day as a federal holiday, which I think Congress should have acted in that window between November and January to say: paper ballots, government-issued ID. And if that’s the case, then we’re not going to complain about stolen elections. And if I were there, I would have declared on January 7th, saying now I’m going to win in a free and fair election. Unlike what we saw with big tech and others stealing the election last time around, fix the process. This time around, we get it right, and it was a missed opportunity to deliver national unity. That’s what I would have done, but that’s what I’m gonna be able to do as president is unite this country.
Unlike Ramaswamy, every candidate who was asked about Pence’s actions on January 6 supported the former vice president.
“I do think he did the right thing. We need to give him credit for that,” former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley said. South Carolina senator Tim Scott said Pence “absolutely did the right thing.”
DeSantis initially didn’t answer the question directly, saying the election needed to be about January 20, 2025, not January 6, 2021. But asked a second time, DeSantis said: “Mike did his duty. I got no beef with him.”
“Mike Pence stood for the Constitution, he deserves not grudging credit, he deserves our thanks as Americans,” former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said. “We need to dispense with the person who said we need to suspend the Constitution for his political career.”
Pence himself spoke in stark terms about how he had been forced to choose between Trump and the Constitution and chose the latter without hesitation. But Pence, like almost every other candidate on stage, raised his hand when asked if he’d support Trump if he’s the 2024 GOP nominee. How does Pence reconcile his view that Trump is a threat to the Constitution while conceding he could still support Trump in 2024?
“First and foremost, I think Mike Pence is going to be the nominee, so I think he’s going to be happy to support the eventual nominee when that’s the case,” Pence spokesman Devin O’Malley told me in the spin room. “But the Biden administration poses a constitutional crisis on a daily basis,” he added, pointing as an example to Biden’s lawless efforts to cancel student loans without congressional approval. “The pledge is to support the eventual nominee,” O’Malley said. “We think it’s going to be us, but if it’s somehow not, then we’ll support the eventual nominee. I don’t think it’s gonna be Donald Trump.”