Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy laid into the Republican National Committee during Wednesday night’s debate for presiding over a “party of losers” and cited the fact that NBC was allowed to host the debate as evidence that the GOP’s leadership is out of touch with its voters.
Asked by the moderators to explain why he would make a better president than frontrunner Donald Trump, Ramaswamy sidestepped the question and instead laid into RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for the party’s recent electoral failures.
“We’ve become a party of losers at the end of the day. Is it cancer? The Republican establishment, let’s speak the truth,” the biotech entrepreneur said. “I mean, since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022. No red wave ever came. We got trounced last night in 2023. And I think that we have to have accountability in our party for that matter.”
Ramaswamy then trained his fire on the mainstream media, specifically accusing Meet the Press host Kristin Welker of pushing the since debunked Russia collusion narrative.
“Think about who’s moderating this debate,” he continued. “This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We’d have ten times the viewership. Asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care and bringing more people into our party.”
“This is actually about you in the media and the corrupt media establishment; [I] ask you,: the Trump-Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years. Was that real? Or was that Hilary Clinton made up disinformation?”
“Answer the question: go!” Ramaswamy said as the audience in the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County applauded enthusiastically.
Unlike Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis answered the moderators’ first question directly, attacking Trump for failing to make good on his 2016 campaign promises. Nikki Haley joined DeSantis in attacking Trump right off the bat, pointing out that the national debt ballooned under his leadership.