A Young Vivek Ramaswamy Questioned Candidate’s Lack of “Political Experience”

Vivek Ramaswamy’s past as a sensible young college student is coming back to haunt him.

An old video of a young Ramaswamy asking Democratic presidential candidate Reverend Al Sharpton about his lack of “political experience” has quickly gone viral.

“My question for you is, of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I vote for the one with the least political experience?” an 18-year-old Ramaswamy asked Sharpton during a 2003 town hall on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews.

Sharpton was quick to fire back, “Well you shouldn’t, because I have the most political experience!”

Ramaswamy’s question is more than a little ironic now, seeing as Ramaswamy entered the 2024 presidential race with no political experience.

Ramaswamy responded to the video going viral on Twitter. “I’ll give the 18-year-old version of myself a pat-on-the-back for eliciting the most sensible words ever to come from that man’s mouth,” Ramaswamy wrote. “20 years later, it’s funny how the tables have turned.”

Yes, it is funny that at one point Ramaswamy understood the importance of voting for the candidate with political experience, but any such wisdom has since evaporated from his mind.

Representative Barry Loudermilk came so close to blaming climate change for hurricanes on Fox News.

The Georgia Republican nearly made the connection on Fox News Monday night, while discussing Hurricane Idalia, a Category 1 hurricane that is rapidly approaching the Florida coast; experts say Idalia could strengthen into a Category 3 storm before it is expected to make landfall Wednesday. Loudermilk compared the storm to Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall on the Gulf Coast 17 years ago almost to the day.

“I think we’re on the anniversary of Katrina, today, one of the worst storms in history,” Loudermilk said. “If it was climate change, if it’s continuing to get worse, then would you not see more and more of this storm being worse and worse?”

Well put, Loudermilk, even if it was a total accident.

Loudermilk is, of course, a climate change denier. In 2014, Loudermilk told The Atlanta Journal Constitution, “I believe that climate change is a function of nature; the climate has been changing as long as the Earth has existed.” He supported President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017.

But his words on Fox news are true: These storms are in fact getting worse thanks to climate change.

Hurricanes strengthen over warm ocean waters—storms need a temperature of around 82 degrees to start forming—while warmer air holds more moisture and can also help intensify storms. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that parts of the ocean off Florida’s coast are more than four degrees hotter than the usual average for August; one measurement taken off the Florida Keys showed that the water was a shocking 91.2 degrees. Following one of the hottest summers on record, the “wildly hot” waters in the Gulf of Mexico are expected to rapidly intensify Hurricane Idalia. The Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly affirmed that rising sea surface temperatures caused by climate change have led to an increase in tropical cyclone intensity, duration, and frequency.

Conservative activist Matt Schlapp tried to settle the multimillion-dollar sexual battery and defamation lawsuit against him, but his offer was denied.

Schlapp is the head of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the annual Conservative Political Action Committee Conference. He and his wife are being sued by Republican strategist Carlton Huffman, who accused Schlapp of groping him while Huffman was working as a staffer on Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign.

Schlapp in March offered Huffman a sum in the low six figures to settle the suit, The Daily Beast reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Huffman countered with a significantly higher amount, which Schlapp turned down.

The Schlapps’ publicist denied that they had offered to settle, telling The Daily Beast, “From the outset Mr. and Mrs. Schlapp have been and remain prepared to go to trial and are confident of prevailing in court.”

Huffman’s lawyer called the denial “categorically false.”

Huffman alleges that Schlapp made “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact with him while he was driving the ACU chief back from an Atlanta bar in October. Huffman says Schlapp bought him drinks at two different bars and then proceeded to grope his crotch on the drive back to Schlapp’s hotel. When they arrived at the hotel, Schlapp allegedly invited Huffman to his room.

Huffman recorded several tearful videos of himself describing what happened. “Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length, and I’m sitting there thinking what the hell is going on, that this person is literally doing this to me,” he says in one video.

“From the bar to the Hilton Garden Inn, he has his hands on me. And I feel so fucking dirty. I feel so fucking dirty.”

The revelation of Schlapp’s settlement offer may cause more people to doubt his denials. He reportedly made the offer without consulting the ACU board. While a settlement is not technically an admission of guilt, this is the latest step Schlapp has taken without including the ACU.

In addition to not letting the board vote on the settlement offer, Schlapp has refused to allow for an internal investigation and has gone out of his way to avoid discussing the accusation during board meetings. Multiple sources described his actions to The Daily Beast as “bizarre.”

Schlapp’s behavior is also starting to alienate former allies. Charlie Gerow, who resigned as ACU vice president on Friday, used to be a full-throated Schlapp defender. But when he resigned, he urged the board to investigate any and all allegations against Schlapp. The next day, two more sexual misconduct accusations were revealed to have been made.

Donald Trump’s legal team tried comparing his federal trial date to the case of the Scottsboro Boys, a move that a retired judge called “stunningly stupid.”

District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday set Trump’s election interference trial for March 4, 2024. Before she made her final decision, Trump’s lawyers tried to request a later trial date by comparing Trump’s case to Powell v. Alabama, also known as the Scottsboro Boys case. The Scottsboro Boys were nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. The boys were rushed to trial, during which they had terrible legal representation, and convicted just days after the alleged incident. The Supreme Court overturned their convictions the following year, and the case is frequently cited as a glaring example of racial injustice in the U.S. legal system.

“The moment in that hearing that struck me, I only have two words to describe it as ‘stunningly stupid.’ And that was when Trump’s attorney compared their desire to delay the case to what happened in the case of Powell v. Alabama,” LaDoris Cordell told CNN Monday night about Trump’s hearing, referring to the Supreme Court case that overturned the Scottsboro convictions.

“What the Trump team did was say that, well, what happened in that trial is what could happen here in this trial, which is absolutely absurd.”

Judge Chutkan, of course, dismissed the comparison and set Trump’s trial date for the heart of the Republican primary season.

Trump was indicted for his role in the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, one of four indictments. His legal team proposed the trial begin in April 2026, well after the presidential election. The hope was likely that Trump would have been reelected by then and could avoid federal charges.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump for this indictment and for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, requested that the trial begin in January. Chutkan said neither date was appropriate and set the trial for March—the day before Super Tuesday.

Cordell said she suspected Chutkan, who is Black, was “offended” by the comparison to the Scottsboro Boys. Chutkan has already begun receiving death threats from Trump supporters.

Former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan tore into Donald Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, slamming the former president as having the “moral compass” of an “ax murderer.”

Trump surrendered to Georgia authorities last week on charges of felony racketeering for trying to overturn the state’s election results after the 2020 general election. Duncan, a Republican, was serving as lieutenant governor to Brian Kemp at the time.

“As a Republican, the dashboard is going off with lights and bells and whistles telling us all the warning things we need to know,” Duncan told CNN Monday night. “Ninety-one indictments, fake Republican, $8 trillion worth of debt—everything we need to see to not choose him as our nominee, including the fact he’s got the moral compass of, more like an ax murderer than a president.”

Duncan also described Trump’s wrongdoings as a “Ponzi scheme of lies” and a “two-plus-year crime spree from coast to coast.”

Trump and his 18 co-defendants will be arraigned in Georgia on September 6. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong. But the state’s Republican leaders aren’t having any of it.

In addition to Duncan, Kemp is one of the few Republicans to have explicitly shut down Trump’s claims. Trump pleaded with Kemp to get the state legislature to override the election results and appoint new electors who would back Trump, but Kemp refused to cave.

“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen,” Kemp tweeted after Trump was indicted. “For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward—under oath—and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor.”

Trump also infamously begged former Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes—the exact number needed to flip the state’s election results to Trump. Raffensperger has refused to play ball too.

“The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and rule of law,” he said after Trump was indicted. “You either have it, or you don’t.