“I Will Ask It a Third Time”: Vivek Ramaswamy Refuses to Explain Past Trump Criticism

Vivek Ramaswamy is so committed to sucking up to Donald Trump that he won’t even explain his own past criticism of the former president.

Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook days after the January 6 riot for inciting violence on the platforms. Ramaswamy criticized the tech giants’ move in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece as a violation of free speech, but he also had some choice words for Trump himself. Ramaswamy described the riot as “disgraceful” and called Trump’s actions “egregious” and “downright abhorrent” on Twitter.

But now that he is running against Trump for president, Ramaswamy is confusingly and aggressively refusing to address his comments. When MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan pressed him about the criticisms Wednesday night, Ramaswamy did everything he could to avoid actually answering the question.

“What did Donald Trump do, in your view, that was ‘downright abhorrent’? Second time I’ve asked that question,” Hasan said.

“The thing that I would have done differently if I were in his shoes, is I would have declared reelection on January 7,” Ramaswamy replied.

Hasan asked Ramaswamy to explain his comments several more times, but Ramaswamy never gave a straight answer. Instead, he kept saying what he would have done on January 6.

The interview is a clear example of how most Republican candidates are too scared to criticize Trump—even though they are running against him. Trump is the front-runner by a wide margin, and the other presidential hopefuls can’t afford to alienate his supporters if they want to peel any away from him.

Ramaswamy has also taken several pages from Trump’s playbook. The biotech entrepreneur has openly embraced making Eminem angry, pushing conspiracy theories, caving to autocratic leaders, and using his campaign to evade lawsuits.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville thinks that the real threat to military readiness is sailors reading poems, not his blockade on hundreds of military promotions.

The Republican senator has blocked hundreds of promotions since March in protest over the Defense Department’s policy of reimbursing travel costs for service members who have to go out of state for an abortion. The department has warned that the blockade, which has left three branches of the military without official leaders, harms U.S. national security. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro slammed Tuberville on Tuesday for “aiding and abetting Communist and other autocratic regimes” with his misguided protest.

“Secretary Del Toro of the Navy, he needs to get to building ships, he needs to get to recruiting, and he needs to get wokeness out of our Navy,” Tuberville hit back Wednesday evening, speaking on Fox News. “We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction that we’re headed in our military, and we’re headed downhill, not uphill.”

Tuberville has blocked an unprecedented 301 military promotions over the abortion policy, resulting in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps being led by “acting” military leaders instead of confirmed ones. The Pentagon says the policy will stay in place, and multiple defense officials, including department Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley, have warned that Tuberville’s blockade is a threat to military readiness and national security.

The senator, however, continues to falsely insist that his actions do not have a negative impact on the military. He said Tuesday that Del Toro’s comment “makes you feel bad.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby had a simple solution. “My best advice to the senator is, if you don’t like being criticized for this outrageous effort to hold up these promotions and advancements, then lift your hold,” he told CNN Tuesday evening.

“If it bothers you that we’re publicly talking about the impacts it’s having—and it is having an impact—then just lift the hold.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday appointed the co-founder of the far-right group Moms for Liberty to the state ethics commission.

Moms for Liberty is a far-right “parental rights” organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center recently categorized as an extremist group. New DeSantis appointee Tina Descovich co-founded the group in 2021 to push back against Covid-19 restrictions in schools and against classes that teach about nonwhite history and LGBTQ rights.

Descovich tweeted that it was a “privilege” to join the Florida Commission on Ethics. The nine-member commission is tasked with investigating complaints about alleged breaches of trust by state public officers and employees.

What this appointment actually does is give Descovich even more power to target the same groups that Moms for Liberty attacks. Legal expert Alejandra Caraballo warned that Descovich will now “be able to investigate LGBTQ state employees and allies and systematically remove them from state government.”

Appointing Descovich is DeSantis’s latest attack on LGBTQ rights in Florida. He expanded his “Don’t Say Gay” law, banned drag performances in public, and prohibited transgender people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, among many other policies.

Descovich’s appointment is also a sign of how much power Moms for Liberty wields on the political right. Their recent annual summit featured multiple high-profile speakers, including presidential candidates DeSantis, Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and Asa Hutchinson.

Ron DeSantis is continuing his spiral into loserdom as his campaign rapidly sheds its biggest donors, according to a new report from Politico published on Wednesday.

Of the 50 top donors who contributed at least $160,000 to DeSantis’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign, fewer than one-third (only 16 people) have contributed to the Never Back Down super PAC. Another eight donors have contributed to DeSantis’s presidential campaign directly, but still, that’s less than half of the total donors who supported him just last year.

Former Governor Bruce Rauner was one of DeSantis’s biggest boosters, having donated nearly $1 million to DeSantis during his 2022 reelection bid. Now Rauner says he’s planning to back another Republican presidential candidate: Nikki Haley.

“I think [DeSantis]’s done a terrific job as governor of Florida, and I’ve been, as I think you know, a big supporter of him in that role,” Rauner said. “I think Nikki Haley probably has the best chance to win the general election.… I think everyone is trying to sort things out. We gotta win, we gotta win the general.”

Last month, Rob Bigelow, the biggest donor to Never Back Down and to DeSantis’s reelection campaign, said that he would hold off from writing more checks for the super PAC until DeSantis adopted more moderate policies and generated more of his own funds.

Five other donors from the list of 50 are now supporting other Republican candidates, and of those who are still donating to DeSantis’s campaign, five are splitting their donations between DeSantis and other candidates.

The DeSantis campaign is still well funded; Never Back Down had nearly $97 million in June, which far surpasses his Republican competition, including Donald Trump. But those funds aren’t from new donors. According to Politico, $82 million of those funds are actually from DeSantis’s reelection campaign.

The DeSantis campaign has been marred by a series of failures and humiliations, which may help to explain his donors’ vanishing act. In July, the DeSantis campaign cut a third of its staff, and in August it replaced its campaign manager. But despite all his attempts at a campaign “reset,” his poll numbers continue to lag. In a CNN poll published Tuesday, DeSantis now trails Trump by a whopping 34 points.

A Mar-a-Lago employee and key witness in the classified documents case against Donald Trump has agreed to testify against the former president.

Resort information technology worker Yuscil Taveras had initially denied to special counsel Jack Smith’s team that there had been any conversations at Mar-a-Lago about security footage that prosecutors subpoenaed in 2022 as part of the investigation. But once he was assigned a new public defender in July, Taveras immediately recanted his testimony and gave a statement implicating Trump and his two co-defendants in efforts to delete the footage.

Taveras has now agreed to testify against Trump, Walt Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira in exchange for avoiding prosecution, CNN reported Wednesday.

Trump was charged in Florida with keeping national defense secrets, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, among other things, for hoarding classified materials at Mar-a-Lago. His body man Nauta and a Mar-a-Lago employee De Oliveira have also been charged. All three men are accused of trying to destroy evidence, including attempting to delete security footage off a server.

Taveras provided his original testimony when he was represented by Trump-appointed lawyer Stanley Woodward, who also represents Nauta. Prosecutors raised concerns in July that Woodward representing a defendant and a witness could create a conflict of interest. The chief judge presiding over Trump’s other federal indictment case in Washington offered to assign a federal public defender to Taveras, and Taveras accepted.

“Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage,” an August filing from Smith said. Taveras was not named in the filing, but he was later identified through media reports.

Taveras’s flip is a major blow to Trump’s defense. Smith’s team has sought to prove that Trump not only knew that he was wrong to keep classified documents but also tried to cover up his actions. Taveras’s new testimony directly implicates Trump in the cover-up.