During the third GOP presidential primary debate, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy took a few aggressive swipes at his rivals on the stage, at one point eliciting a nasty epithet — “scum” — from former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
The Establishment in both parties is corrupt to the core and is alive more than ever.
It’s time to fight: now is the moment for freedom-loving American patriots everywhere to stand up and take back the country we love from a corrupt group of politicians who are marching us… pic.twitter.com/2J2UtBB1qO
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 10, 2023
Ramaswamy proved he was not finished taking aim at Haley and others in the race. During a subsequent Breitbart News interview, he pointed a finger at the other four candidates on stage last week for eschewing a serious conversation about foreign policy issues early on in the debate.
He went on to cite one exchange between Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the topic of China, asserting that despite their heated rhetoric, both have similar skeletons in their closets.
DeSantis claimed that, as governor of South Carolina, Haley “welcomed” Chinese officials into the state, “gave them land near a military base, wrote the Chinese ambassador a love letter saying what a great friend they were” and generally relied on China to support economic development projects.
DeSantis touted his own efforts to prevent Chinese interests from purchasing property in Florida, but Ramaswamy offered a real-time fact check.
“What he left out, though, Ron, and be honest about it, there was a lobbying-based exception in that bill that allowed Chinese nationals to buy land within a 20-mile radius of a military base, lobbied for by one of your donors, so I think we need to call a spade a spade,” he said during the debate.
For her part, Haley acknowledged that her administration oversaw the arrival of a China-based fiberglass company but accused DeSantis of hypocrisy on the issue.
“You have a company that is a manufacturer of Chinese military planes,” she said. “They are expanding two training sites at two of your airports now, one of which is 12 miles away from a naval base.”
Ramaswamy later told Breitbart News’s Matthew Boyle that neither Haley and DeSantis — who are jockeying for a distant second place behind front-runner Donald Trump — are in a position to lecture anyone on China policies.
He accused Haley of being “a China stooge until she tried to talk tough now,” adding that “Ron is really not that different.”
In the end, Ramaswamy said he is motivated by the truth and is willing to call out anyone he believes is being dishonest, accusing the GOP and news outlets far and wide of treating Haley with kid gloves because she is a woman.
“It’s why she’s the candidate of choice for The New York Times, CNN, and the mainstream media,” he said. “And our Republican National Committee is hiring that mainstream media to run our debates. It’s a broken and corrupt process.”
