Has Vivek’s Moment Arrived?

Vivek Ramaswamy’s efforts to distinguish himself from his older, more rehearsed, and more experienced establishment opponents appear to be working.

A new Rasmussen poll found Ramaswamy garnering 13 percent support among likely Republican primary voters, placing him in a distant second place behind former president Donald Trump, who led the pack with 60 percent. Like all polls conducted before the primary candidates take the stage for the first debate, the Rasmussen poll should be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s nevertheless noteworthy that Ramaswamy has risen from relative obscurity as a biotech entrepreneur and author to something approaching a household name as a presidential candidate, outpacing a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Nikki Haley and a sitting senator in Tim Scott.

Cook Political Report publisher and editor Amy Walter said this week that the entrepreneur “comes up a lot” in focus groups “because he’s just so different from the other candidates.”

“He has not cut a traditional political profile,” she added.

Interest in Ramaswamy is undeniable: a RealClearPolitics polling average has Ramaswamy in third place with 6.6 percent support, behind Trump (54.3. percent) and DeSantis (14.4 percent). It seems clear at this stage that he’s not going to be the nominee, but if he reaches 10 percent in the early-primary states, it could spell disaster for DeSantis, who needs all the non-Trump votes he can get.

His constant presence on the campaign trail has made for several viral moments, including an exchange he had with a “pansexual” activist who confronted him at the Iowa State Fair. Ramaswamy engaged in a conversation with the activist, inviting her to share her own opinions, and ultimately said that he believes “we live in a country where free adults should be free to dress how they want, behave how they want, and that’s fine — but you don’t oppress, you don’t become oppressive by foisting that on others, and that especially includes kids because kids aren’t the same as adults.” The activist thanked Ramaswamy for his response and he thanked her for her “civility.”

He was cheered for a similar interaction with a pro-abortion activist who heckled him at an event in Iowa last month. As she was escorted out of the room, Ramaswamy invited the activist to return and to finish sharing what she had to say. The woman proceeded to tearfully share the difficulties she has faced as a single mother. Ramaswamy thanked her for “doing one of the most important things” by raising a child and asked the audience to applaud the activist as she left the room.

It’s been nearly impossible to log onto social media without seeing a clip of Ramaswamy on the campaign trail or on cable news. Over the weekend, he went viral for rapping Eminem’s Lose Yourself at the conclusion of his “fair-side chat” with Iowa governor Kim Reynolds.

As his profile grows, Ramaswamy has attracted attention from a far-right subset of the Republican base for his heterodox opinions on a variety of issues — and his ardent defenses of former president Donald Trump.

During an appearance on Fox News this week after Trump’s fourth indictment in four months, he told Neil Cavuto that he believes the prosecutions against Trump are “wrong.”

When Cavuto pushed back, questioning whether 91 criminal charges against Trump across four cases could all possibly be politicized, Ramaswamy remained undeterred. “I think, Neil, just because the government has brought a case — if we’re going to be a culture that now starts to say there must be something wrong if the government has charged 91 counts, I think that’s a people of sheep. And when the people behave like sheep, that breeds a government of wolves.”

While Ramaswamy has at times defended Trump so aggressively he has seemed more like a campaign surrogate for the former president than a presidential candidate himself, he has distinguished himself from other GOP contenders on a number of issues that have earned him attention both good and bad.

This week alone, Ramaswamy has stirred up controversy with comments about drug decriminalization, Taiwan, and Hunter Biden.

“You don’t hear me talk about the war on drugs. I’m not a war-on-drugs person,” Ramaswamy said during an event in New Hampshire in June, though his comments were first reported by Fox News this week.

Ramaswamy reportedly said he was “probably the only person in the modern history” of the Republican Party open to considering “off-ramps” for people to access certain hard drugs, such as “psychedelics, from ayahuasca to ketamine.” The report noted that Ramaswamy specifically mentioned veterans and those struggling with PTSD, but said he “suggested others could eventually have the same access to certain drugs, citing people who died as a result of ingesting fentanyl that he said could have survived if they had ‘an alternative path.’”

“I’m eyes wide open and willing to be bold in crossing boundaries we haven’t yet crossed to address the demand side of this as well,” Ramaswamy said.

“I think in the long run, and I’m talking about over a long-run period of time, decriminalization, serially, is an important part of the long-run solution here. . . . That’s gotta be part of the solution,” he later added.

Ramaswamy reiterated his stance during an appearance on the Liberty Lockdown podcast in July, saying that rather than being “a war-on-drugs guy,” he was “actually a path-to-legalization guy for a lot of different drugs, and a path to reasonable decriminalization.”

“Many veterans are dying of fentanyl. I think fewer would be dying if there was access to ayahuasca, if there was access, legal access, to psychedelics more broadly. We can talk about, we can have a reasonable conversation about ketamine and others. So, I’m in that direction,” he said.

Ramaswamy claimed that his comments were being misrepresented after receiving backlash this week, saying he was not expressing support for the decriminalization of hard drugs.

“More planted trash. I support decriminalizing ayahuasca & ketamine for veterans suffering from PTSD, to prevent the epidemic of fentanyl & suicide. It’s pathetic that Establishment candidates are using lies as a substitute for a message. When you strike the swamp, the swamp strikes back,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on X.

He also raised eyebrows this week when he suggested during an interview with Hugh Hewitt that China could invade Taiwan without major consequences after the U.S. has achieved “semiconductor independence,” which he said would happen by 2028 under a Ramaswamy administration.

“China will have no reason to aggress towards Taiwan between now and the end of my first term in 2028, if we show we’re serious about it,” he said. “But by being strategically clear, then that commitment changes after we’ve achieved semiconductor independence. Now put yourself in Xi Jinping’s shoes. He has no interest in taking that risk.”

He added: “And the truth of the matter is there are two reasons why China wants to annex Taiwan. One is to squat on the semiconductor supply chain so they can exert leverage over the United States of America. That’s not happening on my watch. I’d take a firm position on that. But the second reason why is that they have unfinished nationalistic business dating back to their civil war in 1949. And if that’s the sole basis for Xi Jinping going after Taiwan after we have semiconductor independence, then you know what? I am not going to send our sons and daughters to die over that conflict. And that’s consistent with my position on Ukraine as well.”

Ramaswamy doubled down, saying his commitment to defending Taiwan would extend “only as far as 2028.”

“We will not take the risk of war that risks Americans lives after that for some nationalistic dispute between China and Taiwan,” he said.

Ramaswamy’s nonconformist commentary didn’t stop there, though.

He also said he would be open to considering pardons for members of the Biden family “in the interest of moving the nation forward.”

“After we have shut down the FBI, after we have refurbished the Department of Justice, after we have systemically pardoned anyone who was a victim of a political [sic] motivated prosecution — from Donald Trump and peaceful January 6 protests — then would I would be open to evaluating pardons for members of the Biden family in the interest of moving the nation forward,” Ramaswamy reportedly told the New York Post.

“It is a broad theme of this candidacy, leading us to a national renewal rather than a national divorce. It’s part of a broader vision of an American revitalization,” he added.

This week’s controversies are only the latest in a string of Ramaswamy-isms that have gone against the grain, including the instance when he suggested that Taiwan could be protected by placing an AR-15 in the hands of every Taiwanese family, or that the U.S. government hasn’t told us the truth about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (Ramaswamy later backtracked on the 9/11 comments in a post on X: “Do I believe our government has been completely forthright about 9/11? No. Al-Qaeda clearly planned and executed the attacks, but we have never fully addressed who knew what in the Saudi government about it. We *can* handle the TRUTH.”)

Ramaswamy’s comments have not done much to assuage his critics’ concerns that he’s not a serious candidate.

NR’s Jim Geraghty wrote earlier this month that Ramaswamy strikes him “as a man who’s running for the 8 p.m. prime-time slot on Fox News, not the presidency.” Charles C. W. Cooke has offered an even harsher assessment.

But if Ramaswamy is indeed having a moment, his star power could be supercharged by the GOP primary debate next week. He has shown a willingness to debate across forms of media and has largely held strong to his messaging.

And while most of the Republican primary field is looking forward to the GOP debate next week, Trump has not said whether or not he plans to participate, and he has planned his own event next week: a “major News Conference” on Monday in Bedminster to unveil the results of a “Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.”

Trump’s comments led Georgia governor Brian Kemp to affirm, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen.”

And despite being in first place, Trump attacked seventh-place Chris Christie this week, calling the former New Jersey governor “so bad for America, while being the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats.”

“Now, all he does is attack me, spewing woke, radical lies. Christie is a sad, pathetic slob who begged me for jobs in my Administration and is bitter that I didn’t give him any of them. Stone cold loser!” Trump added.

Christie replied: “Whatever… see you at the debate in Milwaukee or not, coward”

Around NR

• Dan McLaughlin followed DeSantis around the Iowa State Fair over the weekend. Read his dispatch here.

DeSantis will never be the sort of bigger-than-life personality who charms the pants off everyone he meets, but I saw no sign of him being a bad retail politician as he met again and again and again with people who emerged from the fair crowd. His affect during the entire day was that of a no-nonsense dad navigating a theme park with a lot of patience for things that would wear many men down to their last nerve.

• The alleged war of words that took place in an Iowa bar over the weekend between the DeSantis camp and a Trump supporter is obviously not a great look for the governor’s campaign, Luther Ray Abel writes.

If the DeSantis campaign is serious about winning, it cannot provide such a target-rich environment for left-wing politicos to beat them up. Thankfully, the spat turned out to be only harsh words exchanged in a yuppie bar. But the unforced error, with Trump over 50 percent and the rest of the GOP primary pack dragging him down — willing to take even the cheapest of shots — is madness. Put Mitt Romney in charge of the bar expense account, or else get comfortable in Tallahassee.

• Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expressed his support for a 15-week abortion ban, but then quickly walked it back. He said he misunderstood an interviewer’s question because of “a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair” on Sunday. Ari Blaff has more here.

• Noah Rothman has a piece of advice for Republicans: It’s time to come to terms with Trump’s legal peril.

Trump will spend the months leading up to the 2024 general election in and out of courtrooms. . . . Even assuming some of these dates could still be postponed, they are unlikely to all be pushed beyond the presidential election. And they will dominate the nation’s headlines during the campaign. Voters will be bombarded with evidence presented at trial, the oral arguments attorneys make on behalf of the state and the defendant, and reporters’ assessments of how judges and jurors alike responded to the day’s testimony.

• In a distant second place, DeSantis has “not much left to lose,” Jim Geraghty writes.

He might as well swing for the fences. Trump has made abundantly clear that he believes the 2024 nomination was always reserved for him alone, and that all other Republicans were making an enormously disrespectful insult by even contemplating a run for the nomination. DeSantis will be on Trump’s enemies list for the rest of Trump’s days. If it can’t get much worse, DeSantis might as well take the hardest swing at Trump that he can. And, as always, if you come at the king, you had better not miss.

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