Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pledged on Tuesday to remove himself from Colorado’s Republican primary ballot in response to the state’s Supreme Court’s ruling that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to run in the state over his activity surrounding Jan. 6.
Ramaswamy promised to stay off the ballot until Trump’s eligibility is restored. He called upon his and Trump’s 2024 GOP primary opponents to take the same steps.
“I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Nikki Haley do the same immediately – or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country,” Ramaswamy said in a statement.
Ramaswamy’s statements came shortly after the Colorado Supreme Court decided on Tuesday evening that Trump is disqualified from running for the GOP presidential nomination in their state because he violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says former officeholders cannot run again if they’ve engaged in insurrection against the U.S.
Colorado’s high court said Trump engaged in insurrection due to his activity surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. A Trump spokesperson said they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Shortly before pledging to remove himself from Colorado’s primary ballot in solidarity with Trump, Ramaswamy told ABC News that while it would admittedly be easier to win without the front-runner in the race, the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling against the former president strikes him as “appalling for the future of our country.”
“And to tell you the truth, it would be a lot easier for me to get elected if Trump wasn’t in this race, but that’s not – it’s not about me, and it’s not about another candidate,” Ramaswamy said, speaking to ABC News after his campaign event in Garner, Iowa. “This is wrong. And I think that this is a flagrant violation of the rule of law.”
Later, in Mason City, Iowa, at his seventh and final event of the day on Tuesday, Ramaswamy told a packed bar of voters of his opposition to the court’s decision.
Asked by ABC News later how withdrawing from the ballot will affect his path to the nomination (there are 37 Republican delegates up for grabs in Colorado), Ramaswamy predicted that every remaining Republican candidate will follow suit.
“I think every Republican will end up withdrawing, which means that that won’t affect anyone’s path to the nomination,” he said.
After Ramaswamy first released his statement about removing himself from the Colorado ballot over the court’s Trump decision, the Colorado Republican Party responded to the candidate in a post on X, noting that he would not need to withdraw from the contest because they’d be shifting from the state-run primary to a party-run caucus if the ruling was to stand.
That move, however, would likely trigger a rule change from the Republican National Committee, which has already approved the state party’s nomination plan.
“We would seek a waiver and probably get it,” the Colorado Republican Party’s Chairman, Dave Williams, told ABC News.
The RNC has not responded to ABC’s request for comment.
RamaWHO?
Trump futures are up.
It doesn’t seem Colorado has released any primary polls yet, but I would be shocked if Vivek (it rhymes with Cake) won more than 10 votes. I just drove through a real sister-fucking part of the state and while there was plenty of Trump stuff I didn’t see a single mention of any other candidate. Vivek (it rhymes with Cake) has the most poorly thought-out public persona I’ve seen from the “serious” candidates and appeals to no one here.
I imagine he’s polling at the margin of error in pretty much every state but he might win the actual race he’s running - to get an appointment in the next trump administration
I just don’t know what role he’d be angling for. His personality is like a worse form of Ben Shapiro. Every time he’s been on a debate stage it’s like he’s demanding the teacher forget to give everyone homework so that he can remind them that they forgot to give out homework. He made a little rap to introduce himself as a 38-ass year-old-ass man.
ok
I, too, officially withdraw from the GOP Colorado Primary.
I’m genuinely surprised more candidates didn’t try to just suck up to Trump and echo his positions from the debate stage.
You had your televangelicals, who simply couldn’t bring the juice in the wake of Roe’s reversal. You’ve got the Bush-Era “Please let me do one more genocide!” ghouls who raise a ton of money from the PNAC crowd. And you’ve got the Libertarian-ish “Laws are for little people” business elite suck-ups.
But Ramaswamy seems like the only candidate going all in on the Trump Cult. This should have been DeSantis’s lane for sure, but he pooched it. Nobody else on stage seems to be all-in on the Trump train.
His attempt to pivot from debate kids to conspiracy uncles fell so flat. My brother in Krishna, who do you think the Great Replacement Nazis are describing.
My brother in Krishna, who do you think the Great Replacement Nazis are describing.
Hard to even say anymore. “Great Replacement” is far more about “Not Enough Fuckable Blonde Babies” than it is about this or that Other Race. That’s why you’ve got Matt Gatz running over to Kiev to do human trafficking for evangelical freaks back home.
I think Ramaswamay probably could ride in under the cover of “Aktuly What Aryan Really Means Is…” bow-tie phrenology if he got enough Andrew Tates and Ben Shapiros behind him. Modern American race science is a jumbled mess even by its own insane standards right now. Plenty of people will believe just about fucking anything if you can get Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson to nod at you with a blank stare. But the current Presidential race feels like its powered entirely by 90s-era nostalgia. Ramaswamay can’t win purely because he’s not floating up to me in a fever dream of half remembered “Lifestyle of the Rich And Famous” day time TV episodes.
That’s why you’ve got Matt Gatz running over to Kiev to do human trafficking for evangelical freaks back home.
I mean it makes sense but I must have missed this
The fact that a dude named Vivek Ramaswamy thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the Open Racism Party’s nomination for president is still so funny
You have to act like you want to win to get people to like you, he’s more or less doing this to secure a cabinet position. He’s filthy rich anyways it’s not like he’s losing much by campaigning and what he is losing he’s gaining in clout from maladjusted genXers and zoomers.
Also imagine telling someone in the early 2000s that half of the 2023 RNC finalists and the current VP would be of South Asian descent, that’s a trip.
Did DeSantis even deviate from trump first, or did trump just started to randomly insult him because he noticed that he got some traction, and DeSantis just rolled with it instead of calling him and say “don’t worry boss, you get 2024. I’ll be here in the next run”
Did DeSantis even deviate from trump first, or did trump just started to randomly insult him because he noticed that he got some traction
Hard to say. Republicans love to do whisper smear campaigns and catty campaign remarks to undercut even the folks you ostensibly support.
There was a DeSantis wing of media that definitely came out against Trump. And before NeverTrumpers were backing Hailey, they were all writing 500 word Op-Eds about how liberals needed DeSantis to beat Trump.
Whomever started it, DeSantis clearly wasn’t interested in playing nice from day one.
