Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has the one quality the establishment media despises: He tells the truth.
Nothing, in fact, causes an establishment reporter to hyperventilate more quickly than a firm challenge to race-baiting lies.
In a Thursday interview with NBC’s Dasha Burns, Ramaswamy showed how to handle leftist propagandists who push false narratives.
That portion of the interview was apparently the liberal media outlet’s attempt at damage control after the candidate went viral with his response to a Washington Post reporter who tried to corner him earlier in the week by claiming he had failed to condemn white supremacy.
“I’m not going to recite some catechism for you,” Ramaswamy told the Post reporter. “I’m against vicious racial discrimination in this country. I’m not pledging allegiance to your new religion of modern woke-ism … I’m not going to bend the knee to your new religion.”
WAPO reporter doubles down: You didn’t say that you condemn white supremacy though.
She immediately regrets it.@VivekGRamaswamy isn’t going to play the game. pic.twitter.com/2NHshriVZa
— Chris Carapezza (@Chris_Carapezza) January 3, 2024
Possibly alarmed that a video of that exchange garnered over 22 million views on social media platform X, NBC’s Burns took a turn at trying to corner Ramaswamy.
The candidate, however, refused to play the game.
Chief Nerd, a prominent conservative account with more than 406,000 followers on X, posted a clip of Ramaswamy’s Thursday exchange with Burns.
Do you agree with Vivek Ramaswamy?
“NBC News Melts Down When Vivek Ramaswamy Doesn’t Play Along w/ Their ‘White Supremacy’ Narrative,” Chief Nerd tweeted in part.
Chief Nerd had it right. The source of Burns’ meltdown lay in Ramaswamy’s refusal to talk about “white supremacy” the way she wanted.
NBC News Melts Down When Vivek Ramaswamy Doesn’t Play Along w/ Their ‘White Supremacy’ Narrative
“So who are we supposed to look to when we’re talking about this?!?” 🤣 pic.twitter.com/A1h6npC7yI
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 5, 2024
“It’s incumbent on us for us to define what white supremacy is,” Ramaswamy said.
The Republican candidate then cited punctuality, the written word and the nuclear family as asinine examples of white supremacy touted by woke race-baiters such as Ibram X. Kendi, Ayanna Pressley and supporters of Black Lives Matter.
At that point, Burns shrieked a high-pitched objection.
“Look, Mr. Ramaswamy, this is what you do, though. You choose straw-man arguments. Last night, you brought up Jussie Smollett as the best example of white supremacy,” the reporter said while talking over the interviewee.
That gave Ramaswamy an opportunity — and proved his point.
“Jussie Smollett was the hottest thing in news,” he reminded Burns.
Smollett, of course, staged a hate-crime hoax in January 2019. A jury convicted him on five charges in December 2021.
The most memorable aspect of the case, however, was Smollett’s (false) claim that supporters of then-President Donald Trump had attacked him and used racial slurs. The establishment media ran with that part of the story because it fit their “white supremacy” narrative.
Ramaswamy, therefore, blamed the establishment media for fostering division by advancing that narrative.
Meanwhile, Burns desperately tried to get Ramaswamy to talk about so-called “hate crimes.” She even cited statistics from the Anti-Defamation League and the FBI.
But Ramaswamy, the author of “Woke, Inc. – Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” would not budge.
“What they classify as a ‘hate crime’ is itself a political judgment,” he said.
“Are we supposed to ignore white-supremacist ‘hate crimes?’” Burns asked.
“We’re not supposed to ignore any kind of crime, Dasha. That’s what I say. But what I see is a selective reporting,” Ramaswamy replied.
The Republican candidate then cited the Nashville transgender school shooter’s manifesto, which authorities suppressed for seven months. In fact, some platforms still tried to censor the manifesto even after it leaked in November.
Ramaswamy, of course, made his point clear to anyone with an honest view of things. The establishment media trumpeted the Smollett story, but had no interest in the manifesto. Why? The former served their woke narrative, while the latter did not.
At that point, Burns had no chance. But she persisted and even managed to squeak out another disingenuous objection.
“OK, so why are you OK talking about that manifesto and not talking about the manifesto from the 2015 Dylann Roof shooting?” she demanded, referring to the racist mass murderer who slaughtered nine black churchgoers at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
“I’m more than OK talking about both, but what I’m asking is why did the mainstream media suppress that one? Why did the police suppress that one?” he asked in reference to the 2023 transgender shooter’s manifesto.
Unwilling to acknowledge the establishment media’s role in promoting divisive narratives and squelching news that undermines them, Burns predictably shifted the focus to Ramaswamy himself.
Specifically, she asked if the Republican candidate worried that his “rhetoric” would alienate black and Latino voters.
Ramaswamy knocked that one out of the park by pointing her to an exchange he had with a black pastor in Iowa last week. That exchange went viral and now has more than 4.7 million views on X.
Readers can watch the pastor’s exchange with Ramaswamy below:
A black pastor in Iowa challenged me yesterday: Am I just ignoring historical racism in the U.S. when I say “reverse racism is racism”? He’s a good man. I answered him honestly.
📍 Warren County, IA pic.twitter.com/G01D660Pga— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 30, 2023
Eight years ago, Trump took on the establishment media and won. They hated him for it, and they still do. As a result, millions of Americans will never see the “fake news” the same way again.
Ramaswamy gives off Trump-ian vibes. Like Trump, he refuses to bend the knee to the race-baiting establishment’s woke narrative.
But where Trump bludgeons the press with massive hammer blows, Ramaswamy bleeds them with relentless rhetorical flourishes.
Expect the establishment media to grow even more shrill as Ramaswamy earns more support.
