One week after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted, "What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple. I've said it before and did so in my piece."
Yesterday, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan asked Ramaswamy four times exactly what Trump did that was "wrong" and "abhorrent," and four times Ramaswamy deflected.
"You say he behaved with downright abhorrent behavior that makes him a danger to democracy," Hasan said. "What was it that was downright abhorrent?"
"Let's actually be really fair to your audience," said Ramaswamy before launching into a bizarre non-answer. "So, on January 10th, 2021, thereabouts, days after the incident, I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that censorship was the real cause of what happened on January 6th."
While Ramaswamy continued, Hasan interrupted and said, "Understood, you are avoiding my question. What did Donald Trump do, in your view, that was downright abhorrent? This is the second time I am asking the question."
Ramaswamy replied with another weird non-answer: "I think that the thing that I would have done differently if I were in his shoes…"
"That's not what I asked, Vivek, with respect," interrupted Hasan.
As the Trump-fearing Ramaswamy spouted more deflective nonsense, Hasan said, "That's not what I asked, with respect. I will ask it a third time. What did Trump do that was egregious, quote, 'downright abhorrent and a danger to democracy.' Can you just explain to our viewers, your words?"
"You're mixing two different quotes!" protested Ramaswamy, who loves to lie about the media misquoting him. "But what did I think was reprehensible about what happened that day? Look, I think that the way a true leader should have handled that situation should have been to actually say…"
"I understand, you keep saying what you would have done. I just want to hear from your mouth, unless you're scared of him. Why won't you say what he did that was 'downright abhorrent?'" Hasan asked yet again.
"I'm not going to. I'm not going to let you stitch together three things together," said Ramaswamy.
"I will read you the quote," said Hasan, "Let's put up the tweet."
That made Ramaswamy mad. "Do you want to have an actual conversation?" he snapped.
"Yes. I want you to answer my question. I've asked it three times," Hasan replied. "It's a simple question. It's your words. It's on the screen. What did he do that was downright abhorrent?"
"I believe that failing to unite this country falls short of what a true leader ought to do. That is why I'm in this race, is to do things differently than any prior president has done them. That's the hard truth." The only hard truth is that Ramaswamy is terrified of losing far-right support by having his past criticism of Trump resurface.
