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‘You know what’s vermin?’ Vivek Ramaswamy's take on Donald Trump's viral remark
The GOP hopeful said, ‘You know what’s vermin? What’s running around San Francisco on a given day before Gavin Newsom cleaned it up on a dime…’
Republican Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy addressed Donald Trump's “vermin” remark in a recent interview. On Wednesday, the GOP hopeful criticised CNN anchor Abby Phillip for asking him to comment on Trump's viral comment. “Picking on some word that Donald Trump said on a certain day and asking me for a comment, give me a break,” he said. Though Ramaswamy slammed Phillip for pressing him into addressing the former president's choice of words, he himself labelled the homeless and drug addicts on San Francisco streets as “vermin.”
The CNN Newsnight anchor asked, “That language, they live like vermin, do you believe that that is, as your Republican colleague Chris Christie has said, neo-Nazi rhetoric?” To this, Ramaswamy said, “This is a classic mainstream media move, pick some individual phrase of Donald Trump, focus on literally that word without actually interrogating the substance of what’s at issue.”
When Phillip noted that the word “vermin” was “chosen for a reason,” the American entrepreneur expressed his concerns over “a cultural war” in the US. He added, “Well, you know what? It’s actually describing a series of behaviours. You have Antifa and other related groups that have been burning down cities for the last three years in this country.”
However, the commentator then asked him whether he would describe them as vermin. To this, he declared that “the vocabulary of the vermin or not is not what’s important.” After being pressurized by Phillips once again whether he would use that language himself, Ramaswamy went on to give a lengthy statement. He said, “You know what’s vermin? What’s running around San Francisco on a given day before Gavin Newsom cleaned it up on a dime to roll up the red carpet for Xi Jinping.”
“If he could do that for Xi Jinping, he could have done it on an ordinary day, and yet we’re here sitting and talking not about the substance of that but on one word Donald Trump said in some speech in Miami,” Ramaswamy added. He then criticised the “mainstream media” and said, “Focus on the substance and let’s have an actual policy debate rather than talking to a presidential candidate instead of the policy substance of what’s actually going on in the country.”
