Molly Jong-Fast: From Trump to Vivek: The GOP Is Primed for Another Charismatic Phony

[Celerity]

Ramaswamy’s post-debate blitz speaks to the priorities of the media—and state of the Republican base.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/vivek-ramaswamy-donald-trump-gop-2024



On this last, slow, hot week in August, we are trapped in a Vivek Ramaswamy news cycle. Ramaswamy has figured out the path to free media is lined with saying extreme things like how “the climate change agenda is a hoax” at last week’s first Republican debate, or more recently, doubling down on calling Rep. Ayanna Pressley a member of the “modern KKK” (CNN’s State of the Union) or suggesting Mike Pence should’ve implemented new voting reforms before certifying the 2020 election (NBC’s Meet the Press). He was still pushing that bizarre January 6 scenario days later on MSNBC.

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What’s important about Ramaswamy is not his ideology—he has no coherent one—but how susceptible our political and media ecosystem is to a charismatic phony. He’s become a recurring character on cable news, recently claiming on CNN that he was misquoted in The Atlantic when raising questions about the 9/11 attacks. But The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson had the tape, which of course included Ramaswamy asking, “How many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?” Denying something that is actually on tape, how very Trumpy.

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Two days later, at the Fox News–hosted GOP debate, Ramaswamy claimed to be “the only candidate onstage who isn’t bought and paid for” when decrying the climate “hoax.” But it turns out that Ramaswamy is “bought and paid” or at least “paid for” because his investment firm, Strive, has a fund called DRLL, which, as Semafor reports, “invests in US energy companies and urges them to keep drilling for oil so long as it’s profitable.” As Heated’s Emily Atkin put it, “Ramaswamy makes money from climate denial.”

And yet, in the past, Ramaswamy has acknowledged that climate change is “real,” just one of his campaign flip-flops. On recognizing Juneteenth, for instance, he went from supportive—“Let it be a celebration of the American Dream itself,” he said on video—to against the holiday just two months later, telling​​ Iowa voters,“Cancel Juneteenth or one of the other useless ones we made up.”

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