Vivek Ramaswamy Rants Against CNN for Disqualifying Him From ‘Most Boring’ Debate Ahead of Iowa Caucus
- The Indian American will hold a town hall with right-wing podcaster Tim Pool where he “won’t hold back.”
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been going on a rant against CNN after he was disqualified from attending an upcoming debate hosted by the network, claiming it would be “the most boring in modern history.” Instead of the debate stage in Iowa, Ramaswamy, like Trump, will hold a town hall with right-wing podcaster Tim Pool where he “won’t hold back.”
The Indian American failed to make it to the debate stage in Iowa on Jan. 10 because he couldn’t meet CNN’s criteria of getting “at least 10 percent in three separate national and/or Iowa polls of Republican caucus-goers or primary voters that meet its standards for reporting.” The deadline for qualifying for the debate was today (Jan. 2), “as the network would only consider polls that were conducted no earlier than Oct. 15 and released no later than today,” according to BuzzFeed.
Former president Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have qualified for the debate, with Trump, the front-runner in the race, skipping the debate again. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did not qualify for the debate as well. However, both Rmaswamy and Christie “may still hit the requirements to appear at CNN’s New Hampshire debate on Jan. 21,” BuzzFeed News said. According to HuffPost, Trump is scheduled to attend a Fox News town hall at the same time as the CNN debate, “in another bid to counter-program his dwindling GOP competition.”
In a lengthy post on X, Ramaswamy slammed the network, listing “the backstory on CNN’s shenanigans,” against him. He accused the network of “disgracefully cut short” its Dec 13, Iowa town hall with him he “correctly pointed out uncomfortable truths about Jan 6, which CNN instantly dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories.’”
A day later, on Dec. 14, he said the network “threatened my campaign on the phone with a cease-and-desist.” CNN also had “YouTube black out the town hall after it got 200k+ views on YouTube in a matter of hours. Yet Nikki Haley’s CNN town hall was still up after 6 months (68k total views, sad).” On the same day, he said “CNN notified my campaign that multiple qualifying polls, which the RNC used for each of the RNC debates, mysteriously wouldn’t count for CNN’s fake ‘debate’ in Iowa on January 10.”
He complained about the criticism he received from CNN hosts and reporters, naming senior media “reporter” Oliver Darcy; commentator Van Jones, and anchors Anderson Cooper, Pamela Brown, and Kaitlan Collins as well as “token conservative” commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin.
A day after the Dec. 13 debate, Darcy called out CNN for “helping to legitimize” Ramaswamy’s “dangerous lies” with a town hall on Wednesday. In CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter, Darcy accused the network of “helping to legitimize the dishonest GOP presidential hopeful who has spewed dangerous lies and injected poison into the national discourse at every chance.”
In his post on X, Ramaswamy listed what each of the CNN hosts and reporters said about him. Van Jones said he was “‘literally shaking’ when he heard me speak,” he wrote, adding that he said his rhetoric is “one step away from Nazi propaganda.” He said Cooper accused him of delivering a “soliloquy of conspiracy theories,” while Brown said he has a “history of peddling disinformation,” and Griffin said his rhetoric is “damaging to the country.” Similarly, he said Collins said he uses a “reasonable tone to sell sinister lies to people who aren’t paying close attention and might think what he is saying maybe is legitimate.”
Meanwhile, in Iowa, Ramaswamy has not hit 10 percent in any survey of Iowa GOP voters since October, according to Real Clear Polling. Last month, he reached a high of 8 percent in an Emerson poll. ABC News noted that although he has held 192 campaigns in Iowa, the highest of any candidate, he is “currently averaging just 6 percent in the polls, putting him on track for a fourth-place finish.”
In the last few weeks, as his campaign struggled to gain any traction, Ramaswamy has needed his TV ads in early primary states. He’s also promised to remove his name from ballots in states if they ban Trump, calling on other GOP contenders to do the same.
The Iowa caucuses will be held on Jan. 15, while the New Hampshire primary will be held on Jan. 23.