WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s rivals have found themselves either denouncing or defending the former president as he faces legal troubles related to a federal investigation his efforts to subvert the 2020 election and incite supporters on Jan. 6.
But where biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, stands on the issue is not so clear-cut.
A week after the Jan. 6 attack, Ramaswamy, who is running for the GOP nomination, tweeted that “What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple. I’ve said it before and did so in my piece,” referring to a Wall Street Journal article he co-authored.
He also tweeted that same week that “Unfortunately Trump’s egregious behavior last week blinds us from seeing that Big Tech’s cure is worse.”
During a recent interview with USA TODAY, however, Ramaswamy said that he doesn’t believe Trump was responsible for what happened on Jan. 6.
“This is not to defend him,” Ramaswamy, a Yale law school graduate with a net worth of about $630 million, said. “This is because I think we will get it wrong and fail to learn the lesson (of what led to it) and as a consequence, have even worse that we can expect in the future.”
Here’s a closer look at Ramaswamy’s comments on the matter and what his rivals are saying.
Ramaswamy: ‘Pervasive censorship was responsible for January 6’
Ramaswamy said in the interview that there’s a clear distinction between how Trump handled Jan. 6 and whether he was responsible for it.
“I think that censorship − pervasive censorship − was responsible for January 6 … I believe that’s the cause of January 6, but that doesn’t mean that President Trump acted in somehow a respectable manner,” Ramaswamy said. “These are two separate things.”
He referenced the Wall Street journal article he co-authored which discusses how Facebook and Twitter had banned Trump and some of his supporters after the Jan. 6 attack and that this alleged censorship is a violation of free speech.
“I’ve stood by that position then as I do now, but I also think that that’s very important not to conflate that view with somehow saying that President Trump behaved in the manner that I would have recommended,” Ramaswamy said. “No, he did not.”
Ramaswamy said that he believes it is “unproductive for our country to blame Trump for January 6, because it exonerates everyone else from introspection on what actually led to the frustrations of Americans that boiled over that day,” referencing the COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates and the 2020 election as a base for having to “sort all of this out.”
“If you tell people they cannot scream that is when they tear things down,” Ramaswamy said. “And I think that’s exactly what happened on January 6.”
However, in his book “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back,” Ramaswamy criticized Trump’s refusal to accept to the election results.
“It was a dark day for democracy,” Ramaswamy wrote. “The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.”
Last year, a bipartisan House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack wrote in its final report that Trump’s false claims of election fraud allegedly played a role in the attack.
What are Ramaswamy’s 2024 rivals saying about Trump and Jan. 6?
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who’s been a vocal critic of Trump, said in an interview with USA TODAY that Jan. 6 was a circumstance that Trump created.
“He created it from election night forward, not just on January 6. It started on election night when he told everybody that the election was stolen, when he had no evidence to prove that it had been,” Christie said. “And every statement he made after that, and every action he took after that, up to and including January 6, caused January 6.”
Christie also called Trump a “coward,” noting how Trump told his supporters in a speech on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, a park near the White House, that he would march to the Capitol with them but never joined in.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who testified before a grand jury in the Jan. 6 investigation, told NewsNation that Trump words on Jan. 6 were “reckless” and said that history will hold Trump to account for his actions, but hopes he doesn’t face an indictment.
“My hope is that the judgment about the president’s actions on Jan. 6 would be left to the American people,” Pence said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of Trump’s fiercest rivals, said that Trump “should have come out more forcefully” to stop Jan. 6 rioters and that it was shown how he “was in the White House and didn’t do anything while things were going on,” according to The Washington Post. However, he said that whether Trump acted with criminal intent is a “different issue entirely.”
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said on Fox News a month after the Capitol attack that Democrats shouldn’t be putting the blame of Jan. 6 on Trump. However, Scott appeared to have reversed his stance last year when asked on Fox News whether Trump was at fault surrounding the Jan. 6 uproar.
“Of course,” Scott said. “I would say we all have the most responsibility for our own words.”
