Prospective 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy alleged during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that he was misquoted by The Atlantic while discussing “the truth” about 9/11. The publication is now pushing back.
Ramaswamy told Semafor that a quote published by The Atlantic wasn’t what he said, before telling Collins “I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually” when asked about his statements about 9/11 and the January 6th Insurrection.
“I think it is legitimate to say, ‘How many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?’ Like, I think we want—maybe the answer is zero, probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero,” The Atlantic quoted Ramaswamy as saying. “But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.”
During The Source on CNN Monday, Collins asked Ramaswamy what he meant by that statement.
“This is really it’s funny. I mean, The Atlantic is playing the same game as CNN. It’s funny,” Vivek Ramaswamy responded. “What I said is on January 6, I do believe that there were many federal agents in the field and we deserve to know who they are on 9/11.”
When asked by Collins if the quote was wrong, Ramaswamy concurred.
“I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually,” the candidate replied. “I’ll actually just lift the curtain on how media works. Again, I asked that reporter to send the recording because it was on the record. He refused to do it.”
On Tuesday, The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson released the portion of the interview Ramaswamy was claiming he was misquoted in. The candidate did, in fact, say exactly what he was quoted as saying in the recording published to the website.
The controversy comes one day after a report that Newsmax asked Ramaswamy’s campaign to spend more on political advertising with the network before it would cover him more frequently. The cable channel has strongly denied those allegations.
