MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan pushed 2024 Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for answers during a contentious interview Tuesday. It has subsequently went viral, and Hasan says there’s a simple reason for that.
Hasan asked the candidate about his past criticisms of Donald Trump. In his book, Ramaswamy argued Trump had acted in a “downright abhorrent” manner. The 38-year-old has since changed his tune and routinely sings the praises of the former President. The MSNBC host wondered why.
“You say he behaved in downright abhorrent behavior that makes him a danger to democracy. What was it that was downright abhorrent?” Hasan asked.
Ramaswamy failed to answer the question, so Hasan asked a second, and third time.
I think that the way a true leader should have handled that situation should have been to actually say,” remarked Ramaswamy before Hasan charged him with dodging the question.
“I understand, you keep saying what you would have done, I just want to hear from your mouth, unless you’re scared of him,” posited Hasan. “Why won’t you say what he did that was ‘downright abhorrent?’”
“I’m not going to. I’m not going to let you stitch together three things together,” said Ramaswamy.
However, the comments from Hasan were not three quotes stitched together. In fact, it was the exact wording used by Ramaswamy at the time.
After the clip went viral, Hasan spoke with colleague Chris Hayes about the interaction Wednesday evening, saying the reason it garnered attention was due to Ramaswamy’s history of revisin.
“The takeaway I had is that there are two big issues with Ramaswamy. One is, what is his qualification to be President of the United States? The other is, can we trust anything he says? Those were the two things I stuck to. He was a little irked by that, he did the kind of, ‘Oh these are gotchas. Why can’t we talk about substance?’, but my point is why would I want to discuss the details of your peace plan for Ukraine before we’ve first established whether you should be president?” Mehdi Hasan argued.
“Anyone can say, ‘I’ve got a plan for Ukraine.’ You go on the internet right now, 100 people have opinions on Ukraine. The issue is: why this guy? What’s he going to do about it? How can we trust him?”
