Vivek Ramaswamy Gets Into a Heated Debate With CNN Interviewer Over Donald Trump’s “Vermin” Remarks

"I pledge to you that we will root out the communist, Marxist, fascist, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," former president Donald Trump told his supporters during a recent public rally. His relentless attacks on the opposition party drew a favorable amount of criticism for his choice of words. Numerous news outlets even compared his statements to notorious autocrats such as 'Hitler' and 'Mussolini.'

As per Fox News, CNN interviewer, Abby Phillip, tried to question Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy about Trump's remarks, which led to a heated exchange of words between them. "This is a classic mainstream media move," Ramaswamy expressed vehemently on live TV, "Pick some individual phrase of Donald Trump, focus on literally that word without actually interrogating the substance of what's at issue." 

"The word was chosen for a reason," Phillip tried to defend her question. The Republican 2024 hopeful then cut her point and stated, "It's actually describing a series of behaviors- you have Antifa and other related groups that have been burning down cities for the last three years in this country wildly violating the rule of law," Ramaswamy said. "We have an invasion on our southern border, we have millions of people crossing our southern border. Let's talk about the substance of why we have to recognize that we're not in ordinary times." Phillip was seen interrupting as Ramaswamy tried to explain his point, asking, "Would you describe them as vermin?", and further adding "Would you use that language yourself?" To this the biotech entrepreneur noted, "I haven't used that language." The CNN interviewer kept on pressing the issue on him "Well, would you?". 

Ramaswamy responded, "You can look at my track record on the campaign trail, I talk about the issues, we all talk about them differently. But what I'm not gonna do is play some game of focusing on some word that somebody else said without ignoring entirely the substance of what we're actually talking about- a border crisis of historic proportions, economic stagnation we haven't seen in 50 years, a national identity crisis and the loss of national pride in the next generation that's potentially existential for this country." 

"Let's talk about our dependence on China on a day we're actually talking about Xi Jinping- picking on Donald Trump's word ‘vermin’ to talk about that status quo, Ramaswamy said. He further elaborated, "You know what's vermin? What's running around San Francisco on a given day before Gavin Newsom cleaned it up on a dime to roll out the red carpet for Xi Jinping. If he could do that for Xi Jinping, he could have done it on an ordinary day. And yet we're here sitting talking not about the substance of that but on one word that Donald Trump said in some speech in Miami."

"This is what's wrong with the mainstream media- focus on the substance and let's have an actual policy debate rather than talking to a presidential candidate instead of the policy substance of what's actually going on in the country picking on some word that Donald Trump said on a certain day and asking me for comment on it? Give me a break," he added.