Pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy confirmed during an interview on Sunday that he called former President Donald Trump a “sore loser” after the 2020 presidential election. Ramaswamy also took a shot at former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the results of the election, drawing a response from Pence’s team, which fired back by highlighting how Ramaswamy has “flipped and flopped” on the issue.
NBC News host Chuck Todd asked Ramaswamy if he referred in his book “Nation of Victims” to Trump being a “sore loser.”
Ramaswamy confirmed that he indeed was referring to Trump and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Todd: From your book. No one likes a sore loser and that’s one of the worst victim complexes of all. Are you referring to Donald Trump?
Ramaswamy: I referred in that chapter both to Stacy Abrams and to Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/aOWWRGsjZe
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 27, 2023
Todd also asked Ramaswamy if Pence did the right thing on January 6, 2021, a question that the other Republican candidates were asked during the first party primary debate last week.
Ramaswamy said that he would have “done it very differently” and that Pence missed a “historic opportunity” to unite the country and show “heroism.”
Ramaswamy then said that if he were vice president, as president of the Senate, he would have overseen the passing of federal laws making elections “single-day” events, where only paper ballots are used, and government issued ID cards are mandated.
“I would have led through that level of reform, then, on that condition, certified the election results, served it up to the president, President Trump then, to sign that into law, and on January 7th, declared the reelection campaign pursuant to a free and fair election,” he said.
WATCH: GOP presidential candidate @VivekGRamaswamy, who voted by mail in 2020, says fmr. VP Mike Pence should have implemented “reforms” prior to certifying the 2020 election to build consensus:
➡️ Single-day voting on Election Day
➡️ Paper ballots
➡️ Government-issued ID pic.twitter.com/JGWYX5r1r1
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) August 27, 2023
Pence’s team fired back in a statement noting that Ramaswamy in the past squarely blamed Trump for the riot on January 6th and called Trump’s actions “Downright abhorrent.”
What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple. I’ve said it before and did so in my piece.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) January 12, 2021
Pence’s team noted that in his book, Ramaswamy wrote:
It was a dark day for democracy. 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. … What he delivered in the end was just another tale of grievance, a persecution complex that swallowed much of the Republican party whole. … I was especially disappointed when I saw President Trump take a page from the Stacey Abrams playbook. His claims were just as weak as Abram’s.
“Mike Pence, a man I have great respect for, decided it was his constitutional duty to resist the president’s attempts to get him to unilaterally overturn the results of the election, even in the face of the January 6 Capitol riot,” he continued, later adding: “I’m simply not convinced the election was stolen.”
Pence’s team then said Ramaswamy changed his tune after he announced his candidacy, saying that he would pardon “all” the “peaceful January 6 protesters,” including Trump. He later shifted from blaming Trump for the riot to blaming “pervasive censorship.”
Inbox: Pence campaign hitting Vivek on this. “Ramaswamy has flipped and flopped around the issue of January 6. His most recent comments are perhaps his most egregious, including on this morning’s edition of Meet The Press on NBC.” https://t.co/4hc5eUOyYB pic.twitter.com/MTy07VHUt1
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 27, 2023