GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy defends remark comparing Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley to the KKK
WASHINGTON — Presidential candidate and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has seen a rise in popularity among Republican voters in the 2024 GOP primaries, defended his remarks calling Rep. Ayanna Pressly, D-Mass., who is Black, a part of the “modern KKK.”
At a campaign event in Iowa last Friday, Ramaswamy took aim at Pressley’s comments from 2019 when she reportedly said Democrats did not need “any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice” and “any more Black faces that don’t want to be a Black voice.”
Pressley later clarified her remarks, sharing on social media that they were to “encourage *everyone* to lean-in on (and) not run away (from) lifting their unique lived experiences.”
CNN host Dana Bash on Sunday pressed Ramaswamy on his comparison, considering the Ku Klux Klan “was responsible for more than a century’s worth of horrific lynchings, rapes, murders of Black people.”
Ramaswamy did not rescind his comments about Pressley, claiming “the grand wizards of the KKK would be proud of what they would hear her say because there is nothing more racist than saying that your skin color predicts something about the contents of your viewpoints or your ideas.”
Pressley’s comments had the “same spirit” as the KKK, Ramaswamy said.
“I think it is the same spirit to say that I can look at you and based on just your skin color that I know something about the content of your character, that I know something about the content of the viewpoints that you are allowed to express,” Ramaswamy said, also calling the remarks “divisive.”
His comparison, Ramaswamy said, was to “provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” about race in the U.S. “I think we need to have real open honest raw conversation as Americans. That is our path to national unity,” Ramaswamy said.
Pressley’s team called Ramaswamy’s comparison “backwards and harmful, but that is the point,” in a fundraising email to supporters.
“It’s not lost on us that invoking the KKK in an attack on a Black Congresswoman is intentional and deeply unacceptable,” read the email.
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