Ramaswamy doubles down on calling Pressley part of ‘modern KKK’

politics @lemmy.world – 98 points – 1 years ago

Ramaswamy doubles down on calling Pressley part of ‘modern KKK’

GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy did not back down Sunday when questioned about comments he made during a campaign stop in Iowa Friday, calling Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) part of the “modern KKK.”

“I stand by what I said to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” Ramaswamy said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

This little shit is so smarmy.

I can't stop calling him Ramasmarmy! Every time I see that asshole grin on his face.

I was going with Ramaslimy, but I might like smarmy better.

I like it! I'll probably end up doing the same now lol.

During his Friday appearance in Iowa, Ramaswamy accused Pressley, the first Black woman elected to represent Massachusetts in Congress, of racism and compared her to “modern grand wizards” of the Ku Klux Klan for comments she made in 2019, saying: “We don’t need any more Black faces that don’t want to be a Black voice.” Pressley clarified her remarks at the time, noting on social media that she “speaking to the collective impact of lifting up one’s lived experience, whatever that is.”

Pressley, a progressive elected to the House in 2018, shot back on Saturday, calling the comments “harmful.”

“We typically don’t engage in these bad-faith attacks but yesterday a line was crossed. A GOP candidate referred to Ayanna as ‘a modern grand wizard of the KKK’ because she speaks out against racial injustice,” Pressley’s team said in a fundraising pitch. “This is backwards and harmful, but that is the point.”

You conveniently left out what immediately followed that quote in the article:

But on Sunday, Ramaswamy did not back down when he was repeatedly questioned about the comparison by Bash.

“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 you’re allowed to express,” Ramaswamy said, calling the rhetoric “divisive.”

Every attack is a confession

What Pressley said has nothing to do with the KKK.

This guy is fast proving he’s just a male MTG: shock jock politician trying bait reasonable people into engaging him and legitimizing him.

And of course, the news outlets will spread every provocative thing he says far and wide for clicks.

Fuck everything.

He's just calling Pressley a poser because the OG KKK votes Republican.

Useless babies whining about each other. What is this the GOP? Embarrassing.

It is so weird watching national politics being conducted in terms more fitting to a playground argument. And not just in the US, we're getting a lot of it in the UK too. And I'm assuming it is similar everywhere the fash and their fellow travellers have gained some kind of platform in national politics.

There were never "grown ups" in charge. But I miss them at least pretending to be serious. Or maybe it's better that they're so laughably bad, instead of cloaking equally dire arguments in more convincing rhetoric?

Why does anyone care what this clown has to say? He’s irrelevant. Just ignore his bullshit and don’t let him get to you.

All these people have dinner with and fuck each other behind the scenes while they entertain us with bullshit attacks toward each other.