Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old businessman and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, sparked outrage when he said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a black Democrat from Massachusetts, was like the ‘modern great wizards’ of the Ku Klux Klan.
Vivek Ramaswamy sparks a firestorm with remarks from Pressley and the KKK.
The argument erupted after Ramaswamy called Pressley’s 2019 comments racist Friday in Iowa. At the time, Pressley said Democrats “don’t need brown faces who don’t want to be a brown voice anymore” during an event at Netroots Nation, a liberal conference.
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The Washington Post was then told by Pressley’s spokeswoman that she was saying “diversity at the table doesn’t matter if there isn’t real diversity in politics.”
The comment was made Friday during a campaign visit to Iowa by Ramaswamy, who ran a Republican campaign like a millennial Donald Trump. However, Ramaswamy doubled down after facing backlash on Sunday and Monday.
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On MSNBC’s “Politics Nation” this weekend, Pressley responded to Ramaswamy’s remark, calling the presidential hopeful’s “verbal assault” “shameful” and “dangerous.”
Pressley told host Reverend Al Sharpton: “Not too long ago we were besieged by images of white supremacists carrying tiki torches in Charlottesville. Not long ago, a white supremacist mob took over the Capitol, waving Confederate flags and erecting nooses on the Capitol’s West Lawn.
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She said: “Ancestors and living family members were brutalized, lynched and raped by the Ku Klux Klan. »
However, as she continues to work on racial justice, the rep claimed Ramaswamy has no real estate on her mind.
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After Pressley criticized him for his comments, Ramaswamy explained on Sunday that he brought up those words from 2019 “to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” he told CNN’s “Inside Politics.” .
Ramaswamy continued his argument on Monday and wrote an article on X, formerly known as Twitter; he included part of Pressley’s 2019 remarks on Netroots Nation: “That’s racist. That would make the Grand Wizard of the KKK proud. This provokes reactionary attacks. This must stop. »
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The atmosphere around the verbal fight was intense. One of the few candidates of color for the GOP presidential nomination, Ramaswamy, an American Indian, has tried to woo GOP supporters by drawing on his past.
On Saturday, large crowds gathered in Washington, DC, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, which served as a cornerstone of the civil rights movement.
A white shooter who authorities say was targeting African Americans killed three black people later that evening in Jacksonville, Florida. Later, the shooter committed suicide.
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Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, which runs an organization focused on mobilizing black voters, told The Hill: “Republicans seem to have decided that to stop Democrats, they have to stop black women. We are not rewriting history or subverting it to suggest that a ‘great wizard’ is anything other than what he is.
Shropshire said: “This language was never intended to persuade black voters. It’s about stirring up the racist stew they’ve cooked up in their party and throwing it at black women.
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Ramaswamy’s remarks about Pressley, which Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright called “disgusting,” according to Seawright, show a gap between the GOP’s goal of winning over more diverse voters.
Following the Jacksonville shooting, Seawright warned that Ramaswamy’s words could “cause real and prejudicial harm” to Pressley and others.
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