Businessman and MAGA wannabe Vivek Ramaswamy has dropped his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, announcing that he’s had enough after finishing in a distance fourth at the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
“We are going to suspend this presidential campaign,” he told supporters. “There’s no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don’t want to see happen in this country. I am very worried for our country. I think we are skating on thin ice as a nation.”
Donald Trump won the caucus in convincing fashion, bringing in just north of 50 percent of the vote. Ron DeSantis finished second with just over 20 percent, and Nikki Haley finished third with 19 percent. Ramaswamy, the only other notable candidate still in the race, finished in a distant fourth with seven percent of the vote.
Ramaswamy entered the race as an inexperienced, largely self-funded upstart candidate claiming to be a young, scrappy, Trumpier-than-Trump alternative to the established Republicans already vying for 2024. He announced his campaign last February on Fox’s now-defunct Tucker Carlson Tonight, a from-the-jump attempt to appeal to an audience riled up over culture war grievances, political fear-mongering, and conspiratorial thinking.
As a policymaker, what Ramaswamy lacked in experience he made up for in sheer audacity. His “America First 2.0” platform promised to “take America First further than Trump,” and included a promise to pardon the former president, a proposal to raise the minimum voting age to 25, and a vow to gut the Department of Education, FBI, CDC, IRS, ATF, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Ramaswamy exuded the energy of a Republican frat bro who still crashes mixers a decade after graduation. He awkwardly rapped Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” at the Iowa State Fair; his campaign held “Free Speech and Free Drinks” events at college campuses; and he delivered completely unhinged performances during the Republican primary debates (which he at one point suggested Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Joe Rogan should host.)
Ramaswamy’s bellicose onstage antics in the various Trump-free Republican debates granted him an early boost in exposure. But whatever momentum Ramaswamy achieved throughout the early stages of his campaign seemed to have unraveled in the weeks leading up to Iowa.
He failed to qualify for the last Republican debate before the caucuses, his national political director jumped ship in late November for a job with the Trump campaign, and last week Axios reported that some campaign staff had begun looking for jobs elsewhere.
On Sunday, hours before the caucuses where set to begin, Trump ended his once chummy relationship with Ramaswamy, writing on Truth Social that “a vote for Vivek is a vote for the ‘other side.’”
“Don’t get duped by this. Vote for ‘TRUMP,’ don’t waste your vote! Vivek is not MAGA,” the former president added.
It seems voters listened.
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