The defense of Trump by a distance candidate could undermine the rule of law
In the overheated basement of the Thunder Bay Grille in Davenport, Iowa, Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur turned Republican presidential nominee, tried out another opening for his well-rehearsed stump speech on Thursday night.
“While it would be easier for someone like me to win these primaries or win this election if certain people like Donald Trump weren’t in the running, that’s not how I want to win,” the biotech millionaire told the Republican. Scott County believer who packed the room on the edge of this town on the Mississippi River.
“We don’t do things that way in America,” he continued. “We are not a country where the party in power should be able to use the police to denounce its political opponents. And I am not on politics but on principle.”
It was an ominous broadside for a man aspiring to be president, one that questioned the integrity of a justice system that had just brought the first federal charges against a former president. And it is something Mr Ramaswamy admits he has struggled with, given that his claims could undermine the rule of law, which he says he firmly supports.
The comments drew cheers from an audience not ready to reject Mr. Trump, but perhaps looking for an alternative.
“I admire Trump for what he has done for our country; I admire him immensely,” said Linda Chicarelli Renkes of Rock Island, Illinois, across the Mississippi, who had praised Mr. Ramaswamy for promising to pardon the former president if elected. “But I’m tired.”
The indictment of Mr. Trump on charges that he mishandled some of the country’s most sensitive military and nuclear secrets and then blatantly obstructed police efforts to recover them has left Republican political leaders at the brought them to a moment when they had to choose between their often outspoken adherence to law and order and their sensitivities to the passions of their constituents.
More than any other presidential candidate not named Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy has taken a firm stand by attacking charges against the frontrunner of the Republican primary. He has not called the indictment “devastating,” as former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has done. He has not called on Mr. Trump to drop out of the race, as former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has done.
He has not attempted to expose Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s misrepresentations in suggesting that anyone who mishandles classified documents should be prosecuted. He hasn’t even allowed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s allegations to be serious, as have former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott, and former Governor Nikki Haley, both of South Carolina.
Instead, Mr. Ramaswamy said that although Mr. Trump may have made some errors of judgment, the Biden administration has dangerously abused its power to block the comeback of a political rival. In Davenport, he denounced what he called the “politicized persecution persecution” of the Biden administration’s enemies, and vowed to massively pardon Mr Biden’s victims, whether they be “peaceful protesters” who have been incarcerated for the attack on the Capitol or for Mr. Biden. Trump.
For an outsider with no political experience beyond his cable news appearances and his “anti-woke” jeremiahs against corporate liberalism, Mr. Ramaswamy some stamina.
His polls aren’t great — Mr Trump’s own pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, released a post-indictment survey that placed Ramaswamy at 2 percent in Iowa, behind five other candidates. But he has received the 40,000 individual donations to qualify for the Republican primary debates, and as of now has the required 1 percent in the national polls for the first debate on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.
He also has close ties to Republican sources of power, including technology financier Peter Thiel and Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
But his flight to the right, which had already alienated some of his business associates and financiers, raises a new question: Are Republicans like Mr. Ramaswamy risking the country’s stability for their own political fortunes?
While Mr Ramaswamy is the longest of all long shots when it comes to winning the nomination, some fear that the aggressive rhetoric he and other Republicans regularly use – both in defense of Mr Trump and when attacking the justice system – will have lasting effect. can cause damage.
In an interview on his well-equipped campaign van, the candidate was wary. He agreed that his call for any candidate to pledge pre-emptive pardons to Mr. Trump could lead to lawlessness, though he concluded his offer was defensible because it narrowly targeted only the charges listed in the special’s indictment. counsel were set out. If other crimes, such as the transfer of national security secrets to foreign powers, were revealed during the trial, the deal would fall through.
He also said he wanted to “make sure I wasn’t contributing to a problem I’m very concerned about,” the erosion of the rule of law.
“The thought crosses my mind, but I think the facts are clear,” he said: President Biden has sued the opposing party leader to thwart his rise.
Mr. Biden did no such thing. A federal grand jury has filed the indictment, at the behest of special counsel appointed by the Attorney General, Merrick B. Garland, precisely to insulate Mr. Trump’s legal investigation from any perceived or real pressure from the president or his political appointees.
Mr Ramaswamy said he was not ready to accept that version of events. On the morning of Trump’s arraignment, he flew to Miami to announce to the television crews gathered at the federal courthouse that he had filed Freedom of Information Act requests for all communications between the White House and the Department’s leadership. of Justice, and between Justice Department management and mr. Smith.
Mr. Ramaswamy indeed has a law degree from Yale, though he made his wealth not in law, but in finance and biotechnology. Nevertheless, he speaks with absolute certainty when he rails against the validity of the federal grand jury indictment, which he says “smacks of politicization.” The Presidential Records Act, not the Espionage Act, is the governing legal authority over former presidents, he said, and the records act gives former presidents wide discretion to keep records of their years in the White House.
That line of reasoning has been rejected by more experienced Republican jurists, such as those of Trump himself Attorney General, William P. Barr, and retired appellate court judge J. Michael Luttig. Judge Luttig wrote on Twitter on the day of Mr. Trump’s arraignment, “There is not an attorney general of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president.”
When asked about those judgments, Mr. Ramaswamy that he hears the words of people like Mr. Barr and Mr. Luttig should investigate further. But he offered another defense for his attacks on the justice system: Republican voters already believe them.
“To actually acknowledge a reality that other leaders are reluctant to acknowledge, I think that actually increases the confidence of our institutions,” he said.
While he may be following the voters’ passions, not leading them, Mr. Ramaswamy that his position was principled, not political.
“I will be deeply disappointed if Donald Trump cannot participate because of these politicized charges against him,” he said.
Mr Ramaswamy’s charge against the indictment is just the latest stance in a campaign based on his belief that the former president’s “America First” agenda belongs not to Mr Trump, but to the American people – and that he has the intelligence and guts to take it far further than Mr. Trump ever could.
If Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and Mr. Trump’s closest competitor, is “Trumpism without Trump,” then Mr. Ramaswamy presents himself as Trumpism squared.
The appeal has its limits, especially with staunch Trump supporters who still want the real deal.
“I haven’t seen anything that Vivek says and Donald Trump says aren’t perfectly aligned,” said Clint Crawford, 48, of Eldridge, Iowa, after watching the nominee during a session in the four-story Estes Construction offices. above downtown Davenport. . Now that the former president is determined to stay in the race, Mr. Crawford said, he’s not switching.
But there’s a chance Mr. Trump won’t make it to a potential federal trial, another potential trial in New York on felony charges involving hush money to a porn star, a threatening indictment from Georgia for trying to get the 2020 election results there, and more to come Mr. Smith.
If Mr. Trump drops out, Mr. Ramaswamy intends to be the alternative.
“It goes on with Trump — it’s our past, it’s our present, and it won’t stop,” said Penny Overbaugh, 77, who rose in Bettendorf, Iowa, on Thursday to praise Mr. Ramaswamy for his performance in Miami. on arraignment morning. As for the younger challenger, “the fact that he could see the hypocrisy of the two-sided justice system convinced him.”