Vivek Ramaswamy, wealthy political novice who supported Trump, is quitting his campaign

Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and political newcomer who briefly made waves with brash policy proposals and an outsized sense of confidence, dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination for the White House after a disappointing fourth-place finish in Iowa. caucuses.

He then immediately endorsed former President Donald J. Trump for the White House.

“We didn't achieve the surprise we wanted to deliver tonight,” he said Monday evening in Des Moines.

Mr. Ramaswamy, who financed much of his campaign of a personal fortune made in biotechnology and finance, was at one point an unlikely contender. He clung closely to Mr. Trump, vowing to support him even if he were convicted of crimes, promising to pardon him if elected to the White House, and saying he would voluntarily remove his name from the ballot in states that managed to defeat Mr. Trump. Trump was removed from the ballot as an “insurrectionist” disqualified by the Constitution.

Then, two days before the Iowa caucuses, Trump's campaign turned on him, declaring him a fraud, and the former president — after months of heat toward his potential rival — demanded that voters reject Mr. Ramaswamy and would vote for him.

By then, the Harvard-educated Mr. Ramaswamy had increasingly embraced apocalyptic conspiracy theories; spoke of a “system” that would ban Mr. Trump from office and install a “puppet,” Nikki Haley; called the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol an “inside job” orchestrated by federal law enforcement; and began trafficking in the racist theory of “replacement,” which falsely states that Democrats import immigrants of color to replace white people.

The theory, which has fueled white supremacist frenzies in Buffalo, New York, Pittsburgh and El Paso, Texas, “is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory,” he said in a Republican primary debate, “but a fundamental statement of the Democratic Party platform.”

Mr. Ramaswamy's opening gambit was to say that, with his superior knowledge of the Constitution and civil service laws, he would take Mr. Trump's America First agenda further than the former president ever could.

That would mean immediately eliminating the Department of Education, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service by executive order, cutting the federal workforce by 75 percent through mass layoffs without congressional approval, and cutting America's foreign military obligations must be reversed, first in Ukraine but eventually. in Israel and Taiwan.

His isolationist foreign policy gave rivals a ripe target to attack him, but his bleak vision of millennials and Gen Z voters “starved for purpose, meaning and identity,” with a black hole in their hearts, found surprising resonance among older voters.

He used the debate stage to clash fiercely with Republican rivals for the nomination who wasn't named Trump, mocking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for saying his boots were high heels and calling Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, a stooge for China and the defense industry, and labeling the entire field as pawns of the wealthy backers of their super PACs. He even called the Republican Party a “party of losers.”

Such tactics initially lent surprising appeal to a businessman who had never held elective office and was known only to a small segment of the electorate familiar with his books denouncing “Woke Capitalism” and investing strategies focused on ecological progress and social consciousness . He impressed at the Iowa State Fair while rapping to a recording of his idol Eminem.

His support among Republican primary voters in national polls peaked at 11.6 percent on the day of the first Republican debate, putting him in third place, just behind DeSantis and well ahead of the rest of the field.

But he returned to the pack when his efforts to grab attention and his tendency to stretch the truth drew caustic responses from his rivals and appeared to irritate voters. During the second Republican primary debate, in September, Ms. Haley told Mr. Ramaswamy, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little dumber.”

During the third debate in November, Ms Haley called Mr Ramaswamy “just scum” after he accused her of hypocrisy towards China because her daughter used the Chinese social media platform TikTok.

By then, Ms. Haley had overtaken Mr. Ramaswamy for third place in the national polls. His dogged campaign in New Hampshire, where he jumped to second place in late summer, lost its magic. He swamped Iowa with the vast majority of events — rallies, roundtables, podcasts and interviews with seemingly anyone with a microphone — but couldn't regain the height.

Mr. Ramaswamy had privately told his supporters that his strategy was to stick with Mr. Trump in the hope that the former president's numerous legal battles would force him out of the race — and Mr. Ramaswamy would be the logical next choice for the most ardent followers. By the end of September, he had contributed nearly $17 million of his own money.

But with Mr. Trump making clear that even a conviction would not force him out of the race, Mr. Ramaswamy's strategy and self-financing proved unsustainable.