Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t going to let Donald Trump be the only Republican presidential candidate to deploy the loaded term “vermin,” saying on CNN Wednesday night that the word also applies to homeless people in San Francisco. Ramaswamy was asked by CNN Newsnight anchor Abby Phillip if Trump’s use of “vermin” echoes the rhetoric of Nazi leaders, as historians have noted. “This is a classic mainstream media move: pick some individual phrase of Donald Trump—focus on literally that word—without actually interrogating the substance of what’s at issue,” Ramaswamy said, apparently unable or unwilling to see its significance. He was then asked if he would describe migrants at the southern border as “vermin.” “Well, I haven’t used that language,” he replied. But he soon would do just that. “You know what’s vermin: what’s running around San Francisco on a given day, before Gavin Newsom cleaned it up on a dime to roll out the red carpet for Xi Jinping.”
