Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy announced on Tuesday that he’s skipping next week’s GOP presidential debate in Iowa hosted by CNN, claiming it will be “the most boring in modern history.”
Instead, the “anti-woke” biotech entrepreneur says he intends to hold a live audience town hall with right-wing podcaster Tim Pool, adding that he “won’t hold back” while slamming the upcoming debate on CNN as “fake.” Ramaswamy also slammed CNN over its handling of his Iowa town hall last month, alleging that the network “disgracefully” cut it short while complaining about the criticism he received from CNN hosts and reporters.
However, despite Ramaswamy’s bombastic rhetoric about why he’s ditching next week’s debate, he wouldn’t have been invited in the first place.
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When CNN announced last month that it would be hosting the Iowa debate, the network said candidates would only make the stage if they achieved at least 10 percent “in three separate national and/or Iowa polls of Republican caucusgoers or primary voters that meet CNN’s standards for reporting.” One of those qualifying polls needed to be of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers.
Additionally, CNN said the deadline for qualifying for the debate would be Jan. 2, as the network would only consider polls that were conducted no earlier than Oct. 15 and released no later than this Tuesday.
According to Real Clear Polling, Ramaswamy has not hit 10 percent in any survey of Iowa GOP voters since October, reaching a high of 8 percent in an Emerson poll last month. Overall, his polling average in the state is 5.9 percent. Furthermore, national polls have Ramaswamy sitting just above 5 percent, with no recent survey showing him in double digits.
Ramaswamy, who has seen his poll numbers plummet amid his strategy to be “unhinged” in the GOP debates, took CNN to task for only accepting the results from certain polling agencies. The presidential hopeful, who has increasingly espoused right-wing conspiracies throughout his campaign, suggested that CNN was purposely rejecting some surveys to prevent him from appearing on the debate stage.
“Later on Dec 14, CNN notified my campaign that multiple qualifying polls, which the RNC used for each of the RNC Debates, mysteriously wouldn’t count for CNN’s fake ‘debate’ in Iowa on January 10,” Ramaswamy tweeted.
Notably, the Republican National Committee stated last month that it wasn’t taking part in any additional GOP primary debates, leaving the planning and requirements for any further debates to be decided by the host networks. The RNC’s decision came as Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican primary field while refusing to take part in any debates.
To back those claims, Ramaswamy’s campaign pointed The Daily Beast to three polls—two of which were for New Hampshire—that showed the candidate reaching double digits.
Hours after Ramaswamy’s tweet, CNN made it official. While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had made the stage, both Ramaswamy and ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had not qualified. The two candidates, however, may still hit the requirements to appear at CNN’s New Hampshire debate on Jan. 21.
Following Ramaswamy's CNN town hall last month, CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy called out his own network for platforming the Trumpy candidate. The event featured Ramaswamy getting into a tense exchange with anchor Abby Phillip over his baseless claim that the Jan. 6 insurrection was an “inside job” orchestrated by federal agents.
“The notion that the infotainer, who CNN has reported ‘struggles for relevance’ as he polls in the low single digits and remains exceedingly unlikely to be the Republican Party’s nominee, deserves an hour-long national platform to sell his personal brand and insidious talking points to the masses taxes the imagination,” Darcy wrote in his Reliable Sources newsletter.
Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has fired back at other CNN personalities who have blasted his rhetoric. After political commentator Van Jones accused him of being a demagogue and peddling fascistic languate, Ramaswamy told Jones to “just shut the fuck up” during a speech last month.
In recent days, with his campaign struggling to gain any traction, Ramaswamy has ended his “idiotic” television ad buys in early primary states. He’s also vowed to remove his name from ballots in states if they ban Trump, calling on other GOP contenders to do the same.
