OPINION
For someone who was virtually unknown a few months ago, Vivek Ramaswamy is a rocketing star in American conservative politics. While he still trails third in the Republican primaries, he’s fast catching up to one-time favourite Ron DeSantis — even if both of them are being left for dust by former president Donald Trump.
A large part of the rise of Ramaswamy is that he keeps saying the sort of stuff that grassroots have been waiting in vain for the Establishment RINOs to even acknowledge: ending affirmative action, opposing abortion and pushing back against the “LGBTQ cult”. Even better to American ears, he wants to slash the size of the federal government bureaucracy, including abolishing the IRS, as well as ending birthright citizenship. Even more radically, he proposes raising the standard voting age, while making voting for 18-25s contingent on either some form of service or passing a Civics examination.
Like Trump before him, Ramaswamy is also highly critical of the rivers of American treasure being poured into the pockets of corrupt oligarchies via the conduit of the military-industrial complex.
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released a statement on Tuesday condemning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after the foreign leader said elections in his country during wartime would only take place if allied countries shared the cost.
Zelensky, according to Reuters, said his country would only hold elections next year “if the US and Europe provide financial support,” adding, “I will not take money from weapons and give it to elections.”
In other words, “Gimme, gimme, gimme! More, more, more!”
Ramaswamy called Zelensky’s comments a “pressure campaign to secure millions in additional funding from the U.S. and European nations as a precondition for scheduling democratic elections in Ukraine.”
“Zelensky’s veiled threat to forgo democratic elections in Ukraine unless the American people foot the bill and cough up another $135 million in funding represents a new level of extortion of the United States,” Ramaswamy added. “Our nation is being duped by a leader in Ukraine willing to sacrifice his own nation’s credibility as a ‘democracy’ in a gambit to secure even more money from U.S. taxpayers. This is wrong.”
Ramaswamy is also calling out the bullshit propaganda of the war machine that bickering between two corrupt former Soviet provinces is somehow an existential cause of democracy in the West.
The presidential hopeful then noted that while Russian President Vladimir Putin has “acted in a craven manner,” it should not “trick the U.S. establishment into adopting the false narrative that Zelensky is a paragon of democratic leadership. He is not.”
Ramaswamy compared instances where Zelensky has “made moves that bear a striking resemblance to the tactics employed by Vladimir Putin,” including the Ukrainian president’s “banning of 11 opposition parties and the consolidation of all state media into a single entity.”
“These actions not only mirror Putin’s refusal to register opposition parties but also extensive government control over the media landscape,” Ramaswamy said.
“We have more than fulfilled U.S. commitments to Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, even as we have badly violated James Baker’s February 1990 ‘Not One Inch’ commitment to the Soviet Union’s then-President Mikhail Gorbachev about limiting NATO expansion,” Ramaswamy argued.
The Republican candidate said that the U.S. will be “Uncle Sucker no more” if he’s elected.
Florida Capital Star
That news would be particularly welcome in Maui.
President Joe Biden is facing renewed criticism for his response to the devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui after offering victims $700 per household in emergency aid.
That’s $3000 less than the gold the Biden administration has showered, per capita, on Ukrainians.
Political opponents and commentators described the sum as “insulting” and compared it with the more than $113 billion-worth of aid the U.S. has sent to Ukraine as it defends itself against an ongoing Russian invasion. On Monday, the government announced it was sending $200 million in defensive capabilities.
Newsweek
To be sure, a lot of what Ramaswamy says is obvious politicking. But then, isn’t that true of every politician? Still, if he does only half of what he promises, it would be a huge boon to America.