Many talk about putting principle over politics, but it looks like Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is actually setting that often quaint notion into action.
Ramaswamy went to Miami on the day former President Donald Trump was indicted and held a press conference where he pledged that if he were to become president, he would pardon Trump.
The ex-president is set to be arraigned on Friday on 37 charges concerning the classified documents stored at his home after he left office, an offense that Joe Biden perpetrated for decades since leaving office as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Ramaswamy, who has been somewhat fierce in opposing the left-wing agenda, appeared at the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse and not only said he would pardon Trump, but also called on every GOP candidate to make the same pledge.
Wearing a hat with the word “Truth” on it, during his conference, Ramaswamy said he sent a letter to every candidate — including the two announced Democrats — calling on them to pledge to pardon Trump or to explain why they won’t sign the pledge.
🚨BREAKING: @VivekGRamaswamy signs pledge to pardon Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago docs case if elected President, DEMANDS all other candidates do the same or explain why their refusal:
“That is how we decide who governs this country. Not by a Federal Administrative Police State.” pic.twitter.com/fpzKb02s1W
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 13, 2023
“The use of police force by a sitting U.S. President against his chief political rival in the midst of a presidential election sets a dangerous precedent in our country,” Ramaswamy said in a press release, according to Fox News.
“No one is above the law: the U.S. President shouldn’t be able to use the federal police to arrest his opponents,” Ramaswamy continued.
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“No one should be below the law either, yet there are now two standards of justice depending on your political viewpoints,” Ramaswamy said. “That’s the single greatest threat to our constitutional republic today.”
“If President Trump is prosecuted in a manner that effectively prevents him from running, this will permanently damage public trust in our electoral process and our justice system,” the release added.
“Whoever among us is elected, our job of reuniting the nation will become daunting – if not impossible,” Ramaswamy wrote.
The conservative author and businessman announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination for president in February.
Ramaswamy was born in Ohio to Indian immigrants to the U.S., according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. He’s best known for founding the pharmaceutical firm Roivant Sciences, then walking away after an internal company revolt due in part to the fact he was deemed insufficiently woke. He documented the matter in his bestselling book “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”
Earlier this month, Ramaswamy took leftist CNN anchor Dana Bash to school and gave her a lesson in how she should be doing her job, again in reference to Trump.
Ramaswamy told Bash that it is the media’s job to investigate leads and to look for the truth, not just believe the Biden administration’s proclamations when Bash brought up the federal indictment of Trump.
For his part, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also a GOP candidate for president, blasted the indictment of the former president, and called the legal action an act of the “weaponization of federal law enforcement.”
DeSantis also suggested that he would pardon Trump if he became president, the New York Post reported.
Ramaswamy has certainly been a bold voice among the GOP candidates on this principled stand that the indictment of Trump is a political attack and not an act of law enforcement. But, there have also been a large number of other GOP officials and candidates to agree with Ramaswamy. In fact, instead of sundering the GOP, this indictment seems to have united the party more than ever.
