Sunday 24 / November / 2024
Washington DC: Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy reacted differently when asked about former President and frontrunner Donald Trump's remark calling his political opponents "vermin".
The former UN envoy Nikki Haley expressed her disagreement with the statement. "I don't agree with that statement," Haley said at a town hall event in Newton, Iowa. "Any more than I agree when he said Hezbollah was smart, or any more than I agree when he hit Netanyahu when his country was on its knees after all that brutality," NYT quoted her as saying.
"It's the chaos of it all, right? I think he means well. But the chaos has got to stop," she added.
On the other hand, Ohio biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy tried to brush off Trump's remarks and instead slammed the media for "obsessing over a random word" and ignoring the issues that have been "killing the country".
"This is a classic mainstream media move," Ramaswamy reacted, "Pick some individual phrase of Donald Trump, focus on literally that word without actually interrogating the substance of what's at issue".
"This is what's wrong with the mainstream media- focus on the substance and let's have an actual policy debate rather than talking to a presidential candidate instead of the policy substance of what's actually going on in the country picking on some word that Donald Trump said on a certain day and asking me for comment on it? Give me a break," Fox News quoted him as saying.
In a speech in New Hampshire over the weekend, Trump told a crowd: "We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," and he warned that "the real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left, and it's growing every day," CNN reported.
The former President was also slammed by President Joe Biden. Speaking to donors at an event in San Francisco earlier this week, Biden said that Trump using the word "vermin" is "language you heard in Nazi Germany in the 30s," and argued that Trump would use the presidency for "revenge and retribution" if elected again.
Meanwhile, according to recent CNN polls show that Haley is becoming one of Trump's strongest challengers. While the former president holds majority support in the early primary states of South Carolina and New Hampshire, Haley has moved ahead of Trump's other rivals and holds second place.
However, the latest national Fox News poll showed Ramaswamy polling in fourth place at 7 per cent, maintaining the same amount of support he had in October. Ahead of him are former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley at 11 per cent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 14 per cent and Trump at a whopping 62 per cent.
The next US presidential election is scheduled for November 5, 2024.
