Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has slammed Van Jones for his recent critical comments.
The pharmaceutical entrepreneur appeared on stage at Turning Point USA’s AmFest in Arizona on Dec. 17 and told the CNN presenter he should shut up.
“Just shut the f‑‑‑ up. At a certain point, just shut the f‑‑‑ up, Van Jones at CNN,” Ramaswamy said during his speech, per The Hill.
“We demand a government that tells us the truth again in this country,” he continued. “That’s what we require. We can handle the truth. That’s what it means to be a citizen of this country.”
Jones was critical of Ramaswamy following the most recent Republican debate, saying the Ohio native’s performance left him “shaking.”
“That guy is dangerous. That’s dangerous,” Jones said during a panel discussion on CNN.
“And the smug, condescending way that he just spews this poison out, is very, very dangerous. Because he won’t stop Trump, but he’s going to outlive Trump by about 50 years,” Jones said. “You’re watching the rise of an American demagogue that is a very, very despicable person. And I literally, I was— I was shaking listening to him talk because a lot of people don’t know. That is one step away from Nazi propaganda coming out of his mouth.”
During the debate, Ramaswamy said the Great Replacement theory was “not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic party’s platform.” The theory posits that American elites are intentionally trying to reduce or replace white voters with other ethnicities through immigration and other policies to influence the direction of American politics.
Ramaswamy’s comments were widely denounced as an effort to pander to potential voters.
“The most telling thing about Ramaswamy’s invocation of the Great Replacement is that he clearly believes that it’s the kind of thing the Republican base wants to hear,” wrote Adam Serwer for The Atlantic. “The Great Replacement is simply another log on the bonfire of right-wing victimhood, an ideology whose consistent position is that its adherents would have unquestioned political hegemony over American life if not for the powerful, shadowy forces arrayed against them.”
In response to Jones’s on-air criticism, Ramaswamy shared a clip of the CNN analysis in 2021 advocating for the decline in the White American population.
“The request from the racial justice left: we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it,” says Jones in the video. “That’s a tough request, and change is hard.”
