Ramaswamy’s ‘Gotcha’ Question Prediction Comes True On Social Media

When Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield pressured GOP presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to condemn “White supremacy” at a recent town hall event, he unleashed an impassioned response denouncing the “new religion of modern wokeism” that he claimed was responsible for such a “stupid question.”

The entrepreneur went on to clarify that he opposed all sorts of “vicious racial discrimination” but maintained that White supremacy was only a tiny part of the problem.

Ramaswamy’s response included a prediction that Kornfield would take his comments out of context in order to amp up the sensationalism. 

“I know you’re going to go print the headline tomorrow,” he said. “I already know this. We already know how your game works: ‘Vivek Ramaswamy refuses to condemn racism.’ Because you asked a stupid question.”

Although a complete article with such a headline did not surface the following morning, Kornfield’s summary of the encounter closely followed Ramaswamy’s prognostication.

“I asked Vivek if he condemned white supremacy,” she wrote on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter. “Vivek said to ‘stop picking on this farce of some figment that exists at some infinitesimally small fringe.’ He said he condemns ‘vicious racial discrimination’ but would not ‘bend the knee’ and condemn white supremacy.”

A community note added below the post offered additional context and encouraged users to view the entire clip to determine “whether WaPo journalists properly characterized their exchange.”

This was not the first incident involving Ramaswamy firing back at a mainstream media figure on the campaign trail. 

In August, he clashed with CNN host Kaitlan Collins over remarks he made about the 9/11 terrorist attack, insisting he had been misquoted in an earlier interview with The Atlantic.

“What I said is on Jan. 6, I do believe that there were many federal agents in the field and we deserve to know who they are,” he said. “On 9/11, what I’ve said is that the government lied and this is incontrovertible evidence, Kaitlan, the government lied about Saudi Arabia’s involvement.”

Following the tense on-air discussion, Ramaswamy compared the experience to debating a “petulant teenager,” adding: “Speaking the hard TRUTH to a female anchor isn’t ‘mansplaining,’ it’s the exact same treatment I gave to Don Lemon a few months back. I believe in equal opportunity for all media dishonesty.”