“Trump wants him out now”
Behind Trump’s decision to turn on Ramaswamy and the broader implications of the Ramaswamy possibly staying in past Iowa
Donald Trump’s decision to start savaging Republican candidate, and frequent supporter Vivek Ramaswamy, just days before Iowa Republicans head to caucus may have seemed like needless overkill in a race that’s already pretty well decided in the former president’s favor.
But simmering just beneath the surface has been a worry among Trump and some on his team that Ramaswamy will eat into Trump’s margin of victory Monday night, particularly among a key subset of voters: young men, according to Republicans who spoke with 24sight.
“Trump wants him out now,” one Trump adviser told 24sight.
Trump’s campaign remains confident heading into the caucuses that Ramaswamy is finished in the 2024 race. “Vivek has been squashed like the gnat that he is,” one senior aide told 24sight.
And some Trump advisers have also tamped down Ramaswamy’s potential to impact the race.
But Ramaswamy recently sold $33 million in stock, giving him a fresh infusion to possibly stay in the race past Iowa, potentially hurting Trump.
When Ramaswamy posted a photo of himself Saturday posing with six young men wearing shirts with a photo of Trump’s mugshot and the slogan, “Save Trump, Vote Vivek”, it gave Trump just the opening he had been looking for to hit back at Ramaswamy. Hard.
It wasn’t just that Ramaswamy tweeted the photo, it’s that he found time to get the shirts made and distributed and had a critical demographic wearing them: Young MAGA men.
Asked about the crossover between Trump and Ramaswamy voters, veteran pollster Michael Cohen said, “99.999%” and specifically among one of Trump’s most coveted groups he’s looking to build. “The demographic is men. Young MAGA men.”
Asked about the recent attacks and concerns about polling, one Republican close to Ramaswamy said of Trump, “Oh, so he is starting his hedge.”
There’s little expectation that Ramaswamy pulls off an outright win in Iowa in just a few hours, most Iowa polling has had him in the single digits. But there’s a general belief that any amount of votes Ramaswamy pulls in tonight eats directly into Trump’s margin of victory in Iowa — thus possibly hurting his ability to argue the race should be over after tonight.
Ramaswamy wasn’t an issue when there were a dozen or more candidates in the field, the Trump adviser noted. But as the race whittled down to three or four serious candidates, it’s now a problem for Trump.
Hadn’t even thought of it. Wxcellwnt reporting TLo!