Flat out 'false': NYT fact-checker slams Vivek Ramaswamy’s 'unorthodox' GOP debate claims

26 August 2023

New York Times fact-check reporter Linda Qiu, in a Saturday report, debunked several claims made by biotech entrepreneur and 2024 Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy during the Wednesday, August 23 Fox News GOP debate.

Although the GOP hopeful's has since risen in to third place in Republican voter polls, Qui highlights how Ramaswamy's "unorthodox positions on a number of issues" — including climate change, the 2020 election and foreign policy — were "false."

For example, during the debate he stated, "The reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change."

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Qiu writes:

The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, estimated in May that extreme weather events, compounded by climate change, caused nearly 12,000 disasters and a death toll of 2 million between 1970 and 2021. Extreme heat causes about 600 deaths in the United States a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 2021 study found that a third of heat-related deaths could be attributed to climate change.

Ramaswamy also stated, "There was an [ex-President Barack] Obama appointee, climate change activist, who also believes as part of this Gaia-centric worldview of the earth that water rights need to be protected, which led to a five- to six-hour delay in the critical window of getting waters to put out those fires. We will never know, although certain science points out to the fact that we very well could have avoided those catastrophic deaths, many of them, if water had made it to the site of the fires on time."

Qiu notes:

This lacks evidence. Mr. Ramaswamy was referring to M. Kaleo Manuel, the deputy director for Hawaii's Commission on Water Resource Management, and overstating his ties to President Barack Obama as well as the potential effect of the requested water diversion.

First, Mr. Manuel is not an 'Obama appointee' but rather participated in a leadership development program run by the Obama Foundation in 2019. Mr. Ramaswamy and other conservative personalities have derided comments Mr. Manuel made last year when he said that native Hawaiians like himself used to consider water something to “revere” and something that 'gives us life.'

Regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Ramaswamy said, "What percentage of the people who were armed were federal law-enforcement officers? I think it was probably high, actually. Right? There's very little evidence of people being arrested for being armed that day. Most of the people who were armed, I assume the federal officers who were out there were armed.”

Noting that this statement is "false," Qiu writes that "as early this month, 104 out of about 1,100 total defendants have been charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon, according to the Justice Department," and "at least 13 face gun charges."

Former New Jersey governor and Republican candidate Chris Christie pointed out on the debate stage that Ramaswamy criticized ex-President Donald Trump hopeful a book he wrote, but the entrepreneur blatantly denied this.

Qiu emphasizes:

Mr. Ramaswamy was wrong. During the debate, Mr. Ramaswamy vigorously defended Mr. Trump, calling him 'the best president of the 21st century.' Mr. Christie was correct that Mr. Ramaswamy was much more critical of Mr. Trump in his books.

In his 2022 book, 'Nation of Victims,' Mr. Ramaswamy wrote that despite voting for Mr. Trump in 2020, 'what he delivered in the end was another tale of grievance, a persecution complex that swallowed much of the Republican Party whole.'

The New York Times' full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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