One of the fieriest moments of the third GOP Debate Wednesday night was when candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy asked Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel if she wanted to come on stage a resign given the GOP’s sweeping election losses on Tuesday. He also called her out for awarding NBC the privilege of hosting a GOP debate despite how the network pushed the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax.
Ramaswamy’s comments came during the opening round of questions where moderator Lester Holt wanted all five candidates to talk about the guy who wasn’t there, former President Trump. “Mr. Ramaswamy, let me turn to you. Please make your case. Why should you be the nominee and not the former president?” he queried.
“I think there’s something deeper going on in the Republican Party here. And I am upset about what happened last night. We’ve become a party of losers at the end of the day, there is a cancer to the Republican establishment,” Ramaswamy declared.
He called out McDaniel for presiding over Republican electoral losses for the last several years:
Speak the truth. Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022; no red wave that never came. We got trounced last night in 2023. And I think we need accountability in our party.
Looking into the audience, possibly at McDaniel herself, he said he’d yield her the balance of his time if she wanted to announce her resignation. He also decried how she awarded NBC debate privileges:
You that matter, Ronna if you want to come on stage tonight, you want to look at the GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign, I will turn over – yield my time to you. And frankly, look, the people there cheering for losing in the Republican Party, think about who’s moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We’d have 10 times the viewership asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about and bring in more people into our party.
Ramaswamy drilled down by targeting moderator Kristen Welker. “I mean, we’ve got Kristen Welker here. Do you think the Democrats would hire Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate? They would not do it,” he shouted.
He continued to go after Welker by demanding she answer for why she pushed the Russia Collusion Hoax against Trump:
And so, the fact of the matter is – I mean, Kristen, I’m going to use this time because this is actually about you in the media and the corrupt media establishment. Ask you the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax that you pushed on this network for years. Was that real or was that Hillary Clinton-made-up Disinformation? Answer the question, go.
He argued that battling the liberal media was “how we get our country back.”
“We need accountability because this media rigged the 2016 election, the rigged the 2020 election with the Hunter Biden laptop story, and they’re going to rig this election unless we have accountability. That is how we get back this country,” he concluded.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
One of the fieriest moments of the third GOP Debate Wednesday night was when candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy asked Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel if she wanted to come on stage a resign given the GOP’s sweeping election losses on Tuesday. He also called her out for awarding NBC the privilege of hosting a GOP debate despite how the network pushed the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax.
Ramaswamy’s comments came during the opening round of questions where moderator Lester Holt wanted all five candidates to talk about the guy who wasn’t there, former President Trump. “Mr. Ramaswamy, let me turn to you. Please make your case. Why should you be the nominee and not the former president?” he queried.
“I think there’s something deeper going on in the Republican Party here. And I am upset about what happened last night. We’ve become a party of losers at the end of the day, there is a cancer to the Republican establishment,” Ramaswamy declared.
He called out McDaniel for presiding over Republican electoral loses for the last several years:
Speak the truth. Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022; no red wave that never came. We got trounced last night in 2023. And I think we need accountability in our party.
Looking into the audience, possibly at McDaniel herself, he said he’d yield her the balance of his time if she wanted to announce her resignation. He also decried how she awarded NBC debate privileges:
You that matter, Ronna if you want to come on stage tonight, you want to look at the GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign, I will turn over – yield my time to you. And frankly, look, the people there cheering for losing in the Republican Party, think about who’s moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. We’d have 10 times the viewership asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about and bring in more people into our party.
Ramaswamy drilled down by targeting moderator Kristen Welker. “I mean, we’ve got Kristen Welker here. Do you think the Democrats would hire Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate? They would not do it,” he shouted.
He continued to go after Welker by demanding she answer for why she pushed the Russia Collusion Hoax against Trump:
And so, the fact of the matter is – I mean, Kristen, I’m going to use this time because this is actually about you in the media and the corrupt media establishment. Ask you the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax that you pushed on this network for years. Was that real or was that Hillary Clinton-made-up Disinformation? Answer the question, go.
He argued that battling the liberal media was “how we get our country back.”
“We need accountability because this media rigged the 2016 election, the rigged the 2020 election with the Hunter Biden laptop story, and they’re going to rig this election unless we have accountability. That is how we get back this country,” he concluded.
