Vivek Ramaswamy now denies supporting Bernie Sanders’ COVID mask bill, despite previously calling it ‘sensible’.
Republican 2024 Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Allegedly Backtracks on Support for Bernie Sanders’ COVID-19 Masking Proposal
Republican 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy recently alleged he never supported a Sen. Bernie Sanders-led COVID-19 proposal on masking despite praising it at the time as “sensible,” records show.
In an Aug. 1 recorded spaces conversation on X, formerly known as Twitter, Ramaswamy said around the 20-minute mark, “No,” when asked by commentator Josie Glabach if the wealthy businessman “ever supported ‘Masks for All’ legislation by Bernie Sanders.” However, the claim falls in contrast to a tweet by the GOP White House hopeful in July 2020 in which he replied to ex-Obama official Andy Slavitt, who co-authored a CNN op-ed with the senator calling for “masks for every American.”
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“My policy views don’t often align with Bernie, but this strikes me as a sensible idea,” Ramaswamy said in 2020 in response to Slavitt, who would go on to become President Joe Biden’s senior COVID-19 adviser, sharing the article on social media. “The cost is a tiny fraction of other less compelling federal expenditures on COVID-19.”
“They should have picked someone from the political right as a co-author to show consensus,” he added.
It’s the latest example of Ramaswamy backtracking on prior claims on the presidential campaign trail, with the Washington Examiner reporting in late July on his admission that he actually voted for the first time in the 2004 election rather than in 2020. Ramaswamy alleged soon after, “This is the most false & intentionally deceitful headline of the campaign so far,” even though he had said prior over the phone with the Washington Examiner when it brought the voting discrepancy to his attention, “I appreciate you smoking that out for me, that was actually useful.”
In the CNN op-ed, Sanders and Slavitt laid out an argument for why the public should be entitled to receive free masks for COVID-19 mitigation efforts. On July 28, 2020, the Vermont senator introduced the Masks for All Act of 2020, which didn’t pass and would have allotted funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency “to provide for the manufacture and distribution of high-quality face masks for every individual in the United States during the COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) emergency,” according to the bill’s text.
“As the United States reports record numbers of new cases, research about mask-wearing from around the world and here in the United States shows that masks play a vital role in decreasing the spread of COVID-19, because when the virus can’t easily find hosts, it dies out,” Sanders and Slavitt argued in the article, which noted, “President Donald Trump has recklessly made masks a political football.”
The op-ed continued, “We must act with urgency, using the next package of COVID-19 relief coming up this month and take immediate advantage of the Defense Production Act. Every day we delay, we make it that much harder to find the raw material and manufacturing capacity to make the masks we need. The cost is a very modest investment compared to the number of lives saved and the positive impact on the economy.”
According to a RealClearPolitics polling average for the 2024 primary, Ramaswamy has 6.9% support, while Trump has 54.7%, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) sits at 14.8%. Ex-Vice President Mike Pence is clocking in at 5.4%, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is at 3.6%, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is at 2.8%, according to the average.
Ramaswamy has often clashed with the press over their coverage of him, with the candidate declaring that an Aug. 14 Fox News story was “planted trash” after it quoted him recently saying, “I’m eyes wide open and willing to be bold in crossing boundaries we haven’t yet crossed to address the demand side of this as well,” referring to drug decriminalization.
Ramaswamy’s campaign later told the Washington Examiner, “Vivek supports the decriminalization of ayahuasca, and ketamine, and certain psychedelics as a treatment for veterans suffering from PTSD, to prevent the devastating epidemic of fentanyl and suicide.”
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Meanwhile, Sanders and Senate Democrats reintroduced the Masks for All measure in January 2022, with the Vermont senator noting, “It is an absolute scandal that in the richest country in the history of the world, high-quality masks are not more readily available to frontline workers, health care workers, and all Americans.”
The Ramaswamy campaign did not return a request for comment.
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