Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy condemned his rivals at Wednesday’s Republican primary debate for visiting Ukraine in solidarity against the Russian invasion, accusing them of placing “their pope Zelensky” over American lives.
Ramaswamy’s remarks were directed at former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who both recently visited Kyiv and spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Christie offered Zelensky a sheet of paper with lyrics handwritten by New Jersey rock legend Jon Bon Jovi; Pence shared the day of his visit to Zelensky with climate change activist Greta Thunberg.
During the debate, hosted by Fox News and streamed on the video hosting site Rumble, moderators asked the candidates who among them would cut funding to Ukraine’s war effort, which currently surpasses $110 billion since Russian strongman Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the country to oust Zelensky in February 2022. Ramaswamy, who has begun surpassing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in recent polling but still lags significantly behind former President Donald Trump, enthusiastically raised his hand.
“I think that this is disastrous that we are protecting against an invasion against somebody else’s border when we should use those same military resources to prevent across [sic] the invasion of our own southern border,” Ramaswamy explained. “We are driving Russia further into China’s hands. The Russia-China alliance is the single greatest threat we face.”
“And I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on this stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv to their pope Zelensky without doing the same thing for people in Maui, or the south side of Chicago, or Kensington,” he continued. “I think we have to put the interests of Americans first, secure our own border before somebody else’s, and the reality is this is how we project strength, by making America strong at home.”
As Christie and Pence had both recently visited Kyiv, moderator Bret Baier gave them a chance to respond. Christie argued that supporting Ukraine was necessary because of the brutality of the Russian invasion against civilians and because its leader, Putin, was “the Vladimir Putin who Donald Trump called brilliant and a genius.”
Christie appeared to suggest that Russia may soon invade America: “If we don’t stand up against this type of autocratic killing in the world, we will be next.”
Pence took a more direct line of attack against Ramaswamy, accusing him of having “a pretty small view of the greatest nation on Earth” if he believed that spending billions in Ukraine was undermining America’s ability to spend at home.
“If we do the giveaway that you want to give to Putin to give him his land,” Pence said, “it’s not going to be too long before he rolls across a NATO border and, frankly, our men and women of our armed forces are going to have to go and fight him.”
Pence did not clarify what “giveaway” Ramaswamy had proposed, nor did Ramaswamy directly address the accusation, instead responding by mocking Pence.
“I have a news flash: the USSR does not exist anymore,” he replied, “It fell back in 1990.”
“The real threat we face today is communist China, and we are driving Russia further into China’s arms,” Ramaswamy argued.