During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate, asserted that he would not let former President Donald Trump “get away” with not participating in the Republican Party’s primary debates.
Host Chuck Todd asked him: “If Donald Trump doesn’t do debates, will you not support him, if he’s the nominee?”
Ramaswamy replied: “I’m not going to let him get away with that.”
Todd, again: “What does that mean? He can do what he wants to do.”
Ramaswamy quickly replied: “I don’t think the other candidates, including Donald Trump, are going to relish being on that debate stage with me.”
“What people gave him credit for was that he was [an] outsider and a disrupter. I’m the outsider in this race. And I think that if you want to be like Joe Biden, an existing establishment that doesn’t want to debate, I think people are hungry for new blood,” he added.
Todd asked Ramaswamy once again: “What should the party use as leverage to force him to show up?”
Ramaswamy said: “I think it’s the voters.”
“It’s my job and the job of candidates that if you want someone sitting across the table from Xi Jinping, if you want someone with a spine to take on the state at the top of the agenda, you better not be scared to show up on the debate stage,” he added.
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