Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press” 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, “If Donald Trump doesn’t do debates, will you not support him, if he’s the nominee?”
Ramaswamy said, “I’m not going to let him get away with that.”
Todd said, “What does that mean? He can do what he wants to do.”
Ramaswamy said, “I don’t think the other candidates, including Donald Trump, are going to relish being on that debate stage with me.”
He added, “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.”
Todd asked, “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.”
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