Republican National Committee boss Ronna McDaniel fired back Thursday at Vivek Ramaswamy after he called for her to resign her position during the previous night’s debate.
“He’s at 4%. He needs a headline,” McDaniel told Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney of the biotech entrepreneur.
Ramaswamy, 38, devoted part of his opening statement to lashing out at McDaniel over her stewardship of the RNC following another disappointing round of election results, calling the GOP a “party of losers.”
“Ronna, if you want to come on stage tonight, you want to look the GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign. I will turn over my — yield my time to you,” he said at one point.
“The RNC doesn’t do state races, we’re a federal committee. So we weren’t involved in those races on Tuesday,” McDaniel told Varney. “I know that Vivek is kind of newer to the party — he voted for Obama — so he may not know that.”
Ramaswamy has claimed he did not vote in any presidential election between 2008 and 2016 — voting for Libertarian Michael Badnarik in 2004 and former President Donald Trump in 2020.
The Ohio native is currently averaging 4.7% support in the RealClearPolitics aggregate, placing him in fourth place among his 2024 GOP peers.
McDaniel also pinned blame for the lackluster Republican performance on messaging struggles regarding the issue of abortion.
“We don’t do the messaging — that’s a fact. We don’t do it. And our candidates have lost their messaging on abortion,” she told FBN.
After Ramaswamy’s jab at McDaniel, the rumor mill claimed the RNC chair had choice words for the candidate.
Timcast.com reported that McDaniel had raged that Ramaswamy was “an a–hole. Total a–hole.”
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“He’s desperate because he’s doing bad in the polls,” she allegedly added. “He won’t be getting a cent from us.”
A RNC spokesperson denied Thursday that McDaniel had made any such remark.
In response, the Ramaswamy campaign reiterated to The Post that “Ronna Romney should resign,” referring to the RNC chair by her maiden name.
Ramaswamy himself tweeted: “Ronna should resign. This shouldn’t be controversial. Instead, she reportedly said the RNC won’t give me ‘one cent’ of funding – which proves my point about RNC corruption. And this morning she is flat-out lying by saying I voted for Obama. Swing-and-a-miss, but keep trying.”
McDaniel also denied that she confronted Ramaswamy over his outburst, contrary to what some photos on social media appeared to show.
“I’ve heard this reporting. I didn’t speak to Vivek. I have not spoken to him since those comments,” she told Varney.
Ramaswamy also complained about the RNC choosing to partner with NBC News for the third debate, as well as the choice of “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt and “Meet The Press” moderator Kristen Welker as co-moderators with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“Think about who’s moderating this debate,” he said at one point. “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, bringing more people into our party.”
“I stand by our choice to go with a non-conservative media outlet. I think NBC did a great job,” McDaniel told CNN Tuesday night. “Forty-two percent of our country is independent. We’re not going to win elections if we sit in echo chamber[s].”
“If you can’t take a tough question, then you probably shouldn’t be running for president,” she added.
Josh Christenson contributed to this report.
