CNN
Vivek Ramaswamy dove headfirst into his controversial comments on Sunday, defending his comparison of Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) to a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. The entrepreneur, who is running for president in the GOP primary, said he was merely attempting to debate the issue of racism.
Ramaswamy had blasted the congresswoman, who is Black, on Friday for her 2019 comment that Democrats “don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.” He said her words were “the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.” Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, he double downed on it—all while trying to dismiss it as a “fringe comment.”
“The Grand Wizard of the KKK would be proud of what they would hear her say because there’s nothing more racist than saying that your skin color predicts something about the content and your viewpoints to support your ideas,” he said.