Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy warns that former President Donald Trump’s recent indictments are setting a dangerous precedent.
During an interview on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, the host questioned Ramaswamy on whether he would still vote for Trump despite his criminal charges.
“Your hand shot up pretty fast at the debate when you were asked whether you would vote for Donald Trump in the general election, even if he was a convicted felon. Can you just explain why you would vote for a convicted felon for president?” Stephanopoulos asked.
The presidential hopeful then responded that Trump’s indictments were making the U.S. a “banana republic.”
“If the Constitution permits somebody to run, and that’s the person that people of this country want to elect, then that’s the way our system works, and I stand by it,” Ramaswamy said, before being asked by the host to elaborate.
“So look. I think that many of these prosecutions against Donald Trump are outright, downright politicized persecutions through prosecution that set an awful precedent for our country. I do not want to see us become a banana republic where the administrative police state uses police force to eliminate opponents from competition. That is not the way it works. I will pick who I believe the best next president should be,” he explained.
This comes as new polls show that Ramaswamy is the closest rival to Trump, who has a 47-point lead over the billionaire entrepreneur.
Ramaswamy has also surpassed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with 13 percent to DeSantis’ 8 percent, a stunning development from just a few months ago when the governor led the now-dark horse candidate by 14 percent to 3 percent.
In another interview recently, Ramaswamy compared himself to Thomas Jefferson to dismiss concerns that he was too young to run for president.
“I’ll remind you that I’m in this race to revive those 1776 ideals of this country,” he added. “Well, who wrote those 1776 ideals on a page? Thomas Jefferson when he signed that Declaration of Independence. He was five years younger than me right now, he was 33-years-old,” the presidential hopeful said.
