Vivek Ramaswamy announced Monday night he’s dropping out of the 2024 GOP presidential race and endorsing former President Trump following the long shot’s disappointing showing in the Iowa caucuses, the latest announcement to winnow down the primary field Trump dominates.
“As of this moment, we are going to suspend this presidential campaign,” Ramaswamy told supporters in Iowa on Monday night.
“As I’ve said since the beginning, there are two America First candidates in this race. And earlier tonight, I called Donald Trump to tell him that I congratulate him on his victory, and now going forward, you will have my full endorsement for the presidency,” Ramaswamy said later, while one of his attendees interjected during his remarks, “Don’t do it!”
Ramaswamy’s exit comes not long after former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced he was dropping his White House bid. Late last year, Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and former Vice President Mike Pence also bowed out of the race.
Ramaswamy, the first GOP millennial to seek the Republican presidential nomination, was initially seen as a long-shot candidate with little name recognition when he launched in February 2023. Though he showed modest signs of momentum during the primary, he was unable to achieve momentum in the race against not only Trump, but also other candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
His foreign policy stances on Israel and Taiwan in particular, in addition to his lack of political experience, drew heat from some of his rivals.
Ramaswamy said that, if elected, he would negotiate an “Abraham Accords 2.0” that would incorporate Israel within the rest of the Middle East in order to ensure additional aid to the country after 2028 would not be necessary.
On Taiwan, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur said the U.S. would defend Taiwan until 2028, when the U.S. had achieved semiconductor independence, and that “after that, our commitments to Taiwan, our commitments to be willing to go to military conflict, will change after that, because that’s rationally in our self-interest.”
But he later appeared to change course, telling NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell that “we will resume our position of strategic ambiguity” after 2028.
“You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows,” Haley shot at Ramaswamy during the first GOP debate.
Ramaswamy was also notably supportive of Trump during his candidacy, at one point circulating a pledge that urged the other 2024 rivals to commit to pardoning the former president for federal charges he faced in his handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
However, Trump in the final days before the Iowa caucuses attacked Ramaswamy, warning supporters not to vote for him.
Ramaswamy’s exit more broadly underscores the enduring strength of Trump in the primary, where the former president continues to widely lead his challengers in national and local polling. Ramaswamy’s candidacy as a Trump-aligned contender ultimately did little to move the needle among voters, including those who committed to the former president.