Ramaswamy calls Haley ‘fascist’
Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy took a shot at former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley during the fourth debate, calling her a “fascist” Wednesday night.
“The only person more fascist than the Biden regime now is Nikki Haley, who thinks the government should identify every one of those individuals with an ID,” Ramaswamy said during the debate, which is being hosted by The Hill’s sister organization NewsNation, to boos from the crowd.
“That is not freedom, that is fascism, and she should come nowhere near the levers of power, let alone the White House,” he added.
Ramaswamy was referring to a previous proposal offered by Haley suggesting that social media users needed to be verified by name, saying in a Fox News interview, “Every person on social media should be verified, by their name. That’s, first of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden, people have to stand by what they say.”
“And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots and the Chinese bots,” Haley explained. “And then you’re gonna get some civility, when people know their name is next to what they say.”
But Haley faced blowback over her stance from some of her contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and later adjusted her position on the matter.
“I don’t mind anonymous American people having free speech; what I don’t like is anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech,” the former U.N. ambassador explained during a CNBC interview, according to The Associated Press.
Haley again defended her position on social media and freedom of speech, saying the issue was focused on foreign adversaries and not Americans.
“What I said was that social media companies need to show us their algorithms. I also said there are millions of bots on social media right now. They’re foreign. They’re Chinese. They’re Iranian,” she explained.
“I will always fight for freedom of speech for Americans. We do not need freedom of speech for Russians and Iranians and Hamas. We need social media companies to go and fight back on all of these bots that are happening,” she continued as Ramaswamy disputed her comments.
“As a mom, do I think that social media would be more civil if we went and had people’s names next to that? Yes, I do think that, because I think we’ve got too much cyberbullying. I think we’ve got child pornography and all of those things,” she added. “But having said that, I never said government should go and require anyone’s names.”