Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy was hit hard with the truth earlier this week.
Well, sort of…
During a campaign stop in Lancaster, New Hampshire, the 38-year-old entrepreneur was briefly interrupted when a large sign that read “TRUTH” in all caps fell on him.
Ramaswamy currently sits third in the polls for the 2024 Republican nomination, behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Ramaswamy has been hyping “Truth” as one of the main tenets of his candidacy, even selling hats, T-shirts, and buttons that plug his core “Truth” beliefs, like “God is real” and that “an open border is no border.”
Though Ramaswamy was unscathed from the incident, he took a beating online as social media users cracked jokes about the ordeal.
“The truth hurts,” joked one person.
“That’s a sign if I ever saw one,” wrote another.
“When you’re talking, and the truth comes around and hits you in the head… from behind… it’s a sign… literally…” someone else said.
“Probably not the first or last time he’ll be clobbered by TRUTH,” another user posted.
Ramaswamy has launched a heavy campaign effort aimed at New Hampshire, an early primary battleground state.
He made 10 stops across the state over the Labor Day weekend and has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising in the state.
Since the beginning of August, the political action committee supporting his campaign—American Exceptionalism—has spent more than $430,000 in independent expenditures targeting New Hampshire.
It’s not, though, the only bad viral moment Ramaswamy has faced this week. Ramaswamy is also receiving a lot of social media attention for a heated interview he had with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan on Tuesday.
Video clips of the interview, in which Hasan pressed the candidate about his past criticism of form Trump, are being widely shared online. In it, Hasan shared a post by Ramaswamy that called Trump’s Jan. 6 Capitol riot behavior “abhorrent.”
Ramaswamy was repeatedly asked by Hasan what he thought was “abhorrent.”
The candidate said he would’ve handled Jan. 6 “differently” than Trump and said that “failing to unite this country falls short of what a true leader ought to do.”
But he declined to say specifically what was “abhorrent.”
