Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy endorsed Utah 2nd Congressional District candidate Colby Jenkins Wednesday.
Jenkins is running to replace Republican incumbent Rep. Celeste Maloy, whom he beat at the Utah GOP convention last month. Prior to the convention, Sen. Mike Lee shocked Utah Republicans by endorsing Jenkins rather than Maloy. Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., have both also endorsed Jenkins.
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who ran for president as a political outsider, sometimes being referring to as “Trump 2.0,” is the latest high-profile figure to endorse the congressional hopeful.
He joined the Rod Arquette Show Wednesday, where he said Jenkins is on the “right side” of the Republican Party.
“I do think that there’s been a divide in the Republican Party for the last 20 years. Colby (Jenkins) comes out on the right side of that,” Ramaswamy stated.
The former presidential candidate listed some of the things that made Jenkins stand out to him as a candidate, including the fact that he was a Green Beret.
“I love anybody who has served his country in one way to then come back and serve in a different capacity,” he said.
“But I also like his combination of policy views that are aligned with where I think the conservative movement is going. He is against intervening in foreign wars for the sake of intervention in its own right,” Ramaswamy continued. “He is obviously somebody who stands for using the military and other resources of this country to secure our own homeland. He is strong on securing our own border understanding the impact on the rest of this country. And I do think that that kind of positive pro-nation decision is the future direction of the conservative movement.
“But I also think that he’s going to be somebody through the example that he sets is going to really stand for the Constitution and stand for who we are.”
Last month, Ramaswamy endorsed another Utah candidate for Congress: Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs.
“(Staggs) signed my American Truth Pledge (and) I’m proud to endorse him for US Senate. End the permanent state,” Ramaswamy said in April. Staggs is running to replace Sen. Mitt Romney in the Senate.
Ramaswamy, Sen. Mike Lee and why he loves Utah
Ramaswamy noted that it was Lee who first called his attention to Jenkins.
In fact, Lee is one of the things that Ramaswamy said he loves about Utah.
“You have one of the best senators in the U.S. Senate in Mike Lee, who has become a friend of mine not so much on personal grounds as much on principle grounds, sharing your commitment to the Constitution.”
Ramaswamy also said that Utah “embodies everything that conservatives stand for” and that it should be a model for the country.
“One of the things I love about Utah, apart from being just a beautiful state — I have traveled in Utah and I enjoy just the raw natural beauty and the character of the people there — is the way in which grounded family-based values, faith-based values translate into people just living prosperous, healthier and more fulfilling lives.
“And that’s what we want in the rest of this country as well at a moment where we have lost faith in God and patriotism and hard work and family. Why not use a state that’s done that well, with unambiguously good results to show for it from a regulatory and financial perspective, to be able to make that a model for the rest of the country?”
Ramaswamy on the Trump trial and campaign
Ramaswamy also spoke about the Trump “hush money” trial and what he hopes to see the jury come back with when deliberations conclude.
“I am hopeful that we’ll see an acquittal,” Ramaswamy stated. “I’m not in the business of offering definitive predictions on what is going to happen, but I was in the courtroom. I saw what the jurors see. If I were a juror I would be very skeptical of everything the prosecution has put up.”
“... Let’s hope that a jury of peers, regardless of their political beliefs, rejects this sham prosecution for what it is.”
Arquette then asked Ramaswamy for his assessment of Trump’s presidential campaign and where he stands in the polls so far.
Ramaswamy said there is an opportunity for the GOP to win a “landslide unifying election of historic proportions that we have not seen since Reagan in 1980.”
He noted, however, that there is the risk of complacency in the conservative movement. Ramaswamy said there is the possibility that Biden could end up not being the Democratic Party’s nominee.
“I predict there’s gonna be a lot of twists and turns that we’re not going to be able to anticipate what they are,” he stated. “All we could say is that they’re going to come and we have to be prepared for that and the best way is not just to rail against Biden, but to stand for our own values and our own vision.”