Republican strategist Karl Rove criticized biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy over his “robotic” and “over-the-top” performance in the first GOP debate last week.
In an interview on the Cats Roundtable on WABC 770 AM-N.Y. hosted by John Catsimatidis on Sunday morning, Rove said that overall, Ramaswamy “on points had a good evening and on substance had a bad evening” on the Milwaukee debate stage Wednesday.
“Representative of that was his comment that everybody else on the stage was bought and paid for, which I thought was so over-the-top that it was representative of his mindset, ‘I’m the only perfect person on the stage,’” said Rove, former aide to President George W. Bush.
“And he was robotic, I thought,” Rove added. “Very energetic, high level of energy, big smile, talked very fast. But I think Chris Christie got off one of the better lines of the night ... 'He sounded like ChatGPT.'”
Ramaswamy also ran into criticism for being hypocritical with his “bought and paid for” line, considering he received a $90,000 grant from the family of George Soros to attend Yale Law School. While he said he took it out of need, he reported $2.2 million in income in 2011, the same year he started at Yale, per a report.
A poll that followed the debate found that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won the debate by 3 points over Ramaswamy. The survey, conducted by The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos released Thursday, put DeSantis at 29% and Ramaswamy at 26%.
Rove agreed that DeSantis had a good night.
“There are some people who did what they needed to do that night,” Rove told Catsimatidis. “Ron DeSantis, I thought, had a good opening. He had a good closing. He did a good job of focusing on his ability to get things done, represented by his record in Florida. This was important for him to have a good night.”
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