What in the world … ? On the cusp of his first presidential primary debate, Vivek Ramaswamy put his foot squarely in his mouth in his attempt to virtue-signal to the Truther fringe — or so it seems. In an interview with The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson, Ramaswamy starts off by demanding the truth about January 6th and infiltration by law-enforcement agents in the riot.

And if he’d stopped there, Ramaswamy probably would have scored some points in MAGA world. Instead, Ramaswamy then accused the government of infiltrating agents onto the 9/11 flights that crashed into the World Trade Center. No, seriously:

During one of his “truth” monologues at the Lincoln Dinner, Ramaswamy told the crowd, “We can handle the truth about what really happened on January 6.” As the bus rolled north, I asked him: What is the truth about January 6?

“I don’t know, but we can handle it,” he said. “Whatever it is, we can handle it. Government agents. How many government agents were in the field? Right?”

Then, suddenly, he was talking about 9/11.

“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers. Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero. But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to. Well, if we’re doing a January 6 commission, absolutely, those should be questions that we should get to the bottom of,” he said. “‘Here are the people who were armed. Here are the people who are unarmed.’ What percentage of the people who were armed were federal law-enforcement officers? I think it was probably high, actually. Right?”

The Atlantic published that yesterday. Last night, Ramaswamy appeared on CNN to claim that the Atlantic had misquoted him. “The quote is wrong, actually,” he told Kaitlan Collins:

Collins: Are you telling me the quote is wrong?

Ramaswamy: I am pic.twitter.com/s9Pm4uOMcP

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 22, 2023

COLLINS: But your quote here, are you telling me that the quote was wrong here?

RAMASWAMY: 20 years later, yes.

COLLINS: But are you telling me that your quote is wrong here?

RAMASWAMY: I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually.

Apparently, Ramaswamy is too new to the Internet to game out what would happen if he accused The Atlantic of manufacturing the quote. As anyone else would have predicted — and as several people did predict — Hendrickson rebutted Ramaswamy with the actual audio of the interview:

Yesterday, after The Atlantic published my story and his comments about 9/11 and January 6 drew attention, Ramaswamy told Semafor that the quote we published wasn’t “exactly what I said.” Last night, asked by CNN’s Collins about the same quote, Ramaswamy said, “I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually.”

The quote is correct.

They provide the transcript as well, and it’s exactly how they reported it initially, italics from Hendrickson:

Ramaswamy: Yeah. Absolutely. Why can the government not be transparent about something that we’re using? Terrorists, or the kind of tactics used to fight terrorists. If we find that there are hundreds of our own in the ranks on the day that they were, that they were—I mean, look …

Hendrickson: Well, there’s a difference between entrapment and a difference between a law-enforcement agent identifying—

Ramaswamy: I think it is legitimate to say, How many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers? Like, I think we want—maybe the answer is zero, probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero. But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.

That leaves Ramaswamy with two very big problems. First up, he’s playing checkers in a 3-D chess world by shooting off his mouth and then trying to lie about what he said. He might even be playing tiddlywinks rather than checkers if Hendrickson’s claim that he got permission to record from Ramaswamy to record their conversations. That would mean Ramaswamy knew the recording existed but chose to lie about it on national TV instead. And so Ramaswamy set up the trap, walked right into it, and allowed The Atlantic to snap it shut.

That’s not exactly the kind of master strategic thinker the GOP needs on its presidential ticket.

Second big problem: Ramaswamy is very poorly versed in the issues he discusses. No one has ever suggested that the government infiltrated the 9/11 flights, because that would be a bats**t crazy conspiracy theory. Why would they infiltrate flights with law-enforcement agents that would get killed in the terrorist attack? What does Ramaswamy think that strategy would have gained the government? There are fringe inside-job conspiracy theories, but even for those insane claims, this one is really out there.

It’s so bats**t crazy, in fact, that Ramaswamy tried to lie about it the first time he got challenged to explain his allegation.

This tends to confirm my impression of Ramaswamy yesterday — that he’s a bored and wealthy dilettante who wants to draw attention to himself. He adopts edgy positions and makes splashy attacks, but he’s so out of his depth that he’s prone to fumbling on his attacks and claims, and hasn’t been around or paying attention nearly long enough to pursue electoral politics at this level.

This is an astoundingly bad fumble, coming an astoundingly bad time — for Ramaswamy.  It comes at a very good time for his primary opponents … and for primary voters, too.

Andrew Malcolm and I discuss Ramaswamy’s issues in the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast, too. Today’s show features:

• Donald Trump announced that he won’t do primary debates. Andrew Malcolm and I discuss the tactic and the strategy.
• Will this allow the other candidates to break past the media focus on Trump and his legal fights?
• We also discuss the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy from the tertiary pack, and what that might mean.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!