Donald Trump has suggested that fellow candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is set to drop out of the 2024 race after it was revealed that his campaign is ceasing all its TV ad spending.
“He will, I am sure, Endorse me. But Vivek is a good man, and is not done yet!” Mr Trump wrote on Truth on Tuesday night.
His post linked to a story about the Ramaswamy campaign stopping its spending on TV ads and slot reservations, according to the campaign and ad-tracking company data, NBC News reported.
Data from AdImpact reveal that during the first full week of December, the campaign spent $200,000 on TV ads; last week, that number was down to $6,000.
Campaign officials told NBC that they are spending money on ads, but not on TV.
“We are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified — best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls and doors to communicate with our voters on Vivek’s vision for America, making their plan to caucus and turning them out,” a spokesperson told the network. “As you know, this isn’t what most campaigns look like. We have intentionally structured this way so that we have the ability to be nimble and hypertargeted in our ad spending.”
The new strategy has been launched within a month of the first primary contests – the Iowa caucuses on 15 January and the New Hampshire primary on 23 January.
The campaign said in early November that it was set to spend more than $10m on ads via broadcast, cable, radio, digital, and direct mail in the two early states. Since then, the campaign has spent $2.2m on TV, digital, and radio, AdImpact data shows.
Mr Trump, ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie are still spending on TV ads. During the same timespan that Mr Ramaswamy spent $6,000 on TV ads, Mr Trump spent $1.1m, Ms Haley spent $1m, Mr DeSantis shelled out $270,000, and Mr Christie $88,000.
Similarly, the Haley-backing SFA Fund Inc group spent $4.8m on all kinds of ads last week, while DeSantis-supporting Fight Right spent $1.3m, in addition to $987,000 spent by MAGA Inc, and $700,000 by the Christie-backing Tell It Like It Is PAC.
Meanwhile, the Ramaswamy-supporting American Exceptionalism PAC hasn’t spent anything on ads since October.
Mr Ramaswamy has called Mr Trump “the best president of the 21st century” and the ex-president has returned the favour, calling the political neophyte a “very, very, very intelligent person”.
At the second GOP primary debate, Mr Ramaswamy argued that while Mr Trump was a great president, he was better equipped to lead Mr Trump’s movement into the future.
“I think Trump was an excellent president. But the America First agenda does not belong to one man,” Mr Ramaswamy said on the debate stage. “I will respect Donald Trump and his legacy because it’s the right thing to do. But we will unite this country to take the America First agenda to the next level.”
After meeting Mr Trump, Mr Ramaswamy said his intellect “exceeded my expectations,” according to The Washington Post, pointing to his “memory and command over specific details relating to his foreign policy record and tenure in office” as well as his friendly personality when greeting guests.
“He kept commenting on my energy. I was like, ‘Actually, I thought you had a lot of energy too,’” Mr Ramaswamy said.
He has also said that “The donor class and the Republican Party does not like Trump. And they don’t like it when other candidates say good things about Trump, and that puts other candidates on a tight leash. What runs through the undercurrent of the Trump movement is a form of nationalism, and I share that nationalism”.
Mr Ramaswamy recently ended up in hot water when he was asked on CNN whether he believed the term “vermin” to be neo-Nazi rhetoric after Mr Trump used the word to describe his political enemies.
“This is a classic mainstream media move,” he said, dodging the question. “Pick some individual phrase of Donald Trump, focus on literally that word without actually interrogating the substance or what’s at issue.”
“You have Antifa and other related groups that have been burning down cities for the last three years in this county,” he added. “We have an invasion on our southern border, we have millions of people crossing our southern border, let’s talk about the substance of why we have to recognize that we’re not in ordinary times.”
Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, tweeted after the first primary debate on 23 August that Mr Ramaswamy “represents the most obviously anti-American, pro-Putin candidate since Donald Trump. In that regard, he’s even less subtle than Trump was about wanting to give up America’s allies and interests around the world and roll over for a murderous dictator”.
A few weeks before that debate last summer, in a phone interview with The Independent, Mr Wilson said: “I think if Donald Trump offered Ramaswamy the position of vice president, he would kill his own dog to have that job.”
