The biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, was condemned for conspiracy-tinged remarks about the events of 9/11 and the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers,” Ramaswamy said, in a profile published by the Atlantic on Monday.
“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.”
Charles P Pierce, a writer for Esquire, said: “There is not a single sentence in this paragraph that doesn’t disqualify this guy from being president of the United States.”
The events of 9/11 – and the absence of any US government plot – were established by an official commission, a bipartisan group which published its final report in July 2004.
On 11 September 2001, four planes took off from Boston, Washington and Newark before being hijacked by terrorists. Two planes hit the towers of the World Trade Center, in Manhattan. One hit the Pentagon in Virginia. A passenger revolt on the fourth plane brought it down in a field in Pennsylvania before it could reach its target, the Capitol or the White House.
The death toll was 2,977. Thousands were hurt. More than 2,000 survivors and first responders have died from cancers and other disorders related to the crash sites.
The US deemed al-Qaida responsible, spawning wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and operations elsewhere in which millions died.
In the Atlantic profile, Ramaswamy, 38, did not confine his conspiracy-laced remarks to 9/11. He made that comment after being asked: “What was the truth about January 6?”, the deadly attack on Congress by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn the 2020 election.
“I don’t know,” Ramaswamy said, “but we can handle it. Whatever it is, we can handle it. Government agents. How many government agents were in the field? Right?”
Ramaswamy launched his presidential campaign as a rank outsider but has improved in polling to challenge Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, for second place to Trump.
Ramaswamy, DeSantis and other candidates are due to appear in the first debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Ramaswamy’s remarks about 9/11 seem likely to be raised.
Trump is skipping the debate. But the former president also has a history of controversial comments about 9/11, including claiming “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey were seen celebrating the fall of the towers in New York (they were not) and saying he owned the tallest building in lower Manhattan after the World Trade Center fell (he did not).
Seeking to appeal to Trump voters, Ramaswamy seems eager to cover similar ground. Earlier this month, on the rightwing Blaze TV, he was asked if he thought 9/11 was an “inside job” or happened “exactly like the government tells us”.
“I don’t believe the government has told us the truth,” Ramaswamy said. “I’m driven by evidence and data. What I’ve seen in the last several years is we have to be skeptical of what the government does tell us.”
Ramaswamy later said he was referring to what is known or not known about links between the 9/11 attackers and the government of Saudi Arabia. But the Wall Street Journal, based in downtown Manhattan, was among those to rebuke him.
Referring to a notorious conspiracy theorist, the paper’s editorial board said: “Oh, man. What ‘evidence and data’ is he talking about? An Alex Jones broadcast?”
It added: “More such flights into political exotica will encourage many voters to conclude that Mr Ramaswamy isn’t ready for his closeup, much less the demands of the presidency.”
Ramaswamy protested against such treatment, on platforms including an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In that conversation, Ramaswamy said controversy over his comments about 9/11 would not prove a “campaign-ender”, adding: “I explicitly said that the government absolutely lied to us. The 9/11 commission lied. The FBI lied. Now, is this a core point of my campaign? No, it’s not.”
He also claimed to be “speaking the truth you’re not supposed to speak”.
Then came the Atlantic profile.
Ammar Moussa, Democratic national press secretary and rapid response director, wrote: “Oh my god. Not only is Vivek spreading conspiracy theories about January 6, but now is implying the federal government was behind 9/11? What are we doing here?”
Thomas Lecaque, a historian at Grand View University in Iowa, went harder: “I think it’s legitimate to say Vivek Ramaswamy should be treated like a 9/11 conspiracy nut and given the complete lack of respect, time, and media space that deserves.”
