On Thursday, a consulting firm working with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leaked his strategy for Wednesday’s presidential debate.
According to one leaked memo, the governor’s campaign advised him to “take a sledgehammer to Vivek Ramaswamy,” a rival candidate known as a biotech entrepreneur. The campaign told DeSantis to call him “‘Fake Vivek” or “Vivek the Fake.”
At the time, the campaign was raising eyebrows with this piece of advice.
But some of Ramaswamy’s associates have reportedly said that he’s running specifically to sabotage DeSantis.
Some confidants of Ramaswamy spoke to ABC News, and they described Ramaswamy’s long game.
ABC News reported —
In early 2023, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy summoned a small group of conservative operatives to discuss “exciting plans” he had for the coming months.
“I’m going to run for president,” Ramaswamy said on the call…
Multiple sources who were on the call tell ABC News that they were baffled by the news…
Ramaswamy pitched himself as a candidate who could make serious waves in the Republican primary at the meeting. When met with some skepticism, Ramaswamy argued that his candidacy could also dissuade Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from entering the race, according to a source who was on the call. In the lead-up to his announcement, Ramaswamy would tell several other conservative activists that he believed that if he ran, it could stop DeSantis from running or impact his viability as a candidate if he did enter the race, sources said.
Reportedly, Ramaswamy had not always planned to run for president. He originally planned to host a podcast published by The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing confirmed his work on a podcast hosted by Ramaswamy.
“His priorities were changing. And we could have chosen to be aggressive about it — we did spend a little bit of money on the prep that we’d been doing,” Boreing told ABC News. The conservative CEO added that his company had agreed to release Ramaswamy from his development contract.
Ramaswamy later called Boreing to divulge his plan to run for president.
“I could really relate to the absurdity of it … And I really admired the absurdity of, ‘I’m going to run for president in a week or two weeks,’ or whatever it was from when he called me,” Boreing told ABC News. “I felt that kind of sense of kinship, not because I have any aspirations of running for office, but just because of the kind of entrepreneurial madness of the whole thing… I thought it was great.”
Apparently, Ramaswamy nixed his plan to become famous from hosting a podcast… and decided instead.
Ramaswamy’s campaign has slammed ABC News for doing the Florida governor’s bidding.
One senior adviser asked the outlet, “Does one of your sources live in a publicly financed mansion in Tallahassee, Florida?” The adviser was referring to DeSantis.
“I’m sure they will add this to their pre-canned attack memo for the debate,” the Ramaswamy adviser continued. “Vivek’s job on Aug. 23 [the night of the debate] is to introduce himself and his vision to the American people… These boring, canned attack lines from a robotic candidate doesn’t change that.”
DeSantis has finished behind Ramaswamy in some polls, but according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregate, DeSantis remains the highest-polling candidate set to debate on Wednesday.
For that reason, the Florida Republican may become a target for rival candidates’ attacks.
Read more: DeSantis is no longer second place in the GOP primary
The Horn editorial team