Donald Trump Turns on Vivek Ramaswamy: “Don’t Get Duped”

With Iowa caucusgoers getting ready to head to the polls on Monday, former President Donald Trump lashed out for the very first time at biotech-entrepreneur-turned-GOP-candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

“A vote for Vivek is a vote for the ‘other side’ — don’t get duped by this,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday evening, adding that Ramaswamy—who has made a clear play for Trump’s base—is “not MAGA.”

Though Ramaswamy has lavished praise on Trump throughout the campaign season, the GOP frontrunner said the support was a “deceitful” and “sly” campaign trick.

Trump’s post came in response to t-shirts the Ramaswamy campaign is distributing that read “Save Trump, Vote Vivek.” The line refers to an argument Ramaswamy has made on the campaign trail: that the “deep state” or the “regime” won’t allow Trump to become president for a second term.

The former president reacted to a post in which Ramaswamy posed with supporters in Iowa wearing the shirts, Politico reported, citing an anonymous Trump campaign advisor. Trump advisor Chris LaCivita also responded to the post, calling Ramaswamy a “FRAUD” and a “FAKE.”

“Vivek started his campaign as a great supporter, ‘the best President in generations,’ etc.,” Trump wrote. “Unfortunately, now all he does is disguise his support in the form of deceitful campaign tricks.”

Throughout the campaign, Ramaswamy, who has said he’d pardon Trump on “day one,” has been a source of effusive praise for the former president, and Trump has largely returned the favor. In recent weeks, Ramaswamy had only escalated his support. After the Colorado State Supreme Court disqualified Trump from the state’s primary ballot in mid-December, the entrepreneur pledged to take his name off the ballot unless Trump was reinstated and called on the GOP field to follow suit. Last week, he filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of Trump’s appeal of the Colorado ruling.

It’s likely no coincidence that Trump’s attack comes just days before the Iowa caucuses, where the GOP frontrunner hopes to score an overwhelming victory and shut the door on the primary field. The change in tune possibly reflects the Trump campaign’s concern that Ramaswamy might peel off votes from Trump supporters and damper the extent of Trump’s likely victory.

A new NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll published Saturday has Ramaswamy polling at 8 percent among likely Iowa caucusgoers—up from 5 percent in December. Trump, meanwhile, is the first choice of just under half of the state’s GOP electorate; former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were at 20 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

“I respect the hell out of Trump. He’s the best President of the 21st century. I’ve defended him at every step against the unjust persecutions,” Ramaswamy said in a statement to Politico, in which he touted his amicus brief and promised to keep himself off the primary ballots in which Trump has been removed. “But OPEN YOUR EYES to the hard TRUTH: this system will stop at nothing to keep this man away from the White House.”

In a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday night, Ramaswamy argued that “the system” was angling to narrow the field to a Trump-Haley matchup, after which “they would trot their puppet”—Haley—“into the White House.”

“They’re selling us a rope today that they’re going to use to hang us tomorrow,” he claimed.