Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley fired back at GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Sunday after he referred to her and social justice author Ibram Kendi as “modern grand wizards” of the “modern KKK.”
“The verbal assault lobbied against myself and Dr. Kendi is shameful. It is deeply offensive. And it is dangerous,” Pressley said on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation” on Sunday with Rev. Al Sharpton.
She added she is “squarely focused on the work of undoing the centuries of harm that has precisely been done to Black Americans and charting a path of true restorative justice and racial justice forward.”
“It is not that long ago that we were besieged by images of White supremacists carrying tiki torches in Charlottesville. It was not that long ago that a White supremacist mob seized the Capitol, waving Confederate flags and erecting nooses on the West Lawn of the Capitol,” she said.
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Vivek Ramaswamy during the Republican primary presidential debate hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Ramaswamy upheld his position, initially expressed during an Iowa campaign event Friday.
“I stand by what I said to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” Ramaswamy told CNN host Dana Bash on Sunday. “And there are many Americans today who are deeply frustrated by the new culture of anti-racism, how it’s really racism in new clothing.”
Ramaswamy said racism “comes from the modern left” and that it is part of “a dogma in this country.”
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Rep. Ayanna Pressley speaks during a “Get Out the Vote” rally at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center at Roxbury Community College in Boston, on Nov. 2, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
The original comments were made during Friday’s campaign appearance in Iowa, when Ramaswamy responded to a voter’s question about whether he has experienced racism in recent years.
“She’s a member of the squad,” Ramaswamy said of Pressley on Friday. “Her words not mine: ‘We don’t want any more Black faces that don’t want to be a Black voice. We don’t want any more Brown faces that don’t want to be a Brown voice.'”
“These aren’t my words,” Ramaswamy said. “These are the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.”
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Ramaswamy’s Pressley quote was reportedly said during a 2019 campaign event.
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Ibram X. Kendi at American University in Washington following a panel discussion on his book “How to Be an Antiracist” on Sept. 26, 2019. (Michael A. McCoy/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
During Friday’s rally, Ramaswamy went on to read Kendi’s opening lines in his book “How To Be Anti-Racist.”
“Here’s what it says,” Ramaswamy said on Friday, NBC reported. “Opening lines: ‘The remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Kendi responded to Ramaswamy on MSNBC to host Ali Velshi on Sunday: “The modern Klan actually hates me. And you know who the modern Klan loves? The very candidate that Vivek praises every chance he gets, and that’s Donald Trump.”