Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he was using “an actual IQ” to run his campaign in response to a question about his decision to stop advertising on TV in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Ramaswamy’s campaign spent only $6,000 on advertising the week of Dec. 18, NBC News reported, noting that former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley spent $1 million. “I understand when something actually makes sense and when it doesn’t,” Ramaswamy told “Ingraham Angle” guest host Pete Hegseth. (RELATED: ‘Money Can’t Buy Him Love’: Laura Ingraham Says Big Money Can’t Save Biden’s Floundering Campaign)
“So when advertising rates are spiking for everybody else, you got $200 million close to that been spent by the campaigns and their Super PAC fund TV ads, that’s not the place to spend it,” Ramaswamy continued. “Instead, we are going grassroots bottom up. I have done the full Grassley, more stops in Iowa than many of the other candidates combined. We are doubling and tripling down on spending in much more targeted way that’s going to deliver – you mark my words on this – a surprise at the Iowa caucus on January 15th.”
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Ramaswamy is currently in fourth place in Iowa, getting 5.9% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls from Dec. 1 to Dec. 19, trailing former President Donald Trump, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Haley.
“I’m running this campaign in the same way that I would run a company, with an actual IQ and an actual brain, not taken for a ride by political consultants, and I think that’s going to lead us to ultimate success here,” Ramaswamy said.
“I love where we’re sitting right now, Pete, where the mainstream media has got expectations low, hanging me in fourth place,” Ramaswamy added. “I think if you take where the mainstream media’s polling media is having me in the high single digits in Iowa. We are going to shatter that. I’m going to leave the rest to January 15th.”
Ramaswamy also criticized other Republican candidates, notably DeSantis, for refusing to pull out of the Colorado primary after the state’s supreme court ruled Trump was disqualified from appearing on the ballot in the 2024 Republican primary election in a 4-3 decision.
Ramaswamy withdrew from the GOP primary ballot in Colorado after condemning the court’s ruling.
“I’m sad to see that DeSantis and Haley and Chris Christie haven’t followed that,” Ramaswamy said. “They are focused on collecting some microscopic number of delegates instead of standing for the actual integrity of our election.”
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