Vivek Ramaswamy steps in it

On 9/11 no less!

(Vivek Ramaswamy)

It was all going so well for Vivek Ramaswamy.

The hyper-charismatic, youthful entrepreneur has been charging up the national polls of late — fueled by his outsider image and embrace of Trumpism.

That is until he started talking about the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

In an interview with The Atlantic — as part of a broader profile of Ramaswamy — the candidate said this about 9/11:

I think it is legitimate to say, How many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers? Like, I think we want—maybe the answer is zero, 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.

Which, um, seems a little out there, right? Is Ramaswamy suggesting that 9/11 was an inside job engineered by the government and executed by federal agents? Cause that seems like what he is saying — or at least hinting at!

Now, that alone would be bad enough. Re-litigating 9/11 isn’t a good look for anyone — especially not someone trying to be taken seriously in a bid for the most powerful job in the country.

But, Ramaswamy didn’t stop there. He went on CNN on Monday night and tried to talk his way out of the problem. And, in doing so, he made it worse.

Here’s what Ramaswamy told Kaitlan Collins:

“What I said is on Jan. 6, I do believe that there were many federal agents in the field and we deserve to know who they are. On 9/11, what I’ve said is that the government lied and this is incontrovertible evidence, Kaitlan, the government lied about Saudi Arabia’s involvement.”

“Again, I asked that reporter to send a recording because it was on the record. He refused to do it, but we had a free flowing conversation. The truth is there are lies the government has told about 9/11, but it’s not the ones that somebody put in my mouth. It’s the one that I articulated, which is that Saudi Arabia, absolutely their intelligence was involved in 9/11.”

Which, er, isn’t what he said. I would urge you to go read the quote above that Ramaswamy gave to the Atlantic about 9/11. It said zero about Saudi Arabia. He brings up — unprompted — federal agents on planes that day.

I know all of that because after Ramaswamy claimed that he had been misquoted by the Atlantic, the writer of the piece — John Hendrickson — released not just a transcript of his interview with the candidate but also the AUDIO of that conversation.

Listen for yourself. Ramaswamy was not misquoted. He was properly quoted. The Atlantic has him dead to rights.

There are, it seems to me, two separate issues here.

One is a campaign execution issue. Ramaswamy is a first time candidate. And running for president ain’t easy. He and his campaign clearly believed they could dismiss this as just a misunderstanding. He had been misquoted! It’s just a simple mixup!

Except that the Atlantic brought the receipts. And made clear that what they said Ramaswamy said was, well, exactly what Ramaswamy had said. And they have an audio recording to back it all up.

To me, that’s a more minor infraction. Ramaswamy said something, got called on it, tried to cover his tracks and got caught. It’s a rookie mistake — and Ramaswamy is a rookie candidate. Not great but not a campaign killer either.

The bigger issue — for me — is that Ramaswamy either a) believes that 9/11 was an inside job or b) doesn’t grasp the responsibility that (should) go with running for president.

If it’s option a, then look out. That’s deep trouble for Ramaswamy — and suggests that as he faces a deeper dive into his background (as he grows more and more relevant as a candidate) that he will not wear well. Where there is one conspiratorial belief, there are usually many, many more.

But option b is almost as bad. Ramaswamy seems to be positioning himself as a “just asking questions” candidate. As in, I didn’t say that I knew there were federal agents on planes on 9/11. I am just asking if there might have been.

That sort of stuff gets into dangerous territory very rapidly. And that’s not just a hypothetical. Donald Trump’s four years in office taught us how bad and destructive a “just asking questions” president can be.

Ramaswamy has, to date, largely been ignored by his Republican rivals and the mainstream media. Those days are now over. And if this is an early test of how he will fare under the bright lights, the early returns are not promising.