Republican 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is becoming a familiar figure in Iowa. The multimillionaire entrepreneur and scourge of “wokeness” is blanketing the state that votes first in the GOP nomination fight.
Less than eight months out from the Iowa caucuses, Ramaswamy is headed back to the Hawkeye State, building on his months of previous campaign stops. On June 14, Ramaswamy is set for a Sioux City town hall. The 7 p.m. event is hosted by the Woodbury County Republican Party.
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On Thursday, June 15, Ramaswamy will be in Dubuque for a 9:30 a.m. meet-and-greet at the Veterans Freedom Center. That night, it’s on to Davenport for a Pints and Politics event hosted by the Scott County Republican Party.
The Iowa stops come as Ramaswamy draws more scrutiny over his isolationist-leaning foreign policy views. Ramaswamy, in a June 4 ABC This Week interview, sought to differentiate himself from GOP rivals by embracing what he acknowledged would be “major concessions” to Russia. Ramaswamy pitched the idea of ending military support for Ukraine to negotiate a peace deal.
Under his proposed deal, Russia would agree to end its military alliance with China, withdraw nuclear weapons and systems from surrounding areas, and rejoin the nonproliferation START accord. In exchange, the agreement would “cede most of the Donbas region” in eastern Ukraine to Russia, and it would end any efforts to have Ukraine join NATO.
That broadly aligns with former President Donald Trump’s foreign policy idea, to the degree he’s advanced a consistent approach. Running to regain the White House after losing to President Joe Biden, Trump has criticized the Democratic incumbent and has seemed sympathetic to territorial claims in Ukraine made by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ramaswamy’s Ukraine take is a stark difference from the peace-through-strength model embodied by the late President Ronald Reagan and espoused now by his GOP opponents. These include former Vice President Mike Pence and ex-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during most of the Trump administration’s first half.
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At a June 4 CNN televised town hall in Iowa, Haley said helping Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression is in the U.S. national interest.
“This is bigger than Ukraine,” Haley said. “This is a war about freedom, and it’s one we have to win.” Haley called Putin a tyrant and rebutted claims the conflict is purely a territorial dispute, as claimed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), another 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
