The super PAC backing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking aim at Vivek Ramaswamy just hours before the pair are set to meet on the debate stage with a video of him lifting campaign rhetoric from former President Barack Obama.
The video from Never Back Down begins with Ramaswamy saying he was “leaning into” the perception that he is the “Republican Obama,” and follows with a side-by-side comparison showing the similarities between their rhetoric.
The clips show Ramaswamy using nearly identical language as Obama did more than a decade ago. “This has never been a Democratic or Republican idea, this is an American idea,” Obama says in one clip, which is followed by Ramaswamy saying, “These are not Democrat ideas or Republican ideas, these are fundamentally American ideals.”
The video comes just hours before the second Republican primary debate, where Ramaswamy will seek to command as much attention as he did during last month’s debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At that debate, Ramaswamy received the second largest share of speaking time, and spoke for more time than DeSantis.
It was at that first debate, however, that Ramaswamy was first caught borrowing language from Obama — he described himself as a “skinny guy with a funny last name,” an exact line delivered by Obama when he first entered the political arena.
The video could be an indication that DeSantis will make more of an effort to engage with the other candidates on stage on Wednesday night. Never Back Down took direct aim at Ramaswamy in a statement on the new video, calling Ramaswamy “a fraud and flip-flopper who has been caught in too many lies to count.”
The super PAC is also indicating their belief that this is a pattern with Ramaswamy, pointing to a Tuesday Mediaite story that shows the entrepreneur also using campaign language from former Republican candidate Kathy Barnette, a top consultant for his campaign.
“Recycling lines from his consultant Kathy Barnette’s Senate campaign is pretty pathetic, but copying parts of Obama’s most famous speech for his campaign launch video just shows what an empty suit he really is,” the group said.
Another set of side-by-side clips in the video shows Obama and Ramaswamy using the same analogy: “Imagine they were driving a car and they drove it into a ditch” Obama says. “You can’t have the keys back.”
Ramaswamy uses a similar line, saying “If someone has repeatedly crashed your car, do you want to turn over the keys to the same people who crashed it?”
Another clip shows the two having similar rhetoric on Russia. “I have a news flash, the USSR doesn’t exist anymore … it fell back in 1990,” Ramaswamy states, while a clip shows Obama saying “The Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
“I’m not going to read speeches written by others … what you’re going to get is coming from the heart, my bone-deep convictions,” Ramaswamy is shown saying at the end of the video.
The Ramaswamy campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A source close to the Ramaswamy campaign said it’s “a badge of honor that DeSantis is now directing ads at Vivek.”
“Means we’re right where we need to be heading into the second debate,” the source said.