Republican presidential candidates expressed dismay with their party’s stinging election losses this week as Democrats notched key victories across the country, including on the hot-button issue of abortion.
“I am upset about what happened last night. We’ve become a party of losers, at the end of the day,” former biotech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy said at the third GOP presidential debate in Miami.
Ramaswamy faulted Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, suggesting she ought to resign, and then launched an attack against debate host NBC News, saying the network’s moderators should be replaced by conservatives like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, podcast host Joe Rogan and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
“We’d have 10 times the viewership,” Ramaswamy said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, trained his guns on Donald Trump, the front-runner in the GOP presidential race, who has opted not to participate in the primary debates.
“Trump said Republicans were going to get tired of winning. Well, we saw last night, I’m sick of Republicans losing,” DeSantis said.
Trump endorsed Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who failed to oust the state’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear on Tuesday, to the disappointment of many in the GOP. The former president blamed Cameron’s association with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“Daniel Cameron lost because he couldn’t alleviate the stench of Mitch McConnell,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. “I told him early that’s a big burden to overcome.”
Three days earlier, however, Trump touted his endorsement of Cameron by claiming “he’s not really ‘a McConnell guy.’”
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