Conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter recently told former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that she would not back him for the GOP nomination because “you’re an Indian.”
Coulter, 62, made the shocking remark on a podcast Ramaswamy released Wednesday, on which the two spoke about nationalism and the basis of American identity.
“I agreed with many many things you said during — in fact, probably more than most other candidates — when you were running for president, but I still would not have voted for you, because you’re an Indian,” she said.
Coulter then doubled down by saying she would only vote for presidential candidates who are WASPs — White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
“There is a core national identity that is the identity of the WASP,” she said, “and that doesn’t mean we can’t take anyone else in, a Sri Lankan, or a Japanese, or an Indian, but the core around which the nation’s values are formed is the WASP.”
“We’ve never had a president who didn’t have at least partial English ancestry,” Coulter continued, adding that if any of Ramaswamy’s children married a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), she would “definitely vote for them for president.”
The biotech mogul, 38, argued Coulter was using a “left-like false proxy target” of race to identify those who would be loyal to America, rather than examining their ideology.
Coulter did not respond to an inquiry from The Post, but said on X it is was a “total lie” to claim she didn’t vote for Ramaswamy because “he isn’t white.”
Ramaswamy issued a statement about the conversation on X, saying he disagreed with Coulter, but respected that “she had the guts to speak her mind.”
“I was initially shocked, and for a split second, enraged. But after that I was just deeply curious, and it was a fascinating conversation,” Ramaswamy said in a statement to The Post Thursday.
Coulter had previously told Nikki Haley, another former 2024 presidential candidate with an Indian background, to “go back to your country.”
Haley was born in South Carolina to Indian immigrant parents.
“Her candidacy did remind me that I need to immigrate to India so I can demand they start taking down parts of their history,” Coulter said on “The Mark Simone Show,” referencing Haley’s decision to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s State House grounds in 2015 after a racially motivated shooting at a historically black Charleston church.
