Vivek Ramaswamy Drops Out of 2024 US Presidential Race, Endorses Donald Trump

Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, running for the White House, dropped out of the race on Tuesday and decided to back former US president Donald Trump. The Republican’s decision to drop out of the race for the White House came after a disappointing finish in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses.

“As of this moment we are going to suspend this presidential campaign. There’s no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don’t want to see happen in this country,” Ramaswamy said..

“I called Donald Trump to tell him I congratulate him on his victory, and now going forward he will have my full endorsement for the president,” he further added.

Ramaswamy earlier praised Trump as “the best president of the 21st century”. However, he urged that Republicans should back “fresh legs” and “take our America First agenda to the next level”.

Ramaswamy spoke to reporters and supporters at the Surety Hotel in Des Moines and livestreamed the caucus night press conference. Dozens of supporters thronged the Republican presidential candidate, as seen in the video livestreamed on X, and urged him to keep working for the people. Some of his supporters were visibly emotional and assured him that they would keep supporting him.

Ramaswamy said that he will be headed to New Hampshire later this week where he said he would campaign for Donald Trump and urged his supporters to make sure that he is made the next US president.

A report by the Associated Press pointed out that Ramaswamy’s failure shows that it appears quite difficult for other Republicans other than Trump to push the bounds of party orthodoxy. It pointed to the little political reward for Ramaswamy’s take on wars in Ukraine and Gaza, where he opposed aid for both Ukrainian and Israeli militaries.

The son of Indian immigrants, Ramaswamy entered politics at the highest level after making hundreds of millions of dollars at the intersection of hedge funds and pharmaceutical research, a career he charted and built while graduating from Harvard University and then Yale Law School.