2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has outlined his policy visions and expressed his intention to terminate the employment of one million federal workers if elected. However, his campaign’s trolling of former Vice President Mike Pence has been criticized by X, who added a “community note” to Ramaswamy’s claim of Pence copying his ideas. The Ramaswamy campaign responded by accusing Pence of plagiarizing their “revolutionary ideas” and emphasized Ramaswamy’s prestigious education background at Harvard and Yale Law School. X pointed out that former President Ronald Reagan initially proposed shutting down the Department of Education during his 1982 State of the Union speech, as cited by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The Ramaswamy campaign countered by highlighting a previous post by Ramaswamy from February 28, in which he promised to shut down the Education Department before Pence even launched his own presidential campaign in June. The campaign spokesperson noted that while Republican calls to end federal agencies were not new, Ramaswamy’s level of detail on the matter was unprecedented. Fox News has reached out to the Pence campaign for comment.
