Your Lyin’ Ears

Did he say what you heard? Opinions vary!

Slur, or Slurred? Ramaswamy’s Audio Emission Has People Talking

It was inevitable that, after Elon Musk’s (not a) Nazi salute, Tulsi Gabbard’s (not a) call to “convert” gay people, and RFK Jr.’s (OK, actual) claim that snake venom cures sciatica, the obstreperous Vivek Ramaswamy would get his turn, as Trump confidante Roger Stone likes to say, in the barrel.

The latest tempest-in-a-Trump-cap began with Joe Rogan’s live podcast interview Sunday night with the former DOGE co-lead and current candidate for the Republican Ohio gubernatorial nomination.

Ramaswamy was explaining the origins of the swastika as an Indian fertility symbol, which, he said, “has personal resonance for me as a person of Indian heritage, and that’s why I have them all over my house.”

Rogan responded that he knew some “Jewish dudes” who, though they were “totally down with the whole Make America Great and crypto thing that you’re about,” might feel that “swastikas are a hard no.”

Ramaswamy then said some words, or made a noise — depending on who you ask — which briefly roiled the internet after some liberal writers interpreted the words/sound as an obscene reference to the Jewish people.

“It’s not up for debate, he said ‘M********** K*** B*******,’” said a heavily-bleeped Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times on MSNBC. “Are you f****** kidding they’re trying to say he didn’t say it HE F****** SAID IT,” tweeted NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill.

After the audio artifact occurred, Rogan asked Ramaswamy, “Did you just say what I think you said?” “What?” said Ramaswamy, “I didn’t say anything.” “I coulda swore you said something kinda, like, harsh,” Rogan said. “I said ‘harsh’? I didn’t say harsh,” Ramaswamy countered. “No,” said Rogan, “I mean the thing you said was harsh, not the word ‘harsh.’” “So you’re retracting your accusation,” Ramaswamy shot back.

The conversation went on in this vein awhile, then was abruptly replaced with a musical bumper and the show’s logo; when the podcast resumed, Ramaswamy was gone and Rogan was introducing musician Buddy Brown. His only apparent reference to the abandoned interview was the comment “I told [Rogan producer] Jamie [Vernon] not to do this s*** live.”

Until the footage was pulled down under threat of legal action, the clip of Ramaswamy and Rogan circulated widely on the internet, sometimes slowed down or segmented for analytic context, and generated vigorous debate.

Expert opinion, however, was mixed. Gerald Heimen, a spokesman for the American Academy of Audiology, told this paper, “I don’t know why you called us about this. What Ramaswamy said was obvious to anyone with normal hearing and you don’t have to be an audiologist to say so.”

On the other hand, the Anti-Defamation League issued a tweet saying the alleged comment “doesn’t sound like the Vivek Ramaswamy we know, a great friend of the Jewish people.”

Faith Gesellschaft, a spokesperson for the Institute for Improved Understanding, a nonprofit fully funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, explained that she had listened to many hours of Ramaswamy’s speeches and found the candidate “is sometimes unclear in his fricatives, his plosives, and his vowel sounds. Based on my research, I believe Ramaswamy could just as easily be saying ‘Mulder Function Bike Fashions.’” Asked what that could possibly mean, Gesellschaft said, “you’ll have to ask him.”

That was obviated by Ramaswamy himself, who the following day told a press gaggle at the Ohio Governor’s mansion — which, he quipped, he was visiting to “measure for drapes” — that he had long suffered from “a mild form of Tourette syndrome” that, unlike the Tourette syndrome with which most Americans are familiar, “only comes out once in a blue moon, and causes me to lapse into gibberish for a few seconds, but never anything specific and certainly not slurs on the Jewish people.”

Ramaswamy then chided reporters, whom he said “were always praising Joe Biden for supposedly overcoming a stammer, when Tourette syndrome is three times as devastating and I have managed it with a grace under fire that, I think, Ohioans want to see in their governor.” Some Ramaswamy aides then came forward to fist-bump the candidate.

The firestorm died as quickly as it flared, with newspapers and websites that had declared without qualification that Ramaswamy said the offensive words posting retractions under threat of legal action by Elon Musk, who told reporters at a gala event at Lincoln Center that “this is exactly what we meant when we talked about free speech, and by the way this is not ketamine” as he snorted a substance from a small silver box that was most likely not ketamine.