Rules for thee but not for me?
During a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile repeatedly mispronounced 2024 GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy’s name – even after the host corrected her – while laughing about how the candidate should “go home.”
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, culture editor for The Federalist, and Eliana Johnson, co-host of Ink-Stained Wretches, to discuss Brazile’s comments and why they are tired of the “hypocrisy.”
Donna Brazile’s Flub
During a panel discussion with former United States Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Brazile said “Vivek needs to just shut the hell up and go home.” Maher quickly corrected the former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for mispronouncing the candidate’s name. “It’s Vivek,” he said, later quoting Ramaswamy in saying his name rhymes with “cake.”
Brazile repeated her comment several more times and attempted to laugh off the correction, but Maher pushed back. “I just feel like there’s something wrong with everybody refusing to learn to say his name. I just feel there’s a little racism there,” he said. “I know we don’t like him, but, you know, say his name right.”
That led Brazile to say “there’s no racism” and pronounce Ramaswamy’s last name, which she was also struggling with, correctly.
After the clip began making the rounds on X (formerly known as Twitter), Ramaswamy – who was born in the United States to Indian parents – responded. “I wonder what they’d do if a white Republican intentionally mispronounced Donna’s name [and] then told her to return ‘home,’” he tweeted along with a laughing emoji.
The Hypocrisy
While many social media users took Brazile’s “go home” comment to mean India or another country, Jashinsky said the Democrat strategist was likely talking about Ramaswamy dropping out of the race. Even so, she believes the GOP hopeful took the right approach with his response. “If she was a white Republican strategist talking about a ‘Vivek Ramaswamy’ in the Democratic primary and said ‘go home’ and refused to learn to pronounce his name, then, yes, there would be think-pieces in Huff Post about how it was racism,” she explained. “I think the correct response is that she is a hypocrite.”
Megyn said it is but the latest example of the left – and Brazile in particular – getting away scot free. “I don’t know if she is racist, but she’s definitely a cheater,” she recalled. The 2016 WikiLeaks dump of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign emails showed that Brazile, who was serving as interim chair of the DNC at the time, leaked a question from a CNN town hall to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta ahead of the event.
Brazile eventually admitted to the “mistake,” but not before she lied to Megyn on air about the veracity of the email and claimed she was being “persecuted.” Megyn said Brazile has never faced any real repercussions for what she did. “Every time they introduce Donna Brazile in an article or on TV, do they mention the fact that she cheated at a presidential town hall,” Megyn asked. “When the future of the country’s leadership was in the balance, she cheated.”
While Megyn noted that plenty of op-eds have been written about the “racist Republicans” who mispronounce Vice President Kamala Harris’ name, she believes Ramaswamy is correct about this incident going largely unnoticed. “I’m so over the left’s hypocrisy,” Megyn concluded. “Vivek is exactly right: If you are a white guy, you don’t get away with any of that crap. If you are Donna Brazil, you get away with everything.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky and Johnson by tuning in to episode 673 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.