Ramaswamy calls Trump surrender fanfare ‘shameful’

Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy lashed out against the media coverage surrounding former President Trump’s surrender to authorities in Atlanta on Thursday, calling it “shameful.”

“I think this is shameful, Laura,” he said in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham on Thursday. “This is an indictment not of Donald Trump, but of our national civic health.”

“That we have gotten to a place where we have a party in power that will use any charge in any jurisdiction — four at the same time — in the middle of an election, designed, mark my words, to stop their lead political rival currently from running,” he continued.

Trump’s surrender, a procedural step in his prosecution in a sprawling election fraud case, received wall-to-wall coverage from cable news networks.

The former president turned himself in at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta and had his mug shot taken. While the Georgia case is his fourth criminal indictment, Thursday’s mug shot was his first. 

Georgia prosecutors allege that Trump led a scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, namely by organizing a slate of fake electoral college votes. He was indicted alongside 18 co-defendants, including his attorneys — Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and John Eastman — and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Defendants who have not yet turned themselves in must do so by Friday. Trump was released on a $200,000 bond.

The trial in the case will start Oct. 23 for at least one defendant, former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who asked for a speedy trial. Prosecutors will likely ask for all 19 defendants’ cases to start on that date, which Trump’s attorneys have already opposed.