As the playing field shrinks in the Republican presidential primary campaign, no two candidates have been at each other’s throats quite like Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.
At Wednesday night’s debate hosted by NBC News in Miami, the two Indian Americans sparred in one of their fieriest exchanges yet, peaking when Ramaswamy questioned Haley’s daughter’s presence on TikTok and ending with Haley retorting, “Keep my daughter’s name out of your voice. … You’re just scum.”
The two left the stage after having shaken hands with everyone but each other. The hostility has been building for months, with jabs more biting and personal than those levied at any of the other candidates. Ramaswamy has invoked Haley’s Indian legal first name, Nimarata, in a way that could be read as schoolyard taunting. It’s significant, experts say, that the two South Asians in the race are going the hardest at each other.
The similarities in their backgrounds make their constant back-and-forths feel almost familial, psychologists and community experts said.
“In terms of the optics, there are times in which it looks like an extended family argument, even the kind of argument that might happen over a family dinner or something like that,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, the founder of the nonprofit group AAPI Data.
While competition is inherent to politics, Indian American clinical psychologist Jyothsna Bhat sees another layer beneath the surface of Haley and Ramaswamy’s exchanges.
“It hits differently when it’s South Asian individuals because of that mentality of there’s just not enough room for the two,” she said. “It’s ingrained in us, whether we have to do better than our friends, than our cousins, than other family members. … Because think about it, it’s been such a competition even to come to this country.”
The ‘audacity’ of the attacks
When Ramaswamy and Haley argue onstage, they often tend to go “below the belt,” Bhat said.
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