Conservatives had an extreme reaction to a video posted by Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Monday ― with many convinced it must be AI.
Even worse for Ramaswamy: One of the ideas proposed in the clip was apparently so extreme that people inclined to support his candidacy were convinced the video was a smear made by his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton.
In the original video, later deleted and reposted in a reedited form, Ramaswamy proposes ideas to make life for Ohio citizens more affordable, including year-round schooling and a 9-hour school day from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.
As you can see in the video below, Ramaswamy claims the plan could reduce child care costs and “make parenting more affordable,” according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Ramaswamy’s campaign issued a statement to the Dispatch saying that the video was legit, but that his suggestion was more like a “casual back-and-forth on TikTok” and not a serious “policy rollout.”
A spokesperson for Acton told the paper that they simply shared a clip initially posted by Ramaswamy, and said it was “not surprising” he was trying to distance himself from his proposal.
He later posted another video.
Unfortunately for Ramaswamy, Republicans who saw the video thought the year-round school idea was so, so, so not Republican that they assumed Acton’s camp created a deep fake video to make him look bad to voters.
Acton made sure to point out the disconnect with Ramaswamy’s supporters over the video.
Ramaswamy tried to counter the controversy by posting another video in which he accused Democrats like Acton of “distorting my position” on education, but didn’t mention the year-round proposal from the earlier video.
A 2020 study published in the National Institute of Health said that there was no real proof that year-round schooling improved academic outcomes, but suggested that some at-risk student populations might benefit.
This isn’t the first time Ramaswamy’s views about the American education system have come back to bite him.
Last December, he was heavily criticized after declaring that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” and that a “culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
JS reached out to Ramaswamy, who is a stakeholder in BuzzFeed, the parent company of JS, for comment, but no one immediately responded.
According to 270towin.com, he currently has a 3% lead over Acton.
