Vivek Ramaswamy, Wealthy Political Novice Who Aligned With Trump, Quits Campaign

Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and political newcomer who briefly made a splash with brash policy proposals and an outsized sense of confidence, dropped out of the race for the Republican White House nomination after a disappointing fourth place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

Mr. Ramaswamy, who funded much of his campaign from a personal fortune made in biotechnology and finance, was an unlikely contender at one point. He clung closely to former President Donald J. Trump, vowing to support him even if he was convicted of felonies, promising to pardon the former if elected to the White House, and saying he would voluntarily remove his name from the ballot in states that succeeded in knocking Mr. Trump from the ballot as an “insurrectionist” disqualified by the Constitution.

Then two days before the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump’s campaign turned on him, declaring him a fraud, and the former president — after months of warmth toward his would-be rival — demanded that voters reject Mr. Ramaswamy and vote for him.

By then, the Harvard-educated Mr. Ramaswamy had embraced increasingly apocalyptic conspiracy theories, spoke of a “system” that would block Mr. Trump from office and install a “puppet,” Nikki Haley, called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “inside job” orchestrated by federal law enforcement, and begun trafficking in the racist theory of “replacement” that holds falsely that Democrats are importing immigrants of color to supplant white people.

The theory, which has fueled white supremacist rampages in Buffalo, N.Y., Pittsburgh and El Paso, Texas, “is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory,” he said in one Republican primary debate, “but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”

Mr. Ramaswamy’s opening gambit was to say that, with his superior grasp of the Constitution and civil service laws, he would take Mr. Trump’s America First agenda farther than the former president ever could.