Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s marketing campaign claimed Thursday that protesters bumped into their parked automotive at a marketing campaign cease in Grinnell, Iowa. However native police later mentioned that’s not what actually occurred.
Ramaswamy’s automotive, with nobody inside it, was exterior a coffeehouse. His marketing campaign instructed POLITICO Thursday that two protesters hit Ramaswamy’s automotive, however police say that the accident concerned a driver unconnected to the protest.
“Our investigation has revealed no proof to substantiate” the declare that protesters hit Ramaswamy’s automotive on function and fled, police mentioned in an announcement Thursday evening.
As a substitute, police say {that a} lady had eaten lunch at a deli and backed out of a parking spot into the marketing campaign’s rental car. A report was taken and the motive force was launched with a summons for unsafe backing.
“[The driver] said she was not within the space to protest, she didn’t know who the car she struck belonged to, she didn’t deliberately again into the car, and she or he didn’t flee the scene of the accident,” police mentioned in an announcement.
After Iowa police launched the assertion refuting the Ramaswamy marketing campaign’s declare, Tricia McLaughlin, Ramaswamy’s senior adviser, of an individual in a automotive flipping off Ramaswamy however not the precise collision.
“Suppose a man sporting a MAGA hat is standing amongst protestors at a Democrat presidential candidate’s occasion, then will get into his automotive with aggressive bumper stickers, flips off the candidate & screams profanities, lays on his horn, after which reverse-rams the candidate’s parked SUV,” Ramaswamy posted on X in response to the police’s assertion. “I’m positive they’d be simply as desperate to name it an unrelated accident, proper?”