Ramaswamy swarmed by anti-Israel protesters near Democratic convention

Former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy on Thursday was unexpectedly chased away from an anti-Israel protest near the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Dozens of pro-Palestine demonstrators have been arrested by the Chicago Police Department this week, after several of the protests turned violent or destructive. 

Pro-Hamas activist Hatem Abudayyeh reportedly led the crowd in its confrontation with Ramaswamy, claiming that he was a "racist Zionist pig" who did not have the right to be at the protest since he does not support Palestine. 

“You should take off. We don’t want you here," Abudayyeh told Ramaswamy, according to the Daily Wire.

“The good news is we are in America and so we all actually get to express ourselves,” Ramaswamy responded. 

Abudayyeh then led the crowd of protesters in a chant of “Racist go home," before Ramaswamy was mobbed by the crowd and escorted away by his security team.

The former Republican presidential hopeful said he attended the demonstration on Thursday because he did not trust the media's representation of the protests. 

Ramaswamy also argued the demonstrators should vote for former President Donald Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president, if they want an actual end to the war in Israel. 

“The irony is that if a lot of these people, if they want to stay out of war, there is a president who kept us out of war for four years,” Ramaswamy told the Daily Wire. “There wasn’t war in the Middle East. There wasn’t war in Russia and Ukraine.”

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.