The backlash escalated Thursday, when Vivek Ramaswamy, in a post on X, criticized an American culture that he said “venerated mediocrity over excellence.”

White working-class evangelicals voted en masse for Donald Trump to give a platform to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to call them “lazy,” “mediocre” and “retarded.” OK, they didn’t expect the part about the immigrants, one of them with brown skin and a funny-sounding name, calling them “lazy,” “mediocre” and “retarded.”