On a debate stage filled with nonentities, like Republican Governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, and the former Republican Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, Vivek Ramaswamy stood apart from the pack.
Or at least that’s what we were told.
To be fair to the skinny 38-year-old with a funny last name (no, I’m not referring to Barack Obama), he performed well…for an amateur.
Feisty and funny, Ramaswamy effectively rebuffed the attacks of both former Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Vice-President Mike Pence, both of whom are has-beens/never-wases, and took the limelight away from the real star of the non-Donald Trump wing of the GOP, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis.
Vivek Ramaswamy Stole the Show
Interestingly, few on the debate stage directly attacked or engaged with the Florida governor.
It was almost as though they were all reading from the same script that Donald Trump’s cynical campaign of deflect and deny had written for them (especially Vivek, who is clearly a covert Trump surrogate).
This has the salutary effect (for people like Vivek) of stealing the spotlight from the successful conservative governor of Florida toward themselves.
In so doing, Vivek, a skilled public speaker (whereas DeSantis is not), packed quite a rhetorical wallop.
But at key points, he simply ripped off DeSantis.
It was Governor DeSantis who alerted the public about the abject ignorance involved in U.S. foreign policy toward Russia over the last 30 years (in that American policy has pushed Russia into the waiting arms of China).
What’s more, Ramaswamy copied almost verbatim DeSantis’ stance on the need for Europe to be the key supporter of Ukraine rather than the United States.
Ramaswamy was saying DeSantis’ ideas with greater flare.
Rush Limbaugh used to famously accuse Barack Obama in 2008 of “pimping George W. Bush’s ride” (meaning Obama was taking Bush’s ideas and simply repackaging them in a sleeker way).
That’s precisely what Ramaswamy is doing to DeSantis.
Like Obama, Ramaswamy is all flash, no substance.
Meanwhile, DeSantis has a long track record in government of fully implementing the policies that he campaigns on. For DeSantis, Ramaswamy has never served in government. Trump, who wasn’t present on the debate stage physically—but whose presence was felt everywhere—has suboptimal record of implementing his agenda. The other people standing on the stage may as well have not even been there.
It was a total waste.
A debate between DeSantis and Ramaswamy only would have been better.
Ramaswamy avoided DeSantis purposely. As did the others. That’s okay, though, because the besieged Florida governor gets to live to fight another day. The joke’s on the rest of them.
Who is Vivek Ramaswamy, Really?
Ramaswamy cuts a bizarre figure in American politics, too.
He’s running as an anti-Woke, anti-elite candidate.
Yet, Ramaswamy holds not one—but two—degrees from Ivy League universities (he majored in biology while an undergrad at Harvard and later went to Yale Law School).
While at Harvard, Ramaswamy had the high honor of having his thesis published in not one—but two—mainstream media publications, the New York Times and Boston Globe.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s thesis was on the need to ethically produce human-animal chimeras (hybrids) for medical experimentation. You read that right. Ramaswamy was a proponent of some of the most unethical, ghoulish experiments in modern biotechnology; of sullying the human genome by fusing it with various animal genes, so that modern doctors could conduct morally dubious, dangerous experiments (so long as the results of those lab experiments were treated ethically).
Basically, at least I would argue, Ramaswamy supported the same kind of risky research and development that likely led to the creation—and release—of the novel coronavirus from Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
Only this time, Ramaswamy wanted to do what Chinese scientists and Dr. Anthony Fauci, formerly of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), did with gain-of-function tests on lab-created chimeric illnesses (possibly like COVID-19), only with humans and animals, rather than pathogens.
By the way, multiple US-based biotech firms and research labs have partnered with the Chinese regime to support China’s creation of human-animal chimeras.
After college, Ramaswamy would go on to found Roivant Sciences, helping to take them public in 2021, earning him hundreds of millions of dollars (he has $950 million in the bank and his net worth is over $1 billion from having taken Roivant public).
Before going public, however, Roivant moved aggressively into the flowering Chinese biotech market and cofounded Sinovant in 2018.
Ultimately, Ramaswamy’s China-based subsidiary partnered with another biotech firm in Canada and worked on mRNA vaccine research.
Even before the controversy surrounding COVID-19 vaccines erupted in 2020, mRNA vaccines were seen as the next vital step in the biotech sector toward developing cures for our most pernicious illnesses.
Yet, Ramaswamy’s hypocrisy should be obvious for all to see. Not only is he an anti-elite Ivy Leaguer, but he’s a billionaire tech bro who is pretending to be a man of the people.
Speaking of tech, Ramaswamy is someone who has spent the last few years railing against Big Tech when he is himself a product of that industry.
What’s more, the man who is supposedly this great China hawk is the man whose company notoriously bolstered China biotech industry for years.
The same industry that may have given us the pandemic and the controversial vaccines, by the way.
Vivek and George Soros…
Oh, and that gets us to Ramaswamy’s relationship with the Svengali of the Right, international Leftist financier, George Soros.
In 2011, Ramaswamy graciously accepted a purportedly prestigious fellowship with Soros’ foundation and spent his time collecting funds, making connections with, and dutifully parroting the Soros globalist talking points. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis, who is wrongly accused of being a tool of George Soros, has none of these connections.
Let’s not forget that during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the greatest threat to our freedom occurred in the form of onerous government policies meant to restrict our freedoms in the name of security, Ramaswamy was on the side of the lockdowners. More than that, Ramaswamy publicly defended Dr. Anthony Fauci on social media during the lockdown. Just like former President Trump was doing at the time.
There is only one person running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this cycle who was consistently correct on the issue of COVID, and that was Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis.
Vivek Ramaswamy comes across as a fast-talking charlatan who is highly skilled at sprinkling Republican voters desperate for the genuine thing with just enough glitter to distract them from the fact that they are merely being given the political equivalent of chickenfeed.
DeSantis vs. Vivek Ramaswamy
DeSantis did not lose the debate last night. He stayed strong. Vivek certainly had a better showing but the only real losers last night were Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and Tim Scott.
It’d be nice if Republican voters, rather than blindly follow whatever the Trump side of the GOP told them, actually challenged the wisdom that Vivek Ramaswamy is anything other than a poison pill candidate designed to take out Ron DeSantis without Trump having to do the dirty work himself.
Vivek Ramaswamy is not a serious candidate. He’s building a brand. I suspect he’s playing hard to become Trump’s vice-presidential pick.
Trump Will Stab Ramaswamy in the Back Like He Does Everyone Else
I’d be surprised, though, if Trump even views Ramaswamy in such a way.
Trump needs a woman as his number two. And given Trump’s long history of favoring neoconservatives who hate him rather than loyalists who defend him, I’d expect Trump to choose Nikki Haley as his number two.
In a saner world and time, DeSantis would be the only serious choice for people. He can still win. It’s going to be hard, though. And Ramaswamy’s spoiler campaign on behalf of Trump is simply shameless and a gross disservice to the Republican Party’s voting base.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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