A Guide to Vivek Ramaswamy, From Culture War Commandments to 9/11 Trutherism

On Wednesday night, a flock of Republican presidential hopefuls will take the stage in the first GOP presidential debate of the 2024 cycle. Frontrunner Donald Trump has already declared that he has no interest in showing up for the debates, and every candidate behind a podium will be trailing him in the polls by dozens of percentage points. Despite the massive gap, one candidate is arriving to the Fox News stage on a wave of momentum: 38-year-old businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

In perhaps the clearest sign of the kind of political philosophy he would embrace as a candidate, Ramaswamy announced his campaign in February on Fox’s now-defunct Tucker Carlson Tonight, at the time one of the nation’s premier source of televised culture war grievances, fear-mongering, and conspiratorial nonsense. He’s since built himself up as a younger, more Trumpian version of Trump, and with Ron DeSantis’ campaign floundering Ramaswamy is arriving to the debate unexpectedly poised to become the clear second choice behind the former president.

It has all the makings of a make-or-break moment, so as Ramaswamy looks to put on a campaign-defining performance, here’s everything you need to know about Da Vek the Candidate.

He’s a businessman with no political experience

Much like Trump in 2016, Ramaswamy is entering this race as an upstart, largely self-funded candidate with no previous political experience.

Ramaswamy’s greatest career accomplishments are within the world of biomedicine. In 2014, he founded the biotech firm Roivant Sciences. Ramaswamy was the financial brain behind Roivant, and made hundreds of millions from the company before resigning in 2023 to focus on his campaign.

Shortly before entering the 2024 fray, Ramaswamy founded Strive Capital with the backing of conservative billionaire Peter Thiel. The firm brands itself as an “anti-woke” and “anti-ESG” alternative to traditional investment funds.

Ramaswamy has degrees from both Harvard and Yale. Despite now holding a deep disdain for race-inclusionary policies at universities — part of his anti-woke platform — while a law student at Yale, Ramaswamy was a recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Scholarship For New Americans pursuing post-graduate degrees. The selective scholarship is awarded to the children of immigrants and Ramaswamy received up to $90,000 dollars through it.

But any connection to Hungarian billionaire George Soros, even if only through the philanthropic work of his older brother, is poison in today’s Republican Party. Ramaswamy reportedly paid a Wikipedia editor to scrub mentions of the scholarship from his page on the website. The editor also reportedly removed mentions of Ramaswamy’s work with ​​Ohio’s Covid-19 Response Team.

He’s a culture warrior who wrote his own “10 Commandments”

Like many 2024 Republicans, Ramaswamy’s candidacy leans heavily into culture war grievance politics. Earlier this month at the Iowa State Fair, where candidates schmoozed with potential caucus-goers, Ramaswamy touted his political “10 commandments,” which include such stipulations as “there are two genders,” “human flourishing requires fossil fuels,” and “reverse racism is racism.”

The 10-point manifesto is a distilled reflection of Ramaswamy’s larger project. The former pharmaceutical executive has positioned himself as an “America First 2.0” candidate: a young, anti-woke, entrepreneurially-minded successor that will take Trump’s trademark nationalist style of governance “further than Trump” — with a twist.

Ramaswamy has adopted many of the now standard-issue Republican obsessions and translated them into a platform that proposes sweeping cuts to the federal government, and vastly increases the powers of the executive branch. He’s promised to eliminate the Department of Education, the FBI, and the IRS, as well as to fire “at least half the federal workforce” and eliminate federal employees’ right to collective bargaining.

Beyond massive cuts to the federal bureaucracy, Ramaswamy plans to completely reshape voting rights. He’s proposed a new constitutional amendment, overriding the Fifth Amendment, to raise the national voting age to 25 for anyone who isn’t an enlisted service member, first responder, or who doesn’t take a government-issued civics test.

He has some … interesting views about 9/11

Ramaswamy can’t stop making weird statements about 9/11. Most recently, during an interview with The Atlantic published on Monday, Ramaswamy abruptly switched from discussing conspiracies about federal agents’ involvement in the Jan. 6 attack to suggesting that similar questions should be asked of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“I think it is legitimate to say ‘how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?’ Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero. But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to,” Ramaswamy said.

“I am not questioning what we — this is not something I’m staking anything out on,” he added. “But I want the truth about 9/11.”

When pressed on the comparison, Ramaswamy responded that he didn’t think the two events “belong in the same conversation.”

The comments drew backlash and on Monday night he accused The Atlantic of misquoting him  on CNN. “Are you telling me the quote is wrong here?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Ramaswamy. “I’m telling you the quote is wrong,” Ramaswamy responded.

In response, The Atlantic released unedited audio of the conversation that covered the discussion of 9/11, proving that Ramaswamy was not misquoted.

It wasn’t the first time Ramaswamy has publicly toed the line of 9/11 trutherism. Earlier this month, during an interview with The Blaze, Ramaswamy stated that he doesn’t “believe the government has told us the truth,” about 9/11, and that he “absolutely” doesn’t believe the findings of the 9/11 Commission report.

In a lengthy Twitter post, Ramaswamy attempted to explain that his comments to The Blaze related specifically to questions surrounding the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the planning of the attacks, an assertion he repeated to CNN on Monday. Ramaswamy wrote that “these events are important foremost because U.S. government officials continue to lie about other matters of public importance – the origin of Covid-19, knowledge about UAPs, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and so on – with a complicit media that just accepts the prevailing narrative without question.”

He’s been going to bat for Trump

Aside from modeling his candidacy after Trump, Ramaswamy has been one of the former president’s loudest defenders in the 2024 field. He has already sworn that he will pardon Trump should he win the presidency, a declaration that puts him directly at odds with candidates like Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson.

Amid the slew of criminal cases against Trump, Ramaswamy has defended the former president at every opportunity. Following Trump’s indictment in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, Ramaswamy called allegations that Trump attempted to destroy or conceal evidence sought by investigators a “process crime.”

Trump is grateful for the free PR. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the former president has joked to advisers that Ramaswamy’s frequent glowing praise of his administration sometimes sounds like he’s auditioning for a role in Trump’s administration. He has even asked confidants, “Does he want a job?”

The Trump camp also sees Ramaswamy as a useful tool to curb the momentum of the former president’s chief rival, Ron DeSantis. As one Trump adviser previously told Rolling Stone, the former president sees confrontation between the two as an easy way to “rat fuck” the Florida governor. In the Trump camp’s view, the enemy of their enemy is their friend. If DeSantis wants to spend time and money attacking Ramaswamy, who are they to complain?

He’s a practicing Hindu

Ramaswamy is the son of Indian immigrants, and should he win the nomination he’d be the first Hindu candidate to lead a major party ticket, and the first Hindu president should he win.

But Ramaswamy’s faith has raised suspicion amongst potential voters loyal to a party largely controlled by Evangelical worldviews and policy interests. Despite Ramaswamy aligning his platform with many of those values, including a hard anti-abortion stance and an insistence that this country was “founded on Judeo-Christian values,” he’s been subjected to a barrage of attacks by Christian nationalists.

Pro-Trump pastor and self-styled “prophet” Hank Kunneman devoted a recent sermon to attacking Ramaswamy’s faith as an insult to the Lord himself. “If he does not serve the Lord Jesus Christ,” Kunneman said, “you will have a fight with God.”

“You’re gonna have some dude put his hand on something other than the Bible? You’re going to let him put all of his strange gods up in the White House?” Kunneman added.

Ramaswamy has dismissed these sorts of attacks, arguing that he’s running to be Commander in Chief, not “pastor in chief.”

He’s a rapper?

Ramaswamy has an alter ego: “Da Vek the Rapper.”

Earlier this month, after speaking to Governor Kim Reynolds at the Iowa State Fair, Ramaswamy performed a rendition of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” with unfettered gusto before a crowd of befuddled, though amused, onlookers.

Da Vek got his start at Harvard University, where he successfully auditioned to open for Rapper Busta Rhymes at a concert on the campus. “Lose Yourself” was a regular staple in his performances.

Ramaswamy told Politico in July that he identified with the message in “Lose Yourself.”

“I saw myself, honestly, making it big through American capitalism, and that’s why the Eminem story spoke to me,” Ramaswamy said. “He’s growing up in the trailers, with a single mom, and he wants to make it … I didn’t grow up in a trailer, but I also didn’t grow up in the same circumstances that most of my peers at Harvard did, either. I aspired to achieve what many of their parents did. It kind of spoke to me, I would say.”

He’s been surging in the polls

Despite being largely self-funded and lagging behind in fundraising targets in several key polls, Ramaswamy is now tied with or, in some polls, has even surpassed the consistently second-place DeSantis. The shift is a major one going into Wednesday’s debate and it’s put a target on his back.

In a lengthy debate prep memo written by a pro-DeSantis political consulting firm, the Florida governor was advised to “hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response,” and to potentially refer to him as “Fake Vivek Or Vivek the Fake.”

Fox News has taken notice of the brewing confrontation. Ramaswamy and DeSantis will be placed at center stage, right next to each other, during the debate.

Ramaswamy’s bizarre, bombastic combo of Republican grievance politics and bro exuberance is clearly resonating with some voters. With Trump on the sidelines, the debate on Wednesday is an opportunity for him to hit the gas on his campaign’s momentum.

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