Vivek Ramascammy
“It’s clear that he’s been wanting to be famous for a long time,” said one his friends.
It was Ben Shapiro who first spotted Ramaswamy making some appearances on Fox News and was impressed with his style and confidence. He then apparently pitched an idea to The Daily Wire. Heading into 2022, Ramaswamy embarked on a promising collaboration with right-wing media giant The Daily Wire, but the project, involving a new podcast focused on politics and the economy, was ultimately abandoned. This unique deal deviated from The Daily Wire’s previous talent engagements, as the company aimed to create a show around Ramaswamy, despite its $200 million earnings in 2022. The intended podcast, set to launch in 2022, would have positioned Ramaswamy as the forefront figure, exploring political and economic themes, as revealed by sources familiar with the situation. According to the CEO of The Daily Wire, the reason why they decided to abandon the podcast ideas was because some on the team began to feel Ramaswamy came off “too much like a politician” and “too scripted” for the company’s brand, and there were issues around the biotech entrepreneur not taking preparation seriously enough for the show.
In early 2023, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy surprised a small group of conservative operatives by revealing his intention to run for president. These operatives, gathered for a discussion of Ramaswamy’s upcoming plans, were taken aback, expecting news of a new business venture or a Senate run in Ohio. Ramaswamy, then a relatively unknown figure, presented himself as a contender who could shake up the Republican primary, aiming to compete against established figures like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Despite skepticism, Ramaswamy believed his candidacy could either dissuade DeSantis from running or impact his chances if he did decide to enter the race, as he communicated to multiple conservative activists.
Fast forward to Aug 2023. Vivek Ramaswamy will be literally in the center of the stage tomorrow night — in the first GOP presidential debates, which incidentally the current leader of the pack will conveniently give a miss.
So how did we get here? Who is this guy? Who is Vivek Ramaswamy? To be precise who is Vivek Ramascammy?
If you have followed the American Presidential elections long enough like I have, you know people throw their hats in the ring for different reasons. One, of course, is that they truly believe in their ability to be the next commander-in-chief and to serve the people.
But in the past 4 or 5 election cycles, I have observed something else. If you keep those running for presidency with the belief that they genuinely have a shot at it, running for president has become an opportunity to grift.
A con job. Literally.
Here is how:
Grift Con Model 1:
You announce you are running for President. You know you will not poll above 2% in the primaries. But you somehow convince your donors to keep you afloat as there is no “clear frontrunner” and your pitch is that you would wait till Iowa and/or NH, and then things would turn around. You sign a book deal. And you march on. Attend the Iowa state fair. You will get plenty of media coverage if you show up everyday at the fair doing something unique, eating and saying something different. You could even use your Iowa caucus media coverage to promote your book. Make a million dollars or thereabouts. Then drop out right after Iowa caucus.
Grift Con Model 2:
Probably a good percentage of the 2024 Republican field is running on this model. They know who the frontrunner is by now. They know they can’t win. They’re not even going to pretend that they are trying. Barring a couple of donors to take care of bare minimum expenses, they are not even running a real campaign. Instead of trying to appeal to the voters, they are actually spending the campaign money (whatever little they have), doing favors for the media. This with the hope that they can cash in those favors later after the primaries, either to promote their book or to get a paid contributor job in these media outlets.
Grift Con Model 3:
In this model, you already hold a lower office (or have held a lower office like Governor or Senator or Congress) and you choose to run for president. You know you can’t win because you know you can’t. So you don’t even try to be like Model 2. You raise some money but you don’t spend any of the money you raised. And quietly drop out after the Iowa caucus or NH primary. Then you use that money to fund your reelection campaign for lower office. Or election campaign for a different lower office.
I do not want to name which of the current crop of (9, maybe 10) candidates in the 2024 GOP field are following which model but you can figure that out for yourself.
But the Vivek Ramascammy con model is very unique. It has never been tried before. He is showcasing his model for the first time in 2024 and from the looks of the early poll numbers in the primary, he is having some reasonable success.
“Bottom line,” conservative columnist Scott Morefield wrote in a recent Townhall column, “whether Donald Trump wins the primary and manages to pull off a miracle win in the general or does as predicted and loses bigly, Vivek Ramaswamy wins with, at a minimum, a massive profile increase.” (Source: ABC News)
What many people don’t talk about much is the fact that Vivek Ramascammy has a wealth management fund. Guess who the investors are? Peter Thiel & friends. They are looking to take on companies like BlackRock, et cetra. That background is very important.
So here is Ramascammy’s model:
Grift Con Model 4 — The Ramascammy Model:
You have never held any political office ever in your life. You have lived an entitled and privileged immigrant life all along (of course you would, because you come from an upper caste family and your parents have done well after moving to the US, as one would expect of all migrant upper caste Indians to do in the USA). You are not sure if you want to go through the grind of holding any political office at a lower level that is not going to give you the national visibility because you want to become famous fast. So aim for the biggest political office in the country not because you truly want that job. But because it will make you famous AND because you have started a new investment firm/wealth management fund. You start attacking your Wall Street competitors as too “woke”. You know these 6-12 months of campaign media coverage is free publicity that you would never get otherwise. You acquire customers during this time using the free publicity and you keep ginning up for the said fund and you drop out at a strategic time, after keeping the frontrunner really happy. If your party nominee ends up winning the Presidency, you know you have a fair shot at some visible cabinet post or some government position that you could easily leverage for your fund as well as for your popularity. And you wait until the next election cycle to repeat.
Vivek may not qualify as a tech bro per the dictionary definition, as he is not from the valley, but he talks and acts like a tech bro from head to toe. And he exudes the same tech bro alpha-male toxicity. When he talks monetary policies, they are points straight out of Atlas Shrugged. And when he talks foreign policies, they smell of gas that fills the atmosphere of libertarian utopia. And most importantly, he has the communication style, confidence, and complete flair of a tech bro. Which is why many from the well-educated-white-collared-Ayn-Rand-loving-breed who are far detached from reality, have easily fallen for his con much like how they did for Elon Musk.
As libertarian as he may want to project himself as, at the core, Vivek Ramascammy is a bigot. And his bigotry has many layers.
Anti-Black bigotry.
Anti-Latino bigotry.
Anti-Muslim bigotry.
Anti-LGBTQ bigotry.
And from an Indian caste standpoint, a certain Anti-Dalit bigotry.
This snippet is from Sheela Kolhatkar’s The New Yorker profile of Vivek. Read his quote and read it twice. He lives such a privileged and entitled life and is so far removed from reality that he confidently says that the fact that his family in India is able to tip a Domino’s Pizza delivery guy who comes from a lower caste is proof enough that American capitalism has solved the casteism problem in India.
A conservatism that puts its faith in unfettered markets would come to inform even Ramaswamy’s understanding of caste relations in the Indian state of Kerala, where he spent summers with his family. Ramaswamy’s family is Brahmin, the highest caste in the Hindu hierarchy. In “Woke, Inc.,” he maintains that “American-style capitalism” is repairing the damage of that pernicious system, writing approvingly that a “lower-caste guy” in India can now deliver Domino’s pizza and “my family tips him to show their appreciation.”
Here is more on why he has a particular hatred for Black Americans. It all started with a Black kid bullying him in eighth grade. But read on. You will see how ignorant he is when it comes to his understanding of American racial fabric is. Or how entitled he is to see the racial fabric this way.
I mean, my first thought after reading this was, “What an asshole!!”.
Vivek proudly talks about he and his family being practicing Hindus but you will never hear him refer to “Gods” and he will always refer to “God”.
“I’m Hindu. I’m not Christian, and we are a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values. But here’s what I can say with confidence: I share those same values in common,” Ramaswamy said Monday night during a town hall hosted by NewsNation. “I believe I live by those values more so than many self-proclaimed Christian politicians.”
I am not sure which practicing Hindu who reads this post can clarify this simple religious point to a non-believer like me: “What are some of the Judeo-Christian values that are in common with Hinduism?”.
Personally, I would rather trust Nikki Haley who has been open about her complicated relationship with faith. She admits she is a mainline christian who grew up as a Sikh and faith is always a struggle for her.
Even if one wants to argue that Vivek Ramascammy’s bigotry is just a facade to pander to the extreme right wing of the party because that’s what constitutes GOP’s base these days, I just want to ask you, did you just listen to yourself?
This more recent profile of Vivek Ramascammy by John Hendrickson in The Atlantic gives an even deeper insight into the privileged life he and his wife live and how their worldview is shaped by their entitled life.
Whatever you make of this grifter, one thing is certain.
Vivek Ramascammy is playing this new con game fairly well and is unsurprisingly reaping some rewards.
