Vivek: Kicked out of DOGE? Elon Beef? Trump Relationship and More

Summary

Podcast Summary: Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh – Episode: "Vivek: Kicked out of DOGE? Elon Beef? Trump Relationship and More"

Release Date: January 29, 2025
Title: Vivek: Kicked out of DOGE? Elon Beef? Trump Relationship and More
Guests: Vivek Ramaswamy
Hosts: Andrew Schulz, Akaash Singh, AlexxMedia, Mark Gagnon

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1. Introduction

The episode welcomes Vivek Ramaswamy, clarifying that he is not running for Governor of Ohio. The hosts set the stage for an unfiltered and candid discussion on Vivek's recent endeavors and political aspirations.

Notable Quote:
Akash Singh [00:00]: "This is not the case at all. He's definitely not running for governor of Ohio."

---

2. Departure from DOGE and Pursuit of Elected Office

Vivek Ramaswamy discusses his involvement with DOGE, a project initially aligned with technological and legal reforms aimed at dismantling bureaucratic overreach. However, he decides to leave the project to focus on running for elected office, believing that true systemic change requires holding an official position.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [02:16]: "But I will say that even some of the regulations you brought up... it's at least a good thing to be through elected office."

---

3. Criticism of Bureaucratic Regulation

A central theme of the conversation revolves around Vivek's critique of the "managerial class"—unelected bureaucrats who create rules with the force of law without congressional approval. He provides examples across various industries, highlighting how excessive regulation stifles innovation and economic growth.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [04:18]: "None of those were passed by people that we the people elected. They were written into law by unelected bureaucrats."

---

4. Relationship with Trump and Elon Musk

Vivek elaborates on his personal and professional relationships with influential figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He emphasizes mutual respect and shared goals, while also addressing potential tensions arising from differing visions on implementing technology-driven reforms.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [14:28]: "Trump and I are on great terms. We have, on a personal level, super close."

---

5. Education and Meritocracy

The discussion shifts to the American education system, where Vivek expresses concern over declining math proficiency among eighth graders. He advocates for early educational reforms, including merit-based incentives for teachers and enhanced focus on STEM education, to ensure future generations remain competitive globally.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [23:12]: "What percentage of 8th graders are, for their age, proficient in math compared to international standards? 25%."

---

6. Economic Empowerment through Investment

Vivek introduces innovative ideas for economic empowerment, such as investing $10,000 in every newborn's stock market account, encouraging long-term financial growth through compound interest. He underscores the importance of financial literacy and accessible investment opportunities as tools to bridge economic inequality.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [89:24]: "Every kid who's born in this country have $10,000 invested fully in the stock market. They can't touch it till they're 18."

---

7. Navigating Political Smear Campaigns

Addressing the challenges of political life, Vivek shares his experiences with smear campaigns targeting his business ventures. He stresses the importance of resilience and transparency, advocating for confronting false narratives head-on rather than ignoring them.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [108:50]: "Once you enter the realm of politics, people do not give a crap about what the actual truth is. They have their agenda and they're going to use it to smear you."

---

8. Vision for Rebuilding America

Vivek outlines his comprehensive vision for revitalizing America by reducing bureaucratic inefficiencies, promoting meritocracy, and fostering a culture of excellence. He emphasizes the role of state-level leadership in experimenting with and implementing these reforms, using Ohio as a potential model state.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [127:07]: "What you show as a norm of what's actually beautiful and worthy and desirable in America. I think that culture will reinforce policies that also take away the disincentives for family function."

---

9. Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reaffirmation of Vivek's commitment to transforming American institutions through elected office, emphasizing the necessity of combining policy reforms with cultural shifts to achieve long-lasting positive change.

Notable Quote:
Vivek Ramaswamy [137:35]: "Everything been done through policy, but it doesn't solve all the problem. Early education and economic empowerment are key."

---

Key Takeaways

• Bureaucratic Overreach: Vivek advocates for reducing unelected bureaucratic regulations to restore democratic principles and foster innovation.

• Education Reform: Emphasizes the need for early and merit-based educational reforms to improve national competence in STEM fields.

• Economic Strategies: Proposes investment-based solutions like compound interest accounts for newborns to address economic disparities.

• Political Resilience: Highlights the challenges of political smear campaigns and the importance of transparency and resilience.

• State-Level Leadership: Views state-level governance, particularly in Ohio, as a testing ground for broader national reforms aimed at revitalizing America's economic and cultural standing.

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Note: This summary focuses solely on the content-rich segments of the transcript, excluding advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content interactions to provide a comprehensive overview of the episode for those who haven't listened.

Transcript

[Akash Singh]

What's up, everybody, and welcome to the podcast. And today we are joined once again. Listen, this is not the case at all. He's definitely not running for governor of Ohio. I know that for sure. I mean, he'll tell you in a moment that he's definitely not going to do that. Give it up for Vivek Ramaswamy.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

He's back on the seat, guys. How are you, brother?

[Akash Singh]

Definitely not going to be the governor of Ohio.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Right? People loved you in Ohio, man. This guy's coming. Bring the comedians. First the comedians and then the industry.

[Unknown]

He's going to save the cats and dogs, man.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Already, Everybody. All forms of life.

[Akash Singh]

All forms of life. Okay, okay. So we. There's a lot of things going on here.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, there's a lot going on. A lot of things. A lot of things going on.

[Akash Singh]

I need to know about Doge, what happened. This. You're on this podcast. You give us this beautiful soliloquy about the managerial class.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Thank you.

[Akash Singh]

And, like, it was so important that I was like, I need you to break it down dumb. Obviously, you're a very smart guy.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I was like, you guys say that. Break it down, down. But I know you're. You're into the center of it. I remember that.

[Akash Singh]

Sixth grade.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm a.

[Akash Singh]

We're six.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know, I'll tell you, if you can't explain it to a sixth grader, it means you don't understand it yourself.

[Akash Singh]

That's what Epstein said. Okay.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Okay. Ready? Okay. So this.

[Akash Singh]

I see you just deliver this amazing thing. It's crazy. On Twitter, everybody's like, you got it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Then after we met where one of the core chapter was about dismantling the administrative state. And so this is my passion.

[Unknown]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Akash Singh]

All of a sudden, Trump announces that you and Elon are running Doge.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yes.

[Unknown]

I'm so excited.

[Akash Singh]

I'm like, finally, this is going to happen. It's amazing. And then you say you hate American workers or something.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Come on. He said they were too dumb. None of the above. We need to light a fire under. We can talk a lot about.

[Akash Singh]

We're going to talk about that fire under our feet. No, no. We're going to talk a second. But. But no. So what happened? And now you're leaving Doge right on the precipice of actually cleaning up the government, getting the managerial class out of there, fixing everything.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We got a good head start, by the way, in the two months leading up to inauguration.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But I'll. I'll give you the high level. There's A, there's a, there's a short story, long story. I can give you the short story for sure and the short story. Both are accurate. But. But the short story. I can give you. The short story is it evolved from a focus on where I was focused. Legal, constitutional issues, legislative issues of if you want to save a lot of money, you got to do it through legislation. If you want to look at the Supreme Court landscape for the last few years, it says a lot of these regulations are unconstitutional. That's where I had been focused. And you know, the way it's gotten started, you could see this publicly as well, is much more of a technology and digital technology focus.

[Akash Singh]

Okay, so just slow down for a second. So you were going to use the Constitution to remove legislation.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, to remove regulation. Sorry, right, regulations.

[Akash Singh]

So you're going to use legislation to remove.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yes, and I've written about this for the last year. Right.

[Akash Singh]

So can you give an example of that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, give a good example of that. So, you know, not to get too academic too quickly, but basically Congress is supposed to pass the laws and the executive branch is supposed to enforce the laws. But it turns out that most of the laws that decide what you can and can't do in your life were actually never passed by Congress. They were passed by people who are never elected to their position.

[Akash Singh]

The managerial class.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

The managerial class. The bureaucrats in D.C. what's a law?

[Akash Singh]

Give me an example.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, so they don't call laws, they call them rules, but they have the effect of laws.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Let's say the amount of fees that fishermen have to pay to the government to have a license to be able to fish in a particular area. Let's say it is the registration requirement before a bank or an asset manager is allowed to do business. Let's say it is the procedural hoop that a biotech company has to jump through before advancing from phase one to phase two of the development process. Let's say it's the permission that a coal miner or a nuclear energy plant has to get as permission from the government before they build a new nuclear energy plant, which by the way, has not happened in 20 years in this country because the red tape associated with doing so is so impossible. Now, I imagine none of those were passed by Congress.

[Akash Singh]

Yes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

None of those were passed by people that we the people elected.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

They were written into law, they call them rules. But effectively into law by unelected bureaucrats.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And the thing is, that's not a democracy. Right. It might be something else, but it's not a Democracy. Because in a democracy, if somebody makes a law that affects you.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You get to vote. That's what it makes a law. These are more like edicts.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Edicts come from a king because you can't vote them out. This doesn't come from a king, but it's a new kind of edict of a bureaucracy. So just. So that was the problem.

[Akash Singh]

You're not against regulation as long as it's decided by democratically elected officials?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's my most foundational principle. It so happens in my own politics, I'm generally pretty libertarian. I tend to be against. I think most of these regulations tend not to be productive. But the most important principle is if you're going to have it, at least let the people who it affects to say it's not working out. For me, I want to be able to vote you out. I need to be able to vote you out. That's the most important principle.

[Akash Singh]

Just so we can understand, like, a lot of this probably. Probably comes from good intentions.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Oh, absolutely. Right.

[Akash Singh]

So these aren't like evil people necessarily.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There's certainly malicious people in all kinds of domains of life.

[Akash Singh]

Yes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And the government is no exception to that.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And you can see some egregious examples of it. But by and large, I think we're talking about the regulatory state. The overwhelming majority of federal bureaucrats who I've met are good people, because most people are good people and they believe what they're doing is not for the detriment of the American people, it's for.

[Akash Singh]

The betterment of the American people.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But it's for the betterment of the American people. It's a kind of elite benevolence.

[Akash Singh]

Yes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And it's sort of skeptical of democracy because the idea that you could just leave it to ordinary people to decide this complicated stuff. We can't leave it to ordinary people because they're going to harm themselves.

[Akash Singh]

They're too dumb.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We have to make that. Exactly, exactly. And that was the whole premise of the British monarchy. It's kind of the whole premise of the modern Federal Bureau.

[Akash Singh]

But I get that. I think it's nice to not paint all these people who are creating this. What do you call it? Creating red bureaucracy, red tape, you know, regulation.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Exactly.

[Akash Singh]

As nefarious.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

By and large, most human beings are not nefarious.

[Akash Singh]

And a lot of times it's reactionary. Like, I think there was.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Human beings are good people. Yeah, there was intentions.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. There was like a fire in New York, I'm pretty sure. And I think one of the rooms was created in like an apartment building. And I think a fireman died because they built the room but didn't ask the city permission. So the plot or the plan that they had. So then I think what the knee jerk reaction was to say you cannot do anything to your apartment without permission for the whole city. I'm probably butchering this.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. But it's the kind of example you see all the time. Exactly.

[Akash Singh]

And I get that knee jerk reaction because you want to protect firemen. These guys are brave, they're running into a fire.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And it's actually a great example because you see that same type of incentive structure show up all the time where someone at the fda, they rarely will get hauled in front of some hearing if they fail to approve a drug that saves lives. But if they do approve a drug that has some unintended side effect effects and they're going to be in the public eye. So their incentive is to go in one direction, not the other. Does that make them an evil person? No. Most human beings just respond to the incentives that they have while still in their heart of hearts believing that they're doing good. That's the way the federal government is.

[Akash Singh]

So this is your idea for.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But it's too big. Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, and we laid it out. So there was a Wall Street Journal op ed that we co authored soon after it was written, focused on a, this constitutional approach where the Supreme Court in the last couple of years came out and said actually most of those rules are actually unconstitutional because they didn't go through Congress. That's a big freaking deal A couple years ago. So we got that toolkit. And then if you want to really tackle government spending, which is a separate prong, the budget's set in Congress. There's no way around that. Right. The budget is set by Congress. If you want to cut trillions of dollars, you got to go to the core of that budgeting process. So that was where my focus and our focus was. I think if you look at now it's taken off and I think it could be great. It's very much a digital technology first.

[Akash Singh]

What does that mean?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I mean you can, I'll let you read the executive orders that came out last week and like I said.

[Unknown]

I'll be.

[Akash Singh]

Right here.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I know, I know. That's, you know, so I'll be, I'll stay, I'll leave it at what I'm able to say, which is, you know, sort of what you can see publicly, very technology focused approach and that there's nobody better to take a technology focused, centric approach than Elon. And by the way, we ended up having a pretty open discussion amongst all of us that if my focus is on the legal constitutional policy making functions, that's where my passion has been. The right way for me to realize my own vision is through elected office.

[Akash Singh]

And but by the way, not the governor of Ohio or anything.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

All of those, except that one position announcement will be coming of some kind in the next couple of weeks.

[Akash Singh]

Got it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But I will say that even some of the regulations you brought up. Right. The fireman example.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Most of those regs aren't just federal regulations. In fact, most of them that affect people at everyday lives are also at the level of the state. And I think short of being a president, when you think about driving executive action to improve people's lives, I think a governor's seat is probably the single best way to actually do it.

[Unknown]

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And so that's where I land.

[Unknown]

Correct me if I'm wrong. Wouldn't you and Elon coming in as doge, Isn't that the same as unelected bureaucrats coming in to make a bunch of rules?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So. So I think it's a super fair question of fielded down over the couple of months. The question is it's one thing if you are undoing the actions of people who have actually affirmatively made rules versus making new rules of your own.

[Unknown]

So you're not going to make any rules, you're just taking away rules.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think if you're rolling back, if you're rolling back rules and actually cutting bureaucratic overgrowth. It's one thing to come in and say you're going to hire a million federal bureaucrats without any authorization from Congress to do it. It's another to say there are 4 million, many of whom were hired without that authorization. We need to scale that headcount back. It's another thing to say all these regulations showed up with Congress never authorizing them. It's another to say they're illicit unless they go through Congress. Right. So that was the premise. It's a one way ratchet. If there's been a federal government overgrowth and a lot of that was never authorized by the democratic process, then it's one thing to say, okay, then all of that in order to comply with the Constitution has to be rolled back. You can't make it without authorization. But how you apply that, you could.

[Unknown]

Reverse a new tech. You said Elon's trying to do like tech driven rules.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to let.

[Unknown]

Wouldn't that be new rules?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I shared with you my, my outlook was in what, what brought me to the project and I'm super rooting for success and, and hopeful for success for what's going to come from a technology driven approach with different philosophy and approach and emphasis. Yeah, yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Talk that. No, no, it's talk that. Well, the, the me and my wife had different.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Phil, the truth of the matter is I think he's, I think there's nobody better in the world to run a technology focused approach to fixing the federal government than you want. And if that's where the focus is, I'm rooting for their success. And similarly when I'm thinking about my legal, constitutional, legislative focus and downsizing government, it's hard to argue the best way to do that isn't through actually being elected in my own right.

[Unknown]

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding what the technology driven approach would be.

[Akash Singh]

Can you, what does that mean?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean all I'll say is at that point I'm not running example, I'm.

[Unknown]

Not running or whatever.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, I would say because I truly.

[Unknown]

Don'T know what that means.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I hear you, I hear you. I think we're probably reaching the outer bounds of what I'm going to, what I'm able to talk about. But stay tuned. And I'm rooting for success. I mean I gave you what my outlook is because I can speak for my, I could speak for my outlook. Yeah. So before I think that there is, I think there's an opportunity. Is there an opportunity to make things more efficient using digital technology? I believe there is, but that's a different, that's a different.

[Akash Singh]

But before you guys started it, did you have this conversation about what your outlooks were for this program?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We co wrote a Wall Street Journal op ed that's out laid out a vision that's pretty consistent.

[Akash Singh]

And then does something change?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I think it's, it's a. First of all, did you see him salute? I can't believe people lost their minds over that.

[Unknown]

No, it looks nothing like a salute.

[Akash Singh]

People are so crazy, aren't they? People are so dumb for seeing that and thinking it was something else. What retards we got, right?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Your words, man. You. I, I think that there was a evolution in any new project, right. Something like this has never been done. I'll give you one example, right. Initially this was supposed to reside outside of government. Now late in the lead up to starting ended up in the government. And by the way, here's another thing.

[Akash Singh]

That happened this point.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

When it's in the government.

[Akash Singh]

This is Animal Farm, bro.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

When it's in the government also, I can't run for office. At the same time, there's a rule, it's called the Hatch act, that stops you from independently engaging in your own political activity or running for office while you're in the government. If you're outside the government, it's a different constraint. So there were a lot of things that obviously was supposed to be on the outside for a lot of reasons, ended up moving inside, ended up having a technology first approach. And so when something like this has never been done and you set it up, obviously there's going to be some evolution. And it made a lot of sense, given the way things, you know, evolved for me to say, you know what, this is the right way for me to achieve my vision and goals for. For the country and to wish success in taking a technology driven approach within the federal government. And that's where we landed.

[Akash Singh]

I think that that seems like you guys had a. What is it called, Amicable breakup is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That we're super friendly on a personal level. Yeah. It's just sometimes it's a mutual decision. Yeah, very much so.

[Akash Singh]

Exactly.

[Unknown]

That's what I say when I get dumped.

[Akash Singh]

What is your. What do you say to that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think both parties say that.

[Akash Singh]

No, no, but what do you say that when you see that? You know, I'm sure you saw like tweets or articles or something like that where it's like, oh, the administration is pushing Vivek out.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

And what is the reaction to that? That. Do you call up Donnie and you're like, yo, that's good.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, the kind of guy telling me what I ran for, I ran for president. And I mean the number, the amount.

[Akash Singh]

Because you wrote hard for Trump, man.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That you will read about yourself. If you put yourself in the public eye at some point, you just.

[Akash Singh]

I get it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You sort of get used to it and deal with. It's a price and cost to do in business if you want to change the country.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But, you know, look, I think it is. Do I feel like where I'm headed right now is the right direction for me. 100.

[Akash Singh]

Is there any division in the administration between you, let's say, and Trump?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Trump and I are great terms.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We have, on a personal level, super close.

[Unknown]

You got Tick tock Jack here.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I went, yeah. He actually worked for me first.

[Akash Singh]

Really?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. We, we partner with a lot of these people. And a lot of the people who worked on my campaign, worked out, ended up Ben Jones campaign. A lot of people joined, you know, and myself too. I endorse Trump and work my tail off over the last year.

[Akash Singh]

I think incredibly loyal to the people who support him. And I understand that, because if you support him in any way, you're going to be supported all out. And you went all out. So I cannot fathom, like when I saw.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, we're good. We're good. Yeah, we're good.

[Akash Singh]

But you and Elon, there might be some.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, I don't. No, not on a personal level.

[Akash Singh]

Send him back.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But there's a different.

[Akash Singh]

He's a fucking migrant, you know what I mean? I'm probably paying for him to stay in some hotel in New York right now.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

A lot of people stay in hotels.

[Akash Singh]

I am.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, that's changing very soon.

[Akash Singh]

So what's going on? What? Digital efficiency is going to fix that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So my view, my view is everybody has. Look, let's talk about merit in the country, right? Everybody's got their own gift.

[Unknown]

It seems like you got more merit to be in Doge than some guy with four other companies.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know, you should have pointed him to the door.

[Akash Singh]

You should be like.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Finish, finish it, cuz. You got the mustache.

[Akash Singh]

I do. We got one in here. Just give me, Give him your heart. You can't do it with the stache.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's good. Especially you got good length on there.

[Akash Singh]

But then it comes in here, comes in a little bit and you can't be like, I'm Michael Do.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's out of the window. It doesn't work.

[Unknown]

All right, guys, we also got dates. First of all, Sacramento. Thank you guys so much. Nine sold out shows. I literally just didn't have time to add more. So thank you. Man, it was such a fun weekend. This weekend I'm gonna be in West Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, Saturday, the January 31st and February 1st and taking a couple weeks off. And then February 21st and 22nd, I'm in Brea, California. One of those shows is already sold out, so buy your tickets. Then February 27th and 28th and March 1st, I'm gonna be in Zany's in Nashville. March 21st and 22nd, Omaha, Nebraska. March 28th and 29th, Columbus, Ohio. And these dates have changed, guys. I was going to be in Toledo, Ohio in April, but we're gonna move that show. I gotta make up for everybody who I had to cancel on last minute in Tampa. So Tampa, if you missed your shot Last. I didn't make it. Well, you didn't miss your shot. I up. I apologize. Flu got me. April 10th through 13th, I will be in Tampa, guys. Get your tickets@akash singh.com. now, let's get back to the show.

What's up, guys? Mark Agnon's arena tour continues. All right. February 27th, Baltimore. I will be in Magoobies. That's right, Magoobies. Joke house. It's great. It's like a house, but it's really like an. It's a small arena. Yeah, it's amazing. I'll see you guys there. Baltimore, February 27th. Dick, don't. Please don't do that. Because people have tried to do this after the show. They've come up to me. They said, aakash said I had to sell your dick. I said, please don't do it.

Only men. Men only.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

No, that's the only.

[Unknown]

Who's coming suck his dick. No, please don't. Then don't even really ask.

Not even cheating.

No, because there'll be other people there that don't know about this. And then they go, oh, yeah, Akash said to suck your dick. And then the other people will be like, what? Why are they trying to suck your dick?

And then I said, because Akash said, they just.

It's a whole thing anyway. Please don't do it. You can just come to the show, have fun, get a drink, and laugh with people that like jokes. I'll see you guys. Baltimore looks like 27th. Okay.

[Akash Singh]

Okay. So you and him are beefing, but you just had different ideas.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You got a bunch of people with.

[Akash Singh]

I imagine these are different visions of.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

How to achieve similar goals. Yeah, you find different ways to achieve those goals.

[Akash Singh]

Did you have a combo where you're like, yo, I think we should actually go this direction?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, look, I think that it was. It was an evolution of where we were headed for.

[Akash Singh]

Sure.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, things, you know, in a new project has never been done before. So initially the thought would be outside government.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Use the legal constitutional basis. Legislation ended up, you know, really having an internal to government and technology centric focus. I think that's great. And I think it could be super successful. And I think there's nobody with that focus. I really mean this. I think there's nobody with that focus that is going to be better positioned to do good things than Elon.

[Akash Singh]

Of course.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But initially, the flip side is also, at a certain point, I think this is what's going to be good for me as well, is if I'm really looking at a unique constitutional vision for the future of the country, grounded in my view of what our lawmaking process ought to be. How do you restore self governance in America? How do you actually rid ourselves of that managerial bureaucracy that exists at the federal, but also at the state level? I think I need to stand on my own feet and be elected to office to do it. And I think that that's a good thing.

[Unknown]

That is a good thing. But let me ask you, if you got to run Doge your way or be governor of a state in the Midwest, what would you do?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I will tell you, it was my. It's been my plan for. Even before Doge came into existence and after I left the campaign to pursue the path of likely running for governor of Ohio. Right. So this is something that I, you know, began to really.

[Akash Singh]

Wait, you're going to run for the government? Is that going to happen for real?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Imminently. We'll have an announcement to make. What are we waiting on?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, just announce it right here.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You got to jump through some hoops.

[Unknown]

Hey, you know what this sounds like to me?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Inefficiency.

[Unknown]

It sounds very.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Everything about government paperwork is inefficient to me. But I will say that that was something that I was committed to even before the election was decided. And so when it became clear that you're not able to do certain things while being part of the federal government, I made my choice about who's the.

[Akash Singh]

Sitting governor, who's the guy you're going to go up.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

He's actually term limited. So it's a guy. Mike DeWine. Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

So who are you going to go up against? Who's the other?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Whoever chooses to run.

[Akash Singh]

And it's just body bags all day.

[Unknown]

Zip, zip.

[Akash Singh]

Are you.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Look, let me say this. I'll. I'm a competitor as well, right? You guys are competitors. Talking about this.

[Akash Singh]

I can't believe you let this South African kick you out of do, bro.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So when. When you're talking about competing in. In. Don't cancel my Twitter account.

[Akash Singh]

You're actually not that bad. You send the rockets.

[Unknown]

You're a good guy.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You're a good guy.

[Unknown]

I like him better.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

He's going to do great things. He's going to do great things. But I'm a competitor. But what I will say is I don't want to just win an election by some narrow margin and be another caretaker. There's 50 caretakers across the country. They come and go if there's an opportunity to actually transform Ohio, but also to show what is possible to the rest of the country by standing for excellence. You need a mandate to do that. So you can't win by a little bit. You got to win by a lot. And so I'm in this to be not just in by some sort of marginal victory and be another nanny for a state government for a while, but to really go in and can change the place for the better. And if you think about it, Silicon Valley, right, has been at the bleeding edge of the American economy for the last 20 years, just by market capitalization, by innovation. I think the Ohio River Valley can be the.

[Akash Singh]

You want to bring Silicon Valley to.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Ohio even one step more than that, to go to the next level where Silicon Valley isn't in terms of production, because I do think that's going to be the next wave of actual true innovation in America is actually producing semiconductors.

[Akash Singh]

But how do you do that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You think you just, like, get a.

[Unknown]

Lot more H1B visas in Ohio.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Starts with rolling back.

[Akash Singh]

How do you do with these retard Americans, bro, we just got retarded Americans.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Here in this country.

[Akash Singh]

There's no way we can figure out engineering trying to figure out what the managerial class is. So, you know, we're too dumb.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know what the sad part is?

[Akash Singh]

Yes, we're actually.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Some people say that. What do you mean some people say that?

[Akash Singh]

He's sitting right here. The guy who says it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, actually, so to the contrary.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. Because I said this in my now infamous tweets. He got. That was all me. The problem with me. The problem with me with my tweets is nobody else reads them before I put them out. That is all me.

[Akash Singh]

Championship game. You're like, all right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

When you have a busy year and you're on vacation with your family. Yeah. Maybe put down the Twitter account for a little while. We're in Brazil and I was just.

[Akash Singh]

Like, you know, you saw them work and you were like, nah, these.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, so. So the thing. Thing is I actually. The thing that pissed me off is actually a lot of people started saying the thing that you were saying, which is that actually there's some IQ differential in other countries versus the US I don't think so.

[Akash Singh]

Actually, we gotta be the smartest.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think that if anything, we are because we have a good selection bias of who comes here for native iq.

[Unknown]

Typically, yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But. But there's a big problem. So if we have at least no less smart and probably smarter on average than most countries, if not all countries, because of the selection bias of who comes here yet in 8th grade, you're.

[Akash Singh]

Still saying it's the immigrants that come smart.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, I mean still saying it for generations.

[Akash Singh]

Just say if you want it to be fun.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You wanted the hard.

[Akash Singh]

Say white Christians are the smartest and everything will be okay.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Okay, crisis king.

[Akash Singh]

And we're the smartest.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Here's the problem, man. Eighth grade. I'll ask you a question.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

What percentage of 8th graders are, for their age, proficient in math compared to international standards? Anybody have a guess?

[Unknown]

4.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

4%. You're. You're pretty pessimistic. You're not bad, though. It's 25%.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So 75% of our eighth graders compared to just other developed countries.

[Unknown]

25 of that class is Asian.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

25. They didn't do the demographic breakdown.

[Akash Singh]

All right, so 25%, that's a problem.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I think it is a fix.

[Akash Singh]

For those other countries for us to.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Just say it's a problem for us. 25% are actually.

[Akash Singh]

They got 100 that could do math, and they're still poor.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

The other countries, like, how are you.

[Akash Singh]

Still in the third world? And all of you know math.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Apparently math is unimportant. This isn't the developed world, but you.

[Akash Singh]

Should be focusing on shooting the schools up or something that can make your.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Country, you know, leader of the first world.

[Akash Singh]

This is what I'm getting from the data. I'm getting that math is not important at all to have the most powerful country in the world.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think that the question is whether we're going to have the most powerful country in the world. And that's what I'm worried about. So, you know, we can. We can. You can flex all you want, man.

[Akash Singh]

Don't make me go kangaroo on you right now.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think that we are the greatest country known to the history of mankind. I do, of course, but we have to have the humility to understand we got to be better. And I don't think complacency is an option. And I don't think. I mean, look at the news of the day or the news of this week, right? You got new AI technology coming out of China that somehow takes everybody by surprise here, because with a lot less in computing power, they were smart in the way that they were able to use less computing power to still achieve a similar result. That's deep seek. We can have that discussion later. We are going to get our asses handed to us by China unless we get our act together and light a fire under the feet of our culture. I think that's a hard truth.

[Unknown]

No, I Agree with that. I think we might need to them up right now. Now. I mean, this is really the only chance we got. We them up right now.

[Akash Singh]

What do we do?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Forget anybody else.

[Akash Singh]

We did it to their neighbors.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Let's actually just make our senses, you know, Neighbors.

[Akash Singh]

This guy's crazy. We can't. He's saying nuke China.

[Unknown]

No, that's not what I'm saying.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm imply it. How about just. How about just being better on our own terms? Right? That's a crazy idea.

[Unknown]

Too big.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We got it. So at least you're talking about it. But I. I'm very afraid hide and have our heads in the.

[Akash Singh]

What do they do better than us?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

He just told you. This is the whole discussion. This is the whole discussion.

[Akash Singh]

I know what I was doing, man. Was he saying that the. The AI computing.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I think about. So. So maybe we don't want the best engineers. Right?

[Akash Singh]

What did they do? Can we.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. So there was a thing called Deep Seek that just came out. You hear about it? No. Okay, no worries. I've seen news in the last couple of days.

[Akash Singh]

Deep Seek?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Is that the Bonnie Blue video?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

He's good. He's good. Comedy engineer. Many kinds of engineers. Engineers of comedy. I like that. Where's your wedding ring? Cross examination.

[Akash Singh]

Go, go, go, go, go.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So anyway, there's this thing that really surprised everybody, which with a lot less computing power because we've had these export bans on chips going to China, the thought was they don't have access to the same type of computing power that other companies.

[Akash Singh]

And that's the issue with AI right now is the computing power. Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Or so it was thought.

[Akash Singh]

And they solved that issue.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, it's complicated. So under conditions of scarcity where they had these export controls, they still came out of nowhere and said, you know what, With a lot fewer chips and a lot less powerful chips, they nonetheless created a generation of AI that at least looks as competitive as the bleeding edge of what we're producing in the United States. And, you know, there's a lot yet to be known. But they trained this using phrases rather than individual words instead of going out 32 decimal places on a number. They only used eight decimal places. The way they trained the AI, they ended up being a lot scrappier in doing it. And we can have the whole discussion about deep sea can get boring pretty quickly. But my point is we will see examples daily, weekly of other countries, including China, having our asses handed to us unless we wake up. And as a Sputnik like Moment say we are the greatest nation and we're gonna act like it. And we believe that hard work and education and excellence rather than victimhood is the way to do it. And so the funny thing for me is I've been saying this for years. It's not a different message for me. I've been preaching it to the woke left. I wrote the book Woke Inc. I wrote Nation of Victims a couple of years ago. And it was perceived as an attack on victimhood culture because that's what it was in the US but what I intended it as a wake up call. And I think many of the same people who supported me in delivering that message to the woke left may have initially had a different interpretation of it when I talked about it, just more holistically. I'm talking to everybody.

[Unknown]

Pull yourself.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm talking to everybody.

[Unknown]

Straps meant Timberlands and they loved it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think, you know, to puff our chests abroad, we all got to pull up our pants.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, I agree.

[Unknown]

All of us.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I agree. There was a whole pull up your pants thing. We all got to pull up our pants. Okay. And we got to be serious about it. We got to balance our budget. We got to actually spend in accordance with what we actually bring in. We got to seal our border. We got to teach our kids how to do math and how to read and how to write. And I want excellence in every domain. By the way, I don't think we should be a country of only engineers. But if we want to be the country where we say companies hire American born workers as we all want, we gotta ask ourselves at least a hard question. This is what people got upset about. And they may get upset about me saying it right now. But it's a question that you have to confront, which is why are these companies choosing on their own to not hire as many American born workers as we want? It's a tough question, but we can't hide from asking that question. If you care about this country. I care about this country too much to just ignore that question because that might be politically convenient. And by the way, the H1 visas, I hate doing this because it's so lame in sort of just repeating yourself. I've said it like 150 times in the last year. It is a broken system. It is flawed. Yeah, no, it's a flawed. It is badly broken.

[Akash Singh]

I mean, why? Why?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Because there's all kinds of things that are messed up.

[Akash Singh]

Quickly describe what it is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So it's a worker visa program that allows. It's about 85,000 granted a year where companies can get a foreign worker in a specific role of a specific skill set, often used by technology companies.

[Unknown]

And when you say foreign, you mean Indian.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

India is the number one country that uses it.

[Akash Singh]

We got an H1B here, don't we?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think you got China. You got other countries as well.

[Unknown]

Okay.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, you might. There's about 85,000. But here's the deal with it. First of all, it's distributed by lottery. So my view is that colleges, they pick the very best, at least they think for their university. We're not individually picking. It's a lottery. That's number one. Number two is if you work for a particular company with an H1B, here's the big problem. You are like an indentured servant to the company because another company can't hire you. So the market's not really working. Okay, So I have for a long time.

[Unknown]

And you get under. You're constantly afraid of getting sent back. So they just take advantage of that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And then also you could argue that that compresses American wages because that person can't be hired away. So the company has them under a barrel to pay them less. There are rules to prevent that. But then companies may be abusing it and sidestepping those rules, and you're afraid.

[Unknown]

To have reported if you're.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So it is. It is a. It is not only a broken system, it is a deeply flawed system in its application. And I've said this 100 times, maybe 150 times in the last year, but assume we fix all of that. And by the way, I've got some out of the box ideas for how to fix this. I'd say auction them off. Actually make the companies pay for it.

[Akash Singh]

Get back to that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And by the way, use that money. Get back to change the word. If you auction them off right, then you actually raise that money to close Social Security.

[Akash Singh]

The right is on your side.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So we've got 44 billion doll Social Security. We don't have enough money for Social Security. There's no way to fill it. It makes the companies pay more.

[Unknown]

So the companies are friends of it. You're being very high. Q. The EQ is. When you say auction, I'm off. The black people are like, what are we talking about?

Yeah, we don't do that anymore.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We're just. I mean, this guy can joke around. I'm as loose as I can be, too. But the point is they can pay for it.

[Akash Singh]

Make them make.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Sell the flesh and sell their flesh.

[Akash Singh]

To the highest visa, Visa, sell Their visa. Sell their visa to the high highest bidder. Take their flesh. You take their flesh and sell it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

On that side of the pay to America. Right. So you want to make America great. We got a Social Security gap.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Close the Social Security gap by saying that if a company wants to hire somebody with the equivalent of a new H1B system, make them actually pay. So there's a higher barrier to hire that foreign born worker, but the company will pay whatever it's worth to them to do it. And by the way, when they do it, they shouldn't be indentured servants of that company. They can work at a different company. That's a pretty efficient approach and it can actually used to, you know, close the Social Security trust fund gap or anything else it sounds to me right now. But those are some wonky policy solutions. But the deeper question though, because everyone likes to go there. I agree. No, this is, and get to the hard question. Let's say even after you have that system, I believe it is likely that companies will still in some measure hire workers that include workers from other countries. And by the way, a lot of CEOs, what they'll say behind closed doors and what they do behind closed doors is if you tell them they can't do it, here's they start opening up sites in other countries. That's what's happening. Some of the most successful startups in the country right now founded by names of people who. I'm not going to betray confidence, as you all would recognize, have told me in recent weeks. Right. In response to all of this, what people need to know is that I'm actually building teams in places like Brazil. In places like Brazil, it's not because.

[Unknown]

It'S smarter just because it's cheaper.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There's a.

[Unknown]

If you're not getting, but it doesn't.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Matter, that's not good for America.

[Akash Singh]

You can hire a engineer.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's not good for America. Right. It's not good for America when you create those jobs in other countries. So what are the questions? How do we address the deeper question of make great airplanes? Yeah, well, it's actually kind of cubic here.

[Akash Singh]

What like, what is like a great Brazilian piece of engineering? What have they done?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's not my choice to make. It's not my choice to make. I'll give you, give you decisions that other CEOs are making. That's not good for America. We want this to be the country where the greatest things come out of our own home.

[Akash Singh]

I agree.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So the question to ask the hard question Is, is why when given the choice, are companies not making the choice to hire more American born workers than we want? We got to reflect on that. And then there's a separate question. So you got that observation right now you got a separate observation before you.

[Akash Singh]

Go to the second question.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, no, it's related. It's related that 25% of eighth graders and only 25% are actually proficient in math. That's a separate fact. Are those two facts total coincidences? Like, is that just a random coincidence that we now live in a period where American companies are choosing. I don't love this, but are choosing not to hire as many American born workers at the exact same time that our educational system is producing lackluster results in math, science and engineering? Are those just random coincidences or might those have something to do with each other?

[Akash Singh]

We could explore if they do.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm not completely, I'm not saying I'm convinced either, but I'm saying that this has to be the conversation we're able to have. Have rather than getting upset that the question was asked. And I care too much about this country to do it. And I think that messengers matter. And one of the things I learned from this is, you know, people, people see the message through the messenger a little bit. And for where I sit, to be super clear about it, this is the only country I will ever pledge allegiance to. I have nowhere else to go. This is the country I will die fighting for if I have to. And so you know what, when you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. And if you care about yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. And I was consistent with that. With the left. It was hard for me to preach a message to the left when we took a lot of arrows before criticizing woke culture. Now that's a cool thing to do. That was not a cool thing to do when I started doing it because I don't think that victimhood culture is good for black people. I don't think it's good for white people. I don't think it's good for any American people. I don't think victimhood culture lifts a up. We're victors, not victims. That's who we are. But I apply that principle across the board in America that all of us not pointing the finger at anybody else includes looking in the mirror myself as a guy who's raising kids in this country that I worry about and I see how hard that is. I want all of us to create a country where those kids still grow up in a Country where excellence is the priority in math and engineering. Sure. Sports, arts, music, music, everything. But we are a country where we pursue excellence. We don't penalize somebody for being a striver. Right. That has a negative connotation to it. Today, our country was built on hard workers and strivers in whatever domain.

[Akash Singh]

We also shouldn't be intimidated.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, we shouldn't be intimidated.

[Akash Singh]

Like, we should have confidence. We're Americans. Like, you're coming here and I'm gonna beat you. I'm gonna beat you. Like, I want you to come over. I want to give you all the visas, and I'm gonna still outperform. And I think once.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We are the best.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And American exceptionalism was based on this idea of manifest destiny. It was the manifest destiny of a nation. Real quick. And the reason we could do that is because other countries have national identities that are different than ours. Yeah, right. Italy or Japan or you could go straight. Great countries love both countries, but their national identity is based on the lineage. Right. Whether you speak the language, whether your bloodstock, your stock of blood goes back. Sure. Five generations. That's how it tallies.

[Akash Singh]

Of years old. Yes.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Was America. America, I believe, is a nation founded on a set of principles. Right. Yes. There's a beautiful geographic space and a homeland we love and hold dear. But that homeland is cheap.

[Akash Singh]

That's how it makes you American.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Right. It used to be 13 colonies. Then you got the Louisiana Purchase, thousand percent. Then you have out West. Then you had Alaska, Hawaii. Maybe there will be more to it to be coming soon.

[Akash Singh]

Gangs.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But it doesn't matter. The land is not the core element of America. The blood and soil is important, but it's not the essence. The essence is what are the ideals that bind us together across those otherwise geographically diverse and expansive differences. And to me, it's those ideals that we pursue excellence. We believe in merit, that the best person gets the job. That you can achieve the maximum of your own potential without anybody standing in your way. And speak your mind at every step of the way. That's what makes America great. That's why we win.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So we have to revive that. But right now, I feel like, like, especially the last four years, we've gone through a little bit of a lethargic period. And I think most people who may have had issues with, you know, the way I, you know, framed it, you know, a few weeks ago would agree with me that we wouldn't have to make America great again if America was already perfect. We should have the humility and the love of our country. Yeah. To not only only admit that, but to embrace the challenge on the other side of it. To say that we're still going to strive to be better than we've ever been. That's who we are. And that's the spirit I want to bring back in the country. And if I'm being honest, I think we've lost some of that, but it doesn't have to stay that way.

[Unknown]

You do know the whole thing is just. It's good. White Christian Americans don't like a brown guy holding the mirror up to their face. That's what this is all about.

[Akash Singh]

Don't. Don't you dare talk about it. Don't you dare talk about.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So it's funny. It's funny.

[Unknown]

You know, that's what it is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I reject. And in my arguments, friendly but healthy, heated arguments with the left over the last four years have been steadfast on this. And I don't intend to change my position now. My position in talking to the left, including black audiences or places where, you know, there was this idea that if you're not black, you can't say certain things. I never believed that. I think that your ideas stand on your own merits, regardless of your own skin color, and you got to express them. That's what America's founded on. So if that was my. And I got a lot of applause from many corridors of the conservative movement for maintaining a hard line on that. But that's always been my belief and I'm not about to change that belief now either. So I believe in being consistent across the board.

[Unknown]

Here's my fear for you, someone who roots for you. You said it yourself, the messenger matters. You're gonna run an estate. Conservative, I guess, is a good way of putting it. I'm conservative, having grown up in a conservative state. State knowing a lot of conservatives love them, but there's a good percentage of them, I would say 20%, comfortably, that are simply not going to vote for you because of your race and.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And.

[Unknown]

Or religion.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Remember Ann, Culture said I wouldn't.

And Culture said this exact thing. Now, I'm not saying you can't run or whatever. My question is. She literally said this.

She literally said I would not vote for him because he's in.

[Akash Singh]

Really? Have you spoken to her recently?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Nah, I don't. We don't have. I don't have too much to say.

[Unknown]

No, let that. Anyway, point is, how do you overcome that? And I would listen. This is a beautiful moment to speak to your ideals and what you believe in. And I love those ideals. However, this is a practical problem that you will have to overcome. Can you just do that with ideals?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I think here's what I believe. It happens to be true. Right. If I'm wrong about this, then I won't be a successful American politician. I'm okay with that. My goal in life is not to be a successful American politician. My goal in this phase of my life is to change this country for the better. Better by doing what I believe is truthful and required for saving our nation. That's why I worked hard, worked my tail off to get Donald Trump back in office. Because I think at the federal level, he is the guy to lead us back to our sense of self confidence and greatness. So now when I look at what I'm doing, my goal is not to map some sort of focus group path to what you're supposed to say to win an election. What I care about is actually reviving excellence in America. It so happens, though, that I think most people, including in the Republican Party, agree with the core principles of meritocracy, the pursuit of excellence.

[Unknown]

I do think the majority, I think it's.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And I'm not going to get 100%, I'm not going to get 100% of people support me. That's great. It's the beauty of a democracy. So I think that the majority of people in this country, and certainly I think even the majority of conservatives, especially the majority of conservatives, believe in hard work, self reliance, self determination, meritocracy, excellence. That's what I stand for. So I believe I'll be successful. And you know what? I would rather speak my message and achieve whatever, whether that's success or failure. I don't care about that as much as speaking the truth of what I actually believe. And I think that happens to be the best electoral strategy.

[Unknown]

But are you shocked, Were you shocked at the, I guess, racial blowback that you received when you tweeted that or was that surprising to you? Because I did notice this sense and I do think I'm a moderate person, but I noticed this sense amongst my brown Republican friends who were like shocked that this existed.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, I mean, I think it was a couple things.

[Akash Singh]

Funny to me, this is the racial pushback.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There's a couple things.

[Akash Singh]

No, no, but what were they saying?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, all kinds of.

[Akash Singh]

On funny memes at all or.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't think they were super funny. You're probably funnier, you know, in the scale of, of humor.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah. At times, you know, but sometimes they got some banger.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There might have been, it might have been one or two.

[Akash Singh]

Did they put you on top of a train or anything like that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I didn't get that. I don't get that. Not yet. The, the surprises. I think there's a couple things going on though. Yeah. The online world is not the real world. I think the other thing is you look, you look at actually real people in 3D. I mean you got a bunch of people with burner accounts that can't identify who they are.

[Akash Singh]

The energy changes completely.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's just, I'm not, I could care less, to be honest with you, about what some sort of, you know, somebody calls you a name and you put yourself in the public domain and you're putting yourself in a position to be a leader in the country, that stu going to bother you. You weren't cut out for it in the first place.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And part of my message, you know, it's the whole message in reverse, it applies 360 degrees, is that we're not victims, right? We're victors. That's the example we said. So I'm not going to be some victim of. Was there, was there a lot of ugly racist stuff said on the Internet? Big news flash, big surprise. You know, what do you expect in the depths of anonymous Internet? So commentary. I care less. It's not going to deter me. And to the contrary, what I do care about though is my goal is not just to provoke for the sake of provoking. No, I want to be able to have an earnest and open conversation in our country about how we excel at a level that we have in the past. We're the country. Even think about my home state of Ohio sent Neil Armstrong, John Glenn to outer space and the outer frontiers. There's no reason Ohio can't be the heart of that again. There's no reason the United States of America can't view this as our Sputnik moment right now. But there are many rises and many falls of this American experiment. And when you are down a little bit, you got to be able to light a fire under your feet to come back. That's who we've always been. But we can't just expect that to happen automatically. And so I do care about an honest self reflection. As a citizen of the greatest nation known to the history of mankind, how do we still pursue greatness at a higher level than we ever have? I really care about, about that and I think that sometimes that involves tough conversations. I'm game for it. It's gonna involve A lot of criticism along the way. I'm fine with that. If you can't handle the game, get out of the game.

[Akash Singh]

All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. Let's just be honest, okay? You need some therapy. Okay? Now, there's no more taboo with mental health. We understand the importance of mental health. It feels good to just get some off your chest. Somebody's stressing you, you just tell another human being that. And if you tell another human being that that has specific skills to help you navigate deep, stressful or anxiety ridden waters, you come out much better on the other side. You get to be a nice therapized human being. I mean, look at Akash, right? Hold no. No anger or resentment of anybody or football teams or any of that kind of stuff. This guy is completely changed. We all need to aspire to be more therapized like Akash. Isn't that right, Akash?

[Unknown]

No, I'm great too. And my wife, I think, my friends, I'm a much better human being. I just hate the people who need to be hated.

[Akash Singh]

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[Unknown]

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If people accept the root reflection, how do we ameliorate the actual root cause?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Sure. So that's what we should be talking about. So I think a lot of this starts with early education in the country. First of all, a lot of this even goes to concerns about inequality. I think that every kid who's born in this country, starting at the age of four, if not younger, should have access to the best possible school they can, regardless of what their financial background is. Love that. I mean, it's the truth, right? Universal school choice. That happens, by the way, not at the federal level. As part of what I'm thinking about my own next step, that happens at the state level. That's really where these changes happen. I think that restoring at least a norm in the country, country of a solid Family foundation. Does that mean that somebody who grows up in a broken family environment or single parent household can't achieve great success? No, of course not. But all else equal, it tends to be from a stable family, generally two parent upbringing. You're going to be able to jump higher if you're jumping from a ground that isn't shaking, but a ground that's stable. So I think it starts early and I think a disproportionate focus on high quality education, starting young, on measuring that achievement, starting young, and then some cultural, cultural shift and you tend to get more of what you valorize as a culture. Right? So I think it's fantastic that we valorize a lot of different things in American culture that are great because we produce great comedians, we produce great athletes, we produce, have historically produced great scientists and engineers. It's great you get more of what you valorize. But what I've seen a little bit that concerns me in probably the last 20 years, you could say you could blame some of this in the woke left, but it's not exclusively at the feet of the woke left is penalizing excellence, right? Penalizing the person who works hard and wins and instead rewarding the victim. And I think that if you reward victimhood, you get more victimhood. And if you penalize excellence and hard work, you're going to get less excellence and less hard work. So I think it's going to be a combination of policies that allow people to have access to the best possible education at a young age and start measuring and rewarding for success early. Merit based pay for teachers. Not just everybody just getting the same thing for treating kids like they're on an assembly line, but actually measuring and pinpointing the people who are putting kids on even a little bit of a trajectory that's different when they're four years old. By the time they're at 12th grade, you could run a truck through that. Okay? So those increments of difference, starting even young, that's a big freaking difference. And then to create a culture that we don't need to create it, we just need to revive it because it is our culture to celebrate whoever's the best, to reward them, to celebrate that in every domain, right? Not just academics, academics to athletics, physical excellence. I actually to some other controversy two years ago favored bringing back the, what's called the Presidential fitness test. They used to have middle school kids go through that, they take that away. Now how many push ups can these kids do? I mean, we don't valorize that type of physical Excellence. We should, should. I love sports. I mean, I was a four year varsity athlete myself. It sometimes can make you a better thinker too. But we should embrace excellence in all of its forms rather than this thing that we kind of teach our kids to do nowadays. I'm not criticizing anybody else. Like my kids grow up in a really different environment than I grew up in and I'm somewhat concerned about that. It makes me think a lot as a parent about how do you cultivate that same environment where we. Participation trophy culture. We should have trophies for the winners, not participation trophies. That was America, right? That was the America that produced greatness. I worry a little bit about taking the guy who's a striver and using that and make that a negative connotation rather than celebrating the person who's going to put their head down and work hard. Be it at basketball, be it at the violin, be it at math, or be it in the science competitions. And I do think that that that's a culture that is American at its core. Maybe we've lost our way on that a little bit. I think we have. But bring back the culture that produced greatness at every time we've been at our best. Right. The country that put the man on the moon, the country that was the country of the pioneers, the explorers, Lewis and Clark expeditions, for God's sake.

[Unknown]

Merit based pay for teachers is interesting.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I've never heard that before.

[Akash Singh]

How do you implement that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Super required.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Teachers unions are an obstacle. I think that there's an obstacle. But I think that the idea that you're going to have participation trophy culture in a certain sense. Participation trophy culture for kids. We can't just have participation trophy culture for the people who are educating our kids.

[Akash Singh]

Either question about that. Should unions be able to negotiate against the state?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think that in certain domains it's uncontroversial that they shouldn't. Public school teachers. If you're unionizing as a public school teacher, who are you unionizing against? And also against the very people you're supposed to represent.

[Akash Singh]

But also who is rewarding that union? Someone who's going to be in office for two, two, four years and then they move on so they don't have to deal with the repercussions of bad policy.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Which is totally different from different kinds of unions. Right. Private sector unions came up about fighting against monopoly power, against capitalist consolidation. But public sector unions, I mean, even you had fdr, I think, actually who was a big pro union guy that expressed a lot of skepticism about public sector unions. And then you could talk about. I would put police in fire. That's in a different category because there are a lot of concerns that relate to how they're insured or protected in the case of putting their own lives on the line. But let's just start with the easiest example where I think most people agree. I don't think public teachers unions make sense. I think public teachers unions means you're unionizing against the very people you're supposed to serve.

[Akash Singh]

For example, kids who you're teaching.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Right. One of the.

[Akash Singh]

How are unionizing against kids? Yeah.

[Unknown]

What are they advocating for?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, what you're advocating for, you advocate for summer break. Let's just start with that.

[Akash Singh]

So you're advocating for.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And let's talk about summer break. This is super boring subject to a lot of people. I think it's a super important subject. I've included this in one of my earlier books is you actually see regress when a kid finishes the school year in the spring versus when they show up in the fall. But kids from well to do families, that regress is really small because they're able to pay for and seek out high engagement activity over those three months from poor or less well to do school districts. That's where the gap actually grows. Just the regress when they show up in the fall. That's just one example. I think it is a nice perk of being a teacher that you have summer break. But we should take a look at what produces the best results and conversely the very best aren't rewarded. Let's say you're actually doing the best job amongst your pack of peers of teachers in teaching kids how to excel in math and science and reading ability and critical thinking in a way that's measurable. That person still gets paid the same salary, which I think is way too low right now.

[Unknown]

I think I'm just going to say that teachers are severely underpaid.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Severely underpaid.

[Unknown]

So you think getting rid of unions, they're going to start the state's going to be like the best.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think the best ones would actually get paid more money. Especially it's in the context of. Of a true market based system where the people at the level of the family have the ability whether they can afford it or not. They're able to with a voucher or with a educational savings account. Able to choose to go to a better school. Absolutely. There's good evidence for this.

[Unknown]

I think you have too much faith in state budgets.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

They are trying to cut faith. I mean, I don't Think it has happens. I don't think it happens magically. So I guess I'm with you. It doesn't happen magically, but I think that great leaders can make a difference. I think good leaders with the right policies at the level of the state can fix this problem. And this is a man. Here's why this is not going to the moon. Going to the moon is a problem of physics. And not every natural problem has a man made solution. This is a man made problem and every man made problem has a man made solution. I believe that.

[Unknown]

And if we value education as highly as you'd like, then that's the budget you cut last. You see what I'm saying?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's not just the budget.

[Unknown]

Don't value it already.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's about how you use it.

[Unknown]

That's an issue.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's about how you use it. So take the money to administer the bureaucracy, put that money in people's pockets and allow them to actually get to the best possible education they can get to either renegotiate the union contracts or maybe get rid of them altogether in a way that allows for merit to.

[Akash Singh]

Isn't that great? Just smart schools in dumb schools.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, we're here in New York City, close to downtown. You got the best traders at a Wall street firm. If they make most profit for the firm, which is their merit, they get paid more rather than the guy who didn't. Why would we want to operate our schools, you know, in a way that's the opposite.

[Unknown]

How would you decide what merit is for teachers?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

These are, you know, and there's, there's, there's upsides and downsides to just be slaves of the test. Right. Nobody just wants to solve for one metric. But you know, there's gonna be no perfect system. I'll be the first to acknowledge that. But is a system that has a combination of objective metrics, even if the metrics aren't perfect? Perfect better than one that has none at all? I think it is strictly better. Right. So I think we can't let the fact that you're going to have some flaw in whatever metric you use to say that. Therefore we're not going to be paralyzed.

[Unknown]

Trying to be perfect.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Exactly, exactly. Let the perfect not be the enemy of the good. Right. And I do think that we're not at the good right now when it comes to doing justice by our kids in preparing them to be competitive. And I think that's part of where the victimhood culture comes from.

[Akash Singh]

But aren't.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, even in a state, if you train your kids to be actually prepared to compete, Pete. Then they don't think of themselves as victims.

[Akash Singh]

But I think we also have victorious consider that like sometimes teachers are at the mercy of the families that these kids are born to.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Absolutely.

[Akash Singh]

And we can't punish teachers because, you know, they have a class of 30 kids who are all from single parent household.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I agree with you.

[Akash Singh]

It's like it's not their fault they have the maid hours a day. The other.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And that was the. That was the other point I made. So those are the. Those would be the two biggest changes for the country is restoring a solid, rock solid family foundation as the norm.

[Unknown]

How do you do that? Through policy.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. Some of it is at least eliminate the disincentives to do it.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think these are accidents. I don't think that somebody nefariously did this to the point we were talking about earlier. But there are weird distortions where actually people can make more money by not having a man in the house than to have a man in the house. I think those are accidents of arithmetic in the way that the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson worked out. So that's not going to solve all the problem, but at least start with eliminating the disincentives. I think some of this doesn't just happen through policy. Some of it happens through cultural norm shifts as well. Making it cool to be part of a family. I think making family cool again is a great thing for the country. Yeah. I do think that when our leaders are able to, you know, I mean, even. Even my own journey over the last couple years, we did it as a family, but we showed the world that we did it as a family too. And to people my age into the next generation, I think that's a great norm to set and to show the country that fathers and mothers equally are investing.

[Akash Singh]

How do you reinforce kids?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

What's that?

[Akash Singh]

How do you reinforce that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

How do you bake that into the identity of an American family?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think we're gonna see it happen. I think it already I'm pretty optimistic because I see that dial turning a little bit, even in just the way that Hollywood might make a movie. Right. What kind of movie appeals to what really are the masses of Americans who agree with these concepts? It's almost like a business opportunity that opens up once you give people the permission to think a little bit different. And so that's one of the things I love about this election is it has mostly turned the page on at least the woke cancel culture in a way that I think is productive mostly has given people a sense of permission to speak openly and rethink. I think a lot of the toxicity of the last few years. I think we're going to see as you see a lot of corporations maybe responding and that's a different discussion about how they're thinking about DI programs or whatever. But I think you're going to see similar, similar, similar evolution in the arts, right? The kind of songs that people make, the kind of movies that people make. Not some boring stuff that hits you over the head and preaches about the importance of having a family, but what you show as a norm of what's actually beautiful and worthy and desirable in America. I think that culture will reinforce policies that also take away the disincentives for family function which you're saying it's gonna be a long term project.

[Unknown]

What you're saying sounds really good and maybe I'm just misunderstanding, but I don't think that's a real thing. I don't think that's a real problem. Like I don't see anyone, anyone who's like, oh, I can't wait to be a single parent household. Like no one's like striving to not.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Have a. I agree with you on that.

[Unknown]

Loving family. Where is this problem? Can you give me an example of that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I do think that there are six women. That's the real issue. I do think that it's a fact we need some policy.

[Akash Singh]

We need some policy about that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Easier to go that many women make more money from being married to Uncle Sam than being married to a husband. Right. So I think that that's not a good incentive structure to set up in the first place. And I don't blame the people who are receiving those. You know, they were talking about the Great Society, the way welfare has been administered. I think there are actually just financial disincentives. I mean, for family formation.

[Akash Singh]

That's not a problem.

[Unknown]

That's more a problem where corporations not paying people enough.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, that's a separate debate that we could have. But I think that, you know, that's. How do you get corporations to pay people more as you actually have? I believe a competitive market economy that allows people to get jobs in a growing economy, that's a separate discussion of economic policy. But even if you're going to have programs of government aid, which most of them I'm skeptical of, but if you're going to have it, do it in a way that doesn't create a disincentive to pay somebody more in the exact same Situation where single mother without a man in the house. Single mother, married man in the house. This one gets more money than this one. I don't think that that's a good incentive structure to create. But I'm not going to promise you that the solution is all going to come through policy on the family side. I think through education policy can deliver the solution. Education is that'll get us 50% of the way there alone in terms of giving people access to the best possible education they can at a young age. Then you get to the hard stuff. I do think that restoring the nuclear family norm is a hard thing.

[Unknown]

I grew up in a really poor neighborhood. I'm sure there's always people that try to take advantage of the system, but the majority of people weren't happy to be on welfare. Like it was a necessity.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Sure.

[Unknown]

So I like you say that like they'll get paid more not being in a relationship like no one's striving for.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I agree with that. And it's like I think the least he can do is market it that way.

[Unknown]

I feel it's a little bit.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Let me ask you. Let me ask you. I could actually, actually be. I'm super interested in this. I don't have all of the answers of what the government is supposed to do to recreate family formation. I think some of this is not going to come from the government. Government. The government should do the best we can. What would be. What would be your perspective on how we could actually enhance more stable family formation in the country, given your own, you know, background that you share?

[Unknown]

I think money is the thing that fixes a lot. And if corporations are paying people more now, people can have two family households and make more than if the government was helping them out.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I would love for it starts. I would love people to be able to earn more as well, which requires a vibrant economy rather than shrinking economy over the course of.

[Unknown]

Yeah, but if we're paying people $15 on 40 hours a week, that's no money. No one can live off that.

I mean it's not even 15 to be to his point. So when he first said corporations, I was thinking corporate jobs. But minimum wage, 725. Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

So many others gone insane. And like, I don't mean to pull.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It all back to my favorite topic and I don't mean to pull it back to my favorite topic, but I pull it back because I think it relates to it of the bureaucracy and the regulatory. State. State. The reason people can't afford a house is in part because we have a crisis of not enough housing construction in the country. Why? Because there's too much red tape to be able to build a single family home.

[Unknown]

So building large because people are making enough money to afford housing.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I mean, housing costs are also high. Housing costs have shot up.

[Akash Singh]

You're going to see it happen in California right now.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You've seen it happen across the country.

[Akash Singh]

No, but specifically when they start to rebuild, there's a lot of people out there who like, they bought their homes already built and they've never went through the, the red tape and bureaucracy of like building a home out there. And then these people are going to see what it's like and you're going to see a monumental change change happen in California.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Even builders. Right. There's a lot of zoning regulations, for example, at a local level and at a state level that say you can't build a new house in this area if it's too small, if it's a single family home, that restricts the supply of new housing. When you have less supply, prices go up. And that's a big part of why people aren't able to afford housing, which I think is a major problem amongst Republicans.

[Unknown]

And let's take it beyond housing.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

To his point, I hate to not side with the Indian, but a box of cereal in New york legitimately is $10.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

If minimum wage is dollars an hour and food is that expensive, even if I'm renting and I don't want to buy a house and I don't care about that, I'm still struggling. And if it's 15 an hour in New York, even if things are more expensive, 7:25 in Texas, a box of cereal is $5. I got a family of four to feed. I'm working 40 hours a week on minimum wage. What am I going to do? It's like the I and I support a lot of what you're saying. But there is a problem.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Sure.

[Unknown]

That might require more regulation, which is we. Inflation continues to go crazy. CEO salaries continue to go crazy. They outp inflation. Minimum wage has been stagnant for 20. I mean largely stagnant since I was a kid.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So here is my view. I think that the best way, the reason I want to dismantle the regulatory state is not because that is a more important objective than helping the American worker. It is because I believe it is the way to best aid the American worker. And right now, a shrinking economy or an economy that isn't growing at the pace that we historically have, that brings Everybody down shrinks the size of the pie. I think companies, we want companies to independently make the choice to hire the best and brightest in the United States and pay them at a rate that allows people to flourish and live a great life. We can all agree that hasn't been the case in the last 20 years.

[Unknown]

Correct.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

At least in the post 2000 period, that has not been the case in this country. I think most of that is a function of actually bad government policy by the actual regulatory state and bureaucracy. You think about the Federal Reserve. I mean, the Federal Reserve has tightened monetary. This is a little technical, but it tightens monetary policy every time wages go up. This is actually one of of the best kept secrets of how Federal Reserve policy has hurt workers in this country. They say that was a leading indicator of inflation. Yeah, it's a leading indicator of wages are going up. So wages going up already was programmed into the mind of this bureaucracy that that's all else equal a bad thing. Well, here's what we've learned is that.

[Akash Singh]

Actually some people start making more money. They're like, yeah, we got too much money.

[Unknown]

Right, let's restrict the flow of money.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's even worse than that. It's even worse than that. Because as you will probably appreciate, the last thing to go up in the business cycle when the economy's hot, the very last thing to go up is wages.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So what we actually discovered in retrospect is they thought that was a leading indicator of inflation. Oh, gosh, we got to raise interest rates and tighten monetary policy.

[Akash Singh]

They actually got it wrong.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It was the tail end of the business cycle when wages were going up. Which means they tightened monetary policy right into a natural downturn of the business cycle, which is how you got the 08 crisis, which by the way, people our age, a big source of inequality was still the aftermath of that Great recession. Recession. After the 08 financial crisis, imagine we had.

[Akash Singh]

I don't think that's like how you got the 08 crisis. I don't think that is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, no, no. But it worsened it. Okay. It exacerbated it. It exacerbated it and it caused it to last.

[Akash Singh]

Poor people wanted more.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, no. It was actually the Federal Reserve tightening monetary. Anyway, it lasted a lot longer even in the aftermath of it. But my point is, imagine you didn't have any of that regulatory state all in you. Fast forward 20 years later, would we have been better off off if none of the bureaucracy had even tried to do it? And by the way, just take the money that was Spent by that bureaucracy and put in the pockets of people.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yes, we would, actually.

[Unknown]

So how come.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's right.

[Unknown]

How come that bureaucracy is not affecting CEOs pace? Because Ferris has been going.

So I think there is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I think that. I think the reality is the bureaucracy is what determines that pay. Right. I think a lot of now I believe in the market actually working, but this gets into a separate market structure. So normally shareholders, you ask the question, I'll give the answer. Because it's actually a topic that was near and dear to my heart. I started a company that was on this very issue. Shareholders are the supposed bosses of a corporation and public companies. It turns out that most public companies have their stock held by a really concentrated small number of firms, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard among them. They're the ones who are actually voting for CEO pay, not the actual shareholders themselves. So historically, the way the market economy is supposed to work is the shareholders hold the firm accountable. Instead, you have a lot of these concentrated financial actors that are voting their shares on behalf of the everyday American or the pension fund holder in a way that has resulted, I do think, in some level of inefficiency. So wherever you look in our country, the rise of this managerial class, wherever you see the rise of bureaucracy, the American citizen tends to lose in the end. The everyday citizen tends to lose in the end. And so my general form of solution is, as a first step, take a jackhammer to the bureaucracy, take the savings and put them in the pockets of everyday citizens real quick. Things are going to happen on that.

[Akash Singh]

You said blackrock, what'd you say?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

State Street, Vanguard, Vanguard, all these companies.

[Akash Singh]

So they.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's where a lot of this ESG stuff, by the way, came from too. ESG is like these environmental and social constraints on these fronts. Firms came from the same firms that in many ways were using that as a smoke screen.

[Akash Singh]

Remember when they were to be able.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

To actually fail, companies vote in the way they should be.

[Akash Singh]

For example. Okay, so just real quick, so we understand it's not their capital, right? It's not their assets. People are putting their money into these companies. They invest it. But what's happening is they're using the leverage of all that capital to push policy onto these companies. And then the shareholders are actually, actually not seeing the capital.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You call them the capitals. Because right now they call BlackRock and Vanguard, the shareholders, that's the shareholder in air quotes, the actual capital owner, are.

[Akash Singh]

Not what they want reflect.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Exactly.

[Akash Singh]

And matter of fact, sometimes those policies negatively impact their returns.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I believe that's the case. I strongly believe that a couple books about it.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I also started a competitor to BlackRock called Strive. This is a few years ago. So I care about trying to solve these problems at best I can through the martial. But one of the reasons I entered politics is there's only so much you can do through the market when the root cause of why these firms are structured this way is actually traces back to the regulatory environment that creates the incentives for that type of consolidation in the first place.

[Akash Singh]

Guys, listen. An exciting weekend. I think that we need to have a little bit of a discussion about Akash and his picks.

[Unknown]

Before we get to the picks, can I just say how right I was about. About not being a Cowboy fan?

[Akash Singh]

Okay, tell me.

[Unknown]

Oh, first of all, everybody, you're welcome. Because I last year said, I'm done with the Cowboys. It's never going to change. You guys pretended you were sports fans. You insulted me. People online insulted me. I took a lot of hatred. They hired this guy to be their head coach. This guy, maybe he'll be a good coach. He has no qualifications. His name is Brian Schottenheimer. He's been a coordinator for about 15, 20 years. He's gotten one head coach interview his whole whole life. But because the Cowboys are cheap and they don't want to pay money for a head coach even though there's no salary cap, they had this guy who's a shitty offensive coordinator for them, and they're like, let's just promote him. He's the head coach now. We can boss him around. We'll save a lot of money. Everything is going to be good. And I saw so many Cowboy fans saying, you know what? I'm done with this team. I've given up hope. It's never going to happen. And suddenly their reception, hey, man, I get it. You're right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Right?

[Unknown]

You have the right to go support another team. I want you to know I took those arrows for you. I took those arrows for you.

Did those other Cowboys say they want to kill Jerry Jones?

You're welcome. Not yet. Give it a season. Give it a season and he doesn't have to die. But just, you know, there's a couple me too cases out there.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, my God.

[Unknown]

Do you guys care about women? Do you guys care about women? I pretend I do for the sake of football. So there's that.

[Akash Singh]

I care about two women. Really? To be honest with you, I care about woman. Damn.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I respect mom. Say what? You have a mom, bro.

[Akash Singh]

Hey, she made her bed, bro.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

She got like that sometimes.

[Akash Singh]

I forgive you though. I forgive you though.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know?

[Akash Singh]

I forgive you though. I forgive you though.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know what I mean?

[Akash Singh]

She ain't get me too. Me towing her.

[Unknown]

I just felt so vindicated.

[Akash Singh]

Okay, fair enough.

[Unknown]

What about your playoff game?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

What about your other picks?

[Unknown]

Like I never remember. I don't know.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I got one right.

[Unknown]

I don't know any of the words you're saying.

I said the Eagles would win. I. I said I'm gonna go with the Bills over the Chiefs. I didn't feel good about it. I was wrong. Betting against Patrick Mahomes, I guess, is just insane.

You're almost right though.

[Akash Singh]

It was close.

[Unknown]

It was a good. You're almost right, man. It was a good game.

[Akash Singh]

I mean they should. What's if they should have grabbed that.

[Unknown]

Dalton Kincaid, he's a good tight end to his A key. He got great hands.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Ball.

[Unknown]

I mean, Josh Allen did great to avoid that sack, by the way.

[Akash Singh]

That blitz was amazing. What a ballsy call too at that point in the game.

[Unknown]

Yeah, see, well, I was, I was thinking and I'm pretty aggressive, but it was fourth and five. They had like their own 40 or whatever. I was like, why wouldn't you punt this? And then somebody brought up a good point. He said, because you're giving it to Patrick Mahomes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

You give it to Patrick, you don't get the ball back. So you have to go for the win. You can't give it to him.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Him.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

So I said, okay, you gotta go for it. Great play by Josh Allen. Just to throw it up in the air and not get sacked.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Great, great throw.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And I truly. I mean, Philadelphia is really good, but I thought Buffalo was the best team, but I think Patrick Mahomes is just different. And I know people say the Chiefs get calls and blah, blah, blah. Maybe they do. I don't know. That's also kind of how every great athlete does though, right? Kobe got calls, LeBron got calls. Jordan got calls, Tom Brady got calls. In football, like, this is just what it is.

[Akash Singh]

It's also easier to make calls for the most dominant team.

[Unknown]

Yeah. I think you just give them the benefit of the doubt and they're just.

[Akash Singh]

More glaring when you constantly are winning. You see all the calls.

[Unknown]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Akash Singh]

Like when the bum ass underdog team gets a call, you're not going, oh, this is so. I almost feel like better.

[Unknown]

That's a great point.

And the more you're winning, the more games you play, the more calls that could go your way.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So it is an Eagles chief Super Bowl. I think the Eagles are really good. I hate them. My wife and I got in a fight because I just refuse to be happy for her because she's from Philly and she was just like, why can't you be happy for me? And I was like, they're just terrible people and you're one of them. And that's just what it is.

These are, these are good fights.

I apologize later. I didn't mean the apology, but I did apologize. I lied. But they're really good. I would hate to see them win the Super Bowl. I think it's very possible. I think I'm going to pick the Chiefs, but I'm wrong a lot, so I'm actually right.

Isn't that your team isn't the Chiefs that you hopped on?

You're a die hard Chiefs fan.

[Akash Singh]

I, I don't.

[Unknown]

I found myself rooting for the Bills because I would like to see Buffalo.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Get a Super Bowl.

[Akash Singh]

You just like torture you like you're a masochist.

[Unknown]

The Chiefs, if they win, I'm gonna be thrilled. And I will probably buy a Patrick Mahomes jersey because he's beaten. There's only two teams left that I truly hate.

[Akash Singh]

I love that you're like, I'm sick of my team not winning anymore. You know who I'm gonna root for? The Buffalo Bills.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I don't understand. No.

[Unknown]

All I have left is, what do they call it? Shot and fraud or whatever other people's misery that I don't like. That two teams that I hate left. The NERS and the Eagles. If Patrick Mahomes beats both of them in the super bowl twice, I'm buying a jersey. I, I, I'll pay for his Disney World trip. I don't care. Whatever you need. I, I will worship this man. I will love this man.

[Akash Singh]

Okay, so you're going Chiefs?

[Unknown]

Yeah, I, well, yeah, I think I'm going Chiefs and I'm really rooting for them. And I might have to watch the game in Philly because my wife is going to be there. And if I got to be around those, that whole city just of idiots.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

When they win a Super Bowl, I.

[Unknown]

Mean, it's just going to be unbelievable.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You are crazy.

[Unknown]

It's just going to be unbelievable. I mean, if they lose though, what a, what a sight that would be. You know what I mean? Just a bunch of fucking.

You know, you have shows in Philly, you perform in Philly. You know, you.

Oh, is that, oh, I'm sorry. Is that crazy? For a comic to antagonize Philly. Who would do such a thing? It's probably how he got into arenas because everybody's like, oh, this guy hates Philly. So do we. Let's buy tickets to a show.

Are you going to watch it in Philly?

I'm sure she's going to want to watch it in Philly. And if I wanted to watch the super bowl in Dallas, I'd make her go, that's never going to happen.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But you know.

[Unknown]

So you know that's.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Going to be a nightmare.

[Unknown]

So please just beat the out of them. Don't make it close like you always do. Beat the dog out of them. I would love that. Patrick Mahomes, please.

You're going to riot either way. I already know.

Riot.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

I'm not capable breaking anything. I mean, no, you start flying, asthma is going to start flaring up. It's too much. It's too much.

[Akash Singh]

Guys, if you're going to battle super bowl, you're going to do with stank steak is the leader in globe betting and US social casinos. Bet on top sports and political events and use the promo code flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now let's get back to the show.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

General summary of my worldview is bureaucracy is bad, all else equal. Do you think you're and it harms the very people it's supposed to help.

[Akash Singh]

Do you think you're radical.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

In the sense that America's radical? Sure. No, I mean America is a radical idea.

[Akash Singh]

You were. Of course, of course. What I'm saying is like, do you think that your viewpoint on what needs to be changed is significantly greater, more radical, more extreme? I know these words have are like loaded. And I don't mean them to be loaded. What I'm trying to say is like, I think that what you're suggesting is a massive change.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

And do you feel it is?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, I do. I think a massive change is required to set our country back on the right track to remain. I think we already are. But to remain the greatest country known to the history of man. I do believe that. And I think that the American Revolution was pretty radical by the way too. I like America's birth. America's birth was radical. Right. The idea that we the people get to self govern, that was a crazy idea. Right. The idea that your genetics and your lineage don't matter, but the best person ought to get the job. That is a radical idea. Or that any opinion.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No matter how heinous to you or me, it might seem that any opinion Gets to be expressed publicly, freely. That is a radical idea. Mm. I believe all of those things, so, you know, that might make me radical. I think I'm fine with that. Because America is a radical nation.

[Akash Singh]

I'm not saying it is criticism. I just oftentimes I see your philosophy, and I think it's. I think it's very digestible in the things that you're saying and that you're using language that we're familiar with. Right. And tapping into our identities and what we are as Americans. But the change that you're suggesting, I think significantly shifts, shifts the course of the country. And that is. You said this last time, you're a pod. Like, we. We. What is it we should have the country we deserve or something like that. This was Thomas Jefferson's idea. It's like, for better than we elect.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Is the government we deserve. Exactly.

[Akash Singh]

For better or for worse. Right. And I. I think that's a very brave position to be in. I think a lot of times when elected officials win, they're forced to make certain decisions and they reflect and they go, you know what? That really ain't that bad. Like, maybe we'll try to move it 2% this direction, 5% this direction, 7%.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And so this is why, man, this is actually really important to me as I think about my next step. I don't just. We were talking about this a little bit before. I don't just want to win by a little bit and, you know, check the box and being a governor or whatever, I want to win by such a decisive mandate to be able to actually do the hard things. Right. If you want to be an incremental changer in politics, you could do that by temporarily sitting in a seat with an arrow margin. And then it's ping pong when somebody else is in charge of the. It kind of goes incrementally in the other direction. But if you want to revitalize an actual state or a country, you need a decisive mandate to do it.

[Akash Singh]

And how do you get that? Well, you have to tap into cultural necessity. These people have to feel that you can deliver the change that they desperately need. Like what's happened, I think not throughout entire American history, but when America is. Is doing well.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

When poor people can feed themselves and pay their rent, there's enough magic and distraction in this country where they don't need to rebel. Right. And that's kind of like the perfect spot for the really wealthy, where they're like, okay, we can get really rich and the poor people aren't going to want.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There's no revolution.

[Akash Singh]

Exactly. Right. There's no. That's like, that's perfect. Right. And then every once in a while, you can see the desperation of the poor because the Luigi Mangioni walks behind the healthcare CEO, blows his head off, and then the Internet is like, hey, it be like that sometimes. And to me, the reaction was indicative of people being desperate.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

A lot of deep seated frustration.

[Akash Singh]

Yes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

So how do you tap into that desperation? And I'm going to use this word sell loosely and then. And then sell them a solution to that desperation that I think this is kind of what happened and we can get into, like, what happened with. With Trump. But I think a lot of people couch their support in Trump with these, how I phrase it, like, they try to be noble in their support. Right. Especially on the coasts, they go, yeah, I want to stop foreign wars. You know, I really care about the migration issue. They don't. Right. Their kid comes home from school and they're like, why am I. I'm a girl, but I think I'm a boy. And they're like, who the fuck told you that shit? Right. And I think that it's the cultural issue, but they feel uncomfortable saying that because of public scrutiny. So they go, we got to stop these wars. And you're like, well, where are the wars that they're over there, but we.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Got to stop that.

[Akash Singh]

How can you tab into what Americans are feeling even if it's not what they're saying? Like, when I saw the reaction of Luigi Mangioni, I was like, oh, Americans are feeling resentment and extreme hostility to the healthc care sector.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Sure.

[Akash Singh]

I think to government.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Sure.

[Akash Singh]

I think to. What else would you say?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think, I think the. Almost every major institution, I would say towards their manner of work, the way that they're actually taught to the idea that you could get ahead through your own hard work.

[Akash Singh]

They're not feeling college anymore.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Through higher education.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Through the debt you take on through higher education. We've all been part of a generation where people are taught that you go to college for four years, you load up yourself with debt, and somehow you get a head start in the American dream when it hasn't worked out that way. I think the first way to do is admit the failure. So this is good. Admit the failure. This is really good.

[Akash Singh]

This is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Be honest. Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

But this is really good.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Admitting the failure, very important.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yep.

[Akash Singh]

And I think to Trump's credit, like, I think there's a version of this and I don't Know how much of this is marketing or actual truth, but like admitting the failures of your country, like if there is something that we like the Gulf of Tonkin situation, like, we should acknowledge that. And we'd be like, hey, we did some foul shit, got us into a war. A lot of people died.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's bad.

[Akash Singh]

You have every right to have a lack of like a faith and trust in our government. We want to reinstall that. And the way we're still in it is accountability. We don't gaslight you and be like, yeah, you don't know what you're talking about. We go, hey, I did some goofy shit. Yeah, that's Elon say you did some goofy shit. Don't go, oh, you guys are making a big deal or nothing. Because that's what Democrats did for four years. Don't be the exact version totally of the people that you fought back against.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think, I think that the ability to honestly have the humility to say here's where we screwed up. And it's easy to point to the other side. Screw ups. It's a lot harder to your own. It's a lot harder. But that's my concern. Our own screw ups. But then it's not just. Not just admitting that failure or the failures where we've gone wrong. But I believe the right path is not to just stop there because I think there's a risk there.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

The risk that I see there is that we fall into the trap then of saying, have we all been screwed over? You know, yes. We haven't. Scoot over. Yes. But if you stop there, then it's.

[Akash Singh]

Like you fall back. You fall back into the trap exactly.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Of thinking that my. My fate is somebody else's fault. 100 and my plight is somebody else's responsibility.

[Akash Singh]

We took accountability. Or that's what I think maybe the left did a little bit. They took all this accountability, which is honorable. Hey, America was imperfect and we're not perfect.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We did some horrible.

[Akash Singh]

And then we stopped at stop there. And that's not it. And how we fucked up. How are we going to make it better?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And I don't want the American right to stop there either. Which is to say that, well, the.

[Akash Singh]

American right is the opposite. It's. We never did anything wrong. And that's a problem. It has to be.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That was kind of the old. There's an older version. Then there's a newer spin which is, no, there's other stuff that we're being screwed over by. We are. Government screwed us over. All of which is much of which is true.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

A lot of these systems, the H1B system is badly broken. It sucks. It needs to be gutted. But.

[Akash Singh]

But don't stop there.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We can't. Your fate. And I, I'll say this in ways that speak to everybody 360°. The number one factor that determines whether you achieve your goals is not your race, your religion, your, Your gender, your sexuality, the climate, the weather, or somebody else from another country.

[Akash Singh]

What is it?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Christ is you. Well, I'm trying to win you Ohio, bro.

[Akash Singh]

I'm trying my hardest.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm really trying my hardest. Well, I believe, I believe that God lives in you. Right. And so, so those two, those two merge. So do the priests. And in a certain, in a certain, like he gives his own alley. It's like the dunk contest. Just like bounce it off the backboard and take your own. But go on, go on, go. That's good. You don't need the guy.

[Akash Singh]

It does live in you. It does live in you. Yes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And so, you know, I mean this is probably even a really deeper discussion as I do think a revival of that type of conviction in ourselves, some of that involves revival of faith and I don't think the government should be in charge of doing this at all. But I do think a revival of our self consciousness is a revival of conviction in ourselves as individuals and as a country. And even in states like Ohio where people have fallen into the trap of believing, you know, we're number 38. Where people move in and out.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Restoring that pride as an American, as an Ohioan, as a citizen, as a member of a family. Revival of conviction in self. That's what Donald Trump, I think is doing at the level of the nation. I mean people will could debate about Greenland or anything else, but the idea of manifest destiny, the idea that we're the pioneers and the explorers, that gives us back some of that self confidence, that juice of conviction.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's the second step we got to take. Is once acknowledged that there are a lot of factors that have contributed that were not your own individual level mistakes.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But if we just pause there, you're taught to see yourself as a victim, but to say that no, we're committed to actually overcoming those barriers at a young age. So every four year old, when he chooses a preschool or his parents choose a preschool for him is choosing the best possible one. And if he can't afford it, you have the money from shutting down the bureaucracy that you saved the money to put it in the pockets of those parents to choose. But after that, your fate is in your hands. And we believe in you because you believe in you.

[Akash Singh]

Real quick.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's what we need to get.

[Akash Singh]

So real quick. I think this is really good because a lot of times we get into this black and white dichotomy like these guys are the bad guys, these guys are the good guys. We never listen to each other. But there is a version where if you're more. I don't even want to use the term centrist, but there's a version where you go, hey, I think it's honorable. I think it's noble to recognize our failures. I also think that what we're doing over here, which is shining a light on our successes and what we can do to improve the country. And it doesn't matter which side, but it's the combination of both of those acknowledging the failures of the people. Because the people feel failed. Right? They feel like the government has failed them. They feel like these institutions have failed because they have. Because they have. Let's acknowledge that and then going, we're not going to stop there and let you just complain and whine about all these institutions.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's good.

[Akash Singh]

We are going to show what's wrong with the institutions and we're going to give suggestions that we think will make it better. And we believe in our heart they'll make it better. And we are going to try to make them better. I like that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Because should we expect more of our politicians and our government? Of course we should. But we should also expect more of ourselves and each other and give them that goes in all directions, but give them something to hope for. Exactly. And the way we expect more of our government is the government, I believe, has actually been in the way of your success. It has been a chief obstacle, whether it's a small business with respect to the regulatory state, whether it is overspending on some parts of education without actually allowing you to choose where you go, housing burdens for new construction that raise new costs. The government has been a burden.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You deserve as a citizen of this country to have that government out of your way so you can achieve the maximum of your own potential. But after that, the rest falls on us. And that is a beautiful thing because this is the country that does not constrain you based on your lineage or your genetics. To achieve that, both of those have to be true. Because if you just do the first without the second, you're back to victimhood culture. If you just do the second without the first, you're gaslighting yeah, exactly.

[Akash Singh]

And you're making people feel like their failures are completely off.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Got to be both. It's got to be both.

[Akash Singh]

And I think that strategy, as you described it right now, it's got it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

In truth, it's not a strategy. It's true.

[Akash Singh]

I think it's really relatable. And to me, like, obviously I'm in maybe a different situation. Right. But I think to somebody who is suffering, who feels like these institutions are not backing them in the way that they need, will then feel one validated in their feeling their frustration, but also feel like they have some hope. Because I don't want you to be like, hey, you're poor, because it's their fault, but good luck being poor. No, I want, I want people to be like, hey, listen, upward mobility is difficult for you. And there are these institutions that have restricted that, the government being one of them. But we want to fix these things so you can have upward mobility. And if I'm somebody who needs that, I'm going to go, well, yeah, let's try something because this shouldn't work idea.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm a fan of in this, in this spirit. This, because I was going to bring this up earlier.

[Akash Singh]

Gay marriage, Perfect.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Time had nothing to do with this. Good.

[Akash Singh]

Okay. Damn it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

One day we're.

[Akash Singh]

One day we're going to.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We can't.

[Akash Singh]

We're going to show our wives what a successful marriage can get. We've been together for 11 years.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Okay, go, go, go, go. We signed the contract at 10. Good.

[Unknown]

You know how I know I'm the wife? Cuz it's like 16 years. You don't know nothing.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And he's wearing the ring.

[Akash Singh]

That's actually a fun experiment. Like two guys are married to women, divorcing their wives, making their wives marry each other, and then we marry each other.

[Unknown]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We can be great and see who lasts longer. We'd be great. We'd be great.

[Akash Singh]

They'd be divorced in two years. We'd be gay in. In Palm Springs at 90 years old.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think it would do well on Netflix. I love it. That's right.

[Akash Singh]

We figure that out.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, I get the crease. Nobody can take that idea, right?

[Akash Singh]

You can't do that with. So the feedback will make you gay.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Go, go. Now you're really killing me.

[Akash Singh]

Sorry, sorry.

[Unknown]

California.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Knockout.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, we got, we got, we got. You know, that's, that's too easy. We'll leave that for somebody. He's knocked himself out. Okay, so I'm interrupting, but an idea earlier On a serious note to this message of economic empowerment. I haven't talked about about this before, but it's an idea that I'm a big fan of. If you think about in a given, in a given kid's account when they're born. I'm not going to say universal basic income stuff because it deters work, but take the spirit of that in a different direction. The savings of shutting down a lot of the bureaucracy, you could take a tiny fraction of that. And every kid who's born have $10,000 dollars invested fully in the stock market. They can't touch it till they're 18. You want to know what the biggest source of income inequalities we can gripe about, CEOs or whatever. It's actually compound interest. Yeah, it's compound interest and not compound interest in bonds or in the bank account. Yeah, it's compound interest in the stock market.

[Akash Singh]

So.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yes, you're talking about kids graduating with enough money to not only pay for all of college, but have enough to start their small business.

[Akash Singh]

But I gotta stop you for one second just so people can understand, this is very, this is the kind of.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Thing we should be talking about.

[Akash Singh]

When you say invest in the stock market, you're talking about, about.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, it's not, it's not welfare to me. It is in. In fact. And let me just make the case to people who would disagree. I just want people to understand the.

[Akash Singh]

Concept before you move on. So when you say invest in the stock market, I think a lot of people immediately go. And I was talking to the guy who, who started Acorns. I don't know if you know that account. This is not like a plug for him, but essentially this is his idea. It's like we've kind of tricked people into thinking that investing is risky is. No, no, no, we, we investing is putting money in and having compound interest work for you over a long period.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Long period of time. What we, what we diversify basket. Yes.

[Akash Singh]

So when you invest in the stock market, you're not investing in one company. And I think that's what a lot of people think. They go, I should have put money in Nvidia. No, that's guessing.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's gamble the full market.

[Akash Singh]

Yes. When you invest in the full market. For example, the Vanguard account that you were just talking about, I'm just using it as a placeholder. Right. You investing across the market, you put that 10 grand in and then that 10 grand is compound interest. Over 20 years, you have X amount of million dollars.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yes.

[Akash Singh]

I don't think people really realize what that concept is of compound interest. And it takes a lot of discipline, right? Because when that 10 grand turns into and then something happens to your home, you're like, let me take that 50 out and then we put it into the home. So I don't want to restrict people, but I do want them to understand the power of it. My parents were financially illiterate. They didn't know what the fuck that was.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So the difference in inequality at the highest levels is explained by people who are invested broadly in the stock market over versus people who are not over long periods of time.

[Akash Singh]

It's the long period of time and.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

The way the math works on the compound interest is like if what is.

[Akash Singh]

10 grand over 10 years or 20 years?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know, I mean it depends on, you know, if you're Talking about a 20, 20%, you know, rate of return, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, let's go by the time, let's.

[Unknown]

Go 10% s and pull the spreadsheet.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We'll do that. We'll do the math. S P is more than that. You're talking about compound stock market returns over long periods of time. You're talking about double digit returns. And that multiplies itself. So a dollar first becomes a dollar and ten cents, but it's net $1.10 times a dollar and ten cents. And so you're actually multiplying that whole effect.

[Unknown]

Say it doubles every your money doubles every five to seven years, something like that. So 10k when you're 5 is 20k when you're 10 is 40, 40k when you're 15 is 80k when you're 20 is 100, 160k.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions. A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a [e-mail] switch. $45 upfront payment required. Equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.

[Unknown]

All right guys, we're going to take a break again so we can tell you about cookunity. You know about cookunity? This is the meal delivery service where the meals are actually prepared by award winning professional chefs. And every meal is prepared in Small batches to ensure that the quality of your meal does not go down. The culinary craft is not affected. And there are hundreds, hundreds of menu items that rotate weekly. Dozens of global cuisines. Maybe I'm going to have a hand in one of these soon. And you're never going to run out of options. They also got an app. It offers a seamless experience for ordering and planning your meals and makes it as pain free as possible. This is the only meal delivery service without compromise. You get quality, variety, convenience, and top tier culinary craft for as little as $6 per meal. And to sign up, all you got to do is go to cookunity.com, pick a plan, select your meals from the menu, and then let the chefs do the rest. And Cook Unity is offering flagrant podcast listeners 50 off their first order. 50? You idiots. Why wouldn't you do that? It's half the money and 10 off their next three weeks. So you might as well just ride that for three more weeks, see how you like it. All you got to do is sign [e-mail] flagrant. Now let's get back to the show.

[Akash Singh]

All right, I have a question for you. This one is near and dear to my heart, but so my pops has. Okay. I know I've seen a bunch of articles about you, obviously, when I was looking you up even last time, and it seems like there's some criticism and I don't know if there's people trying to make you more radioactive. I don't know what exactly it is about how you made maybe your big first chunk of money. I don't even know how much money you made.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I know what you're talking about, okay? And this, this pisses me the hell off because I know how cynic, cynical the intentions are of just deceiving and straight up lying. Okay, to people about it and at some point, but about what? Yeah, so. So, like there's this false allegation that somehow there was an Alzheimer's trial that I made a bunch of money off of that failed. It's. But here's. But here's actually the reality. So I think it's usually more important than that. It's. There's a lot in my own business background that informs my, My worldview and what we're trying to do for the country. So I started a biotech company. It was my first company, major company that I started back in 2014.

[Akash Singh]

Okay.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'd been an investor. I worked at a hedge fund in New York, and it turned out pharma companies are among the more inefficient companies when it comes to allocating their money developing drugs. A bunch of pharma companies tend to get out of a therapeutic area at the exact same time. So when they throw in their towel, they all kind of follow the fad and go in a new direction. And there's a lot of reasons why, but they all kind of throw the towel in the same areas at the same time that go from being in favor to out of favor. So my premise was to start a biotech company that took a lot of the projects that they had discarded after spending a lot of money on them. Find the ones that they discarded, not necessarily because they were bad drugs.

[Akash Singh]

No, because it wasn't a trend.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, because it was a trend. And they had the capital allocation issues that they had to allocate in a new direction and see if you could.

[Akash Singh]

Make one of those drugs work.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Exactly. And so some of these areas were women's health and urology. Alzheimer's was one of these areas for sure, where 99.7% of drugs ever tested for Alzheimer's disease had failed. A bunch of these companies are just like, throw in the towel. So I set up a company called Roy Vent, and the whole model was A, you give skin in the game to the scientists who actually develop these drugs. They don't get that at big pharma, and B, focus on the areas where pharma had abandoned them. A subset of these are going to work, not all of them are going to work. Biotech is game of. It's a numbers game. But enough are going to work to be able to create a successful company. And I was convinced of that based on what I had seen. So I started the company. We developed a number of drugs in these subsidiaries. So each of those units, one was focused on Alzheimer's, one was focused on women's health, one was focused on dermatology and so forth. And the way I made my money was that five of those drugs that we developed through phase three, in successful phase three studies, went on to become FDA proved. And the one I'm probably most proud of is a drug actually for the smallest of those markets. But there is a disease where 20 kids a year are born with this genetic condition, where 100% of those kids die by the age of three if they're untreated. And because of the therapy that we led all the way to get through approval in phase three is kids. About 70% of those kids live lives of normal duration. Another for endometriosis, for uterine fibroids, women's health conditions that were generally ignored by pharma. So those are the areas that we had success.

[Unknown]

Five out of how many you think there.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There's many more that are still in development, but there were. There were probably 20 drugs that we've put into development, 20 plus, many of which are still in the development process. But five of them ended up going through phase three, successful, sold those rights to other pharma companies, generated billions of dollars in value for shareholders. And the company I founded, Royvant, is like a 8, 9, $10 billion publicly traded company on the NASDAQ today that's returned billions of dollars to share shareholders. And I'm proud of that. And it was a very cool company that bucked the trend of pharma. And a lot of people in big pharma didn't like it because it in some ways made traditional big pharma look bad because it called the bluff on a lot of these areas they were ignoring. And that's how the company succeeded.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, so you think there's like a smear campaign?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know, I think. I think. Well, I think initially a lot of pharmas did not like Reuben's existence. That's definitely true. But when I entered the realm of politics, which is realm of. Of smear campaigns, there was definitely a concerted effort to exploit one of the drugs that failed.

[Akash Singh]

That's the Alzheimer's.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's the Alzheimer's drug.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So we had a subsidiary called Axaman. It was developing a drug for Alzheimer's disease. So Royvin is a parent company.

[Akash Singh]

Subsidiary is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And it's got. It's got a bunch of subsidiaries. My event is one took it public, ended up being sold for a big premium immune event. Took it public, trades at a big premium to where it went public public. Eurovan, a bunch of them was acquired for big premium. Accident was one of those companies, was a subsidiary of Royvin that developed this drug for Alzheimer's disease. And shares traded on the stock exchange, whole nine yards. That drug eventually failed. And so the stock price was high and then it went down. It was low. And the false smear campaign against me is somehow I made money off of selling shares of Ax Event. It's false.

[Akash Singh]

So you didn't make any money?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

100% false. Neither. Neither Royvant, the parent company, nor I sold a single share, though we could have. It would have been perfectly legitimate. Many biotech CEOs or many biotech companies do that to diversify. It turns out that I just didn't do that because I felt like we wanted to actually see it through and take the same risk that the investors actually took in ax event, no good deed goes unpunished in the public. In the realm of political smearing, not a single share did we sell and erode that big loss all the way down in a way that actually was tough. Like, it was actually a tough early failure to go through. And the way the company eventually succeeded was through these other successes. And the thing I learned is that once you enter the realm of politics, people do not give a crap about what the actual truth is. They have their agenda and they're going to use it to smear you. And I think one of the things I've learned from watching Donald Trump, frankly, is that when people are that false and that malicious against you, at some point you got to actually take action. I mean, what he did with ABC settled the defamation suit. At a certain point, you can't just roll over with this bs. My initial approach was like, this is so garbage. I'm just going to ignore this stuff. But at a certain point, when it's that malicious. Yeah. Because I think the perspective and just roll over and take it.

[Akash Singh]

Or at least the like articles that I've written on it is a. And I guess that this, there are people that are speculating on these drugs. Right. So you can develop a drug and when it's in between phase two or phase three or phase four, whatever it is, you can speculate, meaning you can invest in the company.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's exactly right.

[Akash Singh]

And then a lot of times these companies will spike in between phase two and three.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Right.

[Akash Singh]

But it has to go through phase four in order to actually go through.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Phase three to be approved or whatever.

[Akash Singh]

Whatever it is. So in order to make money, they're inspired by greed. They don't really want to help Alzheimer's. They're like, oh, I think this is a profitable endeavor. Not everybody, but I imagine stock traders, it doesn't matter, they're just looking at letters and oh, this looks like it's got a chance. They try to get in early because if it does pass phase three, if they're getting at phase one or phase two and it passes phase three, they're going to get a 20x100x.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

They take that risk. And which is in one big success space for it.

[Akash Singh]

That's exactly. But the IDE model I think was, is that you made money and then sold shares after it looked promising.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That was. That's the false allegation.

[Akash Singh]

Right. And they even said you put Your mom in to, like, get it approved or something?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Oh, my God. The level of garbage about this. Yeah. So my mom was a geriatric psychiatrist who was in retirement, treated patients with Alzheimer's disease her whole entire career and had experience in the drug development space as well. And she was one of. I'm starting the business from scratch. I'm going to find the smartest people I can.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

She kindly came out of retirement. She didn't sell a single share or make money off that failure either. But the thing that people make, because she wasn't a key employee at the company, but she was.

[Akash Singh]

The narrative is beautiful. It fails over here. You bring your mom and go, hey, make sure it passes. It passes. You guys make noise.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And. And it actually. It actually. The trial failed.

[Akash Singh]

Well, trial. It failed at 3. Didn't pass it 2.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We in licensed it after phase 2 from. From GSK, but.

[Akash Singh]

So it never even did anything.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's just like the level of garbage on this is. Is kind of. Kind of eye openening, actually.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

People have, you know, if they have an objective, they could care less about what the actual truth is.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But what's the narrative they could sell? And. And you know what? Like I said earlier, I'm not gonna be a victim about it. You can stand up and actually explain it to people. People actually understand the truth. The truth is like a lion. You can't hold it back. It's not gonna be held back for so long.

[Akash Singh]

Well, I'm glad you explained it to me, because I had a perspective. But this is not just politics. This is everything. I think when there's successful people that potentially could be in powerful positions, maybe not even powerful, you're gonna create these narratives. And if the narrative feels good and justifies that, those people's pain or their bitterness, then they're gonna run with it. I mean, you see this all the time now.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's one of the things I kind of am keen to do. Always uncomfortable, sort of talking about my own successes in detail. But one of the things I've realized is, A, it can actually give a lot of people inspiration, and B, for people to actually get to know you. I think actually one of the things I would have done differently again in my presidential campaign is to actually talk more about my business background and the tough decisions we had to make at every step. Like that Alzheimer's failure. That was tough. It's probably the toughest, toughest career experience I've been through because it was still relatively early in the life of the company. The Other projects were still well on their way. It actually strengthened in some ways the resolve of the people who work for the company to say, you know what? We did the right thing. We did it right at every step of the way. Roiven, the parent company could have sold those shares when it was flying high. Didn't sell a single share because we were with there with our conviction. Even though that would have been the normal thing to do, we didn't do it. But to say that that's how we're actually going to carry out each of these projects and then the rest succeeded. Succeeded. Those successes were actually far more meaningful in light of actually having gone through.

[Akash Singh]

Because the narrative is that's how you made all your money. In reality, that's how you lost all.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Of your money on paper along the time. Coming all the way back.

[Unknown]

Like if you're gonna get blamed for.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It anyway, you know what that was? That was, that was like what a lot of my friends who were close to me said, you might as well have just done it because it's not. That would have been perfectly legal and acceptable. It might not have been. What I felt like was, was the right thing to do.

[Akash Singh]

This mission all the time is that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Having not done it, this will be the case. And that's what most normal biotech CEOs could do. Diversify a little bit or whatever. And so the thing they pick on is Roivent, which is the parent company. Just for completeness. Roivent, the parent company was developing a bunch of these drugs. We did a financing at Royvant, the parent where there was so much demand in one of our financings. There's $500 million financing. But more investors wanted to put in money. The only way we were able to accommodate that capital was the investors in RON selling a certain number of shares in RO. I was to the order of about 30 million bucks at that point in time. Those shares that I sold then are worth way more today than they were back then. So I actually lost, you know, I actually lost financial value by doing it. But that's the hook. A totally different company that you sold shares in that people will say he made money off of an Alzheimer's failure. Which is, I mean it's just, it's an eye opening lesson to how dirty American politics works.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But it's also a lesson for me to say, you know what? I think you gotta actually people don't just want to know about your policies.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think they want to understand the struggles you've been through. And I've sometimes been Personally natural in talking about it.

[Unknown]

We don't vote for the policy. We vote for the person.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And there's policy secondarily.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And a lot of those. A lot of those experiences has helped shape me to who I am to believe that. Yeah. You're going to go through hardship from time to time. You get through that by actually, you know, mostly coming out stronger on the other side of it, if you can.

[Akash Singh]

I think addressing, like. I think addressing, like, blatant lies, I think is important. I think it's something that we go through all the time because, you know, people make these things up that are just, like, so absurd. You're like, there's nobody stupid enough to actually believe this.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

But then you see narratives take on totally. And then you're like, that was my wish.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's just like, okay, this is so. This is so garbage.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Then. And then they start making up other stuff. They said, well, the only drug he got approved was trans drug.

[Unknown]

Oh, no, I haven't seen.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's just like, okay, I don't know what the. What the. What the hell that's about.

[Akash Singh]

What's the trans.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There's no trans drug. I just like, that is a.

[Unknown]

We should invent that, though.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But it's like, it's at a level of insanity. I think they. There's one drug that was approved for prostate cancer, endometriosis, and uterine fibroids and worked on certain hormones in the body.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Somebody should be sued for malpractice if they're giving a drug that's only approved for that for some other thing. And I have no. To be ridiculous to think that it was.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But people say stuff. And then. And then I know from the inbounds that I get to say, oh, we're going to ask you. These inquiries. It's like, where are these people getting this stuff? Yeah. But at a certain point, you know what? You got to actually just. Actually just stand for what's true.

[Akash Singh]

I was putting out my special that this is the last special. I was going to do a special with the streamer. And then they didn't want me to certain things. And I was like, all right, well, can I buy it back? And then put it out myself? And I put it on myself and I sold it myself. And then as I'm selling it, at one point tell people there's like, video of this. I'm like, guys, if you can't afford it, just steal it. It will be on the Internet somewhere. You can just do that. That's totally fine. And then if you can't figure out how to illegally stream it, I'll have it up on YouTube in the future. This is me telling people, like, if you can't afford it, just go take it. And if that doesn't work, it's going to be up on YouTube. And then the special did really well. And I guess people spun this narrative that, like, oh, you made us buy it, and then a few weeks later, you put it on Internet. And in my mind, I'm like, every movie that comes out eventually is on TV. Like, every UFC fight I watch is eventually on YouTube. I'm like, I don't think I'm doing anything different than I. And I told the. But the narrative is he took our money and then he went with it. And I don't. And I don't address it because I'm like, well, there's nobody that could believe this because I literally said verbatim on the podcast, like, just go take it. And then eventually to be there. But it doesn't matter.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I feel the same way, man.

[Akash Singh]

If people want to see you totally come down. And I'm sure there are people who didn't hear me say that, and then they felt. And for those people, I feel genuinely bad. I'm like, now that sucks, because you supported me. And then maybe you feel like I tried to do something, but it's one of those things where there are people that. They want to see you fail, and they will. Maybe they're not creating narratives, but they will believe a narrative that makes you look bad because it validates the way they feel. There's something about human nature, and that is a human. And that is unfortunate, unfortunately, something that you have to deal with, with success, totally. That's the cost of success. And it's worth paying the price, because I agree.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And the flip side is you can't, you know, just sit here.

[Akash Singh]

And the other thing is to whine.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

About how much do you address and then how much do you.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, some point you're. You're. You're validating. I mean, to me, at a certain point, like, to be able to deign to this level and say that, okay, I'm going to, like, legitimize this type of smear by engaging with it. But on the other hand, it sticks. And so. So you gotta, you know, I think. I think the best solution is. And I think I'm going to be better about this in the next phase of. Of, you know, my political life is also just sharing more about my own Personal journey just as a human being.

[Akash Singh]

I mean, that's validating for me in my career because like, that was something where I thought about you and I was like. And it's, and it's deeply personal to me because my father, I'm like, ah, did he do some kind of trick?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

He was super, super deeply personal to me too, because I think the, the whole thing was pharma had decided this is an area that's supposed to be, that's supposed to be not touched anymore. It's too risky. And actually it is deeply personal to me. My grandmother's sister died of Alzheimer's disease. My mom spent years cutting her teeth in the nursing homes in southwest Ohio where I would actually go to many of those nursing homes, play the piano for people who are in nursing homes suffering from Alzheimer's. It's like an important area for me, which is part of why we took it on. And it was a super bruising experience to then take all of that risk, put yourself out there and fail. Yeah, but the idea then that there's like an allegation that there was some kind of financial gain from it is, is just doubly salt on a wound. Yeah, Chips away and trust. And then people. You don't know, you know, maybe people have. Won't ask you about it, but then they're, they're thinking, they're thinking about it when, when in fact. Yeah, exactly. Is there doubt in the back of somebody's mind?

[Akash Singh]

But the flip side, we have a freak.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We got. We get the modern economy. You can talk to people. Maybe that's answer you do it.

[Unknown]

But you said so you've been around Trump and you learned from him and you saw how he fought with abc. Who are you fighting against?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, I think it's actually, you know.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I, I would have, I would have never, I would have never contemplated doing. Just because I want to do productive things. And like, why are we going to. Why are we going to, you know, fight some sort of side battle?

[Unknown]

Such blatant.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

But it turns out that if somebody says something that is false, something that is damaging and they should have known was true or had good reason know is true and is doing it maliciously anyway, that there's actually hard law that says they can't do that. And so not even for the money of it, but for the justice of it, I kind of have leaned in the direction that's just the right way to go. Name name.

[Akash Singh]

Yes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I came to it quite recently. And the reason is, the reason is people don't Bring. Why did they bring this stuff up during a Republican primary only? And then again, they were mad about the comments I made on. On X about American and excellence. And suddenly, suddenly that.

[Akash Singh]

That issue comes back up. Absolutely.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know, suddenly randomly comes back. Oh, it had nothing to do with the fact that you didn't like what I had to say. There was a, you know, coordinated response to that. So it comes from a malicious place. And so at a certain point, at a certain point, you just can't roll over and take it.

[Unknown]

This will plague you like you'll be in a debate and it'll get brought up again.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Oh, it's not going to happen. Oh, that. That ain't going to want to make sure that's not going to happen. And for you to be like, said the truth.

[Unknown]

This was settled in a court of law. Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And it's absolutely. Here's the hard truth, here's the facts. Dispute it and if not, bear the consequences.

[Unknown]

Said who?

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, we need names, bro. We need names.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know what? I. A lot of these people, I don't even know who these people are. I've never heard of these people. But the stuff that sticks. Yeah, I think we're going to pick. We'll pick a good example. We'll pick a good example.

[Akash Singh]

I like that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

Soros, is it. Is it Soros?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think a lot of this comes not even necessarily from the left.

[Akash Singh]

Really.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, it's. Some of it does, but some of it is. Some of it comes from. From other unexpected corners as well.

[Akash Singh]

Really? Sounds like you got self interested.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

That's why you're not in trolls. Internet trolls. Anyway, regardless, I'm not a. I don't believe in whining. I believe in winning. There we go.

[Unknown]

Let's go.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Winning is the way to go.

[Akash Singh]

Absolutely, man. All right, we're going to take a break for a second. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. This podcast has been brought to you by Squarespace. Okay, if you're looking to build a website, you need to look into Squarespace, all right? They make it easy to create a beautiful website to help you engage with your audience. Sell anything from products to content to your time, and you can do it all on your own terms. They have Squarespace payments also. It's the easiest way to manage your payments in one place. With Squarespace, onboarding is fast and simple. Get started in just a few clicks and start receiving payments right away. Plus, give your customers more ways to pay with popular payment methods like Klarna, ACH, Direct Debit, Apple Pay, Afterpay and ClearPay. Also design intelligence from Squarespace uses cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. Design Intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful and more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. And last but not least, Squarespace can help you with SEO. Every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, an auto generated sitemap and more. So you show up more often to more people in global search engine results. So right now go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're Ready to launch squarespace.com Flagrant to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Now let's get back to the show.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think you're on mute. Workday starting to sound the same. I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for you. Your career on LinkedIn. With LinkedIn job collections you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits like FlexPTO or hybrid workplaces so you can find the right job for you. Get [e-mail] jobs finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how. Problem is, the people who are able to participate in that right now are the ones who have excess capital that in the short run can stomach the risk of the market volatility. That is if you wanted to pick, there's many sources of American inequality, but if you wanted to get to the root of it, you to pick one thing, it's compound interest. Yeah, that's the ball game. So actually you have a generation of people who don't participate in that who end up being skeptical of capitalism. So in a certain sense what you're doing here is you are cultivating a generation of Americans who are not patriotic and yeah, win through capitalism, right? So when they graduated the age of 18, compound interest through the success of the stock market and capitalism is no longer a source of bruised salt on a wound of envy of somebody else's success, but the success that allowed you to have a quarter million dollars nest egg to be able to get a head start in the American dream.

[Unknown]

And they believe in America more.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It does not take a lot of money. I mean in terms of we're talking about percentage of the federal budget, percentage of savings of waste from the federal budget invested in this tiny, it's like, it's like infinitesimally small fraction.

[Unknown]

But then you'll have a bunch of loan shark businesses like oh, access your Money now with this huge interest rate and when you turn 18, you sign that whole shit.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think you shouldn't be able to do that. So I think, and here I'm a libertarian, generally libertarian oriented instincts when it comes to adults. Kids are not the same as adults.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So if you put that, if you put that in the bank account of a kid at 4 months old or at 1 month old or on the day of his birth, it has to be fully invested in the diversified stock market over a period of 18 years. When he's 18 years old, he gets it out. I would make it tax free. That is a down payment on preserving American capitalism. I have a lot of ideas. Like it's the kind of idea that's responsive to your question, but real quick.

[Akash Singh]

Real quick, it's not just an investment in capital.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And by the, it's not even my idea. This is idea. Other people have had these ideas, but what we really need is people in office who are willing to think outside the box to be able to advance a vision for the good of all Americans. Embracing capitalism rather than. Because what happens then when the kid graduates at 18, but the other guy had his parents contributing to his Roth IRA 15 grand a year that graduates with that versus not. He's going to have hostility towards capitalism. Of course he's going to be jaded. He's going to be naturally envious. And then, you know, I'm not saying that there isn't CEO overpay because we talked about the structural reasons why there is. But then you look at that as the root cause of, of the problem rather than the fact that, you know.

[Unknown]

It'S funny, I actually, if I was.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Given the same economic opportunity, could have started my own business at 22, but I can't. And now I'm pissed at capitalism.

[Unknown]

If you pass law, it would be an actual Patriot Act. You would be creating people who believe.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

In repeal the old one trust. Yeah, yeah.

[Akash Singh]

It'S really great.

[Unknown]

America gave me 80,000, $150,000 by the time I was 18. Capitalism is great. I trust the stock market. It's not out to get me. America is great. I believe in this system.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

There's one group called Invest America I think have been advocating for this. There have been others have been advocating for it. It's not. One of the things I've learned as well is that intelligence is not our problem in the country. Actually, most people in America have common sense. What we lack is courage. Actually, I think we just, we lack is courage.

[Unknown]

You should think that was coming I.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Think, no, damn, now we're a bunch of pussies.

[Akash Singh]

No, no, it's education. We don't, we don't understand what these systems are. So how can they work for us if we don't even fundamentally.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I don't think for politicians, I don't think politicians. I think the.

[Akash Singh]

Oh, that's good to clarify because I interpret.

[Unknown]

I thought you talking about people.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm talking about, I'm talking about, I'm talking about what we lack in the class that I'm in right now of people policies. It's not that they don't know the stuff that I'm telling you, but did.

[Akash Singh]

You see how he interpreted and how I interpret it? I interpret immediately as we, we didn't have the courage to put our money in there.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We as politicians lack. People in the political class lack the courage to be able to do what's outside the box as a correction.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah, because you want to get elected every four years. Not you, but they want to get reelection.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I actually think this happens to be a pretty good electoral strategy. Probably it will over 20. That's the same compounding period.

[Akash Singh]

But to what you were saying is it's not only investment in the stock market, it's not only investment in capitalism, it is an investment in America. You want to see America flourish because when America is flourishing and American businesses are flourishing, your money is flourishing, you get to watch your money work for you.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Totally.

[Akash Singh]

And again, I didn't understand this when I had my daughter, my wife and I were sitting, you know, with our business manager and they started telling us about these different things that we could do. We could like put our money in for my daughter's college fund now.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And you get tax deductible. Exactly. So that's why I was referring to people in the Roth IRA account. That kid is actually graduating with some of them six figure payday.

[Akash Singh]

And there's so many people that don't know that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And it's tax free growth.

[Akash Singh]

Exactly. I'm unaware.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So you shouldn't make that available for the everyday American. And in fact, if you did that for every kid in the country, there's no loss to the country. I don't think that the taxpayer burden. You don't have to increase taxes and iota in order to pull this off. You would find more than a multiple of this in just government waste, excess, cutting bureaucracy at the level I want. And then you get to 18 years old and you got people saying that, you know what this capitalism thing is so bad, actually. And, you know, somebody else might have more money than me because then they use that money to start something or whatever. And I'm happy for that because that still served me as a customer. But I'm bought in. I've got skin in the game. I think that that's far better than. I'm not being critical of other people's, you know, universal basic income. I get the instinct. But that creates, that creates disincentives to work. This is where it's at because there you're. You're still in the income category where here you're talking about being an owner. Right. This is true. You're capital, an asset, make it tax free on the growth. And then by that point, when you show up, you are a capitalist in the sense that. Not just a theoretical sense of it. I'm a capitalist when I'm 18 years old because the country that I grew up into through its economic success was not a source of my envy, but my participation.

[Akash Singh]

It's also education by participation and inertia.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Right.

[Akash Singh]

When you see your money working, you go, I'd like to continue this.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And by the way, I better understand that. And I can do the math. The tax tells me that because I started getting a good preschool that taught me how to do math at a younger age rather than get an eighth.

[Akash Singh]

Grade or even taught you how finances work. I went to good schools. Pretty good. Like, I was never taught this at all.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Totally. So I think that this is achievable. This is not. None of what we're talking about here is rocket science. What this requires from a political class is it's not that they lack the intelligence or the ideas, they lack the courage. Which is what brings me back to why am I this game? I do think that people who are willing to lose, if necessary, you'll be willing to lose means that's not your career, it's not your livelihood. But people who are willing to lose on the power of their ideas can then still stand for their ideas. That's what I think is going to actually.

[Akash Singh]

But career politicians.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, career politicians want. And this is one of the reasons I like Donald Trump, by the way. He's not a career politician.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Say what you will about his first week, which I think was a great first week week. He didn't use the usual assembly line model. He came in and did a lot of stuff in that first week in a way that you wouldn't see from a career politician or you think about a president or a governor, whatever it is. Executives who lead. You want them at this moment in our country's history, in particular, to be people who are willing to break things when necessary, as long as the mission is the betterment of the whole country.

[Akash Singh]

Including all of us, in the success of America. And I think right now the average person, the middle class person and the people who are impoverished do not feel included in the success of the economy or the country. They feel left out. And that might be educationally, it might be strictly just their inability to invest in understanding what it is, but that education of those systems, how they work. And I also think there's a little part of it where it's like if. If these funds are incentivizing people to gamble, it's not really investing. They might be doing it because they're making fees per transaction.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Oh, yeah, get rid of that fees.

[Akash Singh]

Per transaction, tricking us into put it.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

In the s and P500 or whatever index it is at the lowest possible fee. Don't transact and then just let it sit.

[Akash Singh]

But they're not incentivized. These hedge fund. These hedge funds are making money per transaction.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

They want us to make these brokerages or whatever. It doesn't.

[Akash Singh]

But can you explain how that works? Because I think that's very important.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I do think that, and I've done this in other scenarios, but the other conversation we were having, because that's just kind of the mood I'm in right now, not just today, but like in this period right now is I've written extensive books and articles about how the system is rigged and all that stuff. And I could do more of that, but I feel like right now what we need is to make sure we don't, just, as we were talking about earlier, stop there because then we're just victims. I want to just talk about actually what we're going to do to.

[Akash Singh]

No, we have the solution. What I'm saying is, while we're in the place now, here's what happens.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

A lot of money managers, they'll manage your money, but they take the fee. If you take the fee out, that reduces the compound interest. The fee is almost a negative compounding effect over time too do. And then you get the monkey to the dartboards analogy where they've done this experiment where monkeys throw in darts at a board of stocks and often outperform half of these wealth managers that are out there because the wealth managers charge the fee while the monkey doesn't. So in many ways, I do think that people are set up to be screwed by the facts. They were never given. And I think that sunshine and education is a great toolkit. But I do think that there is a role here at a young age where I'm not a government redistributionist guy, welfare state guy, but here for every kid born in the country, this is, I'm behind this. If every kid born in the country is bought into the stock market and compounds at the diversified rate over the course of 18 years, we're good.

[Unknown]

And by the way, up at 10% it becomes $55,000 at 10%, which is kind of conservative and how long. So like in 18 years, so imagine you got 55,000 when you're 18.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think you can make, I think you can make a case for that number being even 15 or $30,000.

[Unknown]

A kid could, well, it could.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, starting off I'm being concerned and then you're talking about, you're talking about people who are like straight up wealthy when they graduate well off enough, still hungry enough to be able to use that and start their own business or invest further on their own account when they're 18 or pay for college and I'll be dropping debt and then some you pay for. I mean we're talking about this model. You're going to pay for college and then some. Yeah, and for some people in college is not the right solution for everybody. Especially by that point you have a skill set, you might be able to start your own small business, be in a trade or whatever it is. Every person is able to do the thing that we want in America, which is to realize your own God given gifts. They're not the same God given gifts by the way. We all have different God given gifts. That's true diversity. But the country that we know and love is the country that recognizes that difference. Stops trying to pretend that we all have the same skills and everything because we don't. That's a beautiful thing. Actually it's not a bad thing. It's a beautiful thing. But to say that we are the country where no matter what those unique God given gifts are, you get to achieve the maximum of that potential without really any man made obstacle standing in your way. These are the kinds of solutions starting with early education, early economic empowerment, the family one, I will grant you, I didn't give you a fully satisfactory solution because there's no government ordained solution there. But basic issues that I believe we can actually, actually tackle. Right. And I don't think that our political class has taken a great interest in addressing over the course of the last.

[Akash Singh]

Few years because they're not incentivized to do it either.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

No. And a lot of it's not the federal level. And I don't mean to be pitching my own book here about what I'm doing next, but I do think the action is, a lot of the action there is at the level of the states. I would love to see you see what's possible.

[Akash Singh]

I would love to see you do this in Ohio.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

And I would love to see it. This is why I think the Ohio thing is actually a really good example for you. Because taking the reins of the United States of America before this is proven on any sort of statewide, we're in city. A citywide level. I think it's very terrifying for people especially. It exists in this bureaucratic system.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Akash Singh]

But proving it in a place.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

This gets back to where we started. Right. This is why, well, people should care about is.

[Akash Singh]

But prove it there and then all of a sudden everybody else.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

To your point, I sort of pick up on that for a second because right now you guys are, we're all, you know, millennial or whatever, but Gen Z, the phrase that's so Ohio is like a butt of a joke. Yeah.

[Unknown]

It's a meme.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It's a meme. And I think that's sad, actually. I, I want, I want the next time that we send a mission to the moon or to Mars that is successful. What is it like that's so Ohio. That's what I want us to say.

[Unknown]

What is an example they use now? Like, I want.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Oh, like something super lame. Like something super lame and boring. They're like, oh, that's Ohio. Like that's like an online, online Gen Z meme type expression.

[Unknown]

Are you.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I want, I want actually, when we, when we do excellent boundary breaking things as a country, I want to go back to saying that's so Ohio for that. That. Because by the way, in the 1950s, people don't realize this. Five of the top 15 cities that were the wealthiest cities in the country. Five of the top 15 were in Ohio. Toledo was the glass capital. Akron was the rubber capital. Youngstown and Cleveland were the steel capital of the world. From Ohio, if you have some roots in Ohio north in Cleveland, in Cleveland area, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, I mean this was Cincinnati was the consumer products capital. Dayton was the compute power capital for much of the industrial Revolution. That wasn't that long ago. That was in the 1950s. And I think that there's a risk to saying that, okay, we want to go back to that. Well, the reality is we're probably not going to be the rubber capital or the glass capital again, but it could be the AI data capital, could be the capital of biotech, could be the capital of aerospace and space exploration, could be the capital of semiconductor production, defense industrial base in the country of producing the bleeding edge of technology that Silicon Valley might have in bits. What we can create an atom, nuclear energy, fusion. Where the United States has an opportunity to lead. There's no reason that the heartland of the country, that was a pioneer state, that was a frontier state, that was the heart of the industrial revolution, that that has to somehow be relegated to yesterday. I think there is an opportunity to say from the center of the country you show what was possible in Silicon Valley for the last 20 years. Just be careful running on that.

[Unknown]

Be careful running on that because you're talking about all these institutions that aren't existing in Ohio. So to people who are living there, it's like, oh, he's going to bring a bunch of stuff that I'm not involved in. So he must be bringing workers and people who don't live.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We want to do it from, we want to leverage.

[Unknown]

I'm just saying careful.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

And why, why, why do I favor Ohio doing. It's not random. It's the country, it's the state in the country that still has access to some of the best waterways. 60% of the population of North America is literally within a one day drive of Ohio. Access to the same talent base that I think we've always had, which is a great talent base. I think there's a big concern about AI taking jobs. I think we could actually use AI to make jobs instead of take jobs. Everyone's focused on the algorithms and the computing power which by the deep seek thing was itself calling a bluff on. But what we haven't focused enough on is training people on how to use AI. Actually different domains training human beings on how to use AI. We're not doing enough. We're training the AI but we're not training humans on how to use AI. I think Ohio could be the leading state in the country if you have the kind of governor, the kind of leadership who makes that a priority and then you show the rest of the country what's actually possible.

[Unknown]

Are you going to take donations from major corporations when you run?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You know, I, I did not. Well, first of all, corporations, there's a whole complicated. I got to, I got to familiarize myself with the whole campaign finance landscape. So you know how we do this. But I'm definitely not going to be bought and paid for. I mean since I've lived the American dream.

[Unknown]

Don't they all say that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, I think a lot of people. I don't blame a lot of people who, who can't do it differently. Right. So I'm not going to blame somebody who's in a different position. Our family has been blessed to live the American dream. And I'm happy to talk about my business background story a little bit too.

[Unknown]

What's that net worth? Just tell him, just put him in.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm like, I'm like, I'm like a plants. Yeah, but I'm like a paltry billionaire, right? There's many people have billions put him in his poor. I know what this work. There's many people have billions. I just have billion. Like a. I'm like a poor billionaire.

[Akash Singh]

I'm like A poor.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm 39 years old. My wife has lived the American dream. Not in the. She's. Her focus was never financial but she saves lives every day at the Ohio State Cancer Hospital. This country has allowed us to have independence from a system of being somebody else's punishment on. And so it wouldn't make. It just wouldn't make sense. Right. Even when I ran for US president, we took the money, we took over 30 million bucks out of our bank account and put it in the campaign, which gave me the ability to. To speak my mind freely. And for better or worse, sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad, electorally speaking. But I think it's always good as a leader. And so one of the things I learned through that process though is you don't want to be. You don't want to just be like taking. You want to have impact, whatever allows you to maximally have impact. And so if I was to have won the presidential race, even that 30 million that I put in was a paltry sum to the super PACs that supported the other candidates I beat up, beat out a lot of governors and former senators, but I ended up fourth. If you're talking about with the difference between the people who are number two and number three, a lot more super PAC spending made the difference. And so my view is.

[Unknown]

But then when those people get elected.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, I'm not going to be beholden.

[Unknown]

Those people are going to be like, we don't want you doing this.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I'm not going to be beholden in anybody. And actually in Ohio, in Ohio, there is a. There's a bit of a culture of a little bit of. A lot of states have this pay to play culture. I Think you got to end that if you got to actually serve the actual people.

[Akash Singh]

So how can you raise money and end it?

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. Well, you don't, you don't make promises to people.

[Akash Singh]

Why would I give you 100 million?

[Unknown]

Exactly.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

If you believe in my vision, come aboard. And if not, don't.

[Akash Singh]

So then what if you don't get that money, what do you do?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

First of all, at least we're backstopped and blessed. As I told you, what we do with my presidential campaign. And the second is the way I look at it as it's my job to deliver the message. And if that's going to be a winning message, that's going to be the job of people who want to support us. Grassroots donations, by the way, were a great way, a great experience we had in the presidential campaign. I think we probably had more $1 donors than anybody who had been in a similar position. $1 donors. But it actually sends a message of a bottom up, grassroots version of it. So you don't want people who are beholden. You can't afford to have that. I think it's one of the things that Donald Trump did this time around, which is pretty smart, is he's not beholden. He's a, he's a billionaire. But if people want to support him, he wasn't saying no either. So I think that you want to change the country, be at once not just living in your own echo chamber and satisfying yourself and patting yourself on the back for doing what made you feel like you were sending the right virtue signal, but at the same time stay true to your principles at the same time too. So I think that's the way I think about it. You got to like Trump, focus on impact.

[Unknown]

Trump got a lot of money from Elon. Do you feel like that's maybe a conflict of interest of the amount of influence Elon has?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I think one of the things that makes.

[Unknown]

That's fucking great.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I think, I think the thing. What do you mean? What's a good question? Yeah, I like this.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah, because it is.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

He doesn't shy away. So my view is, I think the best you're going to get in this country is you've got somebody who is independent of that system. Donald Trump is independent of that system. He won in 2016 with effectively an FU to the system that tried to stop him. And that's what the people viewed as the attractive quality to put him there. He's a multi billionaire. Right. So he doesn't need that money now. He really Is, I mean, there's no doubt about it in terms of where he is today. And so I think that's all else equal a good thing. Now, do I prefer a system? I'll tell you what my ideal state is. I would love a system in which the influence of mega money on American politics was. Was virtually non existent. Mega money. Right. Small dollar donations I like, but I would love that system. That's not the system we live in today. It's just not. And you have George Soros, you have a bunch of other people on the left that, by the way, they used to say the same thing in 2010. Corporations are not people. Citizens United. We don't want that until we got the Soros checks and then we're not going to worry about that any longer. And you? I think that. Would I rather have a check and balance in that system than not? Yeah. If both sides play the same game, it kind of negates itself out, which is kind of interesting as a way to look at it. And in many ways one of the things we've seen, and this should be encouraging, is the people, we, the people at our best are able to still see through it. So if you look at Michael Bloomberg. Right.

[Akash Singh]

Yeah.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean he tried to run for US President spending like boatloads of money. It just, it like just didn't work. Actually, you have candidates even this last time around that have had boatloads of money trying to spent buy them. You're never gonna, you're never gonna. A turd is always gonna weigh more than the money that could lift it. Okay.

[Unknown]

But money.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I think combining this from both.

[Unknown]

Sides doesn't really cancel itself out. It's just the corporations still have all the power and the people don't.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Would I rather. Let me say that. Would I rather have a check and balance? I would rather have at least competitive forces that are 360 degrees. But the ideal state. Would our ideal state one be one in which the influence. Influence of money on electoral politics was non existent? Yeah, I think it'd be an ideal state.

[Akash Singh]

But wouldn't that put billionaires in a more advantageous position? Because then they could fund their own campaigns.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We could talk, I mean, if you want. I do think that it would. But at least they're not bought and paid for by somebody else. Somebody else can see that.

[Akash Singh]

Right, right. Bought and paid for by yourself.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. So anyway, I think that where I am though is also pragmatically looking at this. Free speech is important in the country. You want people to be able to express themselves. And then you could say that, oh, if they don't fund the Canada directly, they can fund other colleges, houses. I don't think that's the biggest problem in the country right now. You got checks and balances in a lot of different directions. Yeah. Most billionaires in this country are not on the same side of most issues. Right. You've got billionaires who are on different sides of a lot of different issues. I think that that's okay. I think that that's okay. It's not the fight, it's not the next fight I'm going to pick. Okay. It's not the next crusade I'm on a problem to solve. The next crusade I'm on a problem to solve is restore the American dream, actually ensure that the best person's able to get the job through an actual merit autocracy. Restoring the idea that through your own hard work and dedication, you're able to get a good education and get ahead in this country. Restore the center of the country being a place where we have the bleeding edge of innovation in America. That's where my next fight is. And yeah, you're right. You don't want people who are going to be instruments for special corporate interests. Being independently successful allows you to have that independence. At some point in the distant future, is that system itself going to be changed? One might hope so. But in the meantime, I think you got pretty good checks and balances across the board where you got different moneyed interests with different competing influences.

[Unknown]

Agree to disagree on that. Yeah, well, I think that's the biggest problem involved.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. You know, I think, I think that's.

[Unknown]

Why everything moves so slow, because they want to pass something and then they have to speak to their donors like, is it okay for me to pass this?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. So look, I think that's when nothing happens. You're not wrong. But I do think that you got to pick what you're going to pick as your next battle to change. And as a governor of one state, you're going to change that, I'll tell you that. Right. So at the level of a political culture overall, at the level of a nation, could that be the stuff of an actual political reawakening in our country at some point in time? It could be. But I think right now there's a much more achievable mission that I'm. That I'm actually pretty optimistic about. Is there a state thing? I always tell you what I believe I can do. Everything we've talked about so far, I think I Can do. I think we can help do it at the state of Ohio, set an example for the rest of the country and what we might aspire to. I'm not gonna make a false promise on, but you bring up a good point.

[Unknown]

Gotcha.

[Akash Singh]

Is there a state that you've seen implement certain changes, and they don't have to be holistically in the way that you're talking about, but certain changes that have had positive effects and you've gone, wow, it is possible. Is there a state even on like a small level? Because we can point at all the poor decisions and how they've negatively impacted states, but I don't think we ever shine a light on the states that have made these changes.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think, I think Texas is doing a pretty good job with its universal school choice measures that are soon hopefully to become law. It's on its way in. That looks like a really solid program. I think the ability to go to zero income tax. Nine states that have done that, it makes that table stakes, I think, for the rest of the country to say that the burden on a business owner or the burden on an entrepreneur. So I think got nine states in that category. I think the states that have done a good job of attracting industry, I mean, historically it was thought that even in areas like aerospace exports, exploration places like Florida or Texas would lead the way. You got states like Montana to Colorado doing a good job. And I'm not just picking Republican examples here, for example. So I do think that there are areas where states have brought down the barrier for new innovation, brought down the tax barrier, so that that compounding interest can work in everybody who lives in that state's favor and have actually enacted true educational freedom. I think there's some good examples to learn from. If I felt like some. Some model had already been perfect, then I wouldn't need to, you know, come in with a new vision. But I hope, I hope what we're able to do with Ohio is to provide that beacon of example for the rest of the country.

[Unknown]

Hypothetically, if you ran for governor of Ohio, would these be policies you would run on as abolishing state income tax or the $10,000 for every kid as soon as they're born?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah. So then the latter would have to be more likely federal administer, but compound interest. Working in the favor of lifting people up and, you know, getting rid of state income taxes, I think is like the easiest, lowest hanging fruit way to do that. Educational choice for everyday citizens to be able to go to the best possible school and then just bringing down like not by a little bit, but by a lot. The red tape and regulatory barriers that stop actual businesses from locating in what I think is one of the best places in the country to do it and seeing an economic boom as a, a consequence. Yeah, it's basic table stakes. And I would go even I'd go further in some other respects we haven't talked about either, which is reviving civic education in our country. Part of that sense of that loss of pride and self confidence comes from a lot of kids feeling like they're taught to hate our country instead of to be proud of it. I think that revival of civic education is pretty important. I personally believe that every high school senior who graduates from high school should be able to pass the same civics test that every legal immigrant has to pass in order to become a citizen. Somebody comes from another country, if they want to become a citizen, they got to actually pass a basic civics exam, which I think makes sense. You gotta be proficient in English and know the first thing about a country. I think it'd be great if we taught every high school senior before they graduate the basic things we expect of a newcomer to the country, country. So they can be proud of our country. I think we probably see military, voluntary military recruitment go up as a consequence. I think we'd see a culture of civic minded service go up in our country if people knew more about our country. That falls on our educational system as well. You know, look, I think that there's a lot else that, you know, I would be, would be part of what I want to accomplish. But the kinds of things we're talking about here. Absolutely. And I do think that's something a governor can accomplish.

[Unknown]

You brought up citizenship, ending birthright citizenship.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

For the kids of illegals. That's what I would favor. That's what I do favor and have long favored. That's a whole separate. We could get into legal rabbit holes.

[Unknown]

No, I just wanted to clarify if.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You can't, if you came into the country. I'm a pretty hardliner, that if you're going to come to the country, come legally, period, don't enter the country.

[Unknown]

What if they're here legally awaiting their. What's the illegally? No, no, like all the cases that.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Are going on illegally though.

[Unknown]

No, no, no. But there are some that came, they're applied for.

[Akash Singh]

You're talking about legal asylum seekers. They went through borders. Yeah.

[Unknown]

So now they're waiting for their draw and then they have a kid.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

So I would say, I would say let's just start with it. Let's just start with the lowest hang fruit obvious stuff. ACL the border B, stop paying for any sanctuary cities. End any kind of government benefit to anybody who enters the country illegally. End government welfare benefits to anybody who's even here on asylum. So end the incentives to be here illegally. Ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegals. That is one of the those incentives. And then at least starting with anybody who has committed a crime. And even I would go a little further than that. Anybody who entered the country illegally recently. Let's start with that. What does recently mean? Last 18 months. Last 24 months. You came in the last 18 to 24 months illegally crossing that border. You haven't established roots in this country. I think it's a ridiculous claim to think that in one year or two years you have if that group of people alone is returned to their country of origin. If it's just that that alone would represent the largest mass deportation in American history by far. So very practically to say the largest mass deportation in American history. I don't know that many people who actually find it objectionable to say if you entered illegally in the last couple years of Biden, you haven't established roots in the country or you committed a crime. We're talking about millions of people. But to say combine that with sealing the border and ending incentives to enter this country country illegally. I think most Americans are actually, if they have the permission to say it, most Americans are in favor of that. Combine that with a rational approach to fixing our legal immigration system in a way that works for the benefit of America, including for the benefit of American workers, but in a way that benefits the people who are already here. Do we have a legal immigration system that does that optimally now? No, we do not. Can we design a legal immigration system system that, you know, uses market mechanism? Right. Companies should pay for the ability. Pay the country for the ability to actually hire somebody born abroad, but in a way that benefits that company. Yes, I think there are basic fixes that we can make as a total pack because I think most people in this country are in favor of and I think there's a role for the states to play here too, is the pragmatic part of those mass deportations. How are you going to do it? You only have this many ICE agents. Well, I mean, there's provisions in law. It's like 287 is what it's called. That allows the federal government to partner with state and local law enforcement to help them carry that out. That doesn't require the federal military to be showing up in other parts of the country, that should be utilized, and it's not. And I think you need willing governors, willing state leaders to be able to be good partners in carrying out that focused mission. But if you explain it to the people, and I think it's one of the things I've found in the country is most Americans love our country and want what's best for our country. And if you explain it to them, the people are with us. I think that sometimes where we fall short of just sloganeering instead of actually explaining what makes sense for most people, I think that's half the battle. And so I think if you have both at the presidential level, I think Donald Trump's going to do a good job of it. I think he's already off to a good start in the first week. But if you have partners who are leading the state at the level of the 50, 50 states across the country doing the same thing to reinforce that, I'm confident we could have a pretty rational solution here.

[Unknown]

I could be mistaken, but what was like the provision or executive order that Trump did, where now they can go into places like churches to get illegals?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I mean, look, I think there's a lot of. I want to, I don't want to look at that in front of us before we get into, you know, specifics, because I'm not, I'm not off the bat, familiar with.

[Unknown]

You haven't heard.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, yeah. With this. I tend to have a rule of thumb, which is in Washington, D.C. it's a good rule of thumb. A lot of people talk about statutes, and then you actually read the statutes, it says something different than what they talked about. And same thing with the executive orders. But broadly speaking, as a principle, do I believe in using local law enforcement to be able to enforce the law, that if you're in this country illegally, to be able to return you to your country of origin, certainly if you've committed another crime, or even if you came within the last 18 to 20, 24 months, great and easy place to start. Use local law enforcement to do it. I think that actually creates a much more peaceable way to carry this out in a way that is still respectful of the dignity of every human being. As a human being, I think we got to remember that if many of us, right, any of us were in the same position, as many migrants wanted a better life for their kids, maybe each of us would have done the same thing they would have done. If the United States government is perceived as giving You a wink and a nod to come on in. But that doesn't change the fact that we're a nation founded on the rule of law. So I think doing it in a manner that is respectful of every person's humanity and dignity while at the same time not compromising on the rule of law, I think that's achievable actually. But I think that's the way we ought to carry this out. Yeah.

[Unknown]

Did you see anything?

I mean this is from pbs. It seems like Department of Homeland Security says that ICE is able to pbs.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

We should not have state funded media otherwise I start with that. Okay.

[Unknown]

I can pull up another source.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, but, but, but, but what were.

[Akash Singh]

You going to ask what I was.

[Unknown]

Saying, there's a question, I mean to conclude on this, it was just saying that it was able to enforce immigration laws to catch criminal aliens, including murderers and who have illegally entered the country. They're no longer able to hide in churches and schools to avoid arrest.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, I think, I think that seems fair to me.

[Akash Singh]

But I feel like you were going to say something.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I don't think, I don't think we as a country generally like murders and hiding in.

[Akash Singh]

No, no.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

I mean I. It's a different question than this but when it comes to free markets.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

You know everything you're saying makes sense. Right. Like deregulating kind of let market operate as it is. Yeah. Typically is, you know, works out in, in the best case. And I think the thing that I have the most concern with is health care in this regard because the inelasticity of people's, you know, access to declined health care.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I got you.

[Unknown]

Doesn't really exist. So I'm curious, is there anything you can implement in Ohio to ensure quality health care to the citizens of the state?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

I think, I mean at state level. So most healthcare is certainly Medicare, it's a federal program, Medicaid Administration. And also even thinking about basic things like school health. Right. Implementation of physical education. The best way to save on healthcare cost, just to be say the blunt truth is actually make sure people are more healthy. Yeah. So if you're able to. If people have better health outcomes. This is one of the areas where usually it's a trade off with how much money do you put in to get an outcome and then do you trade off a bad outcome for more cost? That's how most things in life, life work when it comes to designing a health system, it doesn't work that way. The healthier people are, the more money you actually end up saving so when you look at the quality of food served in public schools, that's a state government, That's a state government item. When you look at the quality of early physical education, which I talked about earlier in a different context, but it applies here too. I think it's really freaking important. We used to measure early physical education outcomes. I brought up the example of the Presidential Fitness Test and people maybe a little bit hardcore for middle schoolers or whatever, but I'm not wedded to one particular example. But from an early age, making physical excellence in the pursuit of physical excellence a worthy goal that we not only implement, but measure. You only excel in what you measure in our public school system. Starting at a young age, I think is strictly a good thing. And so those are areas where it's not a panacea. But you're thinking over the long run, you're not going to see it show up in the next year, but 10 years later in terms of both bringing down cost and reducing the need for higher cost to be able to pursue good health, those are great things to start doing at a young age is taking a look at the quality of food going into school cafeterias and to take a hard look at measuring and implementing physical education as something that we prize and actually celebrate and prioritize and measure and think about even merit based outcomes for teachers in school systems. Every bit as much as academic excellence as I'm passionate about, I think physical excellence matters too. And those are things that states can make a difference.

[Unknown]

And as far as like non prophylactic measures, like if someone breaks their leg or if they get diagnosed with cancer, like access to that, is that something you're able to address on a state.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Level, I think that you can in a limited way make improvements there. Absolutely. I think that when you think about disincentives for new health care or hospital construction in a particular area for access, the amount of time that somebody has to drive to be able to get reasonable care, you think about even states. It's true. In many states across the Midwest, people in the va, the amount of distance they have to drive to be able to access reasonable healthcare, bringing down the barriers to be able to create new sources of providing healthcare actually does two things. One is it's more accessible to people who want to access it. But the other thing it does is it actually brings down competition, it brings down costs through competition and holds different people's feet to the fire. There's also a lot of quirks in the bureaucracy that the amount that you're reimbursed for the exact same thing. If it comes through a hospital versus what's deemed to be a private practice practice clinic like that should cost the same thing. If the government reimbursement, even through Medicaid or otherwise is different because it shows up through a hospital rather than because it shows up through private practice, that's insane.

[Akash Singh]

Why? Why are they different?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Because it's just stupid.

[Akash Singh]

You can just charge whatever you want.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

It just is private practice. Medicare and cms, this is at the federal level now, but some of it's administered through the states. When it comes to Medicaid, there's just different levels of hospital will get more, private practice will get less. And I think it just is, it doesn't make any sense. Now you have then barriers and even thinking about different licensing requirements and other barriers to create then new medical health care provision, new private practices, new hospital construction, that confluence of that with the federal nonsensical differences in reimbursement rates actually give us a lot of the nonsensical health outcomes that we have. So I do think that there is a role, an important role for the states to play here. But in this case, when you think about cms, that's really the mother of all of the these problems at the federal level. And a lot of that's just a product of bad regulation, lobbying, years of stasis and lack of market competition. Honestly, general principle is if you're able to destroy bureaucracy and take that excess saving and put it in the bank account of people to be able to buy their own private health insurance in a competitive market, that alone is all else equal, just going to be a better starting point for a solution in the alternative. So I'm a guy who believes in free markets. I'm a guy who believes in capitalism, not crony capitalism and not tilted fake free markets which is what we often end up with. But actually the real thing, that's the ultimate end state. But in the meantime, kids aren't the same as adults. When it starts with physical education, early quality food that kids are served at a young age, that alone over a longer term period of time is going to yield dividends in health outcomes and cost savings.

[Unknown]

But you don't think any of the problems with private insurance, what's that?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You don't think any private insurance is major health problem major problems. Part of it among them is that they have a special exemption from rules that apply to other industries that are anti competitive. Rules that apply to other industries don't apply to health insurance companies.

[Unknown]

What are some of these?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Well, for example, antitrust rules. Antitrust rules don't apply to health insurance companies in the same way they do to other companies. It's super hard to start a new health insurance company. You think about like innovative startups you see in a lot of different areas. Why haven't you heard of a new innov. You hear a new innovative startup for like basically anything you could imagine. You don't hear a new innovative startup being funded for a new health insurance company. Why? Because the barriers to entry by regulatory fiat are so darn high.

[Akash Singh]

And I'm sure they're lobbying to maintain that because it maintains their monopoly, of course, in the industry.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Of course. Yeah. So. So I don't think. I don't consider the private health insurance market to actually be a market in any sense of the word. True capitalism from crony capitalism. That's where I look at it.

[Unknown]

So, you know, how do you get rid of it?

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, well, I think you roll back a lot of those restrictions legislatively. Let's start with that. And then. And then. Yeah, I think that alone would see a capital boom and then funding you.

[Unknown]

To do that on a federal level.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Yeah, federal level. Yeah. So. So it's not, it's. And that's the thing about our beauty of our system is there's certain things that are for president doing with Congress and the Senate, but there are limits on what a president can do because our founders envisioned a system of federalism where most laws ought to be made and implemented at the level of the states in areas from education to ordinary regulatory policy. That's the beauty of our system. There's a lot you can do as a governor, but there's some things that had to be done nationally and there's a lot you're able to do as a president, but a lot of what's country's fate is really in the hands of the states. And in some ways that's actually kind of market competition of its own.

[Akash Singh]

Right.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

You look at the number one in two states that people move into right now, it's Texas and Florida. When people leave California and New York, I would love for them to be moving to Ohio. I think there's no reason it actually can't be. Might sound aspirational, but it used to be, it used to be such a state. It's just you go through different cycles of leadership. And I do think that generally Florida and Texas have had pretty good governors, all else equal for their state. But it would be cool to bring that to what people call, I hate the term the rust belt, but what people call the the rust belt, I think it could be the revival belt of the country. The state of excellence is what I want to want to help us create. And I think it could be pretty cool, not just for the state of Ohio, but then in the laboratory of a democracy to show the rest of the country what's actually possible.

[Akash Singh]

Vivek Ramaswamy, future governor of Ohio.

[Vivek Ramaswamy]

Good. See?