Vivek Ramaswamy

About

Vivek Ramaswamy is an American businessman running as a political candidate for the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. He has a professional history as an investor and has also founded a biotech firm named Roivant Sciences, as a result of which he has gathered a net worth of over $650 million. Particularly in the early 2020s, Ramaswamy became known among many for his "anti-woke" views, having authored a book about what he calls the "social justice scam," titled, Woke, Inc. According to online polling, Ramaswamy notably edged out Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to trail second behind Trump (albeit by a large margin) in August 2023.

Career

Vivek Ramaswamy was born on August 9th, 1985, and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Tamil Hindu parents originally from the state of Kerala in India. He graduated from Harvard College in biology and then received a law degree from Yale Law School.

While in college, Ramaswamy performed Eminem covers and rap songs about libertarian themes under the stage name "Da Vek" (purported footage shown below).^[1] During his undergraduate, he also interned for the hedge fund Amaranth Advisors and the investment bank Goldman Sachs. Ramaswamy earned a Bowdoin Prize for his undergraduate senior thesis on the ethics of creating human-animal chimeras.^[2]

Ramaswamy founded the biotech company Roivant Sciences in 2014 and also worked as a hedge fund manager focusing on biotech investments where he notably invested in Martin Shkreli's Retrophin. Ramaswamy has criticized Shkreli's prosecution, calling his fraud a "victimless crime."^[4]

In 2022, Ramaswamy co-founded Strive Asset Management, an investment firm critical of environmental, social and corporate governance initiatives.^[11] The firm carries investments from Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance, among others.^[3] On February 21st, 2023, Ramaswamy declared his decision to run for the GOP nomination for the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Political and Social Positions

Vivek Ramaswamy is a self-professed champion of "anti-wokeism" and has frequently criticized social justice initiatives undertaken by corporations at the cost of shareholder value, drawing both support and opposition for his stances.^[13] On his YouTube^[12] channel, which has over 154,000 subscribers as of mid-August 2023, Ramaswamy has published various videos discussing his views on "woke" culture (example shown below).

Ramaswamy is also conditional pro-life and supports a ban on abortions save for incest, rape and danger to the woman's life.^[5] Ramaswamy opposes affirmative action and supports merit-based immigration policies. He has also expressed support for raising the legal voting age to 25, with the exception of military personnel, first responders and those who pass a civic exam.^[6]

Online Presence

In April 2023, the New York Times reported that it was Vivek Ramaswamy's appearance on CNN that led to Don Lemon's firing from the network. This was allegedly due to Lemon's reaction to Ramaswamy saying that Black Americans got their Civil Rights with help from the NRA. X^[7] user @JordanUhl posted a clip from the interview on April 24th, 2023, gathering over 30,000 likes in three months (seen below).

At around the :50 mark, Vivek Ramaswamy claims Black Americans got their Civil Rights with help from the NRA and insists its "historical fact."

That's categorically false, and one of the few times the NRA actually supported gun control was when the Black Panthers openly carried. https://t.co/myPu7SvJ8S

— jordan (@JordanUhl) April 24, 2023

On June 13th, Charlie Kirk^[8] made a post on X noting that Ramaswamy was the only GOP candidate to express his support for Trump and call for a pardon (seen below, left). Also in June 2023, online polling indicated that Ramaswamy was starting to inch ahead in the Republican candidate race, as noted by X^[9] user @michaeljknowles in a June 28th post (seen below, right).

On August 12th, 2023, Ramaswamy took to the stage during his Iowa campaign leg to perform a rendition of Eminem's "Lose Yourself," as seen in a video posted by X^[10] user @dylanewells that received nearly 8,000 likes in 48 hours (seen below).

Vivek Ramaswamy is performing Lose Yourself at the Iowa State Fair: pic.twitter.com/mCEMIfijZM

— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) August 12, 2023

Search Interest

External References