Fresh from his campaign stop in front of a Miami courthouse, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stops by the Fifth’s Chinatown studio to very politely argue with Welch and Moynihan about a whole bunch of stuff. Including: The donor class What kind of conservative is Vivek?
Jun 14, 2023·edited Jun 14, 2023Liked by Matt Welch
Again with this NATO expansion to Russia's terf bullshit. I'm from a former Warsaw pact country which joined NATO in the 90s, because my parents' generation voted to join as citizens of a sovereign fucking country.
That argument drives me up the fucking wall. I hear it a lot on the "We're Not Wrong" show; it's one of Jen Briney's favorites to roll out that fits with her general disdain for America's foreign policy. The US and NATO did not hold a gun to the former USSR states after the latter's collapse. The Baltics, Poland, etc. joined NATO because they didn't want to suffer under an oppressive foreign power ever again. Too fucking bad if the Russians didn't like it; maybe they shouldn't have spent decades brutalizing half the continent.
I know that the Neoliberal Podcast is doing a slow tour of likeminded people in other countries. It'd be interesting if she got a Pole and an Estonian to talk to her about the latest defense authorization bill.
I like that Vivek is thinking strategically about how to disrupt the Russia/China relationship, but his approach seems naive, ill-informed, unprincipled, and short-sighted.
For someone who talks a lot about taking a principled approach to politics, he's incredibly quick to dismiss the principle of sovereignty and self-determination when it comes to Ukraine. He didn't answer Michael's excellent question regarding what Ukrainians want. And his conviction that he could negotiate an agreement in 72 hours does not reflect well on him.
It's also not at all clear to me that the benefits of Vivek's plan are worth it for Russia. Even if normal economic and diplomatic ties with the West were reestablished pretty quickly (and that's a big if), it's not like Russia would be entering into an actual alliance with the US or the West. China has already made inroads with the central Asian CSTO nations, and China has way more to offer those countries going forward. No eastern or central European country will enter into an alliance with Russia. Vivek talks about a tri-polar world order, but that assumes that Russia is strong enough to act as its own pole and to build its own alliances. I don't think that would happen at all. Maybe Putin thinks it would, so maybe he takes the deal, but the end result won't be nearly as effective as Vivek seems to think.
But worst of all, Vivek seems totally ignorant of how his plan would damage America's reputation in central and eastern Europe and beyond, and how that would impact alliances down the road. Ukraine and eastern Europe would (rightly) feel totally betrayed. Vivek comes right out and says that those countries have no strategic value to the US because they don't make semiconductors or other vital technologies. Taiwan would (rightly) conclude that, absent a legal guarantee, the US would turn its back on Taiwan as soon as the US no longer needed Taiwanese semiconductors. Other allies would (rightly) conclude that US commitments extend only as far as immediate US economic needs.
That's not how you conduct foreign policy if you actually care about things like democracy, self-determination, and the US-led Western global order. It's also not how you build durable alliances. And I suspect that, with the US and China so evenly matched, the outcome of a confrontation may very well come down to who can build the better alliance with the strongest partners.
I know this take won't be popular among Fifth listeners, but here I go anyway-
Vivek's more significant point is that, from the standpoint of America's foreign policy interests, what's happening in Ukraine right now is terrible for the US but irrelevant compared to what happens if China invades or blockades Taiwan.
Taiwan is the country primarily responsible for the most critical industry in the world today, semiconductors. And that's an understatement. Taiwan produces 60% of all SCs and 90% of the advanced SCs.
Look around your house or office at anything with a power cord or a battery in it...it has many SCs inside of it. Now follow the chain towards the manufacturer who made the power cord or battery-powered thing and the data it houses. There are billions, if not trillions, of SCs all along that value chain.
For anyone who cares about liberal values and modern ways of life, the ramifications of China gaining virtual sole control over that industry is an incomprehensible nightmare.
And for anyone who thinks the CHIPS act is the solution to our problems, you live in a dream world. Chip fabs take at least three years and $10B to build when you break ground. With the global economy on the precipice, the major chip companies (TSMC, Intel, Micron, etc.) will have a hard time justifying the creation of more chip capacity as demand slows. To say nothing about the fact that the CHIPS act is a joke, anyway.
The bottom line is that we need to take a long view of everything related to China. China is an existential threat to the US, whereas Russia is not, and that is just an undeniable fact.
I don't disagree with any of this, but it raises a question I hardly ever hear anyone ask: What, precisely, are we trying to protect in a competition with China? If we can't answer that honestly then we won't be able to develop a coherent long-term strategy for dealing with a rising China.
Are we really just concerned about semi-conductors? If so, then we should just focus on removing any and all barriers to a competitive US-based industry. I totally agree with you that the CHIPS Act is a joke in that regard, but I think there are deregulatory and pro-immigration policies that would be more successful (maybe with straightforward subsidies to grease the wheels). Those policies would also require some political and cultural shifts, but that should be our focus.
Or, are we trying to protect raw US military and economic power? That is, are we simply trying to prevent the rise of another superpower that can stop the US from throwing its weight around anywhere in the world, whenever we want? If so, a more "realist" (I'd call it cynical) approach *might* be justified -- though I'd caution anyone from treating other countries like pieces on a chess board, to be pushed around and traded away -- paraphrasing Adam Smith, in the real world the pieces move on their own).
Or do we mean it when we say that we are trying to preserve democracy, free trade, and the rules-based international order? Personally, this is what I would like to believe. If so then we should actually, not just rhetorically, double down on our commitment to those ideals, both abroad and at home. We often compromised on those ideals during the Cold War when it seemed expedient to do so, and I don't think it was worth it.
These are all fair questions, and I strongly second your last paragraph. That is what we should be trying to protect, and the issue with Taiwan is that the SC market is a pawn in that game, ultimately.
I believe China is extraordinarily dangerous in the short term because a) they are a horrific authoritarian government that enslaves their citizens, either figuratively or literally (in the case of the Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities) and b) IMO, they are the precipice of collapse, which I wrote about a while back and think still holds up well-
The Tl;dr version is that because of their one-child policy, their population is on the verge of collapse. Even after relaxing that policy multiple times, the birth rate has barely moved. For a country with no discernable immigration and a massive welfare state, this is a nuclear bomb waiting to go off.
Additionally, their economy is a house of cards that is starting to tumble (anyone who has visited China and seen the "ghost cities" will know exactly what I mean).
Finally, Xi is a true believer in the Communist system and is determined not to let what happened to the USSR happen in China (there's an excellent podcast called The Prince about XI, which does a great job explaining his background and philosophy).
All of this is to say that the risk with China is not an issue our grandchildren will have to contend with...it is an issue we will have to deal with, and potentially very soon. So to believe the problem with Ukraine/Russia is separate from the looming issue with Taiwan/China is not to have a good handle on what's going on right now.
I have no real issue with this. I just think the underlying assumption that giving our old weapons to Ukraine while updating our Military with new weapons (manufactured in America for all you protectionists who may get excited about that) renders us unable to offer aid to Taiwan is silly and has no factual basis. Unless I maybe missed some write ups about us sending huge parts of our pacific fleet to the Baltic Sea.
Interesting, I guess I stand corrected. I'll do some more reading but from what I understood we were purchasing new replacements. Is there some sort of back order on them?
It seems the issue is that we are giving Ukraine some critical systems faster than they can be built, and for contractors to significantly ramp up their product capacity takes time.
Totally understand why anyone from a Warsaw Pact country wanted to join NATO. They hate Russians and justifiably so given the post war domination of their countries and having Big Daddy USA coming to defend them from the Russian Bear makes total sense.
But, did anyone in the US during the last thirty years consider what was the best way to attempt to integrate Russia into Europe? Was NATO expansion the right way to achieve such a goal? I say no and we see what has happened.
Those who know Russian history know they were invaded in WW1 and big time in WW2 from the West. Western powers occupied Russian territories after the Bolshevik revolution. Yes yes. The Russians have been bastards and the invasions of Poland and Finland were atrocities. There are more too.
Why wouldn’t the 30 year expansion of NATO trigger all this historical anxiety?
NATO isn’t just a bunch of European nations, it is backed by the American war machine and the only power the Russians could possibly fear and cause invasion anxieties.
The sad thing is that Biden doesn’t have a clue how to get out of this.
If you listen closely you can hear a piece of Moynihan's die a few times throughout the interview, especially when Vivek starts waxing poetic about historical figures & events.
Vivek is pretty much what I expected: an eloquent schmoozer with the deluded confidence that only someone with a "life coach" on retainer can attain. Saying he would simply convince a politically isolated Russia to abandon their only major geopolitical ally during a war (that has gone terribly for them) is like a prospective GM saying "if I get the GM job I will trade all the bad players and get all the good ones in exchange." I fail to see how that is much different than what's already been done over and over again...redrawing lines in the sand and saying "okay but for real THIS time."
Vivek is not eloquent, he is just really confident. He says lots of absolute nonsense, but he says it with such conviction it can be a bit mesmerizing at times. He is a classic tech CEO in the mold of Elizabeth Holmes you and Dan Price.
Maybe the first episode of the Fifth that made me want to throw my phone at the wall. That said, I am grateful for it, because it has saved me from ever taking seriously any further mention of Ramaswamy as anything but an Adderall-fueled clown.
About his plan for Russia, I thought the same thing. It sounds almost convincing as long as you assume that Vivek is correct that Putin would just take the deal.
His grand bargain on Ukraine - to be negotiated in 72 hours - was absurd. Not only will there be no leverage to get Putin to break with China, but if by some miracle he agreed what would be the enforcement mechanism?
Vivek thinks it would be automatic NATO membership for Ukraine. Since Vivek thinks NATO expansion is what motivated Putin to go to war, I guess I can understand why he thinks that would be an effective deterrent. But NATO expansion is not, in fact, what really motivated Putin to go to war, and further NATO expansion would not, in fact, act as an effective deterrent.
If that is what had motivated Putin he would have said so from the get go. Over and over he said it was a special operation to deNazify Ukraine. Only when the West came to Ukraine’s aid, notwithstanding no NATO, did we start to hear from Mearsheimer and other apologists - I don’t even recall whether we heard it from Putin himself - that NATO expansion is what triggered the assault on Ukraine. Bogus.
Yeah, Vivek's aim to break the China/Russsia alliance is a lot like what you hear Trump say about ending the war in Ukraine, like these things can be ended on force of personality just because someone very different from you started it.
Pride flag / alphabet of identities exchange was hilarious. I didn’t realize until now I may actually be an ‘A?!” All this time I thought I was just a middle aged woman who was turned on by coming home from working all day, swapping out my hard pants for sweat pants, pouring a glass of Chardonnay, and figuring out what episode of Dateline I wanted to watch? 🤷♀️. Now they call that “asexual?!” I guess our flag would just be a white flag? 🏳️😂
I am in your ranks, and I’m going to take an M for “mildly misanthropic”. I don’t hate men or sex, just most people and in general most of the world anymore.
But that’s only if I’m forcing myself to play the letter brigaders’ game. Rage against the dying of the light!
I thought you gents did a pretty darn good job pushing back against Vivek. Nice interview.
I'm pushing for a clear band to be added to the pride flag to support those of us with no interest in professional sports. We're clearly a marginalized group.
This podcast alone was worth my subscription. I now know everything I need to about Vivek as a candidate. I can completely disregard him from this point forward.
I was trying really hard nor to comment / judge before I finish the episode, but I am not 10 minutes in and I am annoyed by almost every word out of Vivek’s mouth.
Vivek oozes insincerity and condescension whenever he speaks. He has the confidence only a profoundly ignorant and self absorbed person can muster.
I don’t take Vivek as a serious candidate, but I think he does, and it is a little weird to see that from someone from my/our micro-generation before we’ve had a Gen X President. Untimely falls notwithstanding, could we just blow by Gen X altogether?
Vivek Ramaswamy is like the dorky guy in high school who somehow thinks he can impress the hot cheerleader by recounting his exploits at the latest Model UN.
Again with this NATO expansion to Russia's terf bullshit. I'm from a former Warsaw pact country which joined NATO in the 90s, because my parents' generation voted to join as citizens of a sovereign fucking country.
That argument drives me up the fucking wall. I hear it a lot on the "We're Not Wrong" show; it's one of Jen Briney's favorites to roll out that fits with her general disdain for America's foreign policy. The US and NATO did not hold a gun to the former USSR states after the latter's collapse. The Baltics, Poland, etc. joined NATO because they didn't want to suffer under an oppressive foreign power ever again. Too fucking bad if the Russians didn't like it; maybe they shouldn't have spent decades brutalizing half the continent.
I know that the Neoliberal Podcast is doing a slow tour of likeminded people in other countries. It'd be interesting if she got a Pole and an Estonian to talk to her about the latest defense authorization bill.
I like that Vivek is thinking strategically about how to disrupt the Russia/China relationship, but his approach seems naive, ill-informed, unprincipled, and short-sighted.
For someone who talks a lot about taking a principled approach to politics, he's incredibly quick to dismiss the principle of sovereignty and self-determination when it comes to Ukraine. He didn't answer Michael's excellent question regarding what Ukrainians want. And his conviction that he could negotiate an agreement in 72 hours does not reflect well on him.
It's also not at all clear to me that the benefits of Vivek's plan are worth it for Russia. Even if normal economic and diplomatic ties with the West were reestablished pretty quickly (and that's a big if), it's not like Russia would be entering into an actual alliance with the US or the West. China has already made inroads with the central Asian CSTO nations, and China has way more to offer those countries going forward. No eastern or central European country will enter into an alliance with Russia. Vivek talks about a tri-polar world order, but that assumes that Russia is strong enough to act as its own pole and to build its own alliances. I don't think that would happen at all. Maybe Putin thinks it would, so maybe he takes the deal, but the end result won't be nearly as effective as Vivek seems to think.
But worst of all, Vivek seems totally ignorant of how his plan would damage America's reputation in central and eastern Europe and beyond, and how that would impact alliances down the road. Ukraine and eastern Europe would (rightly) feel totally betrayed. Vivek comes right out and says that those countries have no strategic value to the US because they don't make semiconductors or other vital technologies. Taiwan would (rightly) conclude that, absent a legal guarantee, the US would turn its back on Taiwan as soon as the US no longer needed Taiwanese semiconductors. Other allies would (rightly) conclude that US commitments extend only as far as immediate US economic needs.
That's not how you conduct foreign policy if you actually care about things like democracy, self-determination, and the US-led Western global order. It's also not how you build durable alliances. And I suspect that, with the US and China so evenly matched, the outcome of a confrontation may very well come down to who can build the better alliance with the strongest partners.
I know this take won't be popular among Fifth listeners, but here I go anyway-
Vivek's more significant point is that, from the standpoint of America's foreign policy interests, what's happening in Ukraine right now is terrible for the US but irrelevant compared to what happens if China invades or blockades Taiwan.
Taiwan is the country primarily responsible for the most critical industry in the world today, semiconductors. And that's an understatement. Taiwan produces 60% of all SCs and 90% of the advanced SCs.
Look around your house or office at anything with a power cord or a battery in it...it has many SCs inside of it. Now follow the chain towards the manufacturer who made the power cord or battery-powered thing and the data it houses. There are billions, if not trillions, of SCs all along that value chain.
For anyone who cares about liberal values and modern ways of life, the ramifications of China gaining virtual sole control over that industry is an incomprehensible nightmare.
And for anyone who thinks the CHIPS act is the solution to our problems, you live in a dream world. Chip fabs take at least three years and $10B to build when you break ground. With the global economy on the precipice, the major chip companies (TSMC, Intel, Micron, etc.) will have a hard time justifying the creation of more chip capacity as demand slows. To say nothing about the fact that the CHIPS act is a joke, anyway.
The bottom line is that we need to take a long view of everything related to China. China is an existential threat to the US, whereas Russia is not, and that is just an undeniable fact.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2023/03/06/taiwans-dominance-of-the-chip-industry-makes-it-more-important#:~:text=Taiwan%20produces%20over%2060%25%20of,been%20made%20only%20in%20Taiwan.
I don't disagree with any of this, but it raises a question I hardly ever hear anyone ask: What, precisely, are we trying to protect in a competition with China? If we can't answer that honestly then we won't be able to develop a coherent long-term strategy for dealing with a rising China.
Are we really just concerned about semi-conductors? If so, then we should just focus on removing any and all barriers to a competitive US-based industry. I totally agree with you that the CHIPS Act is a joke in that regard, but I think there are deregulatory and pro-immigration policies that would be more successful (maybe with straightforward subsidies to grease the wheels). Those policies would also require some political and cultural shifts, but that should be our focus.
Or, are we trying to protect raw US military and economic power? That is, are we simply trying to prevent the rise of another superpower that can stop the US from throwing its weight around anywhere in the world, whenever we want? If so, a more "realist" (I'd call it cynical) approach *might* be justified -- though I'd caution anyone from treating other countries like pieces on a chess board, to be pushed around and traded away -- paraphrasing Adam Smith, in the real world the pieces move on their own).
Or do we mean it when we say that we are trying to preserve democracy, free trade, and the rules-based international order? Personally, this is what I would like to believe. If so then we should actually, not just rhetorically, double down on our commitment to those ideals, both abroad and at home. We often compromised on those ideals during the Cold War when it seemed expedient to do so, and I don't think it was worth it.
These are all fair questions, and I strongly second your last paragraph. That is what we should be trying to protect, and the issue with Taiwan is that the SC market is a pawn in that game, ultimately.
I believe China is extraordinarily dangerous in the short term because a) they are a horrific authoritarian government that enslaves their citizens, either figuratively or literally (in the case of the Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities) and b) IMO, they are the precipice of collapse, which I wrote about a while back and think still holds up well-
https://www.sub-verses.com/p/a-time-of-maximum-danger
The Tl;dr version is that because of their one-child policy, their population is on the verge of collapse. Even after relaxing that policy multiple times, the birth rate has barely moved. For a country with no discernable immigration and a massive welfare state, this is a nuclear bomb waiting to go off.
Additionally, their economy is a house of cards that is starting to tumble (anyone who has visited China and seen the "ghost cities" will know exactly what I mean).
Finally, Xi is a true believer in the Communist system and is determined not to let what happened to the USSR happen in China (there's an excellent podcast called The Prince about XI, which does a great job explaining his background and philosophy).
All of this is to say that the risk with China is not an issue our grandchildren will have to contend with...it is an issue we will have to deal with, and potentially very soon. So to believe the problem with Ukraine/Russia is separate from the looming issue with Taiwan/China is not to have a good handle on what's going on right now.
Sorry for the long response.
I have no real issue with this. I just think the underlying assumption that giving our old weapons to Ukraine while updating our Military with new weapons (manufactured in America for all you protectionists who may get excited about that) renders us unable to offer aid to Taiwan is silly and has no factual basis. Unless I maybe missed some write ups about us sending huge parts of our pacific fleet to the Baltic Sea.
I don’t think what you’re saying is exactly accurate. https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-running-out-weapons-send-ukraine
Interesting, I guess I stand corrected. I'll do some more reading but from what I understood we were purchasing new replacements. Is there some sort of back order on them?
It seems the issue is that we are giving Ukraine some critical systems faster than they can be built, and for contractors to significantly ramp up their product capacity takes time.
Totally understand why anyone from a Warsaw Pact country wanted to join NATO. They hate Russians and justifiably so given the post war domination of their countries and having Big Daddy USA coming to defend them from the Russian Bear makes total sense.
But, did anyone in the US during the last thirty years consider what was the best way to attempt to integrate Russia into Europe? Was NATO expansion the right way to achieve such a goal? I say no and we see what has happened.
Those who know Russian history know they were invaded in WW1 and big time in WW2 from the West. Western powers occupied Russian territories after the Bolshevik revolution. Yes yes. The Russians have been bastards and the invasions of Poland and Finland were atrocities. There are more too.
Why wouldn’t the 30 year expansion of NATO trigger all this historical anxiety?
NATO isn’t just a bunch of European nations, it is backed by the American war machine and the only power the Russians could possibly fear and cause invasion anxieties.
The sad thing is that Biden doesn’t have a clue how to get out of this.
If you listen closely you can hear a piece of Moynihan's die a few times throughout the interview, especially when Vivek starts waxing poetic about historical figures & events.
Vivek is pretty much what I expected: an eloquent schmoozer with the deluded confidence that only someone with a "life coach" on retainer can attain. Saying he would simply convince a politically isolated Russia to abandon their only major geopolitical ally during a war (that has gone terribly for them) is like a prospective GM saying "if I get the GM job I will trade all the bad players and get all the good ones in exchange." I fail to see how that is much different than what's already been done over and over again...redrawing lines in the sand and saying "okay but for real THIS time."
Vivek is not eloquent, he is just really confident. He says lots of absolute nonsense, but he says it with such conviction it can be a bit mesmerizing at times. He is a classic tech CEO in the mold of Elizabeth Holmes you and Dan Price.
Hey, I just wanted to avoid saying he was well spoken. 😜
Maybe the first episode of the Fifth that made me want to throw my phone at the wall. That said, I am grateful for it, because it has saved me from ever taking seriously any further mention of Ramaswamy as anything but an Adderall-fueled clown.
But, don't you see? Nobody has run on the American Dream before!
I think Dusty Rhodes was the first to do it successfully.
Vivek can't pull it off. He's not the son of a plumber.
There trying to put hard times on Vivek Ramaswamy!
"Virgil Runnels was a horrible plumber"--JJ Dillon
About his plan for Russia, I thought the same thing. It sounds almost convincing as long as you assume that Vivek is correct that Putin would just take the deal.
I don't think it's convincing even if Putin would take the deal. See my comment above.
Putin also claimed he could end the war in 72 hours.
His grand bargain on Ukraine - to be negotiated in 72 hours - was absurd. Not only will there be no leverage to get Putin to break with China, but if by some miracle he agreed what would be the enforcement mechanism?
Vivek thinks it would be automatic NATO membership for Ukraine. Since Vivek thinks NATO expansion is what motivated Putin to go to war, I guess I can understand why he thinks that would be an effective deterrent. But NATO expansion is not, in fact, what really motivated Putin to go to war, and further NATO expansion would not, in fact, act as an effective deterrent.
If that is what had motivated Putin he would have said so from the get go. Over and over he said it was a special operation to deNazify Ukraine. Only when the West came to Ukraine’s aid, notwithstanding no NATO, did we start to hear from Mearsheimer and other apologists - I don’t even recall whether we heard it from Putin himself - that NATO expansion is what triggered the assault on Ukraine. Bogus.
Yeah, Vivek's aim to break the China/Russsia alliance is a lot like what you hear Trump say about ending the war in Ukraine, like these things can be ended on force of personality just because someone very different from you started it.
It seems that he's never even thought about the possibility that with how things are going, Putin might not even be around next year.
Let's all leave comments pretending we think this is Matt Walsh's podcast
What is a baseball, Matt? What👏 is 👏a👏 baseball👏?
Based Baseball Matt > Remedial Reactionary Matt
#NOTMYMATT
Relevant George Will: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/14/republican-vivek-ramaswamy-ambitious-inexperience/
Does anyone else want George Will to be the oldest American to live forever?
My girlfriend who is from Korea thought the “+” stood for Fat...I love her.
I hope this is the "Comment of the week".
Pride flag / alphabet of identities exchange was hilarious. I didn’t realize until now I may actually be an ‘A?!” All this time I thought I was just a middle aged woman who was turned on by coming home from working all day, swapping out my hard pants for sweat pants, pouring a glass of Chardonnay, and figuring out what episode of Dateline I wanted to watch? 🤷♀️. Now they call that “asexual?!” I guess our flag would just be a white flag? 🏳️😂
I'm a Groucho Marx asexual - I don't want to be part of any sexual act that would have me as a member.
sooo cuckoldry?
Hmmm, my wife had said something similar to me.
I am in your ranks, and I’m going to take an M for “mildly misanthropic”. I don’t hate men or sex, just most people and in general most of the world anymore.
But that’s only if I’m forcing myself to play the letter brigaders’ game. Rage against the dying of the light!
You’re an A+!
Today, June 14, is Flag Day, by the way — celebrating the other U.S. flag, the one with the Stars and Stripes.
I thought you gents did a pretty darn good job pushing back against Vivek. Nice interview.
I'm pushing for a clear band to be added to the pride flag to support those of us with no interest in professional sports. We're clearly a marginalized group.
This podcast alone was worth my subscription. I now know everything I need to about Vivek as a candidate. I can completely disregard him from this point forward.
Moynihan: Can probably tell you the favourite perfume brand of each and every Cold War dictator.
Also Moynihan: Doesn't know that his Scandinavian soulmate has actually filed for divorce recently.
I was ready to suggest that someone make a Moyni-sexual flag, but now I don't think he's worthy anymore.
Ppppffftt. Smelling nice is just capitalist propaganda. Like food that is nourishing and tasty.
I was trying really hard nor to comment / judge before I finish the episode, but I am not 10 minutes in and I am annoyed by almost every word out of Vivek’s mouth.
Vivek oozes insincerity and condescension whenever he speaks. He has the confidence only a profoundly ignorant and self absorbed person can muster.
Chris Rufo vibes
This guy would barter with the fate of sovereign nations like the British did during the height of their empire. He has learned nothing from history.
Fuck Ramaswamy.
Mostly negative comments about VR here but he deserves credit for doing the show. Good exposure for TFC, too.
Never expected to find myself yelling at my car radio multiple times during an interview, but here we are.
I commend Matt and Moynihan for not absolutely losing their shit, I would have.
Love your Substack name. Wish I’d thought of it first! 😉
I'm a 37-year-old man whose parents immigrated from India, so I have to say it's just fantastic to see a Presidential candidate who *looks like me*!
Really dumb on foreign policy, though.
I don’t take Vivek as a serious candidate, but I think he does, and it is a little weird to see that from someone from my/our micro-generation before we’ve had a Gen X President. Untimely falls notwithstanding, could we just blow by Gen X altogether?
Would definitely be on brand.
Holy shit, he's only 37! That alone would foreclose him winning.
He’s a year+ younger than me & I feel... 🫠 about that.
Hopefully this stops people from wanting to hear more from Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vivek Ramaswamy is like the dorky guy in high school who somehow thinks he can impress the hot cheerleader by recounting his exploits at the latest Model UN.
Dude, I’m right here. 😢
Don’t feel bad! One day she’s going to look back and regret choosing that third string quarterback with the spray tan and a bunch of DUIs.