Will the real Vivek Ramaswamy please stand up?

This is The Guardian.

Vivek Ramaswamy is making a name for himself.

Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name, and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?

Elon Musk has called him a very promising candidate. Joe Rogan says that Vivek guy is very interesting, and Jordan Peterson thinks he is quote very rational and very smart unquote. He's doing well with the Republican public, too, polling third nationally, behind Donald Trump and Ron DESantis for the party's presidential nomination. But not everyone is enamored with him.

Eminem has asked Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to stop using his music at his campaign event.

So who is Vivek Ramaswamy and why is he being called by some? Trump? 2.

Well, I was struck watching the debate last week about how good and how skillful he is. Which also makes him, I think, particularly dangerous, because he really is a shameless demagogue. So, I mean,....

Charlie Sykes is the editor-at-large of The Bulwark, the journal of the traditional, conservative, never-trump wing of American Republicanism.

The one thing that Vivek understands, I think about the Trumpian Republican Party is that it wants the show. Donald Trump gives them a show. The other Republicans are still thinking that it's about policy, or it's about ideas, or it's about, you know what outrage you can stir up. Vivek is an entertainer very much in the mold of Donald Trump, or at least he is trying to be. He imagines that he could be.

Let's spool back a bit. When did you first become aware of this man?

To tell you the truth, I had not actually been paying that much attention to him because I thought he was more of a novelty candidate. I still think he's a novelty candidate. I just didn't think that he was going to be that significant a player. But we began hearing reports from Iowa. When he was rapping and when he was drawing large crowds, that maybe there was a little bit of buzz. But really, quite frankly, like a lot of other observers, it really wasn't until the debate that it became obvious that maybe we should take him somewhat seriously, you know, for the threat he poses and the kind of bizarre and extreme conspiracy theories that he's willing to embrace more seriously.

Let's talk a little bit about his life before he got into politics, and it doesn't have to be a very long conversation. Because he is only 38, his resume isn't all that long. But one very interesting aspect of Vivek's candidacy is that he is not a Christian. Born to Indian parents, raised in a household and family committed to Hinduism, he's raising his own children in that faith.

So, am I religious? Yes, I am, I'm Hindu, I'm not Christian, and we are a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values.

So how is he, Charlie, using this part of his background in his campaign?

Well, I think that this is going to be a problem for him in some ways, because he has had so many different identities. He's still trying to figure out who he wants to be when he grows up. Most of the other candidates, for better or worse, I think, decided that a long time ago Vivek is still working on his identity. You mentioned his background, which I think makes it more striking that he has been engaging in this performative racism, attacking Nikki Haley's background and making fun of her name.

Here to respond to all of that is Presidential candidate Nikki Haley. Ambassador, thank you so much for being here. welcome to you. First off, what is your reaction to that Twitter post?

Keep lying, referencing your name.

Saying that, desperation is growing.

I'm not going to get involved in these childish name games, it's pretty pathetic. So here is somebody who you would think would be more sensitive to some of the differences and the diversity on that stage. But in fact, he is so eager to pander to what he thinks the MAGA audience wants that. He's willing to throw out those kinds of things that would otherwise, you know, just be considered thoroughly deplorable.

Yeah, we'll come back to some of those themes and questions that are thrown up. I mean, he obviously excelled as a student. He made it to, you know, preeminent Ivy League school in the form of Harvard, where he studied biology. His politics there, to the extent we know about them, were broadly libertarian, and, in fact, he said, he cast his first vote for the Libertarian candidate for president.

Well, this is Vivek, the performer, this is Vivek. Knowing that the audience wants a show he hasn't figured out, you know, which show to give them. But you know, this is Vivek's strength and his weakness as well, which is that he wants to be entertaining. The weakness is that, as a result of that, he will say and do things that might not actually bear up under scrutiny.

But, you know, obviously he's an entertaining performer, but he combines that with being a very successful businessman. And that obviously has a familiar ring to it. The business tycoon, cum showbiz performer, which is obviously very Trumpian. He has made some pretty serious money.

He has made some pretty serious money.

As The New York Times reports, Ramaswamy's talent in his biotech career was for rallying investors, drumming up hype around a business venture to raise money from those investors. He did it quite successfully multiple times, getting multimillion dollar payouts for himself along the way.

You know, and you could see that he clearly is trying to model himself on the, you know, the Donald Trump campaign. You know what did Donald Trump do, how did he present himself? And he's clearly trying to mold himself, you know, to be the Trump successor. And the contrast between his approach. And say, Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis thinks, I'm just going to be angry.

And part of that sort of shtick is the is being the outsider and not a regular party politician.

And I do think Brett is going to take an outsider. Because for a long time, we have professional politicians in the Republican Party who have been running from something. Now is our moment to start running to something.

He's almost making a virtue of the fact that he didn't even vote in the 2008 2012,.

Well, what it tells you is how far that he's gone, and how far that he has come, or how far that he has fallen. Because he is certainly not stressing libertarian themes right now. Just this week, he was saying that, you know, had he been vice president, he would have refused to certify the presidential election, you know, unless everyone agreed to restrict voting, et cetera.

Here's what I would have said. We need single day voting on election day, we need paper ballots and we need government issued ID matching the voter file. And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity. So I would have driven it through the Senate.

So, I mean, again, here's somebody who is is just trying to figure out which position will work best for him. You know, he is the outsider, he is the performer, but whether or not he's the real deal, whether he is authentic, is a really big question.

I mean, I was thinking that partly what remains of that vestigial libertarianism is this war. He promises on the government bureaucracy, which some have said is a kind of inversion of FDR Franklin Roosevelt's new deal. And he wants to set about demolishing the federal government. One of his sort of applause lines is where he lists government agencies, a whole lot of agencies represented with three letters. And he says, he's going to, you know, liquidate the lot of them. Is that a kind of libertarian streak of politics?

Well, I think, you know, probably in his mind. It is a little bit of a reach back to that. But of course, the way that it plays right now, it is more the, you know, chaos. Burn it down, attack, the deep state mood of the party. And again, the question is how seriously to take him? Since he will say one thing on Wednesday and then deny saying it on Friday and then taking a completely different position on Monday? I mean, this is one of the problems is that he spent much of the last week or week and a half actually trying to change his positions or explain his positions. Or flat out lie about what he said before.

CAITLIN With due respect, that's a joke. I will not allow someone to put words in my mouth to say that I ever said that was sufficient. It is not. I'm not putting words in your mouth.

I'm simply asking about something you said.

We played a quote that you've made.

So give it up.

And it's getting to the point where even the folks from Fox News are going, OK, wait, you just said, for example, you want to defund Israel? No, I didn't. Well, here's the tape, here's exactly what you said. And this puts this big question mark over you know who he is, what he actually believes?

That point about his shifting positions on foreign policy and perhaps tying it to his inexperience, was picked up on by one of his opponents, Nikki Haley. In the debate the other day, where she said, You have no foreign policy experience and it shows. But on this point of experience, it is instructive. And sort of, in some ways, a little bit of ironic, that on social media there is now a video of him doing the rounds.

There was a clip circulating on social media of a 2003 presidential town hall on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Questioning then Democratic candidate the Reverend Al Sharpton, who was a guest on the podcast here just a few weeks back, saying that, You know, how could someone like Al Sharpton run for president with so little political experience? And the man asking the question was a young Vivek Ramaswamy. Let's just hear that.

Last week on the show we had Senator Kerry, and this week and the week before, we had Senator Edwards. And my question for you is, of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I vote for the one with the least political experience?

Well, you shouldn't, because I have the most political experience. So Charlie Sykes, there's Vivek Ramaswamy saying you can't run for this high office without sufficient political experience. I notice you chuckling.

Well, because, you know, this is the pattern of Vivek then versus Vivek now, and his willingness to completely shed any position that he held before. I think, you know, this is one of the reasons why I doubt his staying power now. Having said that, Donald Trump has broken the glass on what is considered an acceptable politician in America. I mean, Donald Trump did not serve in the military, served in no political office before being elected to the presidency. You know, clearly had a background in entertainment and a long history of bizarre and contradictory positions on a variety of issues, including, you know, issues that are, you know, really, the hot button issues like abortion.

That prompts, though, this question, which has been rattling around in my mind ever since. Ramaswamy came onto my radar. And that is why is he running against Donald Trump? It's easy to forget that, because on that debate stage last week, there was a whole variety of other candidates who weren't Donald Trump. But officially, just by entering the Republican primary, you are challenging the frontrunner, Donald Trump. Given everything you've said about the similarities between them, why is he running against Donald Trump? and have you been able to identify anything he actually disagrees with Trump on?

Such a good question.

Where do you think? Because there is some support for Ramaswamy, the polls, national polls, are showing. Just, you know, he's getting a few percentage points. He's got himself into that coveted third spot behind Ron DESantis, snapping at Ron DeSantis heels to be in the number two spot. Do you think he is siphoning off support from anti-Trump Republicans, like so many of the others in the process, or potentially siphoning off support from Trump himself? As you said, he's trying to be more Trump than Trump. Is it possible that some of his support is actually coming from Trump voters who think he might be the new great thing?

Possibly, I mean, I think that he's positioned himself to be a good second choice. You know, if you were to, you know, go to Iowa and ask Trump voters, you know, if not Trump, then who? His name comes up all the time. So as a number two.

I also wanted just to put to you something which I read, and I thought that was interesting. That part of the appeal of Ramaswamy is that he comes from the very demographic that Republicans, and particularly MAGA Republicans. Trump supporting Republicans would in some ways despise, but would certainly feel despised by, namely, that. He is an Ivy League educated, you know, tech millionaire. His business, his biotech business, was based in Manhattan and wrote Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times. Conservative audiences want the satisfaction of hearing their resentments affirmed by a defector from the culture of the coastal gentry.

She is precisely right. And you look at many of the other MAGA era stars like Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley, or J.D. Vance, or even Ron DeSantis. What do they all have in common? They are all products of the Ivy League, who decided to sort of put on the populist garb.

Yeah, and a lot of the commentary was describing him as annoying, and he was like a little upstart and a pipsqueak. And, you know, in the past, I might have thought, well, that means that's curtains for him. It made me think. As soon as I saw this conventional wisdom solidify against him, it made me think, yeah, we probably need to take him a bit seriously, because the conventional wisdom so often gets this wrong. I mean, just without being too sort of mature about this, I'm just thinking about our conversation and there is a little bit of me that does worry. That even by the very fact that you and I are talking about him, and we're devoting this week's podcast to him. That this actually, in some ways, means that the ramaswamy, and before him, the Trump maneuver kind of works. That we are rewarding candidates saying outrageous, sometimes even offensive things by giving them what Margaret Thatcher famously called the oxygen of publicity.

Well, obviously yes, to a certain extent. Who turns in the most outrageous performance at the debate? It's Vivek Ramaswamy who is generating all of the buzz afterwards. Well, it's Vivek Ramaswamy, and it's interesting that that he still is generating this buzz. Despite the fact that, as you pointed out earlier, Nikki Haley absolutely demolished him later in the debate.

Part of it is presumably also the policy robustness, as he might call it extremism, others might call it of his positions. He has this line about the 10 truths God is real. There are two genders. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.

Well, this is what I meant before when I said. He touches on all the hot buttons. You know, the fact that he lays out those 10, you know, every one of those, you know, punch the ticket for every single incendiary belief of the MAGA movement.

The climate change agenda is a hoax The climate change agenda is a hoax.

And you can tell that he's very, very conscious about it. It feels almost focus grouped, the kind of thing that that, you know, on a conservative talk show would generate the most reaction, each and every one of them. They're not robust policy positions, but they're very, very robust in terms of pandering to what the base wants. And he clearly went in there, figuring, You know how many flares can I send up? That I am one of you, that I, that I am willing to say these outrageous, transgressive things just like you.

Charlie, let's assume that we're both right. And he doesn't get the Republican nomination. Where do you anticipate next seeing Vivek Ramaswamy? Where does he pop up next?

Oh, I think we're going to see a lot of him, I think that he's going to be a regular on right wing media. I would not be surprised if he became a Fox News regular, maybe even a host. He'll write more books, he'll be in demand at, you know, conservative rallies for some time.

Charlie You know that we always like to ask our guests on the podcast a what else? question something a bit different. On Wednesday evening, footage came of a press conference given by the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, 81 years old, in which he appeared for the second time. To freeze. Just to be there, silently, sort of staring ahead. It came actually just as a reporter had asked him what his plans were for seeking potential re-election as the senator for Kentucky. As I say it had happened before, it's raised these questions about the age of the Senate majority leader.

Well, it was very painful to watch. There's no question about it watching what happened with Mitch McConnell, and obviously the consequences are incredibly grave. Politically, he's a dominant figure in the United States Senate, plays a huge role in the Republican Party. You certainly hope that there are people who love him, people who are around him. You know, staff and family who will get him the best medical attention and will give him good advice.

Charlie Sykes, Thanks so much for talking with us for Politics Weekly America.

Thank you very much.

And that is all from me for this week, moving away from America and from politics. Shantae Joseph, host of our sister podcast Pop Culture, will be taking the show to the stage. The event, which will take place on Sunday, September 17th at 2pm during the London Podcast Festival here at King's Place, will see Shantae talk to the matchmaking expert, entrepreneur and TV host Paul C. Brunson. The pair will discuss the dynamics of TV dating, the key to a successful relationship, and how pop culture plays a significant role in our love lives.