'Anti-Woke' CEO Announces Run for GOP Presidential Nomination, But Has One Big, Red Flag
On Tuesday, conservative author and business executive Vivek Ramaswamy became the third person to officially declare his intention to seek the GOP nomination for president in 2024.
If the first thing that comes to your mind when hearing that news is, “Uh, who?”, you’re not alone. That said, Ramaswamy is one of those individuals who has the potential to turn into this cycle’s version of Pete Buttigieg or Andrew Yang.
Ramaswamy is the Ohio-born son of Indian immigrants to the U.S., according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. He’s best known for founding the pharmaceutical firm Roivant Sciences, then walking away after an internal company revolt due in part to the fact he was deemed insufficiently woke. He documented the matter in his bestselling book “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”
(If you haven’t read it, you should — even if I am about to discuss some of the red flags surrounding a Ramaswamy candidacy. It’s one of the best dissections of how the corporate world has become in thrall to a far-left agenda it doesn’t necessarily believe in but lacks the backbone to fight, written by someone on the inside.)
Ramaswamy made the announcement on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“We are in the middle of this national identity crisis, Tucker, where we have celebrated our diversity and our differences for so long, that we forgot all of the ways we’re really just the same as Americans, bound by a common set of ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago,” Ramaswamy said.
“I’m proud to say I’m running for United States president to revive those ideals in this country, those basic rules of the road, meritocracy, the idea that you get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character.”
“Our diversity is meaningless if there’s nothing greater that binds us together,” he added.
Ramaswamy hit all the right notes. He wants an end to affirmative action and a return to meritocracy. He believes in free speech — and wants to limit the power of big corporations and big tech to take that speech away.
No, Ramaswamy certainly doesn’t have the drawing power of the two other declared candidates, former President Donald Trump and former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Then there’s the seemingly inevitable candidacy of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which, if it happens, will turn the media narrative into a race between the two current titans of the Republican Party.
But again, one shouldn’t discount this as just a novelty run. Anyone who’s familiar with “Woke, Inc.” or who has seen Ramaswamy speak can avouch for the fact he’s an effective communicator whose background is seemingly a perfect fit with the issue set that matters to conservative primary voters going into 2024.
And that’s what has another conservative activist, Jack Posobiec, concerned.
There’s nothing more suspicious, after all, than a recent convert to the cause — be it conservative or liberal — suddenly announcing a run for higher office.
As Posobiec noted on Twitter, just two years ago, Ramaswamy was the darling of an organization that’s hardly the darling of any conservative: the World Economic Forum, the immensely powerful globalist non-governmental organization that infamously popularized the term “The Great Reset” and thinks it’s high time you start eating bugs instead of meat.
How strange!
When you look at the WEF Young Global Leaders 2021 page today it appears a name has been scrubbed from the list
Be a shame if someone had receipts of the original list pic.twitter.com/yfxzONnPaa
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 22, 2023
As late as this January, an archived page on the WEF website still had Ramaswamy listed as one of its Young Global Leaders. He’s no longer on there — and, in a response to Posobiec, he said there was good reason for it.
The games they play are far worse than you imagine.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) February 22, 2023
“Funny you should bring this up. The first chapter of my upcoming book in April has the ‘receipts’ of my exchanges with the World Economic Forum years ago when they *repeatedly* kept trying to get me to be named. I gave them a polite ‘hell no.’ Reveals the games that WEF plays,” Ramaswamy tweeted.
“The games they play are far worse than you can imagine.”
Fair enough — although one might be forgiven for wanting a fuller explanation, not a tease for Ramaswamy’s upcoming book. He’s now a presidential contender, not just an author.
In another tweet, he had this to say: “Nobody has been working to dismantle the global WEF takeover more than me. You’re right over the target, stay on it. I’ll send you a signed book so you can learn more about it. It’s worse than you ever imagine.”
“You’ve sent me like 5 books already my dude,” Posobiec responded.
You’ve sent me like 5 books already my dude
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 22, 2023
Again, fair enough: These two apparently don’t like each other. But guess who else Ramaswamy liked, at least once upon a time?
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 22, 2023
That tweet was from August of 2021, praising George Soros for saying something about Chinese leader Xi Jinping that every American politician from Paul Gosar to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could probably affirm. (Well, maybe not Eric Swalwell, but he has his reasons for that.)
Yet, Ramaswamy specifically picked George freakin’ Soros to highlight on his Twitter account. You know, the billionaire who’s funded the candidacies of so many progressive district attorney hopefuls — almost all of whom are profoundly uninterested in enforcing the law — that they’ve become colloquially known as “Soros DAs.”
That’s not precisely what you want to see from a guy who hopes to become the leader of the Republican Party.
The personal story behind Ramaswamy’s campaign message — which is critical for someone who doesn’t have prior experience in elected or appointed office — is that he was witness to the massive global machine in which Big Tech, massive corporations, and powerful NGOs like the World Economic Forum and Soros’ Open Society Foundations collude to suppress speech, promote wokeness and force austerity and diversity measures upon the world.
One doesn’t necessarily doubt that Ramaswamy saw the rot from the inside and wants to fight it. The problem is how recently he was on the inside. His apparent personal tiff with Posobiec aside, the “receipts” don’t tell a promising story.
It doesn’t make me think any less of Ramaswamy as an author and an activist. In those roles, he has acquitted himself brilliantly. As a presidential candidate, however, the recency of his Damascene road conversion — no matter how legitimate it seems to be — gives significant pause.
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