The Vivek Question | 10/1/26

0:00Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed brussels, and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to sweet green. Featuring Fall's best dressed. Take your move, order on the sweet green app. Things aren't looking great for Vivek Ramaswamy. Two polls released this week put Democrat Amy Act in a head in the Ohio Governor's race. Marist has Act in leading 50% to 44% among registered voters, while Sulphic Paul has her ahead 50% to 41% among likely voters. Another survey does have Ramaswamy narrowly ahead, so the race is hardly over. But Ohio, a state Donald Trump carried comfortably in 2024, shouldn't be producing this kind of anxiety for Republicans.

1:00Some of the explanation is national. Midterms punish incumbent parties, and Trump's approval has been tanking the war in Iran as unpopular, fuel prices have been surging, and voters remain angry about affordability. Republicans still control Congress, but they've struggled to turn that control into accomplishing anything that voters can actually see or feel. Ramaswamy presents an additional problem, one the party created for itself. The Cincinnati native was born in 1985 to Indian immigrant parents. His father came to the United States on a student visa and later worked for General Electric. His mother obtained a green card and became a physician. Vivek became a citizen at birth under the 14th Amendment, in other words, he's what's commonly referred to as an anchor baby. His mother later naturalized, his father, never did. Ramaswamy built his fortune in biotech. His company Roy Van created Axe Van to round interpreting an experimental Alzheimer's drug license from GlaxoSmithCline for $5 million up front.

2:01Axe Van's 2015 IPO raised $315 million and briefly pushed the company's valuation near $3 billion. In 2017, the drug failed, its phase 3 trial, and Axe Van's stock fell about 70% in a day. That history has generated plenty of suspicion among Ramaswamy's critics, especially because Roy Van raised $1.1 billion shortly before the trial results. Suspicion isn't proof of fraud, of course, but the fact is that Ramaswamy made his name selling investors on a speculative biotech story that ended up in spectacular failure. Then he tried to sell voters another story. Ramaswamy entered the 2024 presidential race as a long shot in position to himself as Trump's most loyal rival. He attacked the administrative state denounce, wokeness, and rarely aimed sustained fire at the front runner. The campaign raised his national profile even though he never seriously threatened Trump, which was kind of the whole point. Vex served as a surrogate for Trump for the rest of his campaign and after election it

3:04seemed like his plan had worked. Trump tapped Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, and then came the Christmas crash out. Having a fight over HB1 Vs, Ramaswamy argued that American culture had venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. He contrasted prom queens with math Olympiad champions, jocks with valovectorians, sleepovers with math tutoring, and popular television characters with nerds. The Vex made it very clear that while he was talking about the greatness of America and all the things he valued about it, he really saw himself as being separate and apart. He had a different immigrant culture which was superior to that of the average American, and that's why he was succeeding while all these other loser Americans they were failing. They had American ideas, but he had immigrant ideas that were better and that's why he was out competing everybody else. This is a clear disdain for the very people you're claiming to want to assimilate with.

4:08Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed brussels, and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to sweet green, featuring Fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweet Green app. The backlash on the right was immediate and deserved because the argument landed as more than a defensive skilled immigration. Ramoswamy appeared to be telling ordinary Americans that foreign workers were outperforming them because immigrant families possessed a better culture. The post didn't single-handedly end his role in the administration, but it certainly didn't help. Reporting at the time described deep disagreements with Musk over Doge, his mission, plus Ramoswamy's plan to run for governor. But the H would be fight clearly worse intentions and damage his standing with parts of Trump's

5:10coalition. Ramoswamy launched his Ohio campaign in 2025 and quickly received Trump's endorsement and the backing of the state GOP. On paper, the arrangement looked ideal. A famous candidate, a Republican-leaning state, and a president who remained popular with the GOP base. Then the national environment deteriorated and the candidate's own liabilities became harder to hide. Things out for that is going to have to win this one on his own and that's not looking great. One of those liabilities is religion. Ramoswamy has always been cagey with voters on the question of faith. He was careful to talk about a shared belief in God, but he was never really clear about which one. He would share pictures of Christian pastors praying over him, but would fail to mention that he didn't share their faith. Ramoswamy is a pagan Hindu who believes in a host of foreign deeds. While he would praise Christian values as central to America, he doesn't actually share them. This once again reveals a lack of sincerity that turned off many voters who were already feeling disillusioned with the GOP.

6:10A sharper identity dispute concerns immigration and assimilation. The VEC became a symbol of the H1B fight because he defended a visa program that's heavily used and abused by Indian professionals while criticizing Native-born American culture. In skeptics saw the combination as a confirmation of their fear that Republican donor in business classes value imported labor more than people who are already here. Fairly or not, the VEC became the avatar for that argument. This is basically the VEC question that now confronts the GOP. A party can nominate a candidate who checks all the ideological boxes on paper and even has some of those great diversity boxes that the GOP pretends they don't care about but they really, really, really do. And even if the candidate meets all those requirements, they can still discover that the voters don't really trust his instincts, his biography, or his cultural loyalties. Party leaders can explain that the alternative would govern much further to the left. They can point to endorsements, policy positions, and the partisan leaning of the state.

7:13But what they can't do is manufacture something that's really critical in every election. Enthusiasm The newest polling illustrates the cost. Maris finds independence breaking for act in 57% to 32%. Now those numbers don't prove that the VEC is the one cause national conditions may explain a decent amount of what's happening here. A Republican shouldn't pretend that candidate selection played no role simply because acknowledging it would be deeply uncomfortable. The VEC spent years mastering the language of the populace right. But the real question is whether enough voters believe that that language actually reflects conviction rather than calculation. If the answer to that question is no, then the problem didn't begin with the polls. And it's not the voters who caused this. It began with the Republican leaders who assumed that saying all the right things, having all the boxes checked, was the same as being trusted by the people who were expected to vote. Ultimately, a lot of people feel like the VEC is another humiliation ritual they have

8:13to go through. Yes, they don't want to vote for a Democrat. No, they don't want to stay home and make sure that a Democrat is in charge. So they'll show up. They'll do their best. But this is not invigorating. This is not exciting. It's a humiliation ritual. Check this box for a guy who hates your culture because if not, someone who hates your culture more might be in charge. This is more than just the lesser of two evils. It's embarrassing. Thanks for watching guys. If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and click like and if you haven't subscribed yet, now is a great time to do so. If you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, and you just subscribe to the Orn Mac and Tireshow on your favorite podcast platform. And when you do leave a rating or review, it really helps with the algorithm magic. If you want to follow me on Twitter, or Gab, or Substack, or Instagram, if you want to watch these videos on rumble or Odyssey, the links to do that are down below in the description. You can pick up my book, The Total State, on Amazon. And of course you can watch all of my shows and read all of my columns at the blaze.

9:15Thanks for watching and as always, I'll talk to you next time.