Vivek Ramaswamy Has a Different Vision for Trumpism From JD Vance

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2024

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vivek Ramaswamy burst onto the national scene last year as a wild card candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Here was a relatively unknown biotech executive with no political experience, pitching himself as someone who could carry on Donald Trump’s movement. Trump ultimately won that primary contest handily, but Ramaswamy was a breakout star. There was even chatter that he might be Trump’s V.P. pick. Trump, of course, ended up choosing JD Vance — Ramaswamy’s friend and former classmate — who has a very different vision for the future of Trumpism. But Ramaswamy believes the future of the Trump movement is still up for grabs and is fighting hard for his camp to win out over the one that Vance represents, including in his new book, “Truths: The Future of America First.” In this conversation, we discuss the two competing visions that Ramaswamy sees as lurking beneath the surface of Trumpism, what he calls “national protectionist” and “national libertarian,” whether his vision is really so different from Paul Ryan-style conservativism, why he thinks these debates within the Republican Party are really deep down about identity and what it means to be an American. Book Recommendations: The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek The Bhagavad Gita The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. In 2020, very few people had heard the name Vivek Ramaswami.
0:27.0	That was before he ran for president as a not that well-known biotech executive and
0:31.6	anti-Woke crusader before he was one of the
0:34.2	breakout stars of the Republican primary a guy who proved to be a lot faster on his
0:40.3	feet at a debate and before a crowd than a lot of the much more experienced
0:44.8	politicians who are competing against him.
0:47.6	I think there's something deeper going on in the Republican Party here and I am upset
0:51.3	about what happened last night. We've become a party of
0:54.6	losers at the end of the day. We've a cancer in the Republican establishment.
0:58.6	So reject this myth that they've been selling you that somebody had a cup of coffee
1:02.2	stint at the
1:02.9	UN and then makes 8 million bucks after has real foreign policy experience.
1:06.7	And then in the summer when Republicans are riding high when Donald Trump seemed a pretty
1:10.9	good bet to win the presidential campaign.
1:14.0	Ramasami went to the National Conservatism Conference, a place where his colleague and sometimes
1:18.8	frenemy, J.D. Vance was also speaking, and gave a pretty interesting speech.
1:23.2	Thank you for the warm welcome.
1:24.8	It's going to be a different kind of speech tonight.
1:27.5	Arguing there was a deep divide in the America First movement.
1:30.8	This is not a rah rah rah speech.
1:31.9	My goal is to actually tonight just illuminate what I view as this growing healthy but existent
1:39.4	rift between what I call the National protectionist direction of the future and a
	...

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