Vivek Ramaswamy
Appearances
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think part of what's happened culturally in the country is we've gotten to this place where we've been told that stay in your lane. You don't have an expert degree in that. Therefore, you can't have an opinion about it. I don't know. I think that's a little bit un-American in terms of the culture of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And yeah, it's one of the things I like about you and why I was looking forward to this conversation too is it's cool to have intellectual interests that span sports to culture to politics to philosophy. And it's not like you just have to be an expert trained in one of those things to be able to engage in it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But actually, maybe, just maybe, you might even be better at each of those things because you're curious about the other. Yeah. The renaissance man, if you will. I think we've lost a little bit of that concept in America, but it's certainly something that is important to me. And this year, it's been kind of cool. After leaving the campaign, I've been doing a wide range of things, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I've been picking up my tennis game again. I've practiced at the Ohio State. You're damn good at tennis. I used to be better, but I'm picking it up again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But it's gotten better, again. It's gotten better recently. I've been practicing with the Ohio State team in the morning. They're like number one in the country or close to it. Now, the guys on the team play, but there's a couple coaches who were recently on the team, one of whom used to be a guy I used to play with in the juniors who invited me out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I hit with them in the mornings alongside the team. My goal, I should be careful here. Oh, no. My hips are telling me this. So I've been playing so many days a week that I set a goal for myself by the end to play in a particular tournament. But we'll see if that happens or not. No, no. But regardless, it's been fun to get back into tennis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The vestiges of what happened even in 1860 in the course of human history isn't that long ago, and that we need to do everything in our power to correct for those imbalances in power in the United States. That's the core view of the modern left. I'm not criticizing it right now. I'm steelmanning it. I'm trying to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I was an executive producer on a movie, something I've never done before. It's called City of Dreams. It's about a story of a young man who was trafficked into the United States. It's a thriller. It's a very cool movie to be a part of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I have actually started a couple of companies, one company in particular that I think is going to be significant this year, guiding some of the other businesses that I've gotten off the ground in the past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So for me, I'm re-energized now where I was in the thick of politics for a full year there and getting a little bit of oxygen outside of politics, doing some things in the private sector has actually given me a renewed sense of energy to get back into driving change through public service.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Thank you, man. One final fact to Thomas Jefferson, whether you cut this or not. Of course. He wrote 16,000 essays in his life, letters, right? So he said, I've written four books in four years. That is nothing compared to how prolific – Anyway, good stuff, man.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Neither of us will ever live up to anything close to Thomas Jefferson. I love your curiosity, man. Thanks for reading the book and appreciated your feedback on it as well. And hopefully we'll do this again sometime. Yep. Thank you, brother. Thanks, dude.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
give you, I think, a good articulation of why the left believes they have a compelling case for the government stepping in to correct for historical or present inequalities. I can give you my counter rebuttal of that. But the best statement of the left, I think that it's the fact that we've been imperfect and living up to those ideals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
In order to fix that, we're going to have to take steps that are severe steps if needed to correct for those historical inequalities before we actually have true equality of opportunity in this country. That's the case for the left wing view in modern America. So what's your criticism of that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So my concern with it is even if that's well motivated, I think that it recreates many of the same problems that they were setting out to solve. I'll give you a really tangible example of that in the present right now. I may be alone amongst prominent conservatives who would say something like this right now, but I think it's true. So I'm going to say it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm actually, even in the last year, last year and a half, seeing actually a rise in anti-black and anti-minority racism in this country, which is a little curious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Right when, over the last 10 years, we got as close to Martin Luther King's promised land as you could envision, a place where you have every American, regardless of their skin color, able to vote without obstruction, a place where you have people able to get the highest jobs in the land without race standing in their way. Why are we seeing that resurgence
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
In part, it's because of, I believe, that left-wing obsession with racial equity over the course of the last 20 years in this country. And so when you take something away from someone based on their skin color – and that's what correcting for prior injustice was supposed to do. The left-wing views are to correct for prior injustice by saying that whether you're a white, straight, cis man –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You have certain privileges that you have to actually correct for. When you take something away from somebody based on their genetics, you actually foster greater animus towards other groups around you. And so the problem with that philosophy is that it creates – there are several problems with it, but the most significant problem that I think everybody can agree we want to avoid –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
is to actually fan the flames of the very divisions that you supposedly wanted to heal. I see that in our context of our immigration policy as well. You think about even what's going on in, I'm from Ohio, I was born and raised in Ohio and I live there today, the controversy in Springfield, Ohio.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I personally don't blame really any of the people who are in Springfield, either the native people who are born and raised in Springfield or even the Haitians who have been moved to Springfield.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But it ends up becoming a divide and conquer strategy and outcome where if you put 20,000 people in a community where 50,000 people where the 20,000 are coming in, don't know the language, are unable to follow the traffic laws, are unable to assimilate. you know there's going to be a reactionary backlash. And so even though that began perhaps with some type of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
some type of charitable instinct, right? Some type of sympathy for people who went through the earthquake in 2010 in Haiti and achieved temporary protective status in the United States. What began with sympathy, what began with earnest intentions actually creates the very division and reactionary response that supposedly we say we wanted to avoid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So that's my number one criticism of that left-wing worldview. Number two is I do believe that merit and equity are actually incompatible. Merit and group quotas are incompatible. You can have one or the other, you can't have both.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And the reason why is no two people, and I think this is a beautiful thing, it's true between you and I, between you, I, and all of our friends or family or strangers or neighbors or colleagues, no two people have the same skillsets. We're each endowed by different gifts. We're each endowed with different talents. And that's the beauty of human diversity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And a true meritocracy is a system in which you're able to achieve the maximum of your God-given potential without anybody standing in your way. But that means necessarily there's going to be differences in outcomes in a wide range of parameters, not just financial, not just money, not just fame or currency or whatever it is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's going to be different outcomes for different people in different spheres of lives. And that's what meritocracy demands. It's what it requires. And so the left's vision of group equity necessarily comes at the cost of meritocracy. And so those are my two reasons for opposing the view is one is it's not meritocratic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But number two is it often even has the effect of hurting the very people they claimed to have wanted to help. And I think that's part of what we're seeing in modern America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yeah, it was great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So let's just take a step back and understand because people use these acronyms and then they start saying it out of muscle memory and stop asking what it actually means. DEI refers to capital D, diversity, equity and inclusion, which is a philosophy adopted by institutions, principally in the private sector, companies, nonprofits and universities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
to say that they need to strive for specific forms of racial, gender, and sexual orientation diversity. And it's not just the D, it's the equity in ensuring that you have equal outcomes as measured by certain group quota targets or group representation targets that they would meet in their ranks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The problem with the DEI agenda is in the name of diversity, it actually has been a vehicle for sacrificing true diversity of thought. So the way the argument goes is this, is that we have to create an environment that is receptive to minorities and minority views.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But if certain opinions are themselves deemed to be hostile to those minorities, then you have to exclude those opinions in the name of the capital D diversity. But that means that you're necessarily sacrificing actual diversity of thought. I can give you a very specific example.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That might sound like, okay, well, is it such a bad thing if an organization doesn't want to exclude people who are saying racist things on a given day? We could debate that. But let's get to the tangible world of how that actually plays out. I, for my part, have not really heard in ordinary America people uttering racial epithets if you're going to a restaurant or in the grocery store.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's not something I've encountered, certainly not in the workplace. But that's a theoretical case. Let's talk about the real world case of how this plays out. There was an instance, it was a case that presented itself before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, one of the government enforcers of the DEI agenda.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And there was a case of a woman who wore a red sweater on Fridays in celebration of veterans and those who had served the military and invited others in the workplace to do the same thing. And they had a kind of affinity group. You could call it that a veteran type affinity group appreciating those who had served. Her son had served as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There was a minority employee at that business who said that he found that to be a microaggression. So the employer asked her to stop wearing said clothes to the office. Well, she still felt like she wanted to celebrate. I think it was Friday was the day of the week where they did it. She still wore the red sweater. She didn't wear it, but she would hang it on the back of her seat, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Put it on the back of her seat at the office. They said, no, no, you can't do that either.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So the irony is in the name of this capital D diversity, which is creating a supposedly welcoming workplace for all kinds of Americans by focusing only on certain kinds of so-called diversity that translates into actually not even a diversity of your genetics, which is what they claim to be solving for, but also a hostility to diversity of thought. And I think that's dangerous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And you're seeing that happen in the last four years across this country. It's been pretty rampant. I think it leaves America worse off. The beauty of America is we're a country where we should be able to have institutions that are stronger from different points of view being expressed. But my number one criticism of the DEI agenda is not even that it's anti-meritocratic. It is anti-meritocratic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But my number one criticism is it's actually hostile to the free and open exchange of ideas by creating often legal liabilities for organizations that even permit certain viewpoints to be expressed. And I think that's the biggest concern.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
He did make that case, and it was a great conversation. And my response to that is, Great. That's a good thing. We don't need a three letter acronym to do that. Right. You don't need special programmatic DEI incentives to do it because companies are always going to seek in a truly free market, which I think we're missing in the United States today for a lot of reasons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But in a truly free market, companies will have the incentive to hire the best and brightest. or else they're going to be less competitive versus other companies. But you don't need ESG, DEI, CSR regimes in part enforced by the government to do it. Today, to be a government contractor, for example, you have to adopt certain racial and gender representation targets in your workforce.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That's not the free market working. So I think you can't have it both ways. Either it's going to be good for companies and companies are going to do what's in their self-interest. That's what capitalists like Mark Cuban and I believe. But if we really believe that, then we should let the market work rather than forcing it to adopt these top-down standards. That's my issue with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
This has less to do with left-wing versus right-wing ideology and more the nature of a bureaucracy is one that looks after its own existence as its top goal. So part of what you've seen with the so-called perpetuation of wokeness in American life is that the bureaucracy has used the appearance of virtue to actually deflect accountabilities for its own failure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So you've seen that in several different spheres of American life. You could even talk about in the military, right? You think about our entry into Iraq after 9-11 had nothing to do with the stated objectives that we had. And I think by all accounts, it was a policy move we regret. Our
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Policy ranks in our foreign policy establishment made a mistake in entering Iraq, invading a country that really, by all accounts, was not at all responsible for 9-11. Nonetheless, if you're part of the U.S. military or you're General Mark Milley, you would rather talk about white rage or systemic racism than you would actually talk about the military's actual substantive failures.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's what I call the practice of blowing woke smoke to deflect accountability. You say the same thing with respect to the educational system. It's a lot easier to claim that, and I'm not the one making this claim, but others have made this claim that math is racist because there are inequitable results on objective tests of mathematics based on different demographic attributes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You can claim using that that math is racist. It's a lot easier to blow that woke smoke than it is to accept accountability for failing to teach math. black kids in the inner city, how to actually do math and fix our public school systems and the zip code coded mechanism for trapping kids in poor communities in bad schools.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I think that in many cases, what these bureaucracies do is they use the appearance of signaling this virtue as a way of not really advancing a social cause, but of strengthening the power of the bureaucracy itself and insulating that bureaucracy from criticism. So in many ways, bureaucracy, I think,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It carves the channels through which much of this woke ideology has flowed over the last several years. And that's why part of my focus has shifted away from just combating wokeness, because that's just a symptom, I think, versus combating actual bureaucracy itself, the rise of this managerial class, the rise of the deep state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We talk about that in the government, but the deep state doesn't just exist in the government. It exists, I think, in every sphere of our lives, from companies to nonprofits to universities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's the rise of what we call the managerial class, the committee class, the people who professionally sit on committees, I think are wielding far more power today than actual creators, entrepreneurs, original ideators, and ordinary citizens alike.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's not even a left or right. It just transcends that. But it's anti-American at its core. So our founding fathers, they were anti-bureaucratic at their core, actually. They were the pioneers, the explorers, the unafraid, right? They were the inventors, the creators.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
People forget this about Benjamin Franklin, who signed the Declaration of Independence, one of the great inventors that we have in the United States as well. He invented the lightning rod. He invented the Franklin stove, which was actually one of the great innovations of the field of thermodynamics. He even invented a number of musical instruments that Mozart and Beethoven went on to use.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That's just Benjamin Franklin. So you think, oh, he's a one-off. Everybody said, okay, he was the one zany founder who was also a creative scientific innovator who happened to be one of the founders of the country. Wrong. It wasn't unique to him. You have Thomas Jefferson. What are you sitting in right now? You're sitting in a, on a swivel chair.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Who invented the swivel chair? Thomas Jefferson? Yes, Thomas Jefferson. Funny enough, he invented the swivel chair while he was writing the Declaration of Independence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
What people don't know, he was an architect. So he worked in Virginia, but the Virginia State Capitol Dome, so the building that's in Virginia today, where the state capital is, that dome was actually designed by Thomas Jefferson as well. So these people weren't people who sat on professional committees. They weren't bureaucrats. They hated bureaucracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Part of Old World England is Old World England was committed to the idea of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy and monarchy go hand in hand. A monarch can't actually administer or govern directly. It requires a bureaucracy, a machine to actually technocratically govern for him. So the United States of America was founded on the idea that we reject that old world view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The old world vision was that we, the people, cannot be trusted to self-govern or make decisions for ourselves. We would burn ourselves off the planet is the modern version of this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
With existential risks like global climate change, if we just leave it to the people and their democratic will, that's why you need professional technocrats, educated elites, enlightened bureaucrats to be able to set the limits that actually protect people from their own worst impulses. That's the old world view. And most nations in human history have operated this way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But what made the United States of America itself, to know what made America great, we have to know what made America itself. What made America itself is we said hell no to that vision. That we, the people, for better or worse, are going to self-govern without the committee class restraining what we do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And the likes of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and I could give you examples of John Adams or Robert Livingston. You go straight down the list of founding fathers who were inventors, creators, pioneers, explorers, who also were the very people who came together to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And so, yeah, this rise of bureaucracy in America in every sphere of life, I view it as anti-American, actually. And I hope that, you know, conservatives and liberals alike can get behind my crusade, certainly, to get in there and shut most of it down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Well, the first thing I will say is you're always taking a risk. Okay, there's no free lunch here, mostly at least. You're always taking a risk. One risk is that you say, I want to reform it gradually. I want to have a grand master plan and get to exactly what the right end state is and then carefully cut with a chisel like a work of art to get there. I don't believe that approach works.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think that's an approach that conservatives have taken for many years. I think it hasn't gotten us very far. And the reason is, If you have like an eight-headed hydra and you cut off one of the heads, it grows right back. The other risk you could take, so that's the risk of not cutting enough. The other risk you could take is the risk of cutting too much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
To say that I'm going to cut so much that I'm going to take the risk of not just cutting the fat, but also cutting some muscle along the way, that I'm going to take that risk. I can't give you option C, which is to say that I'm going to cut exactly the right amount. I'm going to do it perfectly. Okay. You don't know ex ante. You don't know beforehand that it's exactly how it's going to go.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So that's a meaningless claim. It's only a question of which risk you're going to take. I believe in the moment we live in right now, the second risk is the risk we have to be willing to take. And we haven't had, we haven't had a class of politician. I mean, Donald Trump in 2016 was, I think the closest we've gotten. And I think the second term will be even, even closer to what we need.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But short of that, I don't think we've really had a class of politician who has gotten very serious about cutting so much that you're also going to cut some fat, but not only some fat, but also some muscle. That's the risk we have to take. So what would the way I would do it? Seventy five percent headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn't exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed in a true self-governing democracy. It should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules, not an unelected bureaucrats. And that is the single greatest form of economic stimulus we could have in this country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But it is also the single most effective way to restore self-governance in our country as well. And it is the blueprint for, I think, how we save this country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
75%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yes. In fact, I think it's necessary and essential. I think things are depends on depends on what your level of well really is, what you're benchmarking against. America is not built on complacency. We're built on the pursuit of excellence. And are we still the greatest nation on planet Earth? I believe we are. I agree with you on that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But are we great as we could possibly be or even as we have been in the past measured against our own standards of excellence? No, we're not. I think the nation is in a trajectory of decline. That doesn't mean it's the end of the empire yet. But we are a nation in decline right now. I don't think we have to be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But part of that decline is driven by the rise of this managerial class, the bureaucracy, sucking the lifeblood out of the country, sucking the lifeblood out of our innovative culture, our culture of self-governance. So is it possible? Yeah, it's really possible. I mean, I'll tell you one easy way to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm being a little bit glib here, but I think it's not crazy, at least as a thought experiment. get in there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who was not elected, elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but if the people who were not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you're out. If it ends in an even number, you're in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you're in. And if it starts with an odd number, you're out. Boom. That's a 75% reduction. Then literally, stochastically, okay, one of the virtues of that, it's a thought experiment, not a policy prescription, but one of the virtues of that thought experiment is that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You don't have a bunch of lawsuits you're dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination or political viewpoint discrimination. Actually, the reality is you've at mass, you didn't bring the chisel, you brought a chainsaw. I guarantee you do that on day one and do number two, step two on day two on day three.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Nothing will have changed for the ordinary American other than the size of their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, spending a lot less money to operate it. And most people who run a company, especially larger companies, know this. It's 25% of the people who do 80 to 90% of the useful work. These government agencies are no different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So now imagine you could do that same thought experiment, but not just doing it at random, but do it still at large scale while having some metric of screening for those who actually had both the greatest competence as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution. That, I think, would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Now we feel, OK, the people we elect to run the government, they've got the power back. They're running the government again, as opposed to the unelected bureaucrats who wield the power today. It would also stimulate the economy. I mean, the regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the American economy. Most of it's unconstitutional.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
All we require is leadership with a spine to get in there and actually do what conservative presidents have maybe gestured towards and talked about, but have not really effectuated ever in modern history.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Exactly, which you're missing today. Because right now the government would swallow them up. Most competent people feel like that bureaucratic machine will swallow them whole. You clear the decks of 75% of them, real innovators can then show up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yeah, well, look, I think there's opportunities for the very best to have large scale impact. in all kinds of different institutions, in our universities, to K through 12 education, through entrepreneurship. I'm obviously very biased in that regard. I think there's a lot you're able to create that you couldn't create through government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But I do think in the moment that we live in, where our government is as broken as it is and is as responsible for the declining nature of our country, yeah, I think bringing in people who are unafraid, talented, and able to have an impact could make all of the difference. And I agree with you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I don't think actually most people, even most people who say they're motivated by money, I don't think are actually motivated by money. I think most people are driven by a belief that they can do more than they're being permitted to do right now with their skill sets. See, I've never, I'll tell you that. So I've run, I've run a number of companies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And one of the things that I used to ask when I was, you know, I'm not day-to-day involved in them anymore, but as a CEO, I would ask when I did interviews. And the first company I started at Roivant, like for four years in, I mean, we're, you know, company was pretty big by that point.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I would still intent on interviewing every candidate before they joined, screening for the culture of that person. And I can talk a lot more about things we did to build that culture, but- One of the questions I would always ask them naturally just to start a conversation, it's a pretty basic question is, why did you leave your last job or why are you leaving your last job?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'll tell you what I didn't hear very often is that I wasn't paid enough, right? And maybe they'd be shy to tell you that during an interview, but there's indirect ways to signal that. That really wasn't at all, like even a top 10 reason why people were leaving their job. I'll give you what the number one reason was, is that they felt like they were unable to do
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
the true maximum of what their potential was in their prior role. That's the number one reason people leave their job. And, you know, I think... By the way, I would say that I'm saying that in a self-boastful way that we would attract these people. I think that's also true for most of the people who left the company as well, Roivant, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that was true at Roivant, it's true at other companies I've started. I think the number one reason people join companies and number one people leave companies, whether they've been to join mine or to leave mine in the past, have been that they feel like they're able to do more than they're able to with their skillset than that environment permits them to actually achieve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And so I think that's what people hung for. We think about capitalism and true free market capitalism. And we used words earlier like meritocracy. It's about building a system, whether it's in a nation or whether it's even within an organization that allows every individual to flourish and achieve the maximum of their potential.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And sometimes it just doesn't match for an organization where let's say the mission is here and somebody's skill sets could be really well aligned to a different mission. Then the right answer is it's not a negative thing. It's just that that person needs to leave and find their mission somewhere else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But to bring that back to government, I think part of what's happened right now is that the rise of that bureaucracy in so many of these government agencies has actually obfuscated the mission of these agencies. I think if you went to most federal bureaucracies and just asked them, like, what's the mission? I'm just making one up off the top of my head right now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The Department of Health and Human Services. What is the mission of HHS in the United States of America? I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you a coherent answer to that question. I just I just heavily doubt it. And you could fill in the blank for, you know, any range of the Department of Commerce.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I mean, it could go straight down the list of each of these other ones. What is the mission of this organization? You could say for the U.S. military, what's the purpose of the U.S. military, the Department of Defense? I can give you one. I think it is to win wars and more importantly, through its strength to avoid wars. That's it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Well, OK, if that's the mission, then, you know, OK, it's not tinkering around and messing around in some foreign conflict where we kind of feel like it sometimes and other ones where we don't. And who decides that? I don't really know. But whoever the people are that decide that we follow those orders. No, our mission is to protect the United States of America, to win wars and to avoid wars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Boom. Those three things. What does protecting the United States of America mean? Number one, the homeland of the United States of America and the people who reside there. OK, that's a clear mission.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I mean, the Department of Health and Human Services maybe could be a reasonable mission to say that I want to make America the healthiest country on planet Earth, and we will develop the metrics and meet those metrics. And that's the goal of the Department of HHS, to set policies or at least to implement policies that best achieve that goal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But you can't – and maybe that's the right statement of the mission. Maybe it's not. But one of the things that happens is when you're governed by the committee class, it dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it's a company or a government agency or a bureaucracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And once you've done that, then you lose the ability to track the best and the brightest because in order for somebody to achieve the maximum of their potential, they have to know what it's towards. There has to be a mission in the first place. Then you're not getting the best and brightest. You get more from the committee class, and that becomes – a self-perpetuating downward spiral.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that is what the blob of the federal bureaucracy really looks like today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's what it does. I mean, that's just by the nature of a bureaucracy. It creates sand in the gears to slow down whatever the other process was. Is there some room for that somewhere in certain contexts? Sure. It's like a defensive mechanism that's designed to reduce dynamism. But I think when you...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
when that becomes cancerous in its scope, it then actually kills the host itself, whether that's a school, whether that's a company, whether that's a government. And so the way I think about it, Lex, is there's sort of a balance of distributed power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I don't mean power in the Foucault sense of social power, but I mean just sort of power in the sense of the ability to affect relevant change in any organization between what you could call the founder class, the creator class, the everyday citizen, the stakeholder class, and then the managerial class. And there's a role for all three of them, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You could have the constituents of an organization, say in a constitutional republic, that's the citizen. You could have the equivalent of the creator class, the people who create things in that polity. And then you have the bureaucratic class that's designed to administer and serve as a liaison between the two.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm not denying that there's some role somewhere for people who are in that managerial class.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But right now, in this moment in American history, and I think it's been more or less true for the last century, but it's grown, starting with Woodrow Wilson's advent of the modern administrative state, metastasizing through FDR's New Deal and what was required to administer it, blown over and metastasizing further through LBJ's
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Great society and everything that's happened since, even aided and abetted by Republican presidents along the way, like Richard Nixon, has created a United States of America where that committee class, both in and outside the government and our culture, wields far too much influence and power relative to the everyday citizen stakeholder and to the creators who are in many ways independent.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
constrained, hamstrung, shackled in a straitjacket from achieving the maximum of their own potential contributions. And, you know, I certainly feel that myself. I, you know, I probably identify as being a member of that creator class most closely. It's just what I've done. I create things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think we live in an environment in the United States of America where we're still probably the best country on earth, where that creator has that shot. So that's the positive side of it. But one where we are far more constrictive to the creator class than we have been when we've been at our best. And that's where I want to see change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yeah, so I go back to this question of mission, right? A lot of people who make arguments for the Department of Education are aren't aware why the Department of Education was created in the first place, actually. So that might be a useful place to start, is that this thing was created. It had a purpose, presumably. What was that purpose?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Might be at least a relevant question to ask before we decide what are we doing with it or not. What was the purpose of this thing that we created? It's not a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It, to me, seems like a highly relevant question, yet in this discussion about government reform, it's interesting how eager people are to skip over that question and just to talk about, okay, but we got the status quo and it's just going to be disruptive versus asking the question of, okay, this institution was created. It had an original purpose. Is that purpose still relevant?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Is this organization at all fulfilling that purpose today? To me, those are some relevant questions to ask. So let's talk about that for the Department of Education. Its purpose was relevant at that time. Which was to make sure that localities and particularly states were not siphoning dollars, taxpayer dollars away from predominantly black school districts to predominantly white ones.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that was not a theoretical concern at the time. It was happening or there was at least some evidence that that was happening in certain states in the south. And so you may say you don't like the federal solution. You may say you like the federal solution, but like it or not, that was the original purpose of the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Department of Education to make sure that from a federal perspective, states were not systematically disadvantaging black school districts over predominantly white ones. However noble and relevant that purpose may have been six decades ago, it's not a relevant purpose today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's no evidence today of states intentionally mapping out which are the black versus white school districts and siphoning money in one direction versus another. To the contrary, one of the things we've learned is that the school districts in the inner city, many of which are predominantly black, actually spend more money per student than other school districts. Thank you very much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So against that backdrop, the Department of Education has instead extrapolated that original purpose of what was a racial equality purpose to instead implement a different vision of racial equity through the ideologies that they demand in the content of the curriculum that these public schools actually teach.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So Department of Education funding, so federal funding accounts for about, you know, I'm giving you round numbers here, but around 10% of the funding of most public schools across the country. But that comes with strings attached. So in today's Department of Education, this didn't happen back in 1970, but it's happening today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Ironically, it's funny how these things change with the bureaucracies that fail. They blow smoke to cover up for their own failures. What happens with today's Department of Education? They effectively say you don't get that funding unless you adopt certain goals deemed at achieving racial or gender equity goals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And in fact, they also intervene in the curriculum where there's evidence of schools in the Midwest or in the Great Plains that have been denied funding because Department of Education funding so long as they have certain subjects like archery. There was one instance of a school. that had archery in its curriculum. I find that to be pretty interesting, actually.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think you have different kinds of physical education. This is one that combines mental focus with physical aptitude. But hey, maybe I'm biased. Doesn't matter whether you like archery or not.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I don't think it's the federal government's job to withhold funding from a school because they include something in their curriculum that the federal government deems inappropriate, where that locality found that to be a relevant locus of education. So what you see then is an abandonment of the original purpose that's long past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You don't have this problem that the Department of Education was originally formed to solve of siphoning money from black school districts to white school districts and laundering that effectively in public funds. That doesn't exist anymore. So they find new purposes instead, creating a lot more damage along the way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So you asked me to steel man it, and could I say something constructive rather than just, you know, pounding down on the other side? One way to think about this is for a lot of these agencies, Were many of them formed with a positive intention at the outset? Yes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Where that positive intention existed, I'm still a skeptic of creating bureaucracies, but if you're going to create one, at least make it, what should we call it, a task force. Make it a task force. A task force versus an agency means after it's done, you celebrate, you've done your work, pat yourself on the back and then move on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Rather than creating a standing bureaucracy, which actually finds things to do after it has already solved or addressed the first reason it was born in the first place. And I think we don't have enough of that in our culture. I mean, even if you have a company that's generated tons of cash flow. And it solved a problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Let's say it's a biopharmaceutical company that developed a cure to some disease. And the only thing people knew at that company was how to develop a cure to that disease. And they generated a boatload of cash from doing it. At a certain point, you could just give it to your shareholders and close up shop. And that's actually a beautiful thing to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You don't see that happen enough in the American consciousness, in the American culture of when an institution has achieved its purpose, celebrate it and then move on. And I think that that culture in our government would result in a vastly restrained scope of government rather than today. It's a one-way ratchet. Once you cause it to come into existence, you cause new things to come into existence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But the old one that came into existence continues to persist and exist as well. And that's where you get this metastasis over the last century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So if the question is what should government do that the private sector cannot, I'll give you one. Protect our border. I mean, capitalism, it's never going to be the job of capitalists or never going to be the capability or inclination of capitalists to preserve a national border.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think a nation, it's literally, I think one of the chapters of this book, okay, a nation without borders is not a nation. It's almost a tautology. An open border is not a border. Capitalism is not going to solve that. What's going to solve that is a nation. Part of the job of the federal government is to protect the homeland of its nation, in this case, the United States of America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That's an example of a proper function of the federal government to provide physical security to its citizens. Another proper role of that federal government is to look after, or in this case, could be state government. To make sure that private parties cannot externalize their costs onto somebody else without their consent. It's a fancy way economists would use to describe it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
What does that mean? It means if you go dump your chemicals in somebody else's river, then you're liable for that. It's not that, okay, I'm a capitalist and so I want to create things and I'm going to do hell or high water whether or not that harms people around me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The job of a proper government is to make sure that you protect the rights of those who may be harmed by those who are pursuing their own rights through a system of capitalism. In seeking prosperity, you're free to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But if you're hurting somebody else without their consent in the process, the government is there to enforce what is really just a different form of enforcing a private property right. So I would say that those are two central functions of government is to preserve national boundaries and the national security of a homeland.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And number two is to protect and preserve private property rights and the enforcement of those private property rights. And I think at that point, you've described about 80 to 90% of the proper role of a government. What about infrastructure? Look, I think that most infrastructure can be dealt with through the private sector. I mean, you can get into specifics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You could have infrastructure that's specific to national security. No, I do think that military industrial base is essential to provide national security. That's a form of infrastructure. I don't think you could rely exclusively on the private sector to provide the optimal level of that protection to a nation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But interstate highways, I think you could think about whether or not that's a common good that everybody benefits from, but nobody has the incentive to create. I think you could make an argument for the existence of interstate highways.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think you could also make powerful arguments for the fact that actually you could have enough private sector co-ops that could cause that to come into existence as well. But I'm not dogmatic about this, but broadly speaking, 80 to 90% of the goal of the federal government
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm not going to say 100, 80, 90% of the goal of the existence of a federal government should be to a government period should be to protect national boundaries and provide security for the people who live there and to protect the private property rights of the people who reside there. If we restore that, I think we're well on our way to a revival of what our founding fathers envisioned.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think many of them would give you the same answer that I just did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think here, if it goes closer to municipalities and to states, I'm fine with that being a locus for people determining as, for example, let's just say school districts are taxed at the local level, for that to be a matter for municipalities and townships to actually decide democratically how they actually want that governed, whether it's balance between a public school district versus making that same money available to families in the form of vouchers or other forms of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
ability to educational savings accounts or whichever mechanism it is to opt out of that. If that's done locally, I'll have views on that that tend to go further in the direction of true educational choice and diversity of choice, the implementation of charter schools, the granting of state charters, or even lowering the barriers to granting one. I favor those kinds of policies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But if we've gotten the federal government out of it, that's achieved 75% of what I think we need to achieve that I'm focused on solving other problems and leave that to the states and municipalities to cover from there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Well, I'm, of course, biased because Elon and I had discussed that for the better part of the last year and a half. So I think it's a great idea. It's something that's very consistent with the core premise of my presidential candidacy. I got to know him as I was running for U.S. president in a couple of events that he came to, and then we built a friendship after that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So obviously, I think it's a great idea. Who do you think is more hardcore on the cutting, you or Elon? Well, I think Elon is pretty hardcore. I said 75%. of the federal bureaucrats. And while I was running for president, he said, you need to put at least 75%. So I agree with him. I think it'd be a fun competition to see who ends up more hardcore.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I don't think there's someone out there who's going to be more hardcore than here I would be. And the reason is, I think we share in common A willingness to take the risk and see what happens. I mean, the sun will still rise in the east and set in the west. That much I guarantee you. Is there going to be some broken glass and some damage? Yes, there is. There's no way around that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But once you're willing to take that risk, then it doesn't become so scary anymore. And here's the thing, Lex. It's easy to say this. Let's talk about where the rubber hits the road here. Even in second Trump term, this would be the discussion. President Trump and I have had this conversation, but I think we would continue to have this conversation is,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
where does it rank on our prioritization list? Because there's always going to be a trade-off. If you have a different policy objective that you want to achieve, a good policy objective, whatever that is, right? You could talk about immigration policy. You could talk about economic policy. There are other policy objectives. You're going to trade off a little bit in the short run
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
effectiveness of your ability to carry out that policy goal, if you're also committed to actually thinning out the federal government by 75%, because there's just going to be some clunkiness, right? And there's just going to be frictional costs for that level of cut. So the question is, where does that rank on your prioritization list?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
To pull that off, to pull off a 75% reduction in the size and scale of the federal government, the regulatory state, and the headcount, I think that only happens if that's your top priority.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You can do it at a smaller scale, but at that scale, it only happens if that's your top priority, because then as president, you're in a position to say, I know in the super short run that might even make it a little bit harder for me to do this other thing that I want to do and use the regulatory state to do it. But I'm going to pass on that. I'm going to pass that up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm going to bear that hardship and inconvenience because I know this other goal is more important on the scale of decades and centuries for the country. So it's a question of prioritization. And certainly my own view is that now is a moment where that needs to be a top priority for saving this country. And if there's one thing about my campaign, I was if I was to do it again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I would be even clearer about because I talked about a lot of things in the campaign and we can cover a lot of that, too. But if there's one thing that I care about more than anything else is dismantling that bureaucracy and more of moreover, it is a. It's an assault and a crusade on the nanny state itself. And that nanny state presents itself in several forms. There's the entitlement state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That's the welfare state presents itself in the form of the regulatory state. That's what we're talking about. And then there's the foreign nanny state where effectively we are subsidizing other countries that aren't paying their fair share of protection or other resources we provide them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
If I was to summarize my ideology in a nutshell, it is to terminate the nanny state in the United States of America in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state. Once we've done that, we've revived the republic that I think would make George Washington proud.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I think the nanny state, I'm against it overall. I'm against the foreign policy nanny state as well. Let me start from that as the starting off point, and then I'll tell you about my views on the DOD and our defense. First of all, I think that and I think that it was easy for many people from the neocon school of thought to caricature my views with the media at their side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But actually, my own view is. If it's in the interest of the United States of America to provide certain levels of protection to U.S. allies, we can do that as long as those allies actually pay for it. And I think it's important for two reasons. The less important reason. still important reason. The less important reason is it's still money for us, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's not like we're swimming in a cash surplus right now. We're at $34 trillion national debt and growing. And I think pretty soon the interest payments are going to be the largest line item in our own federal budget. So it's not like we have money willy-nilly to just hand over for free. That's the less important reason though. The more important reason is that it makes sure that our allies are
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
have actual skin in the game to not have skewed incentives to actually enter conflicts where they're not actually bearing the full cost of those conflicts. So take NATO, for example, most NATO countries, literally a majority of NATO countries today do not pay or contribute 2% of their GDP to to their own national defense, which is supposedly a requirement to be in NATO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So majority of NATO countries are failing to meet their basic commitment to be in NATO in the first place. Germany particularly is, I think, arbitraging the hell out of the United States of America. And I don't think that I'm not going to be some sort of you know, shrill voice here saying, so therefore we should not be supporting any allies or providing security blankets. No, I'm not.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm not going in that direction. What I would say is you got to pay for it, right? Pay for your fisher, A, because we're not swimming in excess money ourselves. But B is it tells us that you actually have skin in the game for your own defense, which actually then makes nations far more prudent in the risks that they take, whether or not they enter war versus if somebody else is paying for it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And somebody else is providing our security guarantee. Hey, I might as well, you know, take the gamble and see where I end up at the end of a war versus the restraint that that imposes on the decision making of those allies. So now let's bring this home to the Department of Defense. I think the top goal of the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
defense policy establishment should be to provide for the national defense of the United States of America. And the irony is that's what we're actually doing most poorly. We're not really using other than the Coast Guard. We're not really using the U.S. military to prevent crossings at our own southern border and crossings at our other borders.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
In fact, the United States of America, our homeland, I believe is less secure today than it has been in a very long time. Vulnerable to threats from hypersonic missiles where China and Russia, Russia certainly has capabilities in excess of that of the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Missiles, hypersonic means faster than the speed of sound that could hit the United States, including those carrying nuclear warheads. We are more vulnerable to super EMP attacks, electromagnetic pulse attacks that could, you know, without exaggeration, some of this could be from other nations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Some of this could even be from solar flares, cause significant mass casualty in the United States of America. The electric grid's gone. It's not an exaggeration to say if that happened, planes would be falling out of the sky because our chips really depend on those electromagnetic, well, will be affected by those electromagnetic pulses.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I know this, oh, people start yawning and say, okay, boring stuff, super EMP, cyber, whatever. No, actually, it is pretty relevant to whether or not you actually are facing the risk of not getting your insulin because your refrigerator doesn't work anymore or your food can't be stored or your car or your ability to fly in an airplane. is impaired. Okay.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I think that these are serious risks where our own national defense spending has been wholly inadequate. So I'm not one of these people that says, oh, we decreased versus increased national defense spending. We're not spending it in the right places. The number one place we need to be spending it is actually in protecting our national defense. And I think protecting our own physical homeland.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think we actually need an increase in spending on protecting our own homeland.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But that is different from the agenda of foreign interventionism and foreign nanny state ism for its own stake, where we should expect more and demand more of our allies to provide for their own national defense, and then provide the relevant security guarantees to allies where that actually advances the interests of the United States of America. So that's what I believe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think this process has been corrupted by what Dwight Eisenhower famously in his farewell address called the military-industrial complex in the United States. But I think it's it's bigger than just the you know, I think it's easy to tell the tales of the financial corruption.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's a kind of cultural corruption and conceit that just because certain number of people in that expert class have a belief that their belief happens to be the right one because they can scare you with what the consequence would be if you don't follow their advice. One of the beauties of the United States is, at least in principle, we have civilian control of the military.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The person who we elect to be the U.S. president is the one that actually is the true commander in chief. I have my doubts of whether it operates that way. I think it is quite obvious that Joe Biden is not a functioning commander in chief of the United States of America. Yet on paper, supposedly, we still are supposed to call him that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But at least in theory, we're supposed to have civilian control of the U.S. military and And I think that one of the things that that leader needs to do is to ask the question of, again, the mission. What's the purpose of this U.S. military in the first place? At the top of the list should be to protect the homeland and the people who actually live here, which we're failing to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So that's where I land on that question.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's a good question. I would say in his case, it's particularly accentuated because it's both. In his case, I don't think anybody in America anymore believes that Joe Biden is the functioning president of the United States of America. How could he be? He wasn't even sufficiently functioning to be the candidate after a debate that was held in June.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's no way he's going to be in a position to make the most important decisions on a daily and demanding basis to protect the leading nation in the world. Now, More generally, though, I think we have a deeper problem that even when it's not Joe Biden, in general, the people we elect to run the government haven't really been the ones running the government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's been the unelected bureaucrats and the bureaucratic deep state underneath that's really been making the decisions. I've done business in a number of places. I've traveled to Japan. There's an interesting corporate analogy. Sometimes if you get outside of politics, people can—I find— listen and pay attention a little bit more because of politics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's so fraught right now that if you start talking to somebody who disagrees with you about the politics of it, you're just butting heads but not really making progress. So let's just make the same point but go outside of politics for a second. So I was traveling Japan. I was having a late night dinner with a CEO of a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And, you know, it takes a while to really get him to open up, culturally speaking, Japan, you know, a couple nights of karaoke and, you know, whatnot, maybe late night restaurant, whatever it is. We built a good enough relationship where he was very candid with me. He said, I'm the CEO of the company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I could go and find the head of a research unit and tell him, okay, this is a project we're no longer working on as a company. We don't want to spend money on it. We're going to spend money somewhere else. And he'll look me in the eye and he'll say, yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'll come back six months later and find that they're spending exactly the same amount of money on those exact same projects.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I'll tell them, no, we agreed. I told you that you're not going to spend money on this project. And we have to stop now. Should have stopped six months ago. Get a slap on the wrist for it. He says, yes, sir. I'm sorry. Yes. No, no, of course. That's correct. Come back six months later, same person is spending the same money on the same project. And here's why.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Historically in Japan, and I should say in Japan, this is changing now. It's changing now. But historically, until very recently, and even to an extent now, it's near impossible to fire people. So if somebody works for you and you can't fire them, that means they don't actually work for you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It means in some deeper perverse sense, you work for them because you're responsible for what they do without any authority to actually change it. So I think most people who have traveled in Japan and Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s and 2000s and 2010s and maybe even some vestiges in the 2020s wouldn't really dispute what I just told you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Now, we're bringing back to the more contentious terrain. I think that's basically how things have worked in the executive branch of the federal government of the United States of America. You have these so-called civil service protections on the books.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Now, if you really read them carefully, I think that there are areas to provide daylight for a truly constitutionally well-trained president to act. But apart from those, that's a contrarian view that I have that bucks conventional wisdom. But apart from that caveat, in general, the conventional view has been the U.S. president can't fire these people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's 4 million federal bureaucrats, 99.9% of them can't be touched by the person who the people who elected to run the executive branch can't even fire those people. It's like the equivalent of that Japanese CEO. And so that culture exists every bit as much in the federal bureaucracy of the United States of America as it did in Japanese corporate culture through the 1990s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that's a lot of what's wrong with not just the way that our Department of Defense is run and our foreign policy establishment is run, but I think it applies to a lot of the domestic policy establishment as well. And to come back to the core point, how are we going to save this republic? This is the debate in the conservative movement right now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So this is a little bit, maybe a little bit spicy for some Republicans to sort of swallow right now. And my top focus is making sure that we win the election. But let's just move the ball forward a little bit and skate to where the puck is going here. OK, yes, let's say we win the election all as well and dandy. OK, what's the philosophy that determines how we govern?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's a little bit of a fork in the road amongst conservatives where there are those who believe that the right answer now is to use that regulatory state and use those levers of power to advance our own pro-conservative, pro-American, pro-worker goals. And I'm sympathetic to all of those goals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But I don't think that the right way to do it is to create a conservative regulatory state that replaces a liberal regulatory state. I think the right answer is actually to get in there and shut it down. I don't want to replace the left wing nanny state with a right wing nanny state. I want to get in there and actually dismantle the nanny state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think it has been a long time in the United States, maybe ever in modern history that we've had A conservative leader at the national level who makes it their principal objective to dismantle the nanny state in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state, and the foreign policy nanny state. That was a core issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
focus of my candidacy, one of the things that I wish, and this is on me, not anybody else, that I should have done better was to make that more crystal clear as a focus without getting distracted by a lot of the shenanigans, let's just say, that happen as sideshows during a presidential campaign, but call that a lesson learned because I do think it's what the country needs now more than ever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Can I say a word about the conditions he was operating in? Because I think that's why I'm far more excited for this time around. is that a lot has changed in the legal landscape. So Donald Trump did not have the Supreme Court backdrop in 2016 that he does today. So there's some really important cases that have come down from the Supreme Court. One is West Virginia versus EPA.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think it's probably the most important case of our generation. In 2022, that came down and said that if Congress has not passed a rule into law itself through the halls of Congress, And it relates to what they call a major question, a major policy or economic question. It can't be done by the stroke of a pen by a regulator, an unelected bureaucrat either.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That quite literally means most federal regulations today are unconstitutional. Then this year comes down a different big one, another big one from the Supreme Court in the Loper-Bright case, which held that historically for the last 50 years in this country, The doctrine has been, it's called Chevron deference.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's a doctrine that says that federal courts have to defer to an agency's interpretation of the law. They now toss that out the window and say, no, no, no, the federal courts no longer have to defer to an agency's interpretation of what the law actually is. The combination of those two cases is seismic in its impact for the regulatory state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's also another great case that came down was SEC versus Jarkesey. And the SEC is one of these agencies that embodies everything we're talking about here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The SEC, among other agencies, has tribunals inside that not only do they write the rules, not only do they enforce those rules, they also have these judges inside the agency that also interpret the rules and determine and dole out punishments. That doesn't make sense if you believe in separation of powers in the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So the Supreme Court put an end to that and said that that practice at the SEC is unconstitutional. Actually, as a side note, the Supreme Court has said countless practices and rules written by the SEC, the EPA, the FTC in recent years were outright unconstitutional. Think about what that means for a constitutional republic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That supposedly these law enforcement agencies, the courts have now said, especially this year, The courts have now said that their own behaviors actually break the law. So the very agencies entrusted with supposedly enforcing the law are actually behaving with utter, blatant disregard for the law itself. That's un-American. It's not tenable in the United States of America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But thankfully, we now have a Supreme Court that recognizes that. So, you know, whether or not we have a second Trump term, well, that's up to the voters, but even whether or not that now takes advantage of that backdrop the Supreme Court has given us to actually gut the regulatory state. We'll find out. I'm optimistic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I certainly think it's the best chance that we've had in a generation in this country. And that's a big part of why I'm supporting Donald Trump and why I'm going to do everything in my power to help him. But I do think it is going to take a spine of steel to see that through. And then after we've taken on the regulatory state, I think that's the next step.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But I do think there's this broader project of dismantling the nanny state in all of its forms, the entitlement state, the regulatory state and the foreign policy in any state. Three word answer for us to summarize my worldview and my presidential campaign in three words, shut it down. Shut it down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think there's one other factor. So you're right to point. I mean, the legal backdrop is a valid and understandable excuse and reason. I think there are other factors at play too. So I think there's something to be said for never having been in government, showing up there the first time, and you're having to understand
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The rules of the road as you're operating within them and also having to depend on people who actually aren't aligned with your policy vision, but tell you to your face that they are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And so I think that's one of the things that I've admired about President Trump is he's actually been very open about that, very humble about that to say that there's a million learnings from that first term that make him ambitious and more ambitious in that second term. But everything I'm talking to you about, this is what needs to happen in the country. It's not specific to Donald Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It lays out what needs to be done in the country. There's the next four years. Donald Trump is our last best hope and chance for moving that ball forward. But I think that the vision I'm laying out here is one that hopefully goes even beyond just the next two or four years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
of really fixing a century's worth of mistakes, I think we're gonna fix a lot of them in the next four years of Donald Trump's president. But if you have a century's worth of mistakes that have accumulated with the overgrowth of the entitlement state in the US, I think it's gonna take, you know, probably the better part of a decade, at least to actually fix them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We've got two candidates, right? People face a choice. This is a relevant election. One of my goals is to speak to people who may not agree with 100% of what Donald, who do not agree with 100% of what Donald Trump says. And I can tell them, you know what? I don't agree with 100% of what he says. And I can tell you, as somebody who ran against him for US president, that right now he is
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
When I say the last best hope, I mean in this cycle, the last best hope that we have for dismantling that bureaucratic class. And, you know, I think that I'm also open about the fact that it's going to take, this is a long run project, but we have the next step to actually take over the next few years. That's kind of where I land on it. I mean, you talked to him, I guess, a few weeks ago.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I saw you had a podcast with him, right? What was your impression about his preparedness to do it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Border, laser focused on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Just as you've clearly highlighted, we share the same priority with respect to the southern border. And that's that's those are near term fixes that we can hit out of the park in the first year. But at the same time, I think we got to think also on decade long time horizon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So my own view is I think that I think that he it is my conviction and belief that he does care about dismantling that federal bureaucracy, certainly more so than any Republican nominee we have had in certainly in my lifetime.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But I do think that there are going to be competing schools of thought where some will say, okay, well, we want to create a right-wing entitlement state, right, to shower federal subsidies on favored industries while keeping them away from disfavored industries and new bureaucracies to administer them. And, you know, I don't come from that school of thought.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I don't want to see the bureaucracy expand in a pro-conservative direction. I want to see the bureaucracy shrink in every direction. And, you know, I do think that from my conversation with Donald Trump, I believe that he is well aligned with this vision of shrinking bureaucracy. But that's a longer term project.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
No, you, you have to have this spine of steel to cut through what that short term advice is you're getting. And I'll tell you, certainly, I intend to do whatever I can for this country, both in the next four years and beyond. But my voice on this will be crystal clear. And President Trump knows that's my view on it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I believe he shares it deeply, is that all else equal, getting there and shut down as much of the excess bureaucracy as we can, do it as quickly as possible. And that's a big part of how we save our country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Sure. And so it goes back to that original discussion we had is what are the few proper roles of the federal government? I gave you two. One is of the government period. Right. One is to protect the national borders and sovereignty of the United States, and two is to protect private property rights. There's a lot else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Most of what the government's doing today, both at the federal and state level, is something other than those two things. But in my book, those are the two things that are the proper function of government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So for everything else the federal government should not be doing, the one thing they should be doing is to protect the homeland of the United States of America and the sovereignty and sanctity of our national borders. So in that domain, that's mission aligned with a proper purpose for the federal government. I think we're a nation founded on the rule of law.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I say this is the kid of legal immigrants. That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And in some ways, if I was to summarize a formula for saving the country over the next four years, it would be a tale of two mass deportations. The mass deportations of millions of illegals who are in this country and should not be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And then the mass deportation of millions of unelected federal bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C., Now, all in all, you could say that those are intention, but I think that the reality is anything outside of the scope of what the core function of the government is, which is protecting borders and protecting private property rights, that's really where I think the predominant cuts need to be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And if you look at the number of people who are looking after the border, it's not even 0.1% of the federal employee base today. So 75% isn't 99.99%, it's 75%, which still leaves that... it would still be a tiny fraction of the remaining 25%, which I actually think needs to be more rather than less. So it's a good question, but that's sort of where I land on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
When it's a proper role of the federal government, great. Act and actually do your job. The irony is 99.9999% of those resources are going to functions other than the protection of private property rights and the protection of our national physical protection.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Fair enough. And I would call those even not even criticisms, but just thoughtful questions, right? Even if somebody who's really aligned with doing this, those are thoughtful questions to ask. So I do want to say something about this point on how we think about the breakage of the rule of law in other contexts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There are 350,000 mothers who are in prison in the United States today who committed crimes and were convicted of them. They didn't take their kids with them to those prisons either. Right. So we face difficult tradeoffs in all kinds of contexts as it relates to the enforcement of law.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I just want to make that basic observation against the backdrop of if we're a nation founded on the rule of law. That we acknowledge that there are trade-offs to enforcing the law. And we've acknowledged that in other contexts. I don't think that we should have a special exemption for saying that somehow we weigh the other way when it comes to the issue of the border.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We're a nation founded on the rule of law. We enforce laws that has costs, that has trade-offs, but it's who we are. So that backdrop is, and the easiest fact I can cite is 350,000 or so mothers who are in prison and did not take their kids to prison with them. Is that bad? Is it undesirable for kids to grow up without those 350,000 mothers? It is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But it's a difficult situation created by people who violated the law and faced the consequences of it, which is also a competing and important priority in the country. So that's in the domestic context. As it relates to this question of mass deportations, let's just get very practical because all that was theoretical. Very practically, there's ways to do this, starting with
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
People have already broken the law. People have not just broken the law of entering, but are committing other crimes while already here in the United States. That's a clear case for an instant mass deportation. You have a lot of people who haven't integrated into their communities. You think about the economic impact of this. A lot of people are in detention already.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
A lot of those people should be immediately returned to their country of origin or at least what is called a safe third country. So safe third country means even if somebody is claiming to seek asylum from political persecution, they're Well, move them to another country that doesn't have to be the United States of America that they passed through, say Mexico, before actually coming here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Other countries around the world are doing this. Australia is detaining people. They don't let them out and live a normal, joyful life because they came to the country. They detain them until their case is adjudicated. Well, the rates of fraud in Australia of what people lie about what their conditions are is way lower now than in the United States because people respond to those incentives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I think that in some ways, people make this sound much bigger and scarier than it needs to be. I've ever taken a deeply pragmatic approach. And the North Star for me is I want the policy that helps the United States citizens who are already here. What's that policy? Clearly, that's going to be a policy that includes a large number of deportations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think by definition, it's going to be the largest mass deportation in American history. Sounds like a punchline at a campaign rally, but actually it's just a factual statement that says if we've had the by far largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history, it just stands to reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's logic that, okay, if we're going to fix that, we're going to have the largest mass deportation in American history. And we can be rational. Start with people who are breaking the law in other ways here in the United States. Start with people who are already in detention or entering detention now. That comes at no cost and strict benefit. There isn't even a little bit of an economic trade-off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Then you get to areas where you would say, okay, the costs actually continue to outweigh the benefits. And that's exactly the way our policy should be guided here. I want to do it in as respectful and as humane of a manner as possible. I mean, the reality is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think one of the things we got to remember, give you the example I gave with the Haitian case in Springfield, a town that I spent a lot of time in growing up in Ohio. I live about an hour from there today. I don't blame the individual Haitians who came here. I'm not saying that they're bad people, because in that particular case, those weren't even people who broke the law in coming here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
They came as part of a program called Temporary Protective Status. Now, the operative word there is the first one, temporary protection. They have been all kinds of lawsuits. There have been all kinds of lawsuits for people who even 8, 10, 12, 14 years after the earthquake in Haiti, where many of them came, when they're going to be removed, their allegations of racial discrimination or otherwise.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
No, temporary protective status means it's temporary. And we're not abandoning the rule of law when we send them back. We're abandoning the rule of law when we let them stay. Now, if that has a true benefit to the United States of America, economically or otherwise, go through the paths that allow somebody to enter this country for economic reasons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But don't do it through asylum based claims or temporary protected status. I think one of the features of our immigration system right now is it is built on a lie and it incentivizes lying. The reason is the arguments for keeping people in the country, if those are economic reasons, but the people actually entered using claims of asylum or refugee status, those two things don't match up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So just be honest about what our immigration system actually is. I think we do need dramatic reforms to the legal immigration system to select purposely for the people who are going to actually improve the United States of America. I think there are many people, I know some of them, right? I gave a story of one guy who I met who is educated at our best universities or among our best universities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
He went to Princeton. He went to Harvard Business School. He has a great job in the investment community. He was a professional tennis player. He was a concert pianist. He could do a Rubik's Cube in less than a minute. I'm not making this stuff up. These are hard facts. He can't get a green card in the United States. He's been here for 10 years or something like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
He asked me for the best advice I could give him. I unfortunately could not give him the actual best advice, which would be to just take a and claim to be somebody who is seeking asylum in the United States. That would have been morally wrong advice, so I didn't give it to him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But practically, if you were giving him advice, that would be the best advice that you actually could give somebody, which is a broken system on both sides. People who are going to make those contributions to the United States and pledge allegiance to the United States and speak our language and assimilate, we should have a path for them to be able to add value to the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yet they're not the ones who are getting in. It's actually the people, our immigration system selects for people who are willing to lie. That's what it does. Selects for people who are willing to see they're seeking refugee status or seeking asylum when in fact they're not. And then we have policymakers who lie after the fact using economic justifications to keep them here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But if it was an economic justification, that should have been the criteria used to bring them in the first place, not this illusion of asylum or refugee status. There was a case actually even the New York Times reported on this, believe it or not, of a woman who came from Russia. fleeing Vladimir Putin's intolerant LGBT, anti-LGBTQ regime. She was fleeing persecution by the evil man Putin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
She came here and eventually when she was pressed on the series of lies, it came out that she was crying finally when she broke down and admitted this. She was like, I'm not even gay. I don't even like gay people. That's what she said.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And yet she was pretending to be some sort of LGBTQ advocate who was persecuted in Russia when in fact it was just somebody who was seeking better economic conditions in the United States. I'm not saying you're wrong to seek better economic conditions in the United States, but you are wrong to lie about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that's what you're seeing a lot of people even in this industry of sort of quote unquote tourism to the United States. They're having their kids in the United States. They go back to their home country, but their kids enjoy birthright citizenship. That's built on a lie. You have people claiming to suffer from persecution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
In fact, they're just working in the United States and then living in these relative mansions in parts of Mexico or Central America after they've spent four or five years making money here. Just abandon the lie. Let's just have an immigration system built on honesty. Just tell the truth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
If the argument is that we need more people here for economically filling jobs, I'm skeptical the extent to which a lot of those arguments actually end up being true. But let's have that debate in the open rather than having it through the back door saying that it's refugee and asylum status when we know it's a lie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And then we justify it after the fact by saying that that economically helps the United States cut the dishonesty. And I just think that that is a policy we would do well to. to expand every sphere. We talk about from the military industrial complex, to the rise of the managerial class, to a lot of what our government's covered up about our own history, to even this question of immigration today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Just tell the people the truth. And I think our government would be better serving our people if it did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think that is true for legal immigrants. I think it's not true for illegal immigrants. That's not what I saw. Yeah. So I in sort of in this this part of why I wrote this book. OK. And I mean, the book is called Truths. So better darn well have well sourced facts in here. Right. Can't be can't be made up hypotheses, hard truths.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And there's a chapter where even in my own research on it, Lex, I know a lot about this issue from my time as a presidential candidate. But even in writing the chapter on the border here. I learned a lot from a lot of different dimensions, and some of which even caused me to revise some of my premises going into it, okay?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
My main thesis in that chapter is, forget the demonization of illegal or legal immigrants or whatever, as you put it, right? Fear, mongering, just put all that to one side. I want an immigration system that is built on honesty. identify what the objective is. We could debate the objectives. We might have different opinions on the objectives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Some people may say the objective is the economic growth of the United States. I make that, I air that argument in this book. And I think that that's insufficient, personally. Personally, I think you need, the United States is more than just an economic zone. It is a country, it is a nation bound together by civic ideals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think we need to screen not just for immigrants who are gonna make economic contributions, but those who speak our language, those who are able to assimilate, and those who share those civic ideals and know the US history even better than the average US citizen who's here. That's what I believe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But even if you disagree with me and say, no, no, no, the sole goal is economic production in the United States, then at least have an immigration system that's honest about that rather than one which claims to solve for that goal by bringing in people who are rewarded for being a refugee.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We should reward the people in that model, which is, I don't even think should be the whole model, but even if that were your model, reward the people who are demonstrated, have demonstrably Proven that they would make economic contributions to the United States, not the people who have demonstrated that they're willing to lie to achieve a goal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And right now, our immigration system, if it rewards one quality over any other, there's one parameter that it rewards over any other. It isn't civic allegiance to the United States. It isn't fluency in English. It isn't the ability to make an economic contribution to this country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The number one attribute, human attribute that our immigration system rewards is whether or not you are willing to lie. And the people who are telling those lies about whether they're seeking asylum or not are the ones who are most likely to get in. And the people who are most unwilling to tell those lies are the ones who are actually not getting in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That is a hard, uncomfortable truth about our immigration system. And the reason is because the law says you only get asylum if you're going to face bodily harm or near-term risk of bodily injury based on your religion, your ethnicity, or certain other factors. And so when you come into the country, you're asked, do you fulfill that criteria or not?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And the number one way to get into this country is to check the box and say yes. So that means just systematically, imagine if you're a university, Harvard or Yale or whatever, you're running your admissions process. The number one attribute you're selecting for isn't your SAT score, isn't your GPA, isn't your athletic accomplishments. It's whether or not you're willing to lie on the application.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You're going to have a class populated by a bunch of charlatans and frauds. That's exactly what our immigration system is doing to the United States of America, is it is literally selecting for the people who are willing to lie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Let's say you have somebody who's a person of integrity, says, okay, I want a better life for my family, but I want to teach my kids that I'm not going to lie or break the law to do it. That person is infinitely more less likely to get into the United States. I know it sounds provocative to frame it that way, but it is not an opinion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It is a fact that that is the number one human attribute that our current immigration system is selecting for. I want an immigration system centered on honesty. In order to implement that, we require acknowledging what the goals of our immigration system are in the first place. And there we have competing visions on the right. Amongst conservatives, there's a rift. Some conservatives believe
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I respect them for their honesty. I disagree with them. Believe that the goal of the immigration system should be to, in part, protect American workers from the effects of foreign wage competition. That if we have immigrants, it's going to bring down prices and we need to protect American workers from the effects of that downward pressure on wages. It's a goal. It's a coherent goal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I don't think it's the right goal, but many of my friends on the right believe that's a goal. But at least it's honest, and then we can design an honest immigration system to achieve that goal if that's their goal. I have other friends on the right that say the sole goal is economic growth. I disagree with that as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
My view is the goal should be whatever enriches the civic quality of the United States of America. That includes those who know the language, know our ideals, pledge allegiance to those ideals, and also are willing to make economic contributions to the country, which is one of our ideals as well. But whatever it is, we can have that debate. I have a very different view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I don't think it's a proper role of immigration policy to make it a form of labor policy because the United States of America is founded on excellence. We should be able to compete. But that's a policy debate we can have. But right now, we're not even able to have the policy debate because the whole immigration policy is built on not only a lie, but on rewarding those who do lie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that's what I want to see change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Maybe even anti-American. Anti-American, yeah. So I want to confront this directly because it is a popular current on the American right. The reason I'm not picking on Ann Coulter specifically is I think actually it's a much more widely shared view, and I just give her at least credit for willing to articulate it, a view that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The blood and soil is what makes for your American identity, your genetic lineage. And I just reject that view. I think it's anti-American. I think what makes for an American identity is your allegiance, your unabiding allegiance to the founding ideals of this country and your willingness to pledge allegiance to those ideals. So those are two different views.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think that there is a view on the American right right now that says that we're not a creedal nation. that our nation is not about a creed. It's about a physical place and a physical homeland. I think that view fails on several accounts. Obviously, we're a nation. Every nation has to have a geographic space that it defines as its own. So obviously, we are, among other things, a geographic space.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But the essence of the United States of America, I think, is the common creed, the ideals that hold that common nation together. Without that, a few things happen. First of all, American exceptionalism becomes impossible, and I'll tell you why. Every other nation is also built on the same idea. Most nations have been built on common blood and soil arguments.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Genetic stock of Italy or Japan would have a stronger national identity than the United States in that case because they have a much longer standing claim on what their genetic lineage really was. The ethnicity of the people is far more pure in those contexts than in the United States. So that's the first reason. American exceptionalism becomes impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The second is there's all kinds of contradictions that then start to emerge. If your claim on American identity is defined based on how long you've been here, well, then the Native Americans would have a far greater claim of being American than somebody who came here on the Mayflower or somebody who came here afterwards.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Now, maybe that blood and soil view is, no, no, no, it's not quite the Native Americans. You only have to start at this point and end at this point. So on this view of blood and soil identity, it has to be, okay, you couldn't have come before a certain year, then it doesn't count. But if you came after a certain year, it doesn't count either.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That just becomes highly uncompelling as a view of what American national identity actually is versus my view that American national identity is grounded on whether or not you pledge allegiance to the ideals codified in the Declaration of Independence and actualized in the U.S. Constitution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And, you know, it's been said, some of my friends on the right have said things like, you know, people will not die for a set of ideals. People won't fight for abstractions or abstract ideals. I actually disagree with that. The American Revolution basically disproves that. The American Revolution was fought for anything over abstract ideals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
that said that, you know what, we believe in self-governance and free speech and free exercise of religion. That's what we believe in the United States, which was different from old world England. So I do think that there is this brewing debate on the right. And do I disagree like hell with Ann Coulter on this? Absolutely. And did I take serious issue with some of the things she told me?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Absolutely. But I also believe that she had the stones to say, if I may say it that way, the things that many on the right believe that But haven't quite articulated in the way that she has. And I think we need to have that debate in the open. Now, personally, I think most of the conservative movement actually is with me on this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But I think it's become a very popular counter narrative in the other direction to say that. you know, your vision of American identity is tied is far more physical in nature. And to me, I think it is still ideals based in nature. And I think that that's a good debate for the future for us to have in the conservative movement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think it's going to be a defining feature of, you know, what direction the conservative movement goes in the future.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
uh doing a lot of whining i like people that win not whine even uh when the refs are biased in whatever direction so look i think the united states of america i preach this to the left i preach it to my kids we gotta accept it on our own side too we're not going to save this country by being victims we're going to save this country by being victorious okay and i don't care whether it's left-wing victimhood right-wing victimhood i'm against victimhood culture the number one factor that determines whether you achieve something in life
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
is you. I believe that's not the only factor that matters. There's a lot of other factors that affect whether or not you succeed. Life is not fair. But I tell my kids the same thing. The number one factor that determines whether or not you succeed in achieving your goal is you. If I tell it to my kids and I preach it to the left, I'm going to preach that to our own side as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Now, that being said, that's just a philosophy. Okay. That's a personal philosophy. You asked me to do something different, and I'm always a fan. One of the things that the standard I hope that people hold me to when they read this book as well as I try to do that in this book is to give the best possible argument for the other side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You don't want to give some rinky dink argument for the other side and knock it down. You want to give the best possible argument for the other side and then offer your own view or else you don't understand your own. So you asked me, what's the strongest case against Donald Trump? Well, I ran for U.S. president against Donald Trump. So I'm going to give you what my perspective is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think it's nothing of what you hear on MSNBC or from the left attacking him to be a threat to democracy. I think all of that's actually nonsense. I actually think it is
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
if you were making that case, and here's my full support, as you know, but if you were making that case, I think for many voters who are of the next generation, they're asking a question about how are you going to understand the position that I'm in as a member of a new generation, the same criticism they had of Biden, they could say, oh, well, are you too old?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Are you from a different generation that's too far removed from my generation's concerns? And I think that that's In many ways, a factor that weighs on that was weighing on both Trump and Biden. But when they played the trick of swapping out Joe Biden, it left that issue much more on the table for Donald Trump. So you ask me to steel man it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That's what I would say is that when I look at what's the number one issue that I would need to persuade independent voters of to say that, no, no, no, this is still the right choices. Even though the other side claims to offer a new generation of leadership, here's somebody who is, you know, one of the older presidents we all have had who was elected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
How do we convince those people to vote for him? That's what I would give you in that category.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Let me ask you, I mean, you spoke to Donald Trump recently. Mm-hmm. What's your top objection to potentially voting for Donald Trump? And let me see if I can address that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I'll respond to that. Sure. Obviously I'm not the candidate, but I'm going to give you my perspective nonetheless. I think we have seen some growth from Donald Trump over that first term in the experience of the 2020 election. And you hear a lot of that on the campaign trail. I heard a lot of that even in the conversation that he had with you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think he is more ambitious for that second term than he was for that first term. So I think that was the most interesting part of what you just said, is you're looking for somebody who has growth from their own experiences.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Say what you will, I have seen personally, I believe, some meaningful level of personal growth and ambition for what Donald Trump hopes to achieve for the country in the second term that he wasn't able to for one reason or another. You know, COVID, you could put a lot of different things on it, but in that first term.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Now, I think the facts of the backdrop of the 2020 election actually like really do matter. I don't think you can isolate one particular aspect of criticizing the 2020 election without looking at it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Holistically, on the eve of the 2020 presidential election, we saw a systematic bureaucratically and government aided suppression of probably the single most important piece of information released in the eve of that election. The Hunter Biden laptop story revealing potentially a compromised U.S. presidential candidate. His family was compromised by foreign interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And it was suppressed as misinformation by every major tech company. The New York Post had its own Twitter account locked at that time. And we now know that many of the censorship decisions made in the year 2020 were actually made at behest of U.S. bureaucratic actors in the deep state threatening those tech companies to do it or else those tech companies would face consequence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think it might be the most undemocratic thing that's happened in the history of our country, actually, is the way in which government actors who were never elected to the government used private sector actors to suppress information on the eve of an election that, based on polling afterwards, likely did influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That was election interference of the highest order. So I think that that's just a hard fact that we have to contend with. And I think a lot of what you've heard in terms of complaints about the 2020 election whatever those complaints have been, take place against the backdrop of large technology companies interfering in that election in a way that I think did have an impact on the outcome.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I personally believe that the Hunter Biden laptop story had not been suppressed and censored. I think Donald Trump would have been unambiguous. I think the president of the United States right now would be Donald Trump, no doubt about it, in my mind. If you look at polling before and after and the impact that would have had on the independent voter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Now you look at, okay, let's talk about constructive solutions because I care about moving the country forward. What is a constructive solution to this issue of concerns about election integrity? Here's one. Single day voting on election day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government issued voter ID to match the voter file. I favor that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We do it even in Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the United States. Why not do that everywhere in the United States? And I'll make a pledge. I'll do it right here, right? My pledge is, as a leader in our movement, I will do everything in my power to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
If we get to that simple place of basic election security measures, I think it'd be unifying to make Election Day a national holiday that unites us around our civic purpose one day. Single day voting on Election Day is a national holiday with paper ballots and government issued voter ID to match the voter file. Let's get there as a country and you have my word.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I will lead our movement in whatever way I can to make sure we are done complaining about stolen elections and fake ballots. And I think the fact that you see resistance to that proposal, which is otherwise very practical, very reasonable, nonpartisan proposal. I think the fact of that resistance actually provokes a lot of understandable skepticism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
understandable skepticism of, okay, what else is actually going on? If not, if not that, what exactly is going on here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We can't know, obviously. I looked at some post-election polling about the views that that would have had, and I can't prove that to you, but that's my instinct. It's my opinion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Let me ask you one question, because bias is one thing, bias in reporting. Censorship is another. So I would be open-minded to hearing an instance of – and if I did hear it, I would condemn it – of the government systematically ordering – tech companies to suppress information that was favorable to Democrats, suppress that information to lift up Republicans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
If there was an instance that we know of government bureaucrats that were ordering technology companies covertly to silence information that voters otherwise would have had to advantage Republicans at the ballot box, to censor it, I would be against that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I will condemn that with equal force as I do to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, suppression and censorship of the origin of COVID-19. All happened in 2020. These are hard facts. I'm not aware of one instance. If you are aware of one, let me know, because I would condemn it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But there's two different problems. I just want to sort them out, right? Because I have a problem with both. You talked about two issues. I think both are important, but they're different issues. One is bias in reporting. One is censorship of information, right? So bias in reporting, I felt certainly the recent presidential debate moderated by ABC was biased in the way that it was conducted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But that's a different issue from saying that voters don't get access to information through any source. So this Hunter Biden laptop story, we now know that it contains evidence of foreign interference against in potentially the Biden administration and their families incentive structure, that story was systematically suppressed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So in the United States of America, if you wanted to find that on the internet through any major social media platform or through even Google search, that story was suppressed or downplayed algorithmically that you couldn't see it. Even on Twitter, if you tried to send it via direct message, that's the equivalent of email, right? Sending a peer to peer message.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
They blocked you from even being able to send that story using private messages. That I think is a different level of concern. That's not bias at that point. That's outright interference in whether or not, you know, that's outright interference in the election. Let's do a thought experiment here. Let's suppose that Russia orchestrated that. What would the backlash be?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Let's say the Russian government orchestrated the U.S. election. They interfered in it by saying that tech companies, they worked with them covertly to stop U.S. citizens from being able to see information on the eve of an election. There would be a mass uproar in this country if the Russian government orchestrated that. Well, if actors in the U.S. government bureaucracy or the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
technology industry bureaucracy orchestrated the same thing, then we can't apply a different standard to say that if Russia did it, it's really bad and interfered in our election. But if it happened right here in the United States of America, and by the way, they blamed Russia for it falsely on the Russian disinformation of the Hunter Biden laptop story, that was false claim.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We have to apply the same standard in both cases. And so the fact that if that were Russian interference, it would have been an outcry, but now it happened domestically and we just call that, hey, it's a little bit of bias ahead of an election. I don't think that that's a fair characterization of how important that event was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Has any U.S. politician ever been perfect throughout the course of American history? No. But do you want to understand the essence of what was going around in 2020, the mindset of the country?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We had a year where people in this country were systematically locked down, told to shut up, sit down, do as they're told, unless they're BLM or Antifa rioters, in which case it's perfectly fine for them to burn cities down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We were told that we're going to have an election, a free and fair election, and then they were denied information systematically heading into that election, which was really important, and in this case, damning information about one of the parties. And then... You tell these people that they still have to continue to shut up and comply.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That creates, I think, a real culture of deep frustration in the United States of America. And I think that the reaction to systematic censorship is never good. History teaches us that. It's not good in the United States. It's not good at other points in the history of the United States. The reaction to systematic coordinated censorship and restraints on the freedom of a free people is never good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And if you want to really understand what happened, one really wants to get to the bottom of it rather than figuring out who to point fingers at.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That really was the essence of the national malaise at the end of 2020 is it was a year of unjust policies, including COVID-19 lockdowns, systematic lies about it, lies about the election that created a level of public frustration that I think was understandable and Now, the job of leaders is to how do you channel that in the most productive direction possible?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And to your question, to the independent voter out there evaluating as you are, do I think that Donald Trump has exhibited a lot of growth based on his experience in his first term and what he hopes to achieve in his second term? I think the answer is absolutely yes. And so even if you don't agree with everything that he's said or done in the choice ahead of us in this election,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I still believe he's unambiguously the best choice to revive that sense of national pride and also prosperity in our country. So people aren't in the condition where they're suffering at behest of government policies that leave them angry and channel that anger. in other unproductive ways.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
No, the best way to do it is actually actions do speak louder than words, implement the policies that make people's lives better. And I do think that that's the next step of how we best save the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I mean, I don't think that that's a... Concern to frame narrowly in the context of Donald Trump winning it or losing it by a whisker. I think this is a man who in the last couple of months, in a span of two months, has faced two assassination attempts. And we're not talking about theoretical attempts. We're talking about like gunshots fired.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That is history changing in the context of American history. We haven't seen that in a generation. And yet now that has become normalized in the U.S. So do I worry we're skating on thin ice as a country? I do. I do think it is a little bit strange to obsess over history.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
are concerns or national or media concerns over Donald Trump, when in fact, he's the one on the receiving end of fire from assailants who reportedly are saying exactly the kinds of things about him that you hear from the Democratic machine. And I do think that it is irresponsible, at least for the Democratic Party to make their core case against Donald Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It was Joe Biden's entire message for years that he's a threat to democracy and to the existence of America. Well, if you keep saying that about somebody against the backdrop conditions that we live in as a country, I don't think that's good for a nation. And so do I have concerns about the future of the country? Do I think we're skating on thin ice? Absolutely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think the best way around it is really through it, through it in this election, win by a landslide. I think a unifying landslide could be the best thing that happens for this country, like Reagan delivered in 1980 and then again in 1984. And in a very practical note, a landslide minus some shenanigans is still going to be a victory. That, I think, is how we unite this country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And so I don't think, you know, 50.001 margin where cable news is declaring the winner six days after the election, I don't think that's going to be good for the country. I think a decisive victory...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
that unites the country turns the page on a lot of the challenges of the last four years and says okay this is where we're going this is who we are and what we stand for this is a revival of our national identity and revive national pride in the united states regardless of whether you're a democrat or republican that i think is achievable in this election too and that's what the outcome i'm rooting for so just to pile on since we're steel manning the criticism against trump is the rhetoric
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I mean, the reality is different people have different attributes. One of the attributes for Donald Trump is- He's one of the funnier presidents we've had in a long time. That might not be everybody's cup of tea. Maybe it's different people don't want, that's not a quality they value in their president.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think at a moment where you're also able to make, I will say this much, is everybody's got different styles. Donald Trump's style is different from mine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But I do think that if we're able to use levity in a moment of national division, in some ways, I think right now is probably a role where really good stand-up comedians could probably do a big service to the country if they're able to laugh at everybody 360 degrees.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So they can go up there and make fun of Donald Trump all they want, do it in a lighthearted manner that loves the country, do the same thing to Kamala Harris with an equal standard. I think that's actually good for the country. But, you know, I think I'm I'm more interested, Lex, as you know, in discussing the future direction of the country. My own views.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I was a presidential candidate who ran against Donald Trump, by the way, and is supporting him now. But I just prefer engaging on the substance of what I think each candidate's going to achieve for the country, rather than picking on really the personal attributes of either one, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm not criticizing Kamala Harris's manner of laugh or whatever, you know, one might criticize as like a personal attribute of hers that you may hear elsewhere. And I just think our country is better off if we have a focus on both the policies, but also who's going to be more likely to revive the country. That I think is a healthy debate headed into an election.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think everybody has their personality attributes, their flaws, what makes them funny and lovable to some people makes them irritating to others. I think that that matters less heading into an election.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yeah, so look, I think that let's just get the self-interest of each party on the table and be very transparent about it. From everyone's perspective, you know, they think the other side is the aggressor or whatever. Just get it on the table. Russia is... concerned about NATO shifting the balance of power away from Russia to Western Europe when NATO has expanded far more than they expected to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And frankly, that Russia was told that NATO was going to expand. It's an uncomfortable fact for some in America. But James Baker made a commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 90s where he said NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany. Well, NATO's expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did during the existence of the USSR. And that is a reality we have to contend with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That's the Russian perspective. From the Western perspective, the hard fact is Russia was the aggressor in this conflict crossing the boundaries of a sovereign nation. And that is a violation of international norms. And it's a violation of the recognition of international law of nations without borders are not a nation. And so against that backdrop, what's the actual interest of each country here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think if we're able to do a reasonable deal that gives Russia the assurances it needs about what they might allege is NATO expansionism violating prior commitments, but get codified commitments for Russia that we're not going to see willy nilly behavior of just randomly deciding they're going to violate the sovereignty of neighboring nations and have hard assurances and consequences for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That's the beginnings of a deal. But then I want to be ambitious for the United States. I want to weaken the Russia China alliance. And I think that we can do a deal that requires that give some real gives to Russia, conditioned on Russia withdrawing itself from its military alliance with China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
One of my criticisms of the modern Republican Party and direction of the conservative movement is that we've gotten so good at describing what we're against. There's a list of things that we could rail against woke ism, transgender ideology, climate ideology, COVID ism, COVID policies, the radical Biden agenda, the radical Harris agenda, the list goes on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And this could be good for Russia, too, in the long run, because right now, Vladimir Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping's little brother in that relationship. But Russia's military combined with China's naval capacity and Russia's hypersonic missiles and China's economic might together, those countries in an alliance pose a real threat to the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But if as a condition for a reasonable discussion about where different territories land, given what's occupied right now, Hard requirements that Russia remove its military presence from the Western Hemisphere. People forget this. Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, we don't want a Russian military presence in the Western Hemisphere. That too would be a win for the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
No more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands. The kinds of wins that the United States wants to protect the West's security, get Russia out of the Western Hemisphere, certainly out of the North American periphery, and then also make sure that Russia is no longer in that military alliance with China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
In return for that, able to provide Russia some things that are important to Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We'd have to have a reasonable, reasonable discussion about what the territorial concessions would be at the end of this war to bring it to peace and resolution and what the guarantees are to make sure that NATO is going to not expand beyond the scope of what the United States has at least historically guaranteed that I think together would be a reasonable deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
that gives every party what they're looking for, that results in immediate peace, that results in greater stability, and most importantly, weakening the Russia-China alliance, which I think is the actual threat that we have so far, no matter who in this debate of more or less Ukraine funding has really failed to confront, that I think is the way we deescalate the risk of World War III and weaken the threats to the West by actually dismantling that alliance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yes. I think the military alliance between Russia and China represents the single greatest threat we face. So do a deal that's very reasonable across the board. But one of the main things we get out of it is weakening that alliance. So no joint military exercises, no military collaborations. These are monitorable. These are monitorable attributes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
If there's cheating on that, we're going to immediately have consequences as a consequence of their cheating. But we can't cheat on, you know, our own obligations that we would make in the context of that deal as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I actually think that that would come down to the specifics of the negotiation. But the core goals of the negotiation are peace in this war, weaken the Russia-China alliance. And for Russia, what do they get out of it? Part of this is here's something that's not negative for Ukraine, but that could be positive for Russia as part of that deal, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Because it's not a zero-sum game alone with Ukraine on the losing end of this. I think reopening economic relations with the West would be a big win for Russia, but also a carrot that gets them out of that military relationship with China. So I do think that the foreign policy establishment has historically been at the very least, unimaginative about the levers that we're able to use.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Actually, I was a little bit critical of Nixon earlier in this discussion for his contribution to the overgrowth of the U.S. entitlement state and regulatory state. But I'll give Nixon credit here on a different point, which is that he was imaginative of being able to pull red China out from the clasp of the USSR and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
He broke the China-Russia alliance back then, which was an important step to bring us to the near end of the Cold War. So there's an opportunity for a similar unconventional maneuver now of using greater reopened economic relations with Russia to pull Russia out from the hands of China today. There's no skin off Ukraine's back for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But actually, what's missing in the conservative movement right now is what we actually stand for. What is our vision for the future of the country? And I saw that as a deficit at the time I started my presidential campaign. It was in many ways the purpose of my campaign, because I do feel that that's why we didn't have the red wave in 2022. So they tried to blame Donald Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I do think that's a big carrot for Russia in this direction. I do think that will involve some level of territorial negotiation as well that, you know, out of any good deal, not everyone's going to like 100% of what comes out of it. But that's part of the cost of securing peace is that not everyone's going to be happy about every attribute.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But I could make a case that an immediate peace deal is also now in the best interests of Ukraine. Let's just rewind the clock. We're looking at now, let's just say we're early 2022, maybe June of 2022. Zelensky was ready to come to the table for a deal back then. until Boris Johnson traveled when he had his own domestic political travails to convince Zelensky to continue to fight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that goes to the point where when nations aren't asked to pay for their own national security, they have what the problem is of moral hazard of taking risks that really are suboptimal risks for them to take because they're not bearing the consequences of taking those risks, not fully in the cost. If Ukraine had done a deal back then,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think it is unambiguous that they would have done a better deal for themselves than they're doing now after having spent hundreds of billions of dollars and expended tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. So the idea that Ukraine is somehow better off because it failed to do that deal before is a lie. And if we're not willing to learn from those mistakes of the recent past, we're
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So this idea that it would be painful for Ukraine, you know, it's been painful. Tens and tens and tens of thousands of people continuing to die without any increased leverage and actually getting the outcome that they want. So I think there's an opportunity for a win, win, win, a win for the United States in the West more broadly in weakening the Russia-China alliance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
A win for Ukraine in having an agreement that is backstopped by the United States of America's interests that provides a greater degree of long run security to the future existence of Ukraine and its sovereignty and also stopping the bloodshed today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think a win for Russia, which is to reopen economic relations with the West and have certain guarantees about what the mission creep or scope creep of NATO will be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's no rule that says that when one party, before a full outright world war starts at least, there's an opportunity for there to actually be a win for everybody on the table rather than to assume that a win for us is a loss to Russia or that anything positive that happens for Russia is a loss for the United States or Ukraine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think out of this conversation alone, There are a number of levers on the table for negotiation in a lot of different directions. And that's where you want to be, right? If there's only one factor that matters to each of the two parties and those are their red line factors, then there's no room for negotiation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
This is a deeply complicated, historically intricate dynamic between Ukraine and Russia and between NATO and the United States and the Russia-China alliance and economic interests that are at issue combined with the geopolitical factors. There are a lot of levers for negotiation. And the more levers there are, the more likely there is to be a win-win-win deal that gets done for everybody.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
They tried to blame abortion. They blamed a bunch of individual specific issues or factors. I think the real reason we didn't have that red wave was that we got so practiced at criticizing Joe Biden that we forgot to articulate who we are and what we stand for. So what do we stand for as conservatives? Right. Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I think it should be encouraging. The fact that there are as many different possible levers here almost makes certain that a reasonable, practicable peace deal is possible. In contrast to a situation where there's only one thing that matters for each side, then I can't tell you that there's a deal to be done. There's definitely a deal to be done here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think that it requires real leadership in the United States playing hardball, not just with one side of this, not just with Zelensky or with Putin, but across the board, hardball for our own interests, which are the interests of stability here. And I think that that will happen to well serve both Ukraine and Russia in the process. If you were president, would you call Putin? Absolutely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I mean, in any negotiation, you got to manage when you're calling somebody and when you're not. But I do believe that open conversation and the willingness to have that as another lever in the negotiation is totally fair game.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So a few things. One is I do think the best way we also avoid it is by reducing the consequences to the United States in the event of that type of conflict. Because at that point, what you're setting up for, if the consequences are existential for the United States, then what you're buying yourself in the context of what could be a small conflict is an all out great war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So the first thing I want to make sure we avoid is a major conflict between the United States and China, like a world war level conflict. And the way to do that is to bring down the existential stakes for the U.S. And the way we bring down the existential stakes for the U.S. is make sure that the United States does not depend on China for our modern way of life. Right now we do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Because right now we depend on China for everything from the pharmaceuticals in our medicine cabinet, 95% of ibuprofen, one of the most basic medicines used in the United States, depends on China for its supply chain. We depend on China, ironically, for our own military industrial base. Think about how little sense that makes, actually. Our own military...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
which supposedly exists to protect ourselves against adversaries, depends for its own supplies, semiconductors and otherwise, on our top adversary. That doesn't make sense. Even if you're a libertarian in the school of Friedrich von Hayek, somebody I admire as well, even then you would not argue for a foreign dependence on adversary for your military.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So I think that's the next step we need to take is at least reduce U.S. dependence on China for the most essential inputs for the functioning of the United States of America, including our own military. As a side note, I believe that means not just onshoring to the United States. It does.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But if we're really serious about that, it also means expanding our relationships with allies like Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines. Right. Right. Right. Now, you think about the other way to do this is strategic clarity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think the way that you see world wars often emerge is strategic ambiguity from two adversaries who don't really know what the other side's red line is or isn't and accidentally crosses those red lines. is I think we need to be much clearer with what are our hard red lines and what aren't they. And I think that's the single most effective way to make sure this doesn't spiral into major world war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And then let's talk about ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the terms that I just discussed with you before. I think weakening the Russia-China alliance not only reduces the risk that Russia becomes an aggressor, it also reduces the risk that China takes the risks that could escalate us to World War III as well. So I think that geopolitically, you got to look at these things holistically.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That end of the Russia-Ukraine war and that peace deal de-escalates not only the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but the risk of a broader conflict that includes China as well by also weakening China because Russia also has hypersonic missiles and missile capabilities that are ahead of that of China's. If Russia's no longer in a military alliance with China, that changes China's calculus as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So that's kind of, I think, more strategic vision we need in our foreign policy than we've had since certainly the Nixon era. I think that you need people who are going to be able to challenge the status quo, question the existing orthodoxies, the willingness to use levers to get great deals done that otherwise wouldn't have gotten done. And that's what I do think.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Someone like Donald Trump in the presidency, and obviously I ran for president as an outsider and a businessman as well. I think this is an area, our foreign policy is one where we actually benefit from having business leaders in those roles rather than people who are shackled by the traditional political manner of thinking.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Both sides need to have their red lines. Both sides need to have their red lines. So, you know, we can get into specifics, but it's going to vary depending on the circumstances. But the principle that I would give you is that we have to have a hard red line that's clear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think that that hard red line, and I was clear during my campaign on this, so I'll say it again, is I think that we have to have a clear red line that China will not and should not for any time in the foreseeable future annex Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
free speech and open debate, not just as some sort of catchphrase, but the idea that any opinion, no matter how heinous, you get to express it in the United States of America. Self-governance, and this is a big one right now, is that the people we elect to run the government, they're no longer the ones who actually run the government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I do think that for the United States, it probably is prudent right now not to suddenly upend the diplomatic policy we've adopted for decades of what is recognizing the one China policy in our position of quiet deference to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And understand that that may be the red line is the national recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation would be a red line that China would have, but we would have a red line to say that we do not in any circumstance tolerate the annexation. by physical force in any time in the foreseeable future when that's against the interests of the United States of America. So those are examples.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But the principle here is you asked, how do we avoid major conflict with China? I think it starts with clear red lines on both sides. I think it starts with also lowering the stakes for the United States by making sure we're not dependent on China for our modern way of life. And I think it also starts with
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Ironically, using a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war as a way of weakening the Russia-China alliance, which in the other direction of weakening China, has significant benefits to us as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Against the backdrop that I just laid out, that's not going to happen. That wouldn't happen if we actually make sure that we are crystal clear about what our red lines and priorities are. We're also dependent on Taiwan right now for our own semiconductor supply chain. So China knows that's going to draw us into serious conflict in that circumstance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So against the backdrop of clearly drawn red lines, against the backdrop of Russia no longer automatically being in China's camp, that's a big lever. I think also strengthening our relationship with other allies where we have room to strengthen those relationships like India. Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
There's a lot of levers here, but I think that if we are both strategically clear with our allies and with our adversaries about what our red lines are, what our priorities are, reasonable deals that pull Russia out of the hands of China and vice versa, reasonable allies and relationships that cause China to question whether it can continue to have the same access to Middle Eastern oil supplies as it does today, and then clear red lines with China itself about what we definitely aren't okay with and understand that they may have certain red lines too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That allows us, I think, to still avoid what many people will call the unavoidable conflict, the Thucydides trap, you know, against the circumstance of when there's a rising power against the backdrop of a declining power, conflict always becomes inevitable. That's a theory. It's not a law of physics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I don't think that, A, we have to be a declining power, and B, I don't think that that has to necessarily result in major conflict with China here. It's going to require real leadership, leadership with a spine. And you don't have to judge based on international relations theory to form your view on this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We in the conservative movement, I believe, should believe in restoring self-governance where it's not bureaucrats running the show, but actually elected representatives. And then the other ideal that the nation was founded on that I think we need to revive and I think is a north star of the conservative movement is restoring the rule of law in this country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Four years under Trump, we didn't have major conflicts in the Middle East, in places like Russia, Ukraine. We were on the cusp of war with North Korea when Obama left office and Trump took over. Four years under Biden, less than four years under Biden and Harris, what do you have? Major conflicts in the Middle East, major conflict in Russia, Ukraine, judged by the results.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And, you know, I mean, I would say that even if you're somebody who disagrees with a lot of Donald Trump and you don't like his style, if your single issue is you want to stay out of World War III, I think there's a pretty clear case for why you go for Trump in this election.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yeah, I think I believe that, you know, somebody I've gotten to know actually reasonably well, for example, recently is Giorgia Maloney, who is a leader of Italy. I told her the same thing. One of the things I love about her as a leader of Italy is that she does not apologize for anything. Thank you so much for having me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And there are elements of that in Modi's approach as well, which I respect about him, is he doesn't apologize for the fact that India has a national identity and that the nation should be proud of it. But I'm not saying that because I'm proud of Maloney or Modi for their own countries. I'm American.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think there are lessons to learn from leaders who are proud of their own nation's identity rather than apologizing for it. And I think it's a big part of, you know, it's why I ran for president on a campaign centered on national pride.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's also why I'm not only voting for, but actively supporting Donald Trump, because I do think he is going to be the one that restores that missing national pride in the United States. And, you know, I touch on this as well in the book. There's a chapter here. It says nationalism isn't a bad word.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think nationalism can be a very positive thing if it's grounded in the actual true attributes of a nation. And in the United States, that doesn't mean ethno-nationalism because that was not what the national identity of the United States was based on in the first place. But a civic nationalism grounded in our actual national ideals, that is who we are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think that that is something that we've gotten uncomfortable with in the countries to say that, oh, I'm proud of being American. And I believe in American exceptionalism. Somehow that's looking down on others. No, I'm not looking down on anybody, but I'm proud of my own country. And I think Modi's revived that spirit in India in a way that was missing for a long time, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
India had an inferiority complex, a psychological inferiority complex. But now to be proud of its national heritage and its national myth-making, and its national legacy and history. And to say that every nation does have to have a kind of myth-making about its past and to be proud of that. It's like Malcolm X actually said this here in the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
He said, a nation without an appreciation for its history is like a tree without roots. It's dead. It's dead. And I think that that's true, not just for the United States. I think it's true for every other nation. I think leaders like Maloney in Italy, leaders like Modi in India have done a great job that I wish to bring that type of pride back in the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You think about even the abandonment of the rule of law at the southern border. It's particularly personal to me as the kid of legal immigrants to this country. You and I actually share a couple of aspects in common in that regard. That also, though, means your first act of entering this country can't break the law.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And whatever I do next, Lex, I'll tell you this is, I think reviving that sense of identity and pride, especially in the next generation, is one of the most important things we can do for this country. Speaking of what you do next, any chance you run in 2028? Well, I'm not going to rule it out. I mean, that's a long time from now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I'm most focused on what I can do in the next chapter for the country. I ran for president. Million things that I learned from that experience that you can only learn by doing it. It was very much a fire first, aim later. When getting into the race, there was no way I could have planned and plotted this out as somebody who was coming from the outside.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I was 37 years old, came from the business world. So there was a lot that only could learn by actually doing it. And I did. But I care about the same things that led me into the presidential race. And I don't think the issues have been solved. I think that we have a generation that is lost in the country. It's not just young people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think it's all of us in some ways are hungry for purpose and meaning at a time in our history when the things that used to fill that void in our heart, they're missing. And I think we need a president who both has the right policies for the country, seal the border, grow the economy, stay out of World War III and rampant crime. Yes, we need the right policies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But we also need leaders who, in a sustained way, revive our national character, revive our sense of pride in this country, revive our identity as Americans. And, you know, I think that that need exists as much today as it did when I first ran for president. I don't think it's going to be automatically solved in just a few years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think Donald Trump is the right person to carry that banner forward for the next four years. But after that, we'll see where the country is headed into 2028. And whatever I do, it'll be whatever has a maximal positive impact on the country. I'll also tell you that my laser focus maybe is distinct from other politicians on both sides.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
is to take America to the next level, to move beyond our victimhood culture, to restore our culture of excellence, we got to shut down that nanny state. The entitlement state, the regulatory state, the foreign policy nanny state, shut it down and revive who we really are as Americans. And I'm as passionate about that as ever, but the next step is not running for president.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The next step is what happens in the next four years. And that's why over the next four weeks, I'm focused on doing whatever I can to make sure we succeed in this election.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
So there's some policy commitments and principles, merit, free speech, self-governance, rule of law. And then I think culturally, what does it mean to be a conservative? Is it means we believe in the anchors of our identity, right? In truth, the value of the individual, family, nation, and God beat race, gender, sexuality, and climate if we have the courage to actually stand for our own vision.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I would love nothing more than a kick-ass set of top tier Democrat candidates. After four years of Donald Trump, we have a primary filled with actually people who have real visions for the country on both sides. And the people of this country can choose between those competing visions without insult or injury being the way we, I would love nothing more than to see that in 2028.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I would like to take on an earnest and civil but contested context, right, of a debate. Who do we want to take on? You want to take on somebody who disagrees with you but still has deep ideology of their own. I think John Fetterman's pretty interesting, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
He's demonstrated himself to be somebody who is thoughtful, able to change his mind on positions, but not in some sort of fake flip-floppity, flippity-floppity way, but in a thoughtful evolution. Somebody who's been through personal struggles. Somebody I deeply disagree with on a lot of his views, most of his views, but who I can at least say he comes across at least as somebody who is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
been through that torturous process of really examining your beliefs and convictions and has, when necessary, been able to preach to his own tribe where he thinks they're wrong. I think it's interesting. I think that you have a number of other leaders probably emerging at lower levels. On the left, not everybody's going to necessarily come from Washington, D.C.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
In fact, the longer they're there, the more they in some ways get polluted by it. I think the governor of Colorado is an interesting guy. He's got a more libertarian tendency. You know, I don't know as much about his views on it from a national perspective, but it's intriguing to see somebody who has at least libertarian freedom oriented tendencies within the Democratic Party.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I think that there are a number of – I don't foresee him running for president, but I had a debate last year when I was running for president with Ro Khanna, who – say what you will about him. He's a highly intelligent person and is somebody who is at least willing to buck the consensus of his party when necessary. I think he recently – I would say lambasted.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
He phrased it very delicately, but criticized Kamala Harris's proposed tax on unrealized capital gains. So I like people who are willing to challenge the orthodoxies in their own party because it says they actually have convictions. And so whoever the Democrats put up, I hope it's someone like that. And for my part, I have and continue to have beliefs that will challenge Republicans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
That on the face of it may not be the policies that poll on paper as the policies you're supposed to adopt as a Republican candidate. But what a true leader does doesn't just tell people what they want to hear. You tell people what they need to hear and you tell people what your actual convictions are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And this idea that I don't want to create a right-wing entitlement state or a nanny state, I want to shut it down, that challenges the presuppositions of where a lot of the conservative movement is right now. I don't think the bill to cap credit card interest rates is a good idea because that's a price control just like Kamala Harris's price controls, and it'll reduce access to credit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I don't think that we want a crony capitalist state showering private benefits on selected industries that favor us or that we want to expand the CFPB or the FTC's remit And somehow we're going to trust it because it's under our watch. No, I believe in shutting it down. That challenges a lot of the current direction of the conservative movement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I believe in certain issues that are maybe even outside the scope of what Republicans currently care about right now. One of the things that I oppose, for example, is – this is not a top issue in American politics, but just to give you a sense for how I think and view the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm against factory farming of a large scale of – you could sort of say putting the mistreatment of – it's one thing to say that you need it for your sustenance and that's great, but it's another to say that – You have to do it in a factory farming setting that gives special exemptions from historical laws that have existed that are the product of crony capitalism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And that's a big part of what's been missing. And it's a big part of not just through the campaign, but through a lot of my future advocacy. That's the vacuum I'm aiming to fill.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm against crony capitalism in all its forms. I'm against the influence of mega money in politics. I don't think that's been good either for Democrats or Republicans. Some of those views, I think, are not necessarily the traditional Republican, you know, orthodoxy reading chapter and verse from what the Republican Party platform has been. It's not against the Republican Party platform.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But it's asking what the future of our movement is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And so long as it exists, you got to play the game. I mean, if you're going to play to win. I think it's one of the things I realized is that you just can't compete without it. But you want to win the game in order to change the game. And I think that that's something that I keep in mind as well. Yeah. You have written a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I need quiet time, extended periods of it that are separated from the rush of the day to day or the travel. I actually think a lot better when I'm working out and physically active. So if I'm running, playing tennis, lifting, somehow for me, that really opens up my mind. And then I need a significant amount of time after that with a notebook. I usually carry around a notebook everywhere I go.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
and write it down in there. Is the notebook full of chaotic thoughts or is it structured? Sometimes it's chaotic, sometimes it's structured. It's a little bit of both. Sometimes I have a thought that I know I don't want to forget later, I'll immediately jot it down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Other times, you know, on the flight over here, I had a much more structured layout of, I got a lot of different projects in the air, for example. And I cross pollinate, you know, I was in the shower this morning, had a bunch of thoughts, collected those on my plane ride over here. So I think that writing is something in all of its forms that helps me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's one of the one of the things actually helped me this year was actually writing this book. You're going through a presidential campaign, you're going at super speed. And if I was to do the presidential campaign again, the thing I would do is actually to take more structured breaks. I don't mean breaks isn't just like vacations, but I mean breaks to reflect on what's actually happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Probably the biggest mistake I made is last time around heading into the first debate, I was like in nine different states over seven days. I would have just taken that as a pause, right? We're at halfway through, you've established relevance. Now make sure the country sees who you actually are in full rather than just the momentum competitive driven version of you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I just think that that's sort of taking those moments to just take stock of where you are. Do some writing. I didn't do much writing during the presidential campaign. I enjoy writing. It's part of how I center myself. It's part of what this book allowed me to do is, okay, I ran that whirlwind of a campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
The first thing I started doing after I collected myself for a couple of weeks was take the pen and start writing. And I was committed to writing that book, whether or not anybody read it. I was just writing it for myself. And actually, it started in a very different form. It was very personal, reflection-oriented. So most of that, funny enough, I've learned about writing the books, Lex.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Edit it out. It just didn't end up in the book because it went in a different direction than what's interesting for a publisher to publish. And so for each of my books, the things that I started writing ended up never in the book anyway, just because the topic ended up morphing. But the journey that led me to write this book, a lot of it in this book is still in there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
This is my fourth book in four years, you're right. And I hope it's the most important one, but it is certainly the product of an honest reflection that whatever it might do for the reader, it helped me to write it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And I think that's one of the things that I learned from this campaign is not just all the policy lessons, but even just as a matter of personal practice, the ability to take spaces of time to – not only physically challenge yourself, workout, et cetera, but to give yourself the space to reflect, to recenter yourself on the why.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Had I done that, I think I would have been even more centered on the mission the whole time rather than you get attacked on the way or thrown off your tilt or thrown off your balance. It becomes a lot harder for someone else to do that to you if you've really centered yourself on your own purpose. It's probably one of my biggest learnings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Well, I enjoy debate. And for me, I think just in ordinary life, forget about like a formal debate setting, whenever I've received criticism or a contrary view, my first impulse is always, are they right? I mean, it's always a possibility, right? And most of the time what happens is you understand the other side's argument, but you emerge with a stronger conviction in your own belief, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Yeah. So look, I think the strongest case, particularly for left wing ideas in the United States or in the American context. is that the country has been imperfect in living up to its ideals. such that they say that that created a power structure in this country that continues to last to this day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You know your own beliefs better if you can state the best argument for the other side. But sometimes you do change your mind. And I think that that's happened over the course of my life as well. I think no one's a thinking human being unless that happens once in a while too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And so anyway, just the idea of the pursuit of truth through open debate and inquiry, that's always just been part of my identity, part of who I am. I'm wired that way. I thrive on it. I enjoy it. Even my relationships with my closest friends are built around heated debates and deep-seated disagreements. And I just think that's beautiful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
not just about human relationships, but it's particularly beautiful about America, right? Because it's part of the culture of this country more so than other countries, China, India, Asian cultures, even a lot of European cultures are very different where that's considered not genteel behavior. It's not the respectful behavior.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
Whereas for us, part of what makes this country great is you can disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it. I think we've lost some of that, but I'm on a bit of a mission to bring that back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
And so I don't know whether it's in politics or not, I'm committed in that next step, whatever the path is over the next four years, one of the things I'm committed to doing is making sure that I go out of my way to talk to people who actually disagree with me. And I think it's a big part of how we're gonna save our country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
It's always probably because you just love the heat. I love the heat and I'm a curious person. So I'm kind of, I'm always curious about what's actually getting the other, what's motivating the person on the other side. That curiosity, I think, is actually the best antidote, right? Because if you just try to stay calm in the face of somebody attacking you, that's kind of fake.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
But if you're kind of curious about them, right? Genuinely, just wondering. I think most people are good people inherently. We all maybe get misguided from time to time, but what's actually, what is it that's moving that person to go in such a different direction than you? I think as long as you're curious about that, I mean, the climate change protesters that have interrupted my events have
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
I'm as fascinated by the psychology of what's moving them and what they might be hungry for as I am concerned about rebutting the content of what they're saying to me. And I think that that's certainly something I care to revive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
We don't talk about in politics that much, but reviving that sense of curiosity, I think is in a certain way, one of the ways we're going to be able to disagree, but still remain friends and fellow citizens at the end of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#445 – Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War
You're a curious person. I know this podcast is basically born of your curiosity, I'm sure. And so I just think we need more of that in America, that kind of, you know, when I talked about our founding fathers, we were joking about it, but they were inventors, they were writers, they were political theorists. They were founders of a nation. They kind of had that boundless curiosity, too.