Vivek Ramaswamy - When The US Became So Polarized

fake man that time good to see you good to be here man how was today oh context for everyone we've literally just left the conference which is why we're wearing these like blue blue bracelets or whatever Trump's just spoken yeah you were mentioned a few times yeah you obviously have his ear you trust you I one of the things I will say is I've actually deepen my respect for him even more than I had I respect him throughout the race as you all know but I've got to know him better after the race and one of the have respected most is actually his openness and intellectual curiosity right this is not a subject that if you rewound and he'd tell you the same thing rewound a year ago that he knew you know a ton about but he unlike other politicians is not afraid to admit that to the contrary he's curious right and he wants to get to the bottom of why it's best for the country and in some of the conversations I've had with him on you know let's just say some of the subject matter I'll often get you know questions of why is this the best argument rather than the reason why people are opposed to it or why are people for that like a cbdc what are the best Arguments for it and he he takes his takes his time to methodically think through and get comfortable with a position even heading into the libertarian convention earlier this year he made some you might have noticed some meaningful commitments there in that speech yeah and uh you know I I had great conversations with him in the nights in in couple of days leading up to that speech as well and so I think the thing that people should know is that when he makes these commitments like of a specific kind that he made today he doesn't make those lightly I think those are those are really commitments that he takes to the bank and he means and expects to stand behind and so what I'll say is less about me or or you know my own ideas but more about President Trump what I respect is his actual openness and curiosity that leads him to adapt to the Future in a way that I think his Democratic opponent absolutely doesn't amazing well we don't want to just interview you about Trump because we'll get that one day we want to know about you as well man so like what's your what's your role now yeah yeah what do you like well I'm a businessman by Nature I took a break from that to run for US president if there's only so much I'm able to do in the political realm so I'm helping down ballot candidates with their campaigning across the country Senate races even other down ballot races I'm actually able to be much more helpful there I don't think I help Trump all that much by showing up at rally though from time to time I do so that's part of it but you know I think I'm best when I'm I'm at my most natural certainly when I'm offering my own Vision my own ideas that's that's what I did in my candidacy so I'm channeling that in some other ways so I've written a book that's coming out this fall lays out some themes relating to the future of the America first movement that's coming out in September I spent some time doing that I've I've launched my own weekly podcast which really for me is less about maximizing views and more about just actually having the discipline once a week to create space for an interesting conversation that the rest of the world gets to see that's the way I've been looking at that and I've been getting involved back in a number of the business Pursuits that I was looking at before my presidential run and some new ones as well I think the private sector is a great way to drive some positive change even in issues or areas or subject matter areas that I grew even more compelled by during the presidential campaign I'm looking at perhaps using entrepreneurship as a way of driving some positive Solutions as well with what's going to happen in November I can't make any ultr longrun commitments myself A lot's going to change based on what happens in November but if I'm able to actually either Mentor other people or help Mentor other Founders or partner with them through capital or otherwise to help them get useful things off the ground that I think is a strict positive so in this 9mon period since I ended my campaign but before the election those are some of the things I've been up to what what is that like as a you know you're campaigning for the presidency and in that you're essentially you're a battle with someone like Donald Trump and the other candidates and you can be hostile but then then you know you know once that ends and you start support you then become friends with that person it kind it kind of reminds me like boxers is like they can be hostile up until the fight then after the fight they're like good fight yeah yeah well I think that's a actually a pretty good example I think in certain cases that works better than others I think it works well with me and Trump because ideologically we see eye to eye on most things maybe not 100% things but most nearly most things I think with some of the other candidates where there's a difference in ideology I mean that's just that is what it is you're have a fundamentally different ideological worldview but in cases where you're competing but for the same goal for the same vision for the country then yeah I think it becomes a lot easier to say hey we were competing like hell and now we're going to compete like hell together you know for the for the best interests of the country I think uh it wasn't on stage that he said this it was in the smaller Round Table even when he came up he he acknowledges that same Spirit he said well this is one of the guys who was running against me and he was a guy running against me who was smart and now I'm running against a guy who doesn't have a brain but I prefer at least a guy who's harder with a brain the one who's not I mean so it has that friendly banter to it while still recognizing that we were competing against each other a year ago yeah I think about the candidacy I have um a lot of feelings about it mostly positive it was you know I'm proud of what we accomplished I mean I started as a 37-year-old outsider who very few people in this country knew or had heard of and was able in less than a year to outflank and beat multiple US senators Governors a former vice president pretty resoundingly in certain cases the fact that that's possible in the United States of America shows that you know what for all the obstacles that people will bring up I often get asked about oh how much of an obstacle was the fact that you're a slightly different religion or your last name is hard to pronounce everybody has their own OB obstacles and you know I had I had my share of them not being known the fact that that was possible under those circumstances in this country I think is actually really heartening for not just the American dream but even for the ability to succeed at the highest levels of changing this country or at least close to the highest levels so it's mostly positive takeaways from the last year but a lot of learnings I would say that I would uh I would you know bake into whatever I do in the future would you have another go I wouldn't say um you may be crazy to say no to I I rarely say no to anything but it's not what's at the top of my mind right now either I think one of the things I've found is that every time I make elaborate life plans personally it never goes according to that plan anyway it just doesn't like it never has for me and I think it's true probably for most people too but when you're called by your actual sense of purpose then the plan reveals itself I'm called by the same purpose I would say but what specific plan that entails you know that's I my faith each to me that's higher power that will work through me to reveal itself you you're not tempted by Congress I'm not tempted by Congress okay okay never have been yeah you know I considered a run for Senate back in 2022 and decided against it at the time it just wasn't I didn't didn't feel called to do it I ran for president because I felt called to run for US president I only made that decision in January and I'm the kind of person where once you've made that decision you don't you know sputter around I declared by February you know there is a there's a senate seat open in my home state and that's something that people have been bringing up a lot so is that something that I would have to consider if asked you know if asked I think I have an obligation not to be no no can't just be like the automatic answer I have an obligation to consider it but I'm think there's also other possibilities of driving change through the administration through the executive branch and let's see what happens in November I mean I think that that's the first question is people assume what's going to happen after November I think the next 100 days or so are going to be going to be a challenging 100 days for the country actually I um I'm not really looking forward to it you worried about certain things I worried yeah I mean how could we not be we have been taught by the media and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that we're as deeply divided as we are we just had the first serious assassination attempt we've had of a major US president and presidential candidate in a generation I'm worried about the lack of cander in the Democratic party even about who their nominee is going to be just think about even the last three weeks you have a change in who's running for US president on grounds of cognitive deficit while that person is still the current president of the United States at a moment where I believe we are at significant domestic vulnerability you have a major candidate who's the head in the polls the leading Contender to be the next president who by a few centimeters avoided assassination notwithstanding an attempt and a bullet that struck him yeah I'm worried and I think the next couple of months I think are going to be challenging for the country I think it's going to put us through put us through some testing and are we going to come out stronger on the other side of it I believe we can you know I think when a bone breaks it heals stronger but I hope we get to that place that it does heal stronger and it's not going to happen automatically it's going to be a function of what each of us decides to make of it and so I'm going to do do my part in that but it is with some it is with some concern about what's ahead in the next few months yeah how do you get to a point of more Unity so I don't think it can be a fake Unity yeah right I mean I think we all desire Unity I think you can remember if I'm remembering one of our earlier conversations of having a Deja Vu movement with you we might have talked about Unity before you and I I about it before yeah okay well I'm just I'm remembering that as we're sitting down again I don't think it can be a fake Unity I think part of what unites Americans is that we can deeply not just superficially deeply disagree about policy from some of the most contentious issues abortion to Second Amendment rights to tax rates to how we should deal with foreign policy risks we can deeply disagree on questions of policy without seeing our neighbor as our enemy the enemy is an ideology I think it exists that's the way I look at in the side I'm on the enemy is an ideology but not my fellow Citizen and I think the way we achieve Unity fake Unity I'll give you my version of it is pretending like we agree more than we do on those deeper seated differences that fake Unity can't last but real Unity is being able to say that we I'm not using Danny as an example here but we deeply profoundly disagree and yet I'm able to see your ideology as my enemy without seeing you my fellow citizen as my enemy that's what real Unity looks like and I think that in some ways we've set ourselves back through people who say hey can't we just tone down the rhetoric or can't we compromise and meet in the middle which actually obfuscates the real Unity which was that even some of my some of my closest friends extended family members are people who have drastically different views in the future of the country animated dinner table conversations that would feel and uncomfortable at times right but to still know that we're Bound by some other Bond either as a family member or as fellow citizens and that's I think what we've forgotten is in the same way that two family members can disagree but still decide they're members of the same family led by the same head of the household the same thing can apply to a country to say we're in a relationship with each other as Citizens and you could disagree like mad with your neighbor but still actually get together at the dinner table at the end of it that's the America I miss I think that is somewhat unique to America it's not only unique to America but I think it's distinctively true in America at least it has been for most of our history and we've lost that now so if that truly is distinctively true in America and we've lost that not only are we more divided we've lost our identity right we've lost our sense of national identity and that was the whole premise for my campaign is that we're in the middle of this national identity crisis and I think if the next president of the United States has his work cut out for him well I'm rooting for Trump so I'll talk about you know him as Trump I think the two things the next president of the United States can do is to revive national pride and identity in the country and then the second is far more executional which is to shut down the overgrowing administrative State and the regulatory State accomplish those two things we save this country that's why IR ran those were the two most important parts of my campaign I think the best candidate to now Implement that is undoubtedly Donald Trump that's what I'm supporting yeah when when do you think we lost the ability to disagree with each other H I think it was gradual I think we just woke up you know in some days you know when does when does a grain of sand or pile of grains of sand become a heap one day you just oh it's two grain sand three grain of sand one day you wake up it's a heap that's kind of what happened with the culture of fear in this country I think it happened when we view came to view Politics as a substitute or came to treat Politics as a substitute for religion actually I think that politics I'm not the only person that have said this is a kind of new religion in the United States of America so when politics invaded other spheres of Our Lives that's when it happened so you're in my first conversation which by coincidence happens to have actually been here in Nashville a couple years ago what we were talking about then it's relevant to this conversation was the politicization of the private sector right when companies adopt you could say woke values if it's leftwing but whatever it is adopting political values in Commerce MH and that was a symptom of I think a deeper ever expansion of politics to infect spheres of our lives that were supposed to be untainted I mentioned this on stage today at the conference Alexis to teville when he traveled this country 160 years ago he said this country isn't supposed to last more than a generation it's too big it's too diverse too religiously diverse to have anything that causes this country to cohere unless you have these apolitical s ues these spaces outside of partisan politics where you could still unite Sports the Arts the private sector broadly economic production manufacturing research nonprofits universities whatever it is eight political sanctuaries that bring bind us together across our political differences so when did when did we lose that ability to see our fellow citizen still as a fellow brother and sister rather than in in a common country rather than as an enemy is when politics became total right and when do we see this happen this started to happen really in the aftermath of 2018 2019 when the business Round Table discarded the historical purpose of the corporation to be one that advanced social and and environmental ends as well in the aftermath of George Floyd's death when you saw company saying no no no there's a right and a wrong side for a company to take a position on what otherwise was a question reserved for the political realm now your fellow employee isn't no longer just your fellow employee working in common cause of your company but possibly an enemy un they were aligned on the broader social Vision that was historically relegated to the realm of politics so very specifically when it happened I think it started happening the period between 2019 to 2021 I think that a lot of the hypercharged environment during the unnecessary lockdowns in the country created I think a lot of pent up frustration that then boiled over once people say things it becomes very hard for them to admit that they didn't quite mean the fullest extent of what they said you put yourself in a box or someone puts you in a box you kind of have to stay there and you have no way out it's one of the things I think we need to be careful of in our politics actually and because politics is everywhere now I mean in our lives you got to give people the space to have an off-ramp right when you when you lose when you cut off somebody's off-ramp from even a position they themselves have adopted you lose the ability for True reconciliation not fake but the real thing you lose that ability where if somebody's put themselves in a corner or you put them in a corner and then you cut off their offramp their only choice is to stay there and double down and so I do think that even for many friends on the left who may not have agreed with points of view that I had today the last thing you're going to hear from me is to say well you said this back then it's going to say okay if your experiences have evolved in a way that caus you to view things differently now we're all human beings and I think that that sort of inviting spirit is not only better as an electoral strategy though I think it is obviously it's also I think the right way to preserve the possibility of at a moment where it feels impossible but I don't think it actually is impossible but do you think it's been an overcorrection like a blip because I feel like over the last year or so we we've seen some I almost like these Nature's healing moments I feel like Elon Musk has helped with that and you know this isn't a pro or con Elon Musk conversation but I feel like he's opened up the space to have a little bit more honest conversation yeah I think it's great I I don't think it's an overcorrection I think it is a correction well no I think he's the correction but I believe like I believe like this kind of pendulum shft yeah the pendulum shifted you know too much One Way say what you mean by that well I I believe like we went through a period of there was acceptable public ideas and thoughts and unacceptable and you were co-opted into the what the acceptable thoughts were and that became even more obvious when you had corporations accepting those thoughts yes but actually there's been there has been there's a correction there look Bud Light had a big fail I've Just Seen another one with ADD death having a big fail like this I think people are saying look we don't want you in our [ __ ] politics yeah we we don't want companies mucking around in politics exactly I want to buy your stuff and your stuff is good that's right exactly for a couple of reasons one is companies are less effective at achieving their own mission when their D their focus is diluted but second is you lose this possibility of national Unity yeah that these are the sanctuaries that actually bound us together this is actually what I was focused on before I ran for president not only in my book woke in was about that and capitalist punishment I wrot a second book about that it was also the company I founded I founded strive which competes directly with the large asset managers like Black Rock and Vanguard and State Street that were actually forcing companies to behave this way through their proxy voting and through their shareholder engagement in favor of emissions caps at Chevron or or racial Equity audits at Apple and know those aren't madeup examples those are real world examples from 2022 I believed in driving that change through the market not even through politics offer alternative to these large asset managers and you know I'm proud of what strive was able to do in its first less than first two years got to what you know whatever the whatever the AUM is 1.61 billion or whatever it is I'm very proud of the fact that market Alternatives have been able to drive positive change I don't view that as an overcorrection I view that as a correction many companies now after hitting the peak of tying executive compensation to Dei or ESG goals are now beginning to pair that back I'm proud to have played some small role in that not only through the books I wrote but through strife's own shareholder public advocacy that creates an alternative voice represented in the company's shareholder stack that causes it to have to rethink some of these prior missteps they might have made and so this is what change looks like it's not it's not binary or sudden it's gradual and I do think that the market is a good way to equilibrate the kind of change we need back to what normal equal Bri is supposed to look like now some of this does start with policy and the only way you're going to change it is through the front door of the government a lot of the root cause of this is the toxic three-letter managerial class agency class in the administrative State there's only one person who could fix that the person who leads the executive branch of government that's the US president who I think hopefully will have an opportunity to do that starting in January but it's an all of the above approach and for me my native Turf has been driving competition through the private sector but I do think we live in a moment where we can also get to the original root cause of a lot of these cultural sins which is actually the managerial class and the federal government itself