He’s made a fortune in biotech, calls environmental activists a ‘religious cult’ and enjoys a surprise rise in the Republican primaries: Vivek Ramaswamy, 38, hopes his provocative and incisive speech will propel him to the White House .
To the point of imagining himself in “Trump 2.0”.
“I want to push his program even further,” says this other red-tie entrepreneur, who is still more than 40 points behind the 77-year-old former president.
The fact remains that this complete novice in politics now occupies, to everyone’s surprise, third place in the polls for the Republican primaries, organized at the beginning of 2024. To the point of giving cold sweats to the governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, current second, and who surfs on a very similar political niche.
On the ground, Vivek Ramaswamy, father of two young children, has made his fight against “Wokism”, the supposed well-meaning of the American left, an obsession.
“We are in the midst of an identity crisis,” says the 30-year-old, who accuses the country’s elites of spreading a “cultural cancer”, especially on LGBT issues.
Not without success: his book “Woke Inc.” in which he develops this thesis, is on the list of the best-selling books in the United States, according to the New York Times ranking.
In an increasingly crowded field of candidates — more than 10 Republicans are currently vying to challenge President Joe Biden in 2024 — Vivek Ramaswamy manages to stand out with a radical program to say the least.
This piano-loving vegetarian wants to push back the right to vote to 25 and lay off 90% of the staff of the American central bank and the Department of Justice. His ready-made solution to revive growth in the United States? “Burn coal, without qualms”.
“Like all the other candidates, the only chance for Ramaswamy to get out of this is if Trump collapses,” political scientist Kyle Kondik told AFP.
If the majority of contenders for the 2024 Republican primaries are careful not to criticize Donald Trump too frontally, for fear of alienating his base, Vivek Ramaswamy goes even further.
Present in court during one of the charges of the former president in Miami, the candidate invited all his peers to commit to pardoning Donald Trump if they were to be elected.
A loyalty that Donald Trump returns to him well: “He is doing well,” said the Republican billionaire recently, more used to distributing nicknames than good points to his political opponents.
Born in the working-class state of Ohio in August 1985, Vivek Ramaswamy is the son of Indian immigrants, of Hindu religion.
Educated in Catholic institutions, he continued his graduate studies at Harvard. In this prestigious university of Massachusetts, this man with a dazzling smile even lends himself to rap and stands out under the nickname “Da Vek”, an alter ego adept at libertarian texts.
Fan of Eminem, he has fun rapping songs from the Detroit artist in the countryside, like Saturday at the Iowa agricultural fair, in front of a conquered audience.
“If you think speaker Vivek Ramaswamy is intense, you haven’t met Da Vek yet,” The Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, humorously noted in 2006.
After a stint at Yale, he founded the biotechnology company Roivant, thanks to which he amassed more than $600 million in personal fortune, according to Forbes magazine. He left the board of directors in February to devote himself to his campaign, which he largely financed.
“It’s not just a political campaign,” argues Vivek Ramaswamy. “It’s a cultural movement, to build a new American dream.”
13/08/2023 10:55:49 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
