Conservative author and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is “seriously considering” a 2024 presidential bid after traveling to Iowa in January, he confirmed to the Daily Caller on Monday.
Ramaswamy spoke with Iowa farmers and Republican leaders about reviving national identity and combatting woke ideology, the subject of his bestseller “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” published in 2021. (RELATED: Nikki Haley Sets Date To Announce 2024 Presidential Bid)
Vivek Ramaswamy, the oft-described CEO of Anti-Woke Inc., is going to run for president.
reports @dlippmanhttps://t.co/6ZEY3a62k9
— Sam Stein (@samstein) February 13, 2023
“I would say I’m seriously considering it, that’s where I’m at,” Ramaswamy told the Caller in a brief interview. He believes “we are in the middle of this national identity crisis” because “the things that used to define American national identity have disappeared.”
Ramaswamy views the rise of “secular religions” such as woke ideology as “a symptom of a deeper hunger for purpose and meaning.” He fears the search for meaning is holding America back from “taking on Communist China” and addressing other national challenges.
Ramaswamy’s vision is based on answering the question of “what it means to be an American,” and he will not be influenced by other candidates, he told the Caller.
“I’m interested in the question of the ‘what’ and the ‘why,'” he said. Based on conversations from his two book tours, he believes most Americans share his vision of renewing national identity.
His message in Iowa was largely warmly received despite his status as a political outsider in a field likely to be dominated by experienced politicians, Politico reported.
Ramaswamy has reportedly built a political team of close to 20 people, including former Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Kathy Barnette to run his possible grassroots operation and Republican operative Rex Elsass to oversee a potential campaign. His political platform would consist of battling China economically, firing “managerial” government employees, shutting down many federal agencies, reforming the national security state and fighting affirmative action, according to Politico.
He would self-fund his campaign with his personal wealth, estimated at roughly $500 million from his career as an asset manager and biotech entrepreneur, the outlet reported. Ramaswamy began his career on Wall Street before venturing into pharmaceuticals with Roivant Sciences, which developed drugs that were abandoned by the industry. He left Roivant in 2021 and became a prominent conservative commentator for criticizing the presence of progressive ideology in corporate America.
In 2022, he founded his asset management firm, Strive Asset Management, with the mission of depoliticizing corporate America from the environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing movement taking over the finance world. ESG advocates, such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, prioritize climate change and progressive values when making investment decisions.
Ramaswamy is a first-generation American with an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. He was raised in Ohio and would reportedly run his campaign from there.