Conflicting Positions and Big Pharma Ties Complicate Vivek Ramaswamy’s Candidacy

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has seen a recent spike in popularity after the first GOP debate. But critics have started digging into his past policy positions, pointing out inconsistencies and contradictions.

Ramswamy stated in an interview that he would be supportive of implementing election security reforms like single-day voting on Election Day and paper-only ballots. But Ramaswamy himself notably voted by mail in the 2020 presidential election.

SIDED WITH PENCE

In the same interview, Ramaswamy discussed the 2020 presidential election and specifically the incident at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Responding to a question about Mike Pence’s decision to verify Joe Biden’s win, Ramaswamy said he “would have done things very differently” from Pence. He said when election integrity and a peaceful transfer of power are in conflict, “that’s an opportunity for heroism.”

But in his book Nation of Victims published in the fall of 2022, Ramaswamy praised Pence for his actions on January 6. Portions of the book were captured by conservative commentator Pedro Gonzalez.

“Mike Pence, a man I have great respect for, decided it was his constitutional duty to resist the president’s attempts to get him to unilaterally overturn the results of the election, even in the face of the January 6 Capitol riot,” Ramaswamy wrote, adding: “I’m simply not convinced the election was stolen.”

FLIP-FLOPPED ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change is another policy area where Ramaswamy has flip-flopped.

In 2021, he testified before the House Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets where he said that “fighting climate change” was “not a bad goal.”

In March 2023 after he announced his candidacy, Ramaswamy said, “Climate change is also real, by the way… I’m not denying the underlying reality that global surface temperatures are going up, and in part due to human activity.”

But during the first Republican presidential debate, Ramaswamy loudly interjected that “the climate change agenda is a hoax.”

On June 19 of this year, Ramaswamy posted a video on social media wishing his followers a “Happy Juneteenth” – only to two months later call it a “useless holiday.”

INSPIRED BY SOCIALIST ECONOMISTS

Regarding taxes, Ramaswamy said in his recent book that he supported an inheritance tax as high as 59 percent. The source of Ramaswamy’s tax policy came from economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Piketty was an economic advisor to the French socialist political party, and Saez is a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley.

“If anything, I’d take the figure Piketty and Saez arrive at as a minimum,” Ramaswamy wrote in his book. “We shouldn’t allow people to become billionaires just by having rich parents.”

COVID CRONYISM?

Prior to politics, Ramsawamy worked as a hedge fund manager and founded a pharmaceutical company called Roivant. He currently owns approximately 54 million shares in the company which equates to over $155 million with Roivant’s current price per share being $2.92 and climbing.

One of Roivant’s subsidiaries, Datavant, proposed the idea of launching a COVID database of patients “to study disease transmission, identify the most vulnerable groups of the population and evaluate how effective investigational drugs are.”

“Datavant’s proposed registry would be free for government and academic researchers to access, and would aim to include every patient who has been tested for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus,” according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Months after the database proposal, Datavant was awarded a contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in order to launch “a centralized analytics platform to store and study vast amounts of medical record data from people tested for the virus.”

Datavant claimed the database was anonymous and did not violate privacy concerns.

PARTNERED WITH PFIZER

Just last year, Roivant partnered with Pfizer, one of the companies behind the experimental COVID shots, on a new “experimental bowel disease treatment, as the drugmakers seek to tap into a multibillion dollar market.”

As the mRNA injections were rolled out, Ramaswamy took to Twitter to explain that more shots would assist in limiting the spread of COVID variants.

“Those variants are the ones that have the greatest potential to drift, and possibly shift, away from the strain that initial vaccines were designed to protect against,” Ramaswamy tweeted – saying they were “emerging in places with a higher percentage of unvaccinated individuals.”

ROIVANT’S SKETCHY PAST

Currently, CNN Business labels Roivant’s publicly traded stock value up 42 percent so far in 2023 with BlackRock buying $5.7 million worth of shares on June 30.

BlackRock is one of the most notable supporters of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scores.

Ramaswamy has claimed to be “anti-woke,” but Roivant has a nonprofit arm of the company called Roivant Social Ventures (RSV).

In RSV’s company name, they describe themselves as a “social impact organization” and actively promotes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. RSV expressed interest in "building DEI opportunities for future leaders in biopharma and biotech."

The CEO of RSV, Lindsay Androski, penned an op-ed in September 2022 titled “Why the lack of diversity in drug industry leadership is hurting women and people of color” where she lamented how the pharmaceutical industry is “overwhelmingly white and male.”

Additionally, on the presidential debate stage, Ramaswamy said that he would “end the teachers’ unions.”

However, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System pension fund was also an investor that lost money in Roivant’s failed 2017 clinical trial for the Alzheimer’s drug intepirdine through one of Roivant’s subsidiaries, Axovant.

ALLY OR ENEMY OF THE GLOBALISTS?

Ramaswamy was named a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum (WEF). However, Ramaswamy just recently won a lawsuit against the WEF claiming the WEF used his image and name without his permission.

“This is an organization that does a lot of wrong and I’ve opposed it publicly and believe it should be held accountable,” Ramaswamy told The New York Post.

Critics of Ramaswamy questioned how he could sue the WEF – known for advocating their “New World Order” and wielding outsized power in governments and corporations across the world – and win in just a few months.

“How do you sue, what many consider evil, the World Economic Forum and win and get an apology letter in three months?” asked conservative podcaster Matt Kim. “He’s either that good, or, I don’t know.”

In 2011, Ramaswamy was also named a Soros Fellow by the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

Paul Soros is the brother of radical Leftist billionaire George Soros.

TRUMP WEIGHS IN

Former President Donald Trump, who continues to outpace the rest of the Republican candidate field, said that Ramaswamy is “smart,” “young,” and “full of talent.” He went a step further and indicated that Ramaswamy could be a candidate for vice president.

“He's a very, very, very intelligent person. He's got good energy, and he could be some form of something,” Trump said. “I tell you, I think he'd be very good.”

But even Trump did issue a word of warning for Ramaswamy, saying that he was perhaps getting into controversies too frequently.

"He's starting to get out there a little bit. He's getting a little bit controversial," Trump said. "I got to tell him: 'Be a little bit careful. Some things you have to hold in just a little bit, right?’"