| Резюме: |  A political novice and one of the world’s wealthiest millennials, Vivek Ramaswamy has waged a whirlwind presidential campaign mirroring his meteoric rise as a biotech entrepreneur. On everything from deporting people born in the United States to ending aid to Israel and Ukraine, he consistently displays the bravado of a populist, self-declared outsider. “I stand on the side of revolution,” he declares. “That’s what I’m going to lead in a way that no establishment politician can.” In business and politics, though, Ramaswamy has run into skeptics and sometimes hard facts that threatened to derail his ambitions. In the 2024 campaign, the Israel-Hamas war has refocused the Republican primary on foreign policy and exposed just how much Ramaswamy’s self-declared revolutionary approach puts him at odds with the party’s most powerful figures and many of its voters. At Wednesday’s primary debate, Ramaswamy joined the rest of the field in supporting Israel’s offensive but returned to his practice of not just critiquing his opponents but mocking them. Ramaswamy skewered Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who some online sleuths suggest wears lifts in his boots, by asking, “Do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels?” The performance drew eye rolls and derision on stage. When Ramaswamy implied Haley was being hypocritical in criticizing the social media platform TikTok because her daughter has previously used it, the 51-year-old mother of two called him “scum.” Ramaswamy, an Ohio native who also lives there, has wowed many audiences with his rapid-fire, wide-ranging discourse. Yet even some Republican voters who come away impressed are not backing him. He’s among a group of candidates who trail former President Donald Trump and generally fall behind DeSantis in national surveys, polling in the mid to high single digits. Ann Trimble Ray, a Republican activist from Early, Iowa, suggested Ramaswamy “exposes his naivete in part with what he’s said about Israel, but also his inexperience.” “Unless you’ve had the experience of someone who has had exposure to the briefings, what you communicate is a whole lot of conjecture,” said Ray, who is leaning toward backing Haley. The 38-year-old son of Indian immigrants has spent his adult life as a sort of boastful savior. In business, that meant building a fortune by hyping a drug that ultimately failed. In politics, it means arguing he can return Trump’s “America First” vision to the White House without the baggage. Ramaswamy set his course at Harvard, a pillar of the American establishment. Ramaswamy majored in biology and participated in the campus Republican club, standing out even there as a libertarian. He drew attention from the campus newspaper for his alter ego, “Da Vek,” a rapper who performed using libertarian ideology as lyrics. “I consider myself a contrarian; I like to argue,” Ramaswamy told The Crimson. Harvard introduced Ramaswamy to the hedge-fund class. He interned at Goldman Sachs, the most prestigious Wall Street investment house, then won a job at QVT Financial, founded by another Harvard alumnus, Dan Gold. Ramaswamy led the firm’s pharmaceutical investments. Ramaswamy launched his own venture in 2014. He named it Roivant — the ROI standing for “return on investment” — and had a clear business model in mind: Buy discount patents for drugs languishing in the development phase, then resurrect them. In his first big move, […] |