Did Vivek Ramaswamy Effectively Tone Down His "Know-It-All" Persona? With Glenn Greenwald

What do you see? You see a young man who's in a bit of a hurry, maybe a little ambitious, bit of a know-it-all, it seems at times. I'm here to tell you, no, I don't know it all. I will listen. I will have the best people, the best and brightest in this country, whatever age they are, advising me. So he was asked about that answer, Vivek, by CNN's Dana Bash later and admitted that it was based on feedback he'd received from, I don't know, was it like focus groups or consultants after the first debate. He's learning. I think it was good feedback. He was too much of a know-it-all in the first debate. Nobody knows who he is. It's like he comes out there. Not only is he like, I'm the only one I've criticized him about this repeatedly. I'm the only one with the courage to tell you this. I'm the only one with who's brave enough to say the truth. And everybody else up here has bought and paid for it. It's like, OK. So I liked the new Vivek better. I thought it was a good tweak. It could have the unfortunate effect of making him seem inauthentic, however. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the problem that a lot of them had, actually, in trying to compensate for their failures of the first night by coming out and essentially unveiling a totally different personality for the second night. So, you know, it's like, who is this person? And if somebody is willing to change to that extreme, that extent, you start to wonder, do they even have like an actual soul, like an actual fixed personality, or is it just whatever they're being instructed to do? I think we talked about this last time I was on your show because I was in Milwaukee for that last debate and I interviewed Vivek the morning after the debate. And I had interviewed him before, but it was the first time I did so in person. And, you know, he does have kind of like a natural charisma. I absolutely can see easily why he succeeded in business so early. He's obviously very smart. The thing about it is, though, he obviously has a huge amount of faith and confidence in the fact that he's smart. He believes a lot in how smart he is. And that, too, is palpable, not just the fact that he is smart, but the fact that he thinks he's very smart. And that can be very off-putting. It's just that I think there was kind of a consensus in polling, at least, and you saw like in the polling since that he did himself a favor with that first debate, even though he came off in kind of like an arrogant way, he stood out. He clearly dominated that first debate in a way people didn't expect. And I don't mind that kind of a self-effacing humor, you know, like, oh, I know you think I'm a know-it-all. Maybe I am. But no, actually, I'm not. That that's fine to do to kind of poke fun at yourself. But to just offer a completely new revamped relaunch of your personality, where like you went from running like a bull through a China shop, insulting everybody's character and intellect and everything about them to suddenly being mismanners, you know, oh, my gosh, I'm so offended that one might interrupt me and speak of our character. Let us have dignified political debate. I think that's going to leave a lot of people, particularly for someone new on the scene, wondering, like, does he just wake up and change his personality the way the rest of us change our wardrobe every day? It's so true that you, yes, you hit it right on the head. Well said. I will say I'll give Chris Christie this moment. It was kind of funny and it showed himself in control and my kids liked it. He he kind of put Vivek in his place at a certain point here. We'll watch it because they've done it. But put your hand down for a second, would you? I still got I still got time, dude. So so chill out. I liked that. I have to say, you know, it is it's back to what you were saying about like the kid in class who's always like with the hand up while you're speaking and like every time he knows all the answers, he's always got something to say is annoying. And so I think Chris Christie was feeling it and organically was like, just stop it. Put your hand down. I still have the mic, dude. Well, what it reminded me a lot of was you probably remember there was a lot of very similar hostility for Pete Buttigieg, especially in the early parts of those twenty twenty debates when, you know, this young guy who never really went through the paces, the most he did was get elected with seven thousand votes to be the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, started speaking with that sort of, you know, same kind of self-certainty of having gone to Harvard and worked at McKinsey and believing that you're just like on the smartest kid in the room, always the smart. And it just offended a lot of them there who have been working in politics for decades to be treated as though they were just dumb, ignorant by this person who never really has done anything. And particularly Amy Klobuchar barely could disguise her very visceral contempt for Pete Buttigieg in a way that actually became entertaining. And it's starting to remind me of the dynamic now between Nikki Haley and the VAC. The problem is, I think a lot of people watching these debates, not necessarily the way we do kind of looking to be entertained, but a lot of people look to politics as a way to help important things in their lives they feel are missing with their kids, with their family, with their financial situation. And when it starts to become these kinds of bickering personality disputes, even though they can produce some entertaining moments, I love the hatred that Amy Klobuchar harbored for Pete Buttigieg. 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