Vivek Ramaswamy Reveals His Shocking School Bullying Story and What He Learned from Elon Musk

Welcome back to the PodForce One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine. We are in midtown Manhattan today where we are joined by former presidential candidate, entrepreneur, and Ohio gubernatorial candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy. Thanks for joining us, Vivek. It's good to see you. Seems like forever ago that I was on your campaign bus in New Hampshire. That's right. That's right. Yeah, it does feel like forever ago. It was a wild ride. You had a fantastic run there. It was wild. It was wild. Yeah. And we have great memories of it. Yeah. And since then, so much has happened with you. There was Doge with Elon Musk, and now you're running for the governor of Ohio. Is that a consolation prize? I think for me, it's an ultimate prize to lead from the front. One of the things that I've learned about myself, I said during the presidential campaign, and I think I've learned about myself that it's definitely true about me, is that I'm somebody who's best positioned to lead from the front. And I view this as a form of self-criticism, but I don't make for particularly good number two. Right. Right. You got to know your weaknesses. And for me, that's one of mine. And your primary opponent is, or potentially for the Democrats, is Amy Acton, who's described as the Dr. Fauci of Ohio. I think correctly described as such. Yes. Is that how you're going to one of your sort of methods of attack for her? Well, I think about it less as attack and more just let's talk about what's true. Right. So she doesn't really have much of a public record of taking a position on really any matter of public importance other than COVID policy. And she had different viewpoints than mine, both at the time and today. Like what? Well, she led Ohio to be the first state in the country that actually shut down our public schools. Right. Which I thought was not an area where we wanted to be first. And in fact, an area where I did not want Ohio to shut down our public schools at all. But the irony is, see, I went to public schools in Cincinnati through eighth grade, and then I went to a private Jesuit high school called St. Xavier High School. You look back now, Cincinnati public high schools, they were closed for a year and a half during COVID. Private high schools like the one I went to were closed for five days or less. The irony is that those kids in the public schools are never going to get that year and a half of their education back. Which leaves us with a situation that's so telling with modern politics. The people who preach the most about inequality are often the ones who implemented the policies that create that inequality. Isn't that an irony? Do you think that's deliberate? It is an irony. You know, in this particular individual's case, I don't think she was deliberate in saying that I want to actually penalize these inner city Black students, which is exactly what she ended up doing. But what about the left in general? But I think the left in general, if you think about it as a movement, what is intentional? It's the amalgam of collective incentives to say that if you create the very conditions that allow your relevance to persist, then in that sense, it is intentional. Yeah. In devious intention, do they actively think they're harming those people? No. But do their incentives add up to create a dependence on the government and a dependence on those policies that preserves their relevance? Or their votes. And their votes, of course. That's a persisting staying power. And the answer to that, I think, in that incentive amalgam sense is yes. And I'll give you an analogy outside of politics, right? In the nonprofit world, right? We've thankfully lived the American dream. We've had an opportunity to be philanthropic and evaluate different nonprofits. And one of the things you see in certain nonprofit organizations is at a certain point, they become addicted to the problems they want to solve. Because if you actually solve the problem, then you wouldn't have a reason to exist anymore. And I think a big part of that, that same syndrome exists in much of the modern Democratic Party. Imagine if they actually solve the problem of generational poverty. Imagine if they actually solve the problem of inequitable access to high quality education, which we know how to do through school choice and educational mobility. If they actually solve those problems, then they wouldn't have a need to continue to actually exist. But the existence of the problem creates a new type of bondage in the United States of America. I think that, you know, I don't mean to be overly dramatic about this, but it was, we traced our history not that long ago, 160 years ago, it was a Democratic Party that favored slavery in the United States. And there's a new kind of psychological slavery of a dependence on the government that the modern Democratic Party needs to create to persist in its quest for power. And I do think that for the far fringe of the left, which doesn't represent a majority of Democrats, I believe by numbers, but they absolutely represent what has a stranglehold on the modern Democratic Party by way of power. That's exactly what this game is about. Yeah, it's very cynical. If you win as governor of Ohio, what would you do that would be different from your predecessor and from other governors around the country to fix those problems? So one of my areas of focus that you asked what's different, and I could tell you all the things that would be very similar, that we want to become a zero income tax state like Texas and Florida. I favor educational choice, moving it to the next level. That's in the standard canon of Republican policies, which in those areas I largely favor. What would I do that was different is your question. So on economic growth, on education, I'll give you a couple of different niche ideas, but that I think can actually catapult Ohio to the forefront of the country. And by the way, that is my objective. Think about Texas and Florida. Ohio should not be living in their shadow. For the next 10 years, I want to lead our state to be the state that creates a new frontier for the country. Because it used to be. It used to be. We were the frontier of America. We're the first frontier of America, actually. Seven presidents from Ohio. Absolutely. And think about Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and the Wright brothers landing on the moon, orbiting the earth. The first people to take flight. That was Ohio. And I would like for us to be the next frontier as well. And that requires thinking outside the box a little bit. So you think about the path to zero income tax. What's the first step to get there? We'll get rid of the capital gains tax in Ohio, which attracts entrepreneurs to our state. Think about people building in Silicon Valley or New York City or Austin, Texas. Give zero capital gains tax and combine that with founder friendly incorporation statutes. That's the stuff of economic development that you don't hear in campaign slogans. Somewhat technical stuff. I am an entrepreneur. I've built successful companies. I think if we have a state that's run by an entrepreneur for entrepreneurs to actually build in the state, those are easy ways to catapult Ohio forward. Because what went wrong with Ohio? Well, I think there's I mean, there's a lot that happened over the last 70 years. When you think about the deindustrialization of the country, a lot of Ohio sectors where we were at the leading edge of the first industrial revolution. Toledo was the glass manufacturing capital of the world. Akron was the leading rubber manufacturing capital of the world. Youngstown and Cleveland were the steel production capitals of the West. At that point in time, those were the leading edge sectors. And what happened is as the economy moved, Ohio was once at the forefront, began to fall behind areas like Silicon Valley that seized the new forefront. So the way I look at it is if Silicon Valley led the way for the last 10 years, we need to revitalize it and make the Ohio River Valley lead for the next 10. And that means not just the sectors of the past, we build on those foundations, but to also embrace the sectors of the future, even the state where we embrace AI and quantum computing. Not to take old jobs, but to make new jobs through workforce training and education. And that's the other area where you say what's different in Ohio from other standard Republican canon talking points is the traditional Republican canon on education, which I favor, is school choice. But I don't think we've had a serious Republican governor who has rolled up our sleeves and actually elevated the standards of performance of public schools themselves. And there's a lot of common sense reforms that we should be able to adopt in our public schools that allow them to compete with the best of those alternatives. Like phonics for reading? Absolutely. And standards to go along with it. So there's a thing called the science of reading technically exists in Ohio. It's not being fully implemented in the execution in many of our public schools in urban districts. But let's talk about actual standards. And what I'm about to say won't be controversial to most parents, but is really controversial in education policy. If you can't read by the end of third grade in Ohio on my watch, you won't be going to fourth grade. The third grade reading guaranteed. And why is that important? That's the age at which in your educational development, you need to go from learning to read to reading to learn. And if that transition never happens, you're four times less likely to be able to graduate from high school. Therefore, more likely to end up in jail, more likely to end up in poverty. And yet you look at what percentage of people in Ohio public schools in the big eight school districts are actually meeting that standard. It's less than half. It's under 45%. It's shocking. And yet it's controversial to say that we're going to apply that actual standard. Think about at least algebra competency by the end of eighth grade. Now, unlike the third grade reading guarantee, maybe not a hundred percent of people will be algebra competent by eighth grade, but that should at least be the default standard. And a big part of the problem, Miranda, it's a little controversial to talk about, but it turns out that many of the math teachers teaching math are not actually competent in the subjects they're actually teaching. We've got to apply standards to our teachers. And better education. Better education at a young age. I mean, if you think about math teachers, in some ways, on one hand, our licensing requirements to be a teacher are overexpansive. They keep out good people. On the other hand, they're under-inclusive because for all the licensing standards we have, they don't even license them for competency in math to be a math teacher. So would you do that? Absolutely. Absolutely we would. Especially in math, I want those teachers to be paid more because if you're competent in math, it turns out there's a whole economy for people who are competent in math to get jobs outside of education. We need to understand that those teachers may need to be paid differentially. 75% of eighth graders right now across the country are not proficient in math. The average student in China is a full four years ahead of the average student here in the U.S., which if we do the math on that, a seventh grader here is performing at the same standard as a third grade student in China, which is totally unacceptable. Yeah. And Vietnam and Singapore. An eighth grader is the equivalent of a third grader in Singapore. I use China as an example just because they're better. Australia or England, we're all falling behind the Southeast Asian countries, China. We've got to turn that around. Why is that? Well, look, I think that the question is prioritization. How much do we prioritize elevating our educational achievement standards? And frankly, I think this has been a failure of both political parties. It is the least discussed issue relative to its importance in American politics. Fads like antiphonics, whole word language, new math, that's all complicated teaching. I've been in Vietnam in very poor schools. They've got 40 kids to the classroom and they're just learning old school math. Well, I mean, if you adopt Singapore math curriculum in the US, you already see better results in math competency. Absolutely. Would you do that in Ohio? I think it's reasonable to do it. So we're looking at curricular enhancements. And I'm not saying Singapore math is the only way, but it's a pretty darn good standard relative to what we're getting here in most of our public schools. Now, a lot of this is also something that's got to start with the family. It's not the government's going to fix everything. So when I say we adopt Singapore math here, you do see important improvements in academic standards, but not to the full extent that you see in Singapore. A big part of that is a family emphasis on education in Singapore as well. So I think part of this job of leading as a president, or in the case of the nation or the governor in the case of Ohio, is that the half the job of a chief executive is yes to set these policies. And we're going to do that. But half the job is also just identifying what's important as a policy and even cultural priority. I think we're in need of a modern Apollo mission. Apollo mission rally to galvanize the United States. And I think elevating our educational achievement standards can be the modern Apollo mission of our time. And I think it's necessary, by the way. I mean, if you think about entering this era of A.I. and quantum computing, if we roll this forward 20 years and our students are still four years behind China and five years behind Singapore, that will be that will mark the end of American exceptionalism and greatness unless we turn that ship around. Now, I'm confident we can and I'm confident that we will in Ohio and as a model for the country. But I think that is the moral imperative in front of those of us who care about preserving America's purpose in the world and in human history. It starts with making sure that we have an educated enough generation of citizens to be able to compete at the leading edge of a modern economy rather than to see themselves victimized by it, which has largely been the dogma of the left, which has largely infiltrated K-12 education, which in turn accounts for the abandonment of those standards, those standards themselves labeled as racist or inequitable or whatever. Instead of recognizing that the application of these standards is actually what's going to lift up people of every race and actually create the conditions for the people from top to bottom to be able to flourish. That's the turnaround we need. And my criticism of the left is I think they're responsible for a lot of those lowering or abandonment of standards. My criticism of our friends and our coalition here are myself included in that. On the right is we haven't done enough to be able to, while in power, elevate and apply those standards. And that's what we're going to change when I'm elected in Ohio. We're sort of bordering on your very controversial tweets about H-1B visas, which I think you were misunderstood. And on the right, people ran away with that and said that you wanting to have influxes of, you know, immigrants into the country to change the culture and that we were critical of American culture. You mentioned, you said, you know, we need to change the culture so that the jock and the homecoming queen, I'm paraphrasing, aren't elevated over the valedictorian or the math olympiad. That they're all elevated is what we want, right? And so when you made that tweet, I think you were on holiday in Brazil or something. Yeah, that's right. You just tossed it off. Not realizing you'd get millions of views and be very controversial. Well, as you know, when I ran for president, I'm not afraid to start a conversation that we need to have. And then this is the conversation is, by the way, on H-1B is that a broken system? Of course, I've said so millions of times. That's irrelevant compared to our own deeper failure in education that we need to address. That's what I'm talking about. And people are uncomfortable. Were you misunderstood or what was your point there when you talked about, you know, there seemed like there was an element of dissonance, you know, the math nerd who was, you know, felt that the jock was elevated over him? Well, I think that we got to celebrate success in every form. What made this country great is that we're the country where every path is open to every child. There's this conversation around, OK, why are we less competitive than some of these other countries compared to where we were 55, 60 years ago, where we were in 1950, where we were after World War Two, we were the unambiguous leaders of the world. Where are we today? Right. For those who say, myself included, that it is time to make America great again. Where does the again come from? We wouldn't have to make America great again if we already were where we were immediately after where we came out of World War Two. And a big part of that failure is the fact that our education system has fallen behind. It's a moral failure. And if we really want to lead in those sectors of the future, what do I want for our economy? I want one where people who are born and raised in Ohio go on to achieve the maximum of their potential, that they are the workers who are lifted up by a modern economy. That's what I want. In order to achieve that, if we're really serious about it, not lip service on Twitter. A lot of people do lip service on Twitter. If you actually if you actually really care about the problem and you're not talking about fixing public education in this country, that means you're not serious. You're entirely unserious. If you care, if you're talking about elevating American workers, which I care about, but you're not talking about the quality and the failures of our public schools, it means you don't mean what you say because you're not actually paying attention to the root cause. And I refuse to abandon the root cause focus. And that's an uncomfortable message for some people. I mean, the idea of you care about somebody, you know, you tell them the truth. You care about yourself. You can tell them what they want to hear. That's easy. But if you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. And I've always been somebody who challenges the people we love the most. And I would love to be challenged by them, too. That's our country better. And I think we need more leaders who are willing to challenge our audiences, challenge our own base to lift ourselves up and be the best version of ourselves. That's the kind of leader I'm going to be for a while. That's the that's the country I grew up in, where even many of my best friends are people who we disagree with vehemently. But we ought to be able to have actual hard open debates rather than just giving people the pions and the standard, you know, standard trite slogans that have brought down our politics. What triggered you then to make that tweet while you were on holiday? Triggered is, you know, anything. Prompted, yeah. Well, I think that the fact is, in November, we won. And it's a beautiful thing. And I want us to see and use that victory to actually fix so many of the failures that have held our country back. And President Trump correctly, I went to so many of his rallies over the last year, traveled this country to do my part to help him get reelected. And at every one of those speeches, what did he say? We are a nation in decline. He said at every one of those speeches. And why did he say it? He said it because in some measure, it's true. It's true. Now, maybe it lands differently when I say it. Why is that? I don't know. Apparently it does for some people, but it's the truth. And the reality is, even if we're a nation in decline, we don't have to stay that way. That's the part I want to get to. See, we may have been a nation in decline for the last half decade. We may have been a nation in decline for much of even the last half century, but it doesn't have to stay that way. I believe we can still be a nation in our ascent, but we have to confront what the actual failures are. And I think one of those deepest failures, one of those deepest failures is the failure in our education system. It is a moral imperative to make sure that our kids and their generation are equipped to be at the forefront of a modern economy. And are we prioritizing that to the extent that we should right now as a country? No, we're not. I think the left is mostly responsible for the failure, but is the right doing everything that we should to elevate those standards, Miranda? I don't think we are. Not yet. And it's a big part of why I was called into, you know, into hopefully being in a position to elevate those standards of performance in a positive way. And I think that is a precondition for reviving American greatness. You think about the woke infection, right? And here we have a lot of unity on the right. We talk about the left's rejection of excellence, the left's rejection of American unity in favor of racial and identitarian division, gender, race, sexual orientation. I mean, I wrote my first book at a time when people didn't even, you know, popularize the word Woke Inc. Woke Inc. was my book at the time where people, many people said- Huge bestseller. It was. And people didn't know what that, you know, weren't associated with that word. And I called that out because that was the threat to American exceptionalism. Just to go back a minute, I'm interested in education and your experience of education, because you went to a majority black middle school in Ohio. Must've been tough because you were thrown down the stairs and had to have surgery. Tell us a little bit about what it was like at that school and how did you not see yourself as a victim after that really, I mean, everyone, you know, you go through, everybody goes through the parts of growing up. So for me, I'm grateful for every part of my upbringing, including tough public schools, all the way to the Jesuit private high school I went, all the way to Harvard and Yale. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so we went to public schools, first through eighth grade, went to a school district in southwest Ohio and had a great experience with teachers there, many of whom have touched and changed my life. The junior high school I went to was also a place where, and there's often knives brought to school, which often notices there's an entire wing that they would call the success wing, which was the wing that they would tell us, don't go there because many of the students who were there were often held back by two, three, four years. They call it the success wing. They call it the success wing, but that's the place where you definitely don't want to go. This is what, 1990s? 1990s, yeah. The era of everyone wins a prize. That's right. I mean, the participation trophy culture began and I think that we'll come back to this, but in some measure, we've even turned graduation from high school into a participation trophy. And I don't think that's doing anyone any favors. Now, a lot of these students, I mean, I had the ultimate privilege that many of the students who were in the success wing or other parts of the school didn't have. I came from a stable two-parent household with a focus on education, instilling in us the values that allowed us to succeed. And that was unusual in that school. It was, I would say, I mean, there was, it was a diverse range of people in that school. There were a lot of people who also had the ability to succeed and do great things, but there were a lot of people who came from tough, challenged backgrounds, very different from my own. There was a history to that annexation of different school districts that created the district that I was in. Looking back at that, I'm immensely grateful for that experience, but I had a French teacher, Mr. Wagner in eighth grade, who came to me and said, listen, you need to get out of here. Really? Yeah. He sat my parents down and my parents weren't thinking about it. My dad was working at GE. He was working at GE in an era of layoffs under Jack Welch's tenure. There was different job security concerns. Their plan was not to send us to private school. But when a teacher sits down, me down and my parents down and says, for the betterment of yourself and your kid, you need to get out of this school and go to a place where they can actually celebrate academic achievement and success. That's what led my Hindu parents to arrive at the conclusion when they weren't planning to write a check, just write the check out of their savings to be able to send me to St. X High School, St. Xavier in Cincinnati. And to me, that was a totally different experience too, because I was one of the lone non-Catholic, non-Hindu student in a Catholic environment. But you weren't at risk of being thrown down the stairs. Yeah. It wasn't a great event. You get up, you pick up and you move on. But that was a wake-up call for us to say, and you know what? That kid probably, I mean, I don't know who it was, probably came from a tough background of their own. We think about what a lot of students go through that put themselves in a tough position. That's what we're in this to change at the end of the day. And so I think we got to have empathy for people who come from tough circumstances. My parents did what was right for me, which was to go to St. X, which ended up being a great high school experience and give us a great education in the process. But what I want to do is to say, we're not going to leave behind those kids in those public schools. It's not that getting out isn't the only option. In fact, getting out should not be the only option. But it has to be in that situation. But what we want to do, I mean, now you think about this beauty of this country and the state where I grew up. This is the country on God's green earth where that kid who grew up as the kid of immigrants who came to this country with nothing, went to a challenged public school environment, had rough experiences there, now has gone on to succeed at the highest levels of American business, ran for president, became the youngest person in history of the Republican Party to do it. And now God willing, in a position to lead that same state where I was born and raised and hopefully to change that state for the better by elevating the standards of those very public schools. That's what makes this country great. It's a wonderful story. That's my gratitude. It's my sense of gratitude for that journey is what guides me in this mission. And I guess that experience built resilience in you and an ability to bounce back. And your mother is a psychiatrist. Your dad was an engineer for GE. And they came here from India. Why did they do that? What were their circumstances like back home? And what do you think their experiences instilled in you as the American-born son of migrants? Yeah, well, my dad was from a village in rural southern India. And it was not even India in the cities, but this was rural. This is an area where they had rotating power outages on a regular basis, even when we would go back and visit my grandparents in the 1990s. My mom grew up in different cities around India, from Bombay to Mysore, where she went to medical school. And the one thing they had when they came here... So there were different classes? One was a doctor, one was an engineer. But one was from the city, one was from rural. So one was from a high-born family, and one was from a... not really? I would say that's a little bit of an archaic and outdated... yeah, super... I mean, it's like the left talking about somebody grew up in a city versus in the suburb here. They were both from... I would say neither one of us were from upper-class circumstances. And your dad must have been very smart. They were both very smart, actually. Yeah, and smart in different ways. So they're both, thankfully, highly intelligent people. They came to this country. My dad in pursuit of higher education. My mom married my father, came over here to complete her residency, and then eventually she treated patients from the Veterans Administration, the VA in Cincinnati, to older patients in nursing homes in Southwest Ohio. But their journey, which is... I mean, it's amazing. You think about this, like my dad came in the late 70s. Back then, you don't have cell phones, you don't have phone connection, you're in a totally different place. A totally different environment. To be able to pack your bags, go around the world and say that we're going to make it in the greatest country known to the history of man takes gumption. It does. And so for me, that was part of what I took away from their story and upbringing is hardship is something that happens to you in life. Victimhood is a choice. Right. And we don't choose to be victims. We choose to be victorious. And that was the mentality that my parents instilled in me. My dad had a slogan growing up is, if you're going to stand out, you might as well be outstanding. And I think there's something very American about that. Yeah. Is the American creed, this idea of pursuing excellence, pursuing and celebrating success. And I think it is what draws so many of the greatest minds from across the world through most of our nation's history. To this great country we have, I want to preserve that optimism. That optimism and that sense of mobility and success in our country. And adventure. And adventure. Absolutely. And you know, you're taking risk. Yes. That too is part of the American way, the American culture. And talk about, you know, Ohio, even as a frontier, there's a people took risks to go West. You think about people who come to this country to take risks, to participate in the system of creating value. Think about my own success as in the American dream was as an entrepreneur, you take risks, sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed. But that is the grit, the texture of the American dream. And that's what, that's the spirit that I want to see us revive. And I go back to the education system. I think it is the best place, Miranda, with the next generation to cultivate that American spirit that I think we're longing for in the country. And did your mother psychoanalyze you at all? I mean, what was it like to have a mother who was a shrink? She found her way. So her specialty was geriatric psychiatry. So she was particularly taking care of patients. And, uh, you know, yeah, yeah. When I, you know, hopefully God willing, we're all alive and doing, doing well and healthy, but. But did she give you any sort of, um, strategies for success or? I think they had a very simple formula. When in doubt, work hard. When in doubt, work hard. It's like, I told you, I'm a tennis fanatic. It's like a strategy. Best advice I get from a tennis coach is if you feel like you're having an off day on the court, some days your rhythm is off or whatever. What's the best thing you can do is just excess footwork, just go extra hard on the small steps, put a little extra effort in. And that's usually how you're going to find your rhythm. Yeah. So that's on the tennis court. And it generally, generally works. Okay. And so this is advice. A lot of pros would get to that advice writ large to life. It was probably the best advice that my parents would have given me when I was young too, is when in doubt work hard at what you want to achieve. And most of the times things are going to work themselves out. Now there's certain areas where you're never going to, you know, different people have different natural gifts. I love playing basketball as a kid, but I'm six feet tall. I was never destined to play in the NBA. Right. So there's certain things that, you know, when you hit the outer limits of where your capacities are, that's just the truth. And I've been so blessed in other ways. We have other natural capacities we're able to use. And tennis, you were amazing. You were a national champion. Yeah. National champion is an overstatement, but I was, yeah, I would love to take that and accept that. But I was, uh, I was a good player. Right. And when did you stop playing? I played, um, so I played, we played a bunch of sports till I was probably in third, fourth, fifth grade. And then it actually was when my dad, so I've mentioned the, the GE, you know, terminal or whatever under Jack Welch. So he had an ability to keep his job security by going night school at Northern Kentucky university law school. And by the way, the idea of the advice they gave me, they practiced what they preached. Yes. So he faces job insecurity. What does he do when in So he went to night school for four years, full-time job a day, four years, 45 minute plus drive to Northern Kentucky from Cincinnati and back. And by the way, sometimes I would do those drives and be in sixth grade in the back of the law class with him. Got a firsthand experience of what that hard work actually looked like. But anyway, that required my brother, who's four years younger than I, we'd have team sports, soccer, basketball. My mom was then single piloting. So we had to consolidate to a place where we could actually play the same sport at the same time. Oh, I see. So that was the Genesis of tennis. Yeah. So my brother started four years younger than me playing seriously. And he was like a national champ. So he got to be better than you. Yeah. He's I hate to admit it in public like this, but I hope he doesn't listen to this, but yes, he is better than me. And he got, you know, he's four years younger and grew up playing with me and people my age. That was what created it was my mom having to decide we couldn't have two soccer games at the same time when my dad is, you know, at night school for law school after work. So we consolidated on tennis and it worked out for the better. I mean, my brother got really good and I got, you know, I got, you know, I would say humbly quite good as well. So first born of two boys, obviously you're going to be quite an alpha. And so and you mentioned before that you don't do very well as being number two. I don't. And with Elon, I guess that must have been part of the mix. I mean, I was a bit surprised that that was a job that you were given by President Trump after the election. Were you a bit disappointed that you weren't given a cabinet post? I was offered a cabinet post. Oh, right. Yeah. But I won. I'll reserve that between myself and President Trump. There were a couple that were discussed. But for me, what was interesting was when you said no, you prefer Doge. Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And one of my core things that I ran on for U.S. president core platform was taken down the overgrown regulatory state. You think about the fourth branch of government. It is this overgrown bureaucracy. And I've traveled this country and I travel my home state of Ohio to you meet a lot of people who would say we have too much red tape. I haven't met one person who say we need a little more red tape in this country. And I do think that that is the wet blanket on our economy that's choking the country from its maximal potential. I continue to believe that that we're making progress. So for me, when I thought about what I wanted to do and make a I was already set on running for governor of Ohio, but for a period of time in the administration where I could be most helpful, that's where my focus was. And I continue to believe that is one of the areas where we can unlock real potential. I was really glad to make what I hope were some useful contributions for two and a half months of working intensely and setting up Doge for what I thought was the path it was heading. But at a certain point, you got to follow your own your own natural calling. And as I said, I'm why do you think I'm best turned into a tech? Because I mean, at the beginning, you write that Wall Street Journal piece with Elon Musk. It seemed like more of an outside the government, as you say, sort of a takedown or shrinking or reassessment of the bureaucratic state, the administrative state. And yet it just became kind of tech support, as Elon called it. Were you surprised by that? Why did that happen? Well, I mean, I'll leave you know, Elon took the reins for Doge and and worked with President Trump on that. So I'll leave that to him and others to discuss. It's been successful up to a point. Well, from my perspective, we've got a few things we got to address in the country. Right. So one is we have the overgrown regulatory state that can be addressed through executive power. And then we have an overgrown national debt problem. Yeah. And that needs to be addressed through legislation. So my own perspective is that a combination of both. I mean, I think at this point, both is required. I mean, those are two sides of the same coin, but it has to still be addressed through legislation that spawns that growth. Now, deregulation is part of giving us the tailwind for that growth. So you're right. They do go together. But my view is executive power, a great way to deregulate cut red tape. President Trump is getting a head start in that direction. I want to see more in that direction at the state level, which is a big part of where I'm focused in Ohio is cutting red tape. Yeah. And then at the federal level, at some point, we're going to have to confront the national debt problem in the country where it's right now, 37 trillion approaching and growing. I think it's on track to be 60, 65 trillion in 10 years because it compounds. And at some point, we're going to confront that. And I do think that economic growth is an important part of our way out. I also have some broader perspectives on how we can think about empowering a whole new generation of capitalists in the country. You think about everyone's focused on what you cut, what you cut, and how do you roll back entitlements? How about thinking about cultivating a generation of millionaires in this country who are so wealthy that they don't need access to the yesterday's entitlement state, but instead are a generation of millionaires that are independently successful on their own. And what's the key to getting there? You go back to two things, the education system, and then you go back to starting the process of asset compounding at a young age. And Albert Einstein called this the most powerful force in the universe. And he was right. The difference between the wealthy and everybody else is whether or not you own an asset that compounds. That's really the difference between, broadly speaking, the wealthy and everyone else. That's been real estate so far. I mean, for most people, isn't it? Well, real estate, equity. Real estate doesn't... I'm talking about broadening the base of stock market ownership in this country. Think about what the S&P 500 has done in the last 20 years. Imagine if the full base of the United States of America participated in that, we'd be no longer fighting each other tooth and nail. We'd instead be united. How would you do that? Well, I mean, that's maybe a longer discussion for another time. But would you give people shares when they're born? Well, I think that I'll give you the most modest example where I'll start in Ohio. Yeah. And I think that there's going to be more ambitious ways that we implement this. But I'll give you the most modest example. Start with education, financial literacy education, starting at a young age. I mean, if you're a patriotic parent, if you're willing to die for your country, here's something easier you can do that would also do some good for your country. Actually, teach your kids how to do math by eighth grade. Actually, teach your kids to read by third grade and put $10,000 in the S&P 500 as early as you can. Right. Just leave it there. Don't touch it. Well, President Trump's kind of doing that with that baby bonus. To just say as a parent, $10,000 is nothing to sniff at. I'm not saying it's easy for every parent to come up with $10,000. But if you're able to save $10,000 and put it in the S&P 500 for your kid, you let that compound, they're going to be a millionaire by the time they're in their fifties. Doing nothing. Well, what I would say, if you're a government version of this, attach work requirements and so forth. But that's one of the most patriotic things you could do for your country as a parent right now, is teach your kids how to do math, algebra by eighth grade, read by third grade, put $10,000 away in the S&P 500 and set them up to be a millionaire. And to me, if we're able to then root for the economic policies that cause maximal S&P 500 compounding, but everyone's actually participating in it, now we're really talking about a new kind of capitalism in which everyone's participating in uncapped equity upside. And this is where I see the future of our new conservative movement going, or at least where it ought to go, is to revive capitalism, revive success, revive meritocracy, but to do it in a way that allows everyone to participate in the benefits of that gain, rather than the us versus them-ism of penalizing the people who succeed and rallying the people who are falling behind against the succeeded. The us versus them stuff, let that be yesterday. On the left, and frankly, even for I would say on the right as well, let's not go the direction of the left. Let's go the direction of how we actually empower people to achieve the things that capitalism empowers them to achieve. Back to Doge, what happened with Elon? And were you surprised in the end that he and Donald Trump fell out so badly? I'll leave that between the two of them. I'm not here a commentator between the relationship between those two guys. Okay, fair enough. But what about your relationship with Elon? What was he like to work with? Obviously, I mean, you can say he's a smart guy. Was he awake 24-7? It was a good, interesting experience for a couple of months, and I think that we share a passion for fixing some of these foundational issues in the country. There's different ways to do it, and there's, I could say, maybe no right or wrong way. I had my vision of how to do it, and my perspective is I'll have the opportunity to lead from the front in Ohio, which is why I chose the path that I did. Because a lot of, you think about what we did, or we're looking to do at Doge, I think I'm actually going to be able to even help implement in my home state. I'll give you one example just to tease something I haven't really talked about elsewhere, but you're kind of pulling it out of me, is you think about a lot of those regulations at the federal level, and one of the things we were looking at is how do you rescind a lot of those regulations that fell outside of the constitutional scope of Congress's response, was Congress's responsibility, but were never passed by Congress? So constitutionally, they're out of scope. They're actually unconstitutional regulations. So we were looking at all kinds of ways to rescind a lot of the regs that the Supreme Court has said are actually unlawful. Well, whether or not that happens at the federal level- Can't you just ax them? Can't the president just ax them? So my view is yes. My view is yes, but that, A, needs to happen, and B, there's sometimes hoops that you go, I mean, you could think about- Fishing regulations. Every domain, fishing, wildlife, to EPA, to Nuclear Regulatory Commission that's killed nuclear energy production in the country, but there's hoops you have to jump through, or at least arguably so. The Administrative Procedures Act, etc. That's a whole separate discussion. One of the things you can do as a state is that you can actually sue the federal government if those regulations are impacting you, and guess what? My first two years as governor, if I'm successfully elected, will overlap with President Trump's last two years as U.S. president, which is a friendly administration. We have a great relationship, which allows us to be able to actually accomplish maybe things by states, pushing for the federal action that's actually easier for the federal government to accomplish that way than to jump through the Administrative Procedures Act. So it's sort of a reverse, you're helping the federal government do what you wanted to do, except you're doing it via- Synergistically. Synergistically, exactly. So in that way- So free up energy or whatever it is. Absolutely. Energy production, you can think about natural gas, you can think about nuclear, you can think about a lot of other areas too. So that experience of helping with the transition of being involved, my experience running for U.S. president, really opened up for me opportunities at the intersection of leading as a state, but setting an example for the country that I'm excited to implement. Did you learn things? Oh my gosh, yeah. I learned an immense amount. How could you not? You're drinking from a firehose, you're seeing things that you never would have imagined. What was the most useful thing you learned? I think that the most useful thing that I learned is that in a business context, you set a vision, you've got your own employee base who reports to you. It's hard enough to implement through a large enough rank and file, but at least you're implementing and you're in charge as a CEO. In the federal government, there are so many, it's like a wedding cake of overlapping different authorities. The good news is if you can move that Titanic even by two degrees, the magnitude of effect that you have on the country, hopefully for the better, is huge. The different part is it's really hard to move that Titanic more than a couple of degrees. I think President Trump, in his second term, you look at his own learnings from the first term, I think is really a different kind of leader in understanding how to move those levers more effectively than a first-time president. It's frustrating for someone who's been an entrepreneur, who's been successful in business to come into government. I think that one of the most interesting things that might go down in the history books from President Trump's presidency, this is whether you agree with him or not, and I worked hard to get him elected, but this is irrespective of the policy content, is I think it's a cool model to have somebody be a president for four years, leave, have the chance to reflect on that experience, really formulate a vision for what you want to accomplish, and then come back. It only happened once previously in US history, with Cleveland, I guess. I do think that it's one of the most interesting parts of watching President Trump's comeback is the ability to take in those first-term experiences and then learn from them. For me, in a small way as well, having participated for two and a half months during the transition, helping get Doge off the ground, learning so much that I would not have even known just as a candidate running from the outside, but having a chance to internalize what works, what may not work, what we thought might have worked, what doesn't, to be able to think about how do you implement this for the betterment of the country, and then to be able to take office as a governor, I think is a cool experience in my own right to be able to have this next year and a half to really get started with a head start. And in a way, what's happened to you, but particularly what happened to President Trump, was adversity in those four interim years has actually been a blessing. I think so. And it goes back to even our earlier discussions about lessons from my own upbringing in Southwest Ohio, is adversity is a blessing. Hardship is not the same thing as victimhood. Hardship is an opportunity to really figure out who you really are and what matters to you and how you're going to achieve the things that you thought were impossible. I think a life without hardship is really not really a full human experience at all, and there's no such thing as a life without hardship. And so you might as well embrace it and learn from it and derive enrichment and value from it, rather than just be victimized. Along those lines, you have two sons with your beautiful wife, and we're soon expecting a daughter as well, early next year. That's great. You were a billionaire, I believe. How do you shield your children? I know this is something that a lot of billionaires worry about. Bill Gates, people like that, they decide they're not going to bequeath their fortune to their children. How do you stop your kids becoming spoiled brats? Yeah, we think about it a lot. They're still young, so they're five and three, but my oldest son's getting to an age where once you're in kindergarten, you start to think about things a little bit differently. We didn't grow up with nannies, let alone security guards, and now we have both in our own household. And so one of the things that we think about is that that earlier lesson you were talking about. When in doubt, when you're worried about something, work a little harder. In this case, work a little harder means putting the extra effort to make sure that you're there for every bedtime. I'm campaigning across the state. I've been campaigning across the country. I make an effort to be home at least by bedtime every day. That's a pretty hard constraint on my schedule. I'm blessed to own something that I didn't even know people could own privately when I was growing up, a plane. Well, you know what? I don't apologize for it. I use that to be able to achieve the things I need to do across our state, across our country, and still be back home in time for bedtime for our two sons. And so in some ways, we're able to use those same blessings to be able to open up the kind of time and energy we're able to invest with our kids while doing these otherwise crazy things that I would have never imagined myself running for governor when I'm growing up in public schools in Cincinnati, Ohio 35 years ago. I think it requires putting more effort in. That's what I would say. Imprinting your values on your kids, not outsourcing. I think making sure that you're not falling into the trap of outsourcing. Because on the other hand, I want to be home for bedtime. I'm not able to pick them up from school every day. So Nanny does pick the kids up from school because my wife's a surgeon as well. So on days where she can't do it, that means we have to put the extra effort in to make sure that the stories we read them at bedtime, and then the moral of that story, the discussion we have around it before our five-year-old goes to bed. I think that is, it's always important, but I think it is doubly important for us. When Apoorva and I, you know, in some ways could take for granted the fact that we had a squarely middle-class upbringing, that we weren't going to get into this warped world. I mean, you can go into Manhattan and look at the circumstances that many kids grow up in here and billionaire wealth on 57th Street in New York City. But I think that for us, it does require that extra effort because our kids may not normally face the same kind of scarcity or adversity that I did when I was growing up. But I don't think that that's automatically a curse either. It's just what you make of it. And we're going to try to be as conscious as we can to make sure that we're passing on those same values that we were raised in. Last question, the secrets of success, your success or other success for people that you've met? Be willing to take a risk and fail. And it turns out the failure may actually teach you more things than you thought. I think the fear of failure is crippling. And I think the national creed of America, particularly in this country, I think it's more true in this country than any other country on earth. Be willing to experiment, be willing to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. And if you're willing to do that, your best case is you're going to achieve things you were thought to believe were impossible. And your worst case is you come out stronger for it as well. The other piece of advice I'd give people as leaders or maybe as an entrepreneur is make sure you're surrounding yourself by people who actually challenge you. I think that that's something that I worry about in the modern environment we live in. But think about the businesses that I built. One of them, my first company is not far from where we're sitting right now. I built a biotech company, led it as CEO for seven years. It's now a multi-billion dollar business on the NASDAQ and it's developed a number of medicines that are FDA approved. One of them is a life-saving therapy in kids. Another one for women's health conditions that were previously ignored. It's done great things, but one of the things that made me successful at that company is that I surrounded myself at the executive ranks of people who challenged me on strategy of the company, on the decisions we were making through open debate and deliberation. It was the culture of the company ended up making better decisions. And in an ultimate irony, even when I stepped down from my job as CEO to write Woke Inc. to talk about the cultural challenges in corporate America and in our economy, the guy who was the best person for the CEO job happens to be a guy who is on the other side of me in politics. His personal politics are different than mine. We still spar about it to this day as friends, but I think I was better off not so much in the political context, but even in the business context by hiring and surrounding myself with people who felt free enough to actually challenge me and challenge me hard. And as I entered this next phase of my political career, I'm going to be sure to do the same thing. I don't want to lead Ohio with a bunch of yes-men around me. I want people who are dedicated to the mission, but who are also equipped and empowered to challenge me and allow me to be the best leader I can be. And that would be one of my best pieces of advice for American success. Take risks, surround yourself with people who challenge you, good things tend to happen. Terrific. Thanks so much, Vivek. Thank you, Miranda. Great to see you. Thanks for watching PodForce One. We have new episodes every week, so please hit like and subscribe buttons so you don't miss them.