Vivek Ramaswamy Reveals What His Relationship with Elon Musk Was Like: Interview

And one of my core things that I ran on for U.S. president, core platform, was taking 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 too. You meet a lot of people who would say we have too much red tape. I haven't met one person who said 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 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 that 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 Doge turned into a tech? Because I mean, at the beginning, you wrote 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 a 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 to to him and others to discuss 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 in the relationship between those two guys. OK, fair enough. But what I would say about your relationship with them, what was he like to work with? Because smart, obviously, I mean, I would say he's a smart guy. He's obviously a smart guy. Was he awake 24-7? Like, what were his, you know, I mean, it was 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. Yeah. 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. It's a lot of you think about what we did or we're looking to a 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 but you're 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 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, we'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 axiom? Well, the president just acts. So my view is, yes. Right. My view is, yes. Yeah. But that needs to happen. What kind of 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. Administrative Procedures Act, et cetera. That's a whole separate discussion. One of 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 by synergistically, synergistically. Exactly. So in that way. So free up energy or whatever it is. Absolutely. 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 in 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. Did you learn? That I'm excited to implement. Did you learn things? I learned an immense amount. Right. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I learned an immense amount. How could you not? You're drinking from a fire hose. Yeah. You're seeing things that you didn't you never would have imagined.