An0maly GRILLS Vivek Ramaswamy – Top 5 Most Epic Interview Moments!

We should have never been in that position, but we were in that position. So yes or no, you never have a yes or no answer. It's always like a run around. Yes or no. I'm an outsider to politics. I got somebody who's reciting talking points at you. If you guys are going to cut me off, I really do want to get through all the questions. Yeah. Let's get to the questions. Yeah. Yeah. So I appreciate you. Thank you. Um, with the Soros scholarship. So can you explain that? Cause it's a Paul, a lot of people are misconstruing it and they're saying it was George Soros, but it was actually Paul and Daisy Soros. It was his brother. They call him the invisible Soros and some news things. And you got a scholarship. It was in 2011 to go to law school. From Paul and Daisy Soros. So what have you been telling people about that? Cause obviously a lot of people are skeptical. Yeah, sure. I mean, look, I'd say my advice to everybody is be skeptical of anybody who's, who's telling anything when they're running for office. Here's the facts. I was 24 or 25 years old in the fall of 2010. When I applied on a Fridays, when I heard about it, the deadline was Monday. There was classmates who said, Oh, there's this scholarship. First time I heard about it, but you know, 50,000 bucks, I'm not going to turn that down. In my early twenties filled out a scholarship application over the weekend, the funder of it, the main funder, not George Soros, but Paul Soros. It's his brother who made his money independently, who by the way, now is long dead, who funds the scholarship. It's a generic scholarship. Hundreds of kids. Him dead doesn't matter though. It would be saying like, I took a Soros, he's dead. You asked me, you asked me to, you asked me to let you finish. So I'm going to, I'm going to ask for the same courtesy. If you asked me to explain it, the guy is long dead because I think the big question that comes up is who's the boogeyman pulling the strings. And, and, and so the answer is I think it's relevant to know this guy's long dead, made his money independently, has different, totally different background from George Soros as well. But nonetheless, I wasn't even paying attention to this. I couldn't have told you what George Soros ties were, let alone George Soros. Why I wasn't paying attention to him at a guy, a different guy named Paul Soros is funding the scholarship at the age of 24. I would have had to be an idiot, a fool to turn down a merit scholarship that you win to help pay for graduate school as hundreds of other kids win generically. And I'm honest about that. That's what exactly what I did. Were there strings attached? No, there weren't. Now, the reason I also bring these other facts up because I think it's just important for people, skeptical people to stay skeptical is that I have no tie to George Soros other than criticizing it. There are other candidates who has tied to George Soros. I mean, George Soros is investment partners have hosted fundraisers for other prominent Republican candidates in this race as recently as June. Ron DeSantis George Soros has praised other candidates in this race. That's not me has praised other candidates. He wants to see as the Republican nominee. That's not me. There's candidates in this race who have received multimillion dollar a hundred plus million dollar loans from George Soros. That's not me. I'm not saying that to disqualify the other candidates, but I am saying that when people get a lot of information, yes, be skeptical, but be skeptical where it's coming from too. And for my part, yes, I'm honest about it. I took a 24 year old scholarship in the year 2010 from a guy who's related to George Soros. You know, if that's going to stop somebody to say, they shouldn't vote for me, that's their decision. But I think that anybody who would have turned that down should not be allowed anywhere near the white house doing trade deals on behalf of this country either. You say you're being honest. I heard two interviews. I quoted you. You said when I didn't have the money and back when I didn't have a lot of money to do it, those are direct quotes from you. A Fox digital news did a report and they said that the year that you took the award from Soros, you had, $2.2 million that year and a million over a million dollars years total. So can I address the fact you really need the money or are you just saying that? Well, let me address a couple of facts right there. So how do people know that? One thing they should know is it's because I did something that no presidential candidate has ever done. And I was aware of what I've said and when I've released it, we published 20 years of tax returns. Nobody who's running for us president has published 20 years of tax returns. Certainly not somebody who's been successful in business. And the reason is I believe transparency is important. That's an, I would love for every other political candidate to do that. None of them do it because they want to hide. So I voluntarily in the early weeks of this campaign, put that on the internet for everybody to see anybody who on your show, who's visiting media or anybody else can see it for themselves. Now if you want to interpret that correctly. So let me just tell you, if you want to get to the facts, I mean, I don't think these facts matter at all, but if you care about them, I'll go into them. Fall of 2010, I applied my first major payday at the hedge fund I was working for was the year end bonus I got in 2010 and then my real big payday then came in 2011. So at the time I applied for that scholarship, yeah, I didn't have that. My parents know me, no had not earned big time money. So the fall of 2010 when I applied, absolutely. Now at the year end, 2010 December 31st for people in the finance industry, that's when you know that was a biggest paycheck by an order of magnitude I've ever gotten. And then 2011 it just kept going up from there. But the other thing I'll say is to anybody else who's young and receiving advice, even if you have a million dollars in the bank account and somebody gives you a $50,000 scholarship, yeah, take it. Don't take it. If there's strings attached and they say you can't say certain things, turn down that money. But yeah, if you have a million bucks and somebody gives you 50 grand more and you earned it, go for it and take it too. Turns out though, that that wasn't even the position I was in. It was the following year and you want to match up the tax returns, do the facts right. The reason I've done it is so that everybody else has full transparency. So I think it's important that people understand that. Well, just real quick before we move on, the Fox digital news report says you made them over a million year, a million dollars three years prior. And then that year you made 2.2. So, I mean, if you say, you know, if you get free money, take it. That's one thing. If you say, I don't have the money, that's fair. Well, to tell you the truth, put yourself in the, I mean, it wasn't a need-based scholarship. It's a merit scholarship. But I'd say that, you know what? I am wealthy now. Okay. I was not wealthy by the standards that I used to judge that back then. And yes, $50,000 meant a heck of a lot to me when I was 24 years old. All right. I can't, you can look up my tax returns, post-tax the way you accumulate. Had I earned a few hundred thousand dollars? Yes. Leading up to that, did it become millions later and hundreds of millions later? Yes, it did. At the age of 24, it wasn't 50,000 bucks meant a lot to me and I was smart to take it. And I would advise any other young person to do the same thing. Cool. Yeah. Before we move on to, I just saw this, this was on the Paul and Daisy Soros website. They were bragging about you pursuing the potential of abandoned pharmaceuticals. That guy right there, they said that he had contacted you because he saw you on the Soros website. And there, this is, I believe, Axovant, which is the four times failed drug that you bought from GlaxoSmithKline. And then that large IPO that they're bragging about, it actually caved, right? It went from like $200 stock to like a 30. You want me to just tell you about that whole experience? Cause I can, I can. I'm down to talk about it later since I'm kind of in a rush. If you guys aren't going to give me as much time, cause I have a lot of stuff to get through. So do you want to move on and then we can talk about Axovant later? Yeah. Wherever you want to go, man. And my, my job is I, I, I love the skepticism. All I say is to everybody, be skeptical of what anybody's feeding you, get to the actual facts. And so I'm happy to talk about that too. So I want to read this tweet real quick. It's from a seven, nine, 2020, understandable, right? Things are changing, et cetera. You said wear a mask equals personal responsibility. It's puzzling when conservatives oppose it. Um, so, you know, you were kind of pushing the mask thing. And I've heard interviews where you said, you know, that was just the libertarian in you. You know, is that your stance on that, that you were so libertarian that you were shaming conservatives for not wearing masks? I have a couple of things to say about it. One is I think every Republican politician who's running for president certainly has said something about the COVID policies in the last, in the early phases and over the last several years that we all look back and cringe at. I do. I cringe at that right now. I'm man enough to admit it. I think some other people aren't, but that's a fact. Now I will tell you what happened in early 2020. I think you probably remember this. Other people should too. The government literally was telling people not to buy masks. Anthony Fauci was saying it. My wife is, he's an airway surgeon. They're telling her in the hospital, you know, you don't want to wear a 95 masks around. So if the government's telling you not to buy a mask, yes, my native instincts do kick in. And I go in the other direction of anytime somebody tells me to do something, sometimes that gets the better of me. And that did get the better of me there. I look back at that now and I cringe. Well, I've been identified as libertarian when I was 19 years old, when I was in college, I have a libertarian instincts that are solid in me today. I voted for the libertarian candidate in 2004, the first election I voted in. So yeah, I have, I don't like labels. They don't mean a lot to me, but I have strong libertarian instincts. Do you think that, because I saw you say in another interview that that was your libertarian instinct where you said, if the government says, don't buy them, I say, my anti-government instincts definitely kicked in and inform my views of saying that, you know what, if the government's going to say this, I'm going to do the opposite. However, we now know that those were ineffective. The other thing I just want to be clear on, because I've heard a lot of people spew nonsense about this. I've never once been on record favoring a mandate of any kind. In fact, I'm dead set against them, vaccine mandate, et cetera. I'm a medical choice absolutist, even when it comes from right to try, which I've advocated for is the only person in the pharmaceutical industry who is open enough to say it. People should be able to try medicines that haven't yet been approved, but people shouldn't be forced to take anything that has been approved either. Yeah, I got you. So you said that on July 9th, right? Um, on April 3rd Fauci said that Americans should wear masks on June 5th. I mean, for months, the government had been telling people to wear masks with the libertarian instinct. What I'm curious is how did your libertarian instinct kick in to make you pro masks just when they were briefly telling you not to buy them, but your libertarian instinct didn't kick in when it came to the government, uh, pharmaceutical vaccine, you seem to say very generic stuff about that as far as you think everyone eligible should take it. You wrote in 2022 in a wall street journal op-ed that you thought it was the most important part of the pandemic. Uh, so where was your libertarian instinct then? Yeah. Just so you're aware. I mean, and if you read that op-ed, I know you know this, I just want to make sure your audience does too, to be fair to everybody listening. That was an op-ed that got criticized like hell by the establishment because it called for letting it spread. You know what the title of it was? You may, if you have it in front of you, you may remember it better than me. Right. I got it. Let us, what was the title? A slow, the spread speeding. It may be safer. And real quick, this is a direct quote spread question, Mark, maybe safer. And I'll give you some time. It says the most important step in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic was the distribution of vaccines. I mean, I don't think that's true. Yes. I agree with you. Now that we know about the myocarditis risks, which I think is what actually gives me great pause about this. But what I will say is just to, I know, and I know you'd like to be a straight shooter. So be a straight shooter with your audience, that article, 1200 words of it. And the title of it says slow, the spread question, Mark, no speeding. It may be safer was an argument for actually letting the Omicron variant spread and rip at a time when they were actually imposing lockdowns and mandates. So I'm not going to say that everything that I or any other Republican politician at every step of the COVID-19 pandemic, what they've said was right, but I definitely have been far more on the side of opposing any mandate. And also even someone arguing, I remember the heat I took for writing that arguing for letting it rip. I think I was one of the few Republican politicians to actually take that stand. And so there are other areas. That was 2022. Pretty much everyone was doing at that point, but I'm more interested in your libertarian is kicked in with the mask thing. Yeah. But like, why didn't it kick? Why didn't your libertarian instinct, your anti-government instinct, you have an $18 billion socialist scheme called operation warp speed, where the government owns part of the Moderna patent. I believe one of your companies is even suing for like lipid. They lied about it. Yeah. Lipid nanoparty lied about a lot. Those companies have, but that's what I'm like, you know, we can move on, but I'm just wondering what speed in retrospect was an example of crony capitalism. And I despise crony capitalism, whether it's electric vehicle subsidies, whether it's picking favorites among people who manufacture vaccines. I believe that we should rescind the special liability protections that apply to vaccine manufacturers. Those are my policy positions. And I think that that's really important. And Reagan is actually the guy who implemented that. Does that mean? I think Ronald Reagan's a bad guy. No, I don't. But that doesn't mean everything he did was heroic either. And so I think part of what we've got to do is understand that everybody, me, Trump, Reagan, DeSantis doesn't matter. We're human beings. We're doing our best. I believe in everybody's acting in good faith, doing their best to advance this country for things that we've said in the past on different sets of facts. You know what? I haven't been right about everything in my life. Neither has any other politician. Maybe neither has any other human being, but there are certain areas where I've been well ahead of the curve that nobody else was talking about it from where the climate agenda is to where the racial woke agenda is long before people were talking about it. Those are areas where I was on the bleeding edge. I'll give credit to people like you who were ahead on spotting the risks of the COVID policies on vaccines in particular. And I just got to be right to move it forward though. I didn't even finish college. I mean, I'm not stupid. I dropped out to pursue my career, but in general, I believe it was a third grade math equation, a lot of this stuff. So why do you think I was able to figure it out? But not you, not Trump. I believe it was because at the time you were working in the biotech pharmaceutical industry. So that's what you were doing. You were focused on sucking up money, advancing your company. You weren't really concerned with what we were dealing with or the truth about it, because if I can do it with a calculator, I think you could have done it or Trump could have done it. But Trump hired Alex Azar, a pharmacy executive lobbyist. Trump took a million dollars from Pfizer. Trump had meetings with Bill Gates in 2018, where Bill Gates told him about modernizing flu vaccines. And in 2019 before the pandemic, Trump passed an executive order for that. So I don't think that I'm so smart that I just had the foresight. I think that I actually care. And Trump was being a politician that I believe sold out to big pharma. And I think you were working with big pharma. So I don't, I don't think I had insight. I just think you care now because you're running for president. No, I mean, I think everybody wears their different hats and has their perspectives of what they're focused on. I was in the middle of writing woke Inc, which is my first book. I was not writing a book about the lockdown policy. So where I was going deep was on the woke industrial complex as it related to corporate America. Appreciate it. I want to get through to a few things. I know we have limited time, so I just want to read this quote is from your book, nation of victims, which I actually purchased on Kindle to make sure that it was legit. I didn't want to go off other sources. You know, you wrote, it was a dark day for democracy. The loser, the last election refuted, refused to concede the race claim. The election was stolen and raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters and is considering running for executive office. Again, I'm referring of course, to Donald Trump, where you compared him in that chapter to Stacey Abrams as a sore loser. Um, do you still stand by that? So, and you read the whole chapter, right? Because that entire line you read, that was the opening lines of the chapter where I said, I'm of course, referring to Stacey Abrams, right? So what I did, absolutely, absolutely. I just want people to, who haven't read the book to understand cause everything is, I mean, there's a tone I'm bringing to this. Okay. I want to unite the country. And would I have handled the way that, you know, Donald Trump handled the lead up to January 6th? Now I would have handled it very differently. I've been very clear about things I would have done. I'm in this race for a reason, but my view is none of that was illegal. And I think where I have gone vehement in recent months on this in the last six months is when they then start prosecuting him for bad judgments, that changes my emphasis. Okay. My emphasis is on, we can't be a country where the party in power uses police force to indict its political opponents, which is probably why I have been by far the clearest voice in the GOP, that if I'm elected, I would pardon Trump. I think they need to drop the investigations now. I think that's a dangerous precedent for our country, but that is different from saying that I would have done everything the same way that he did. And I think we've got to be able to draw those distinctions. I did at the time. In fact, I wrote an op-ed in the wall street journal even before nation of victims was January 10th or it was four days or so after what happened on January 6th, 2021 saying that the reason that this happened was systematic censorship in the year leading up to January 6th, 2021. Now people ask me, are you defending Trump's behavior? I said it at the time. I said, no, I think his behavior was bad on that day. I would have handled the situation really differently, but we've got to be able to draw those distinctions and say, Trump didn't cause January 6th censorship did let's speak the truth. Does that mean I applaud the way he handled it? No, I don't. And that's the way I draw these distinctions. Great. I, uh, I watched your DC Drano and Candace Owens interview. And when they brought it up, you said it was airlifted and satirical. I felt like you were misleading the audience, trying to make them think that you didn't say it. I just want to read this here because my issue is not that you think that Trump's a sore loser like Stacey Abrams, or if you did it, I'm just not sure which one you actually believe. Cause in the book, I'm just going to read another part. It says, so I was especially disappointed when I saw president Trump take a page from Stacey Abrams playbook, his claims were just as weak as Abrams. She claimed voter suppression. He claimed voter fraud. And you went on to say how his claims of voter fraud were ridiculous and you didn't agree with them. But then on Candace Owens, this thing, you said that you did believe in ballot fraud and election fraud when they kind of you. So I'm just wondering which one is you, the one that you wrote a year ago or the one on Candace's show for their audience. Hey, so, so I'll be honest about this. I've been clear. If you read also woke Inc, the book before nation of victims, where I was clear about this, the form of election interference that I think changed the outcome of the election. And I think we do think it changed the outcome of the election was big text interference. Okay. Search algorithms, changing what did and didn't show up on Google searches, the Hunter Biden laptop story being systematically suppressed. Yes. I've been clear. Even since my first book in woke Inc that I believe that this actually is dangerous, changed the outcome of the election. Now at the time I wrote nation of victims, I wasn't in politics. I'm not, I'm not coming from the business world. And I saw the disgrace that unfolded at the footsteps of the Capitol on January 6th. I cried. I was in tears when I watched on television that day. I will say that over the last year, as people have, including some people in the conservative movement who are friends have pushed back and have said, Hey, listen up, here's actual data, hard data of ballot harvesting and otherwise, some of which was illegal. I am now persuaded that there was ballot fraud. I'm not yet persuaded that it was of a scale that we know could have changed the election result. So that's where I'm at now. And that's what I've said all along at every step of the way. And you know, just so people are aware of my background, I'm not a politician. Okay. I came out of the world of business. I didn't come out of the birth canal spouting the standard Republican talking points. And I saw the disgrace that unfolded at the footsteps of the Capitol on January 6th. I cried. I was in tears when I watched on television that day. I come to my views with experience. If people present data, I'm always open to actually evolving my perspectives, but that's where I've been at. And so I've been clear pretty much at every step of the way, just to be clear. Yeah. And the book is it, you mock Trump for believing in voter fraud on Candace's show. You said you believe there was ballot and election fraud, which like, just a clear yes or no answer, which one? I believe that there was ballot and election fraud. I think we have clear evidence of that, but I have not seen evidence that it was of a scale that would have changed the election. And just to be clear, I challenge you back because I know you're, you're honest and it's a straight shooter as well. Read what I said in the book, right? I think the line I used in the book was I have yet to see evidence that that would have changed the outcome of the election. I think that's the exact line I used now. Here's what I also think is Stacey Abrams. And that's where most of my chapter was focused is a sore loser who never accepted the outcome of that election. Neither did Hillary Clinton. Can I read, can I read the book real quick? It said, yeah, he filed scores of lawsuits over various claims of fraud and was right, but they came nowhere, nowhere close to changing the outcome in a single state, let alone the several swing States who's, uh, he needed to overturn. In many cases, judges, the president himself had nominated, ruled against him a sign of our health, uh, into our nation's constitutions. I want to just read this real quick. That's fair enough. Right. Yeah. Just take the words as they are. Yeah, I'm sure. Um, you know, Trump is kind of floating you for vice president. And I want to read another part of your book. I did read the whole chapter cause I know you asked, uh, Candace and Drano if they did and they didn't. So they didn't know what to say, but I read it. Uh, you said Mike Pence, a man I have great respect for decided. It was his constitutional duty to resist the president's attempt to get him to unilaterally overturn the results of an election. Even in the face of the January 6th Capitol riot, our institutions did hold in the end, but they shouldn't have been tested. I don't mind that you wrote that. I think that's totally fine, but obviously president Trump, I don't think would want a vice president that agrees with Mike Pence and what he did. And most of the MAGA base wouldn't. So do you agree with that? Well, I think I would have never put us in that position. So what I said, here's what I would have done post the election on November 4th. All right. And this is in the standpoint of being actually, let's say I'm in the position, I'm running for president. I'm not running for vice president, but if you want to get the question of what would I have done in those shoes, I think there was an opportunity for heroism there. Okay. If you know that there was at least evidence of election integrity and security issues, fix that problem. You have the American help America vote act. You have the American confidence in elections act. Here's what I would have done single day voting on election day as a national holiday, pass the law, make it a national holiday, get that on Trump's decks, get that sign government issued ID to match the voter file and paper ballots with that. Here's what I would have said is on January 7th, we're declaring our run for reelection pursuant to an actual free and fair election. I think there's an opportunity for Congress to have set that minimal standard. That's not a 10th amendment violation. That's what I would have done, but I think it was a missed opportunity. I hear what you're saying, but before I move on, cause I want to get through everything, you know, do you still have respect for Mike Pence? And do you think he did the right thing on January 6th? Yes or no. I've actually lost a lot of my respect for Pence over time. And I think he and I have had some conflicts. I think that have boiled over into the, we have different points of view. I think he's a good family man. I respect many aspects about him, but the truth of the matter is we should have never been in that position. But we were in that position. So yes or no, you never have a yes or no answer. It's always like a run around. Yes or no. Would you have done what Mike Pence did if you were there? I would, I would have not done what Mike Pence did starting on November 5th of 2020. Okay. So if I'm vice president of the United States, or if I were vice president of the United States, then it's not like I would be helicoptered in for a one day job. If we're starting from when the election even moves on forward, it was a missed opportunity to actually heroically reunite this country. And by the way, I would have done it differently than Donald Trump did it too. I'm even handed on it. I promise you. I want to say too with you stepped down as a chairman in 2023 from your pharmaceutical company, right? In 2023. Right before I ran for president is when I stepped off the board, the board stepped down as CEO in January of 2021. Okay. But you were on the board in 2023, right? Before I was one of the, one of the 10 board members or so. Yeah. And in 2022, your company partnered with Pfizer that to create a new company, correct? Yeah. There was, I mean, the whole business model of the company I founded was to pick up drugs that other companies had abandoned or left behind. And so there's one deal of some drug that Pfizer was developing that Roy even took over some rights too. I was on the board, not involved with it, but you know, there was a separate deal that the company had done with Pfizer longer ago back when I was CEO too, it's probably about 200 deals. The company has done, it's a licensing business. That's exactly how it worked. Yeah. Not, not my favorite company, but I understand that's not mine either. Not mine either. In 2021 in August or August 21st, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. August 15th, 2021. You said, well said George Soros. I consider Mr. G the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world. And you pretty much just shared and co-signed his wall street journal op-eds. So my question to you is now that you're running for Republican president, do you think tweeting well said George Soros looks good? And also when you say enemy of open societies, George Soros is worldview of open society is a worldview I don't subscribe to. So what do you think that means? Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know what, probably doesn't sound good, but you know what, in that narrow instance, I actually do stand by it because I think Xi Jinping is the greatest threat that we face and we got to wake up to it. Communist China is the number one threat that we face. And so yes, think about this, right? I've already published Woking. Put yourself in my head space because this actually allows people to understand what's going on. I've been critical of George Soros heading into that. But even if George Soros is going to say something in the wall street journal at a time when Republicans are still bending the knee to Xi Jinping, and he says Xi Jinping is the greatest threat to free societies. And you know what I purposely, I knew what I was doing. I said, even this guy, not free societies, open societies, which is the name of it. That's the name of his article. And I posted it on Twitter and I said, well said, because you know what? Xi Jinping is the biggest threat we face. And so just because somebody I disagree with vehemently on a lot of issues, because they say Xi Jinping's bad, that's not going to make me say Xi Jinping's good. I would say, I actually think it's a good thing in this country if we get to a place where both Democrats and Republicans wake up to the fact that communist China, not the USSR, which doesn't exist anymore, which is why I'm against the war in Ukraine. I think we have a foreign policy establishment in both parties that has its head in the sand. And yes, anybody in the United States who recognizes that China's the top threat we face, that we have to cut the cord on dependents and our links. Yeah. Even if I disagree with them on everything and I've been critical as I have, you know what? I'm still going to speak the truth when it comes to whether, and I don't care whether that looks good or not. It's exactly what I'm going to do. I wonder why Souris feels that way. It's interesting. But I want to say if like DeSantis or Mitch McConnell, if they had done business in China before they were in office, do you think like people have a right to have a red flag and be like, is that, what are they doing there? Well, I think, yeah, absolutely. And to be honest with you, I have, I wrote my whole book, Woke Inc. I go through the experiences of my first business, major business, at least that I founded. I did do business in China. I see how ugly it is. You can't do business in China if you're critical of the CCP. Honestly, for many business, if they criticize the United States, they roll out the red carpet. So I started my second major business, Strive. It's an asset management firm. I don't know if you know much about Strive, but it competes with BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard by rejecting the ESG orthodoxy. I did something that no major U.S. asset manager has ever done. I made a day one commitment that Strive would never do business in China. And as I said at the beginning, man, I came to my views because of my experiences. I did not come out of the birth canal, spouting Republican talking points. Even in my twenties, I really wasn't particularly political, but I came to my views, especially on China because of my experiences. And so, yes, I talk about that openly, which is why I've been the most vocal CEO against China and in favor of cutting the cord of probably any CEO in the United States. And I challenge you to find one who's been even more vocal than me on it. Speaking of BlackRock Newsweek reported recently that while you've been openly vocal against ESG policies that Roy Vaughn, your company's major institutional investors include Morgan Stanley, Viking Global, and BlackRock, the very firms he criticizes are amongst his largest stakeholders, owning over 500 million shares in your company. It's hilarious, right? So you want to know. It is. It is. Yeah. And the thing that makes it hilarious is that people have to know how the system works, right? Don't be duped by anybody. You want to know why BlackRock's the top shareholder of every American company that's publicly listed? The company I founded is listed on the stock exchange. Well, you want to know the way it works is BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard automatically own your companies. Whether or not you have a choice in the matter, you don't choose your shareholders as a public company. And you want to know what's even more broken about it. People should know this. Your own retirement accounts, your own investment accounts are being used without your knowledge to vote for toxic policies in corporate America's boardrooms. So I've written two books. My most recent one this year, Capitalist Punishment lays this out. This is a problem. It's a big problem when you have three institutions that are automatically the top shareholders of every major public company in the US. If you take your company public, you don't have a choice in the matter. That's how the game works. And if you have a 401k account, you don't have a choice in the matter. Your money is going to be used to actually vote for those toxic agendas. But I'm the only person in corporate America or in capital markets who actually started an asset management firm to compete and take that down. And I also believe in succeeding. It cost a billion dollars in assets under management within a single year. That's twice as fast as it took for JP Morgan to get there. And so that's how I roll. And so I just think that it's important for people to understand this. These are great questions. I believe in providing alternatives in the market and winning. So calling me part of big pharma or part of BlackRock is like calling Rumble part of big tech. And I say this as also somebody who backed Rumble early on to challenge big tech back when it was a private company. So I believe in winning through the market, not through staying out. I believe in staying in providing alternatives and winning. But yes, that was my background, not politics before I made my run. Right. Speaking of staying in the market, this is you, I think, in Beijing, right? You were at a conference in Beijing a couple of years ago. I think it was before we pulled out. That's right. And I have my views for a reason.