Vivek Ramaswamy Is Changing The 2024 Narrative
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Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and it's an aptly named show, I do think. Listen, I appreciate you being able to join us, give us a bit of your time. I'm excited to have a great guest. We're going to highlight some things in the news. We're going to point out the stupid because

There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. And then we're going to have a conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy. I hope I pronounced his last name right. I'm sure I'm not the first one to slaughter it if I did. But look forward to talking with Vivek and his announcement that he wants to put his hat in the ring and run for the president of the United States. This is going to be a good discussion. Look forward to it. I've seen him from afar. He's got these two books out there that are really worthwhile.

But I want to learn more about his history and where he comes from and where he's approached to life and why he's such a strong conservative and how he came up with the idea of really diving deep and writing a book called Woke Inc. and another one called The Nation of Victims.

And he's just really turned himself into a player in the conservative movement and really looking forward to having a good discussion with them. But first, a few things on the news. Border security will continue to be an issue. You know, one of my big concerns, and I don't want to foreshadow something negative. I want to be careful on creating any sort of hysteria and stuff. But I worry that our country's getting a little sleepy.

We created Homeland Security for a reason. Homeland Security was in the wake of the bombing that happened in New York and in Pennsylvania and the taking out, at least trying to take out part of the Pentagon there.

And that attack on 9/11/2001. And it was supposed to be there to fight terrorism and to make sure that we connected all the dots. And it just seems like we're a little sleepy right now. The border's wide open. We've allowed millions of people in. We've caught people on the terrorist watch list coming across that border. But those are the only ones that we only the ones that we know about.

And I just worry that our vigilance is waning. There have been major cities, attacks on police officers, this whole anti-cop movement by the left, a lot of Democrats embracing this soft on crime approach. And you know what? There's going to be a consequence and a vulnerability. And I really worry about it. That's my take of it. I think it goes hand in glove with the number two thing on my list, which is crime.

Crime is something that you can identify with statistics, but also affects a community. It affects your way of life, your ability to go to school, to your ability to go to work, your ability to go to a show at night, maybe stay out late with friends, whether you're going to a restaurant or just over to their house or apartment or whatever it might be. Crime is that feeling that that fear that seeps in if you don't feel safe.

And I think this country has gotten too used to it. We're just kind of accepting of it. But listen to the D.C. police chief. You know, I saw him. He made a plea and he basically because they had a horrific homicide in Washington, D.C. And he said, look, we we have dangerous criminals that need to be incarcerated. That's what they need to be incarcerated. They need to be in jail. Anyway, we need to pay attention to that.

Other thing I wanted to highlight in the news is this Turkey earthquake. I mean, this is one of the saddest situations. You know, it's far away. Maybe you have loved ones or you're from Turkey or you have relatives or some connection to that part of the world. It wasn't just Turkey. It went into Syria, other parts of the... But that part of the world...

The estimation, and it's a round number and it's not a precise count because it's just the devastation of that earthquake, which happened weeks and weeks ago now, the death toll is north of 51,000. I mean, it's hard for us to fathom how big that is. And they still, I saw in the Wall Street Journal, have the problem of identifying babies. There were

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of babies who were rescued. They were saved. These are miracles. But they were too young to even identify their name, let alone their parents or an address or a telephone number. And many of these babies are still sitting there. And the fear is that the parents or siblings or somebody else died. And they're still working to identify and trying to find people with DNA and whatnot.

to identify these babies, but that calamity has not yet ended and it's still going on. And I think it's worthy that we continue to mention it and, um, and pay attention to it. The other thing I think that caught my eye, totally transitioning now to back to the United States, um,

It's a stunning number to me and something that I think we need to pay close attention to. And that is the commercial real estate business. Many of you have 401ks, you have some sort of investments, mutual funds. Those may be in the forms of a REIT, a real estate investment that you may own some of this commercial real estate in your portfolio. You don't quite know, but

You could look it up, but the commercial real estate market, certainly with COVID and the transition that our economy has made to home offices and whatnot, has really changed the marketplace. The estimate, and it's a broad number, it's a rounded number, but is that 50% of the commercial real estate in this country is still vacant. 50%. That's a huge number.

And not necessarily turning around anywhere soon. It's just something I thought it would highlight because it's a big number in our economy and it's not something that's necessarily going to change and yet it's going to affect an awful lot of people. All right, time to bring on the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. ♪

I feel for this couple here, and they made a very strong allegation. We'll see if it's true. You know, there's always two sides to this story. But Elizabeth Webster and her husband, Alexander Burkle, I think if I'm pronouncing your name right,

They're suing a Hawaiian snorkeling company for $5 million. The allegation is they were off the coast there in the Hawaiian waters. They were snorkeling and having a very difficult time because of the currents and whatnot, getting back to the boat. Now, the allegation, at least in the story, is that there were something like 40 people on this boat doing snorkeling.

Well, the boat got what they thought evidently was everybody back on board. And then they took off and left this couple out there.

They were in the middle of the ocean. They had to swim, and it didn't specify the distance. But somehow, miraculously, they were able to snorkel together to the shore, wrote SOS out on the sand, and were trying to yell and scream and jump up and down. Finally, somebody saw them, and they were rescued. But can you imagine that?

The trauma, the drama, the fear that was invoked in these waters when you're out there snorkeling and your boat leaves. Holy cow, that's going to be an interesting thing. If that's all true, that certainly is stupid. I feel for that company. That's bringing on the stupid. You're listening to Jason and the House. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

from the Fox News Podcast Network. Hey there, it's me, Kennedy. Make sure to check out my podcast, Kennedy Saves the World. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.

All right, time to transition now to the author of Woke Inc., the author of Nation of Victims, and now presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. I'm so glad to have him here and really look forward to this discussion. So let's dial him up. Hey, it's Vivek here. Hey, Jason Chaffetz. Thanks so much for picking up. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Jason. How you doing? You know, they have caller ID these days. You're like an IT tech guy and you could have easily just not picked up the phone, but I appreciate you doing it. I like what you have to say, man. So I wanted to hear it and happy to chat. Well, very kind. Looking excited for you. It's not every day you wake up and say, you know, I'm going to run for president. So I want to get into history and like how you became you and all that. But first, kind of give me the

Why did you like say, hey, honey, talking to your wife, I'm going to run for president. And this is why. What's the answer to that question? Yeah. So, look, I just think we're in the middle of this national identity crisis where if you ask most people our age, my age, my wife's age, what does it mean to be American? You get a blank stare in response. And this country has been kind to me. It's been kind to both of us.

I was born in this country in 1985 at a point in our national history when this was the country that somebody came to live the full arc of the American dream. But if I had been born just 20 years later, I don't think my story would have been possible. I would have been taught to be a victim. I would have taught to think of myself as somebody who had a grievance because of

My name or because of the color of my skin. And I think that's dangerous for the future that our kids are going to grow up into. And so I'm running for president to fill our void of national identity.

with the vision of what it means to be American that runs so deep that it dilutes these woke agendas to irrelevance. And as much as I think it's important to call out the problem, as other Republicans do, frankly, as I've been doing for the last several years about wokeism or gender ideology or climatism or COVID religion, which some of these things have become religious movements, cults, really.

I think what's more important is that we solve the problem. And the way we solve it is by going upstream and answering what it means to be American. And I have a vision on what the answer to that question ought to be, and I'm running to deliver it.

Well, you certainly have lived the American dream. I've seen pictures of your family. Beautiful family, right? You're like picture perfect, right out of central casting, if you will. It's just a beautiful, beautiful family. So let's go back to 1985. Start with, you know, I was born in, and tell us a little bit more about that.

Growing up, what was life like? Did you have brothers, sisters? Were you playing sports? What were the early formative years? And what were those things that happened to you, Vivek, along the way that informed your conservatism? Because not every kid grows up and says, yeah, I'm going to be a conservative. And you certainly are. You've written a couple books, right? Woke Inc., Nation of Victims. I mean, this is to your core. But go back to the beginning. I want to hear about the early years.

Yeah, so look, I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, just outside the city in 1985. My parents were both immigrants. They came from India. And so, you know, there was something about growing up as a skinny kid with nerdy glasses and a funny last name and a dad who had a funny accent, different from the other kids' dads in southwest Ohio in the mid-90s that, you know, always gave us the experience of

In a good way, not quite just fitting in and being the normal kid in, you know, either the public school that I went to, which was not a particularly well-off public school through eighth grade, or to the Catholic high school that I went to as the lone Hindu kid and a kid of Catholic kids who had come from different backgrounds. But I think that that was always...

That was always a good thing for me. And my parents, you know, they had a disproportionate focus on academics, of course, as Indian immigrant parents, many of them do. But they had a little saying for me, which is that if you're going to stand out, you might as well be outstanding. And that's why achievement was always it was my ticket to get ahead. But it's always been so personal to me. And even, you know, nowadays, my political views are.

I talk about ending affirmative action. I talk about restoring merit in America. Those are core priorities for me, but they probably tie to my upbringing where the idea that you just can achieve something based on your own hard work and commitment is

That was just second nature to us growing up. That was what my parents instilled in us. And, you know, when I was in eighth grade, actually, I told you I went to a, you know, again, not the best of the public schools in greater Cincinnati. I was, you know, very academically focused. You know, yes, we were also pretty athletically inclined to we played the piano. I was on the tennis team. I was actually not a terrible basketball player either, but

My parents were always about whether it was sports, whether it was music, whether it was in the classroom, achievement was a big part of our upbringing. But on the academic side of that, that wasn't so much the culture of the school that I went to. And there were kids who came from more difficult backgrounds, some of whom were older by even a couple of years that had been held back or whatever. And, you know, there was this incident I talked about in A Nation of Victims a little bit when that was my second book about.

you know, I was actually pushed down a flight of stairs going from class to class. And, you know, my parents hadn't, they weren't, as I said, particularly rich, they weren't going to easily afford being able to send me to private school. But that was probably the event that catalyzed it where they said, look, you know, actually it was our French teacher, uh, pulled my parents aside. And, you know, he was a teacher in this public school. He says, you need to get this kid out of here. Um,

you know, he needs to go to a place where achievement actually is rewarded instead of penalized or else he's going to not realize his fullest potential.

And I'm really grateful that my parents, they were really working hard. My dad had actually gone to law school taking night classes for four years to keep his job security at the GE plant in Evendale, Ohio. They'd worked really hard. It wasn't easy for them to make these sacrifices, but that's what caused them to send me to the Catholic high school, St. X, that I went to. It was a place where you didn't have to apologize for being excellent. In

In fact, excellence was part of the motto of the school. They would always encourage you to pursue the more, as they called it, the magis. And so that was, I think, a big part of my upbringing as well was this idea of, you know what, if you're in an environment that doesn't reward the more,

you know, characteristics you bring to the table, your sense of achievement and purpose, then make a change and find one that is and also change the people around you to lift those people up too. And I think that that deeply informs my

as a conservative, my political perspectives and my cultural perspectives as an American. And you know what? Maybe you'd have to take a psychologist or something to put the pieces together, but I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for somebody to piece together the kinds of things I'm saying on the campaign trail and to tie it back to that upbringing in Ohio. Yeah, and that's why I'm fascinated by it because I think you're really going to

you know, ultimately vote for somebody, you're putting an awful lot of trust, particularly in that high of an office, the highest office in the land. And it's oftentimes those young experiences that inform you. And were you always conservative or did that, was there things that happened that said, hey, you know, self-reliance? Yeah, that's kind of important. I mean, it sounds like your parents were very kind of in that category, but

When you were that young. They weren't conservative. They were apolitical, I would say. You know, my dad almost leaned and maybe still does leans a little left. But, you know, there was something about that experience about watching my dad when, you know, Jack Welch was CEO of GE. Right. He instituted a big round of layoffs. My dad went to work one day and apparently what they told him was look to your left, look to your right. They told everybody. And one of you will be left standing. Right.

That was startling, right? We, I mean, shook the financial foundation of our home to know that that was a real risk. And it created a lot of tension in our house growing up. I mean, my mom also worked that two kids in a place halfway around the world from where they grew up, where they came to with not a lot of money. And, you know, one day that changed when the GE plant in Evendale, Ohio, went through a resounding round of layoffs, right?

But what did my dad do? He found that there was a program within GE where they had a shortage of patent attorneys. He was a guy who designed engines for planes.

And so they said, if you have that knowledge, but you go to law school, they would actually pay for law school and that you would probably have increased job security because they had a shortage of those patent attorneys. So he went to night school for four years. And you know what? My mom had to take care of my brother. It's not like my wife and I were blessed to be able to when we run for this presidential campaign. We have my parents here, her parents, even nannies and others helping us. Great. That's what allows us for my wife to be a surgeon and me to run for president. We have little kids. My parents didn't have those luxuries.

And so, you know, my dad would take me to law school with him. I was in sixth grade and we would ride to Northern Kentucky University Law School. I would sit in the back of the class while I watched him, you know, participate in his class after he had done the reading after a full time job.

And, you know, the funny part about how he became a conservative is he would always disagree with like Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia. And so after the class, we'd talk about it in our long car ride back home. And this is back when I'm like in sixth and seventh grade. And so, you know, something about arguing with your dad that, you know, makes you have to form your own arguments. But that, you know, that's that's the the, you know, joking around part of it. The real part of it was watching my dad encounter adversity, our family encounter adversity. And how do we encounter it?

it through hard work, through dedication. And, you know, it was a couple of years later when I got pushed down that flight of stairs. But it's sort of the same lesson you learn is that hardship is not the same thing as victimhood. And I think we live in an American moment where young people, really all Americans today are taught that encountering some kind of hardship turns you into a victim.

And I reject that mentality both in my life, but also in my, hopefully my leadership from the White House in the cultural tone that we set for this country. Hardship isn't the same thing as victimhood. Hardship can be what teaches you who you are. That's what my parents taught me. And I think that that's what we ought to teach the next generation of Americans too, because a lot of what we've created in this country, bad policies to the culture we've created ensures that we will have some hardship ahead. But I think we can learn from that and become stronger as a country too.

And I think a lot of that dates to some of my own upbringing in Cincinnati and growing up as an adolescent in this country. I think you're absolutely right. 100% right. Because it's the challenges, the hardships, the difficult things that you go on that go through your life. Because every person's going to go through those. And they can come in all kinds of forms. And you don't know when they're going to come, but they're going to come.

And it just suggests that, oh, well, the government, they should take care of me. No, there's, you know, we want to have a backstop for those that, you know, severely disabled and those types of things that, you know, really can't take care of themselves. But if you're an able-bodied American, you had to be able to, you know, figure out, get on the right path and take care of yourself. It's the self-reliance component there.

that is part of the American dream and overcoming those challenges. So, okay, what was your focus? Like when you started Turn the Corner, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, you know, you kind of start to get a little bit more focused. You're going into high school, right?

What excited you? I mean, what, why, because you ended up going to Harvard, right? And you did pretty well there by all accounts. I did. Yeah, you did. Summa cum laude, pretty good at Harvard. Yeah, I was an academic guy, but we also had, I was also, I mean, I'm to this day actually an avid tennis fanatic. I was actually, you know, pretty good in high school as a nationally ranked tennis player. Wow, that's good. Yeah.

What do you think of pickleball? Do you play pickleball? You know, I am kind of a philosophical hardliner that is part of the conservative in me, call it, but that resists the spread of the American pickleball nation that we're becoming. You know, the tennis courts near where I live in Columbus, Ohio, many of them are being converted in droves to pickleball courts.

So I hope you're the first president. You should be the first president to put a pickleball court at the White House. No, we'll put a tennis court at the White House. I kind of result. I kind of resist the pickleballization of our nation. I like to, you know,

Hey, easy. I'm getting a little older than you. And pickleballs, I played a lot of tennis growing up. A lot. I love it. I love going to the U.S. Open. I watch it on TV. I'm maybe not as fanatical as you are on tennis, but I really enjoy the game. But I do love pickleball. You know, it's funny. I was a ball boy because Cincinnati has this tennis tournament every year. It's a big tennis tournament in Cincinnati. It's kind of a world-class event. We

We're lucky that it's in Southwest Ohio. But I was a ball kid growing up, and so I used to watch that from the front row. And so we've become, you know, not only a fan of playing, but watching. This presidential campaign, though, I got to tell you, man, it's...

Tennis is the one thing that's got to give. Yeah, you're not going to get a lot of tennis matches out there. No, I'm not. I'm not. Okay, so you go to college. You do exceptionally well, right? You get a degree in biology. But then you transition to tech. Why? Why?

Well, it was actually biotech. So I got into the world of biotech investing when I graduated. I joined a hedge fund in New York that was starting to dip its toes into investing in biotech companies. And you know what? That actually – there's something about it that kind of got my juices flowing even more than spending time in the lab.

I kind of had a financial knack that I never knew that I had, but I discovered that and it allowed me to build an early successful career as an investor in New York City. And I was right on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis because it was '07, the fall of '07 when I joined. So man, was that a learning experience and then some. I learned a ton. I had a front row seat to the financial crisis at this hedge fund in New York.

And so it was awesome. But a few years in, I had this itch to study law and political philosophy, which I'd never really scratched as kind of a science guy. And so I went to my bosses at this hedge fund in New York and I said, "Look, it's been good, but I'm going to go." I had a seat in law school at that point in time, and it was at Yale, which is about an hour and a half out of New York. But I said, "Look, I'm going to do this for three years. And so we'll reconvene in a few years and see how things look." And they said, "No, no, no, keep your job."

You can keep your job, you can do it on your own. You can have a little portfolio you manage to yourself, do it out of New Haven. I said, that sounds great. So I kept my job and went to law school for those three years from 2010 to 2013. And those are three great years. Actually, I had three of my most successful careers as an investor, personally, financially, and also for the funds that I managed.

and met my wife. She was in med school. She was my next door neighbor, actually. So that was serendipitous, probably the most tangible thing that come out of those three years in law school. And I had fun because, you know, I wasn't there to, you know, do the career fair thing and try to join a law firm. I was just there to, you know, really explore questions that I was interested in that helped shape my views today. And the cool thing about going to, I mean, the thing about Harvard and Yale is they're not the institutions they were when I went there. You know, they had their biases, of course, but it wasn't a place where,

All dissent was suppressed, which is kind of what it feels like at those places today. But, you know, I got a better education than my peers because my views were tested. Right. And I thought that I learned a lot during those years, really discovering not only what I believed, but why I believed it.

And then I came back to New York City afterwards. And so I had managed to have my job as a hedge fund investor and law school at the same time. Law school then disappears after I graduate. And so I have a lot of time on my hands. And so I spend a short-lived stint in stand-up comedy in New York, filling up that extra time. Yeah, I did about 10 shows and...

You know, I was all right, nothing to write home about, but it was fun, humbling. And then I realized I had too much time on my hands. Actually, one of the things you do as a stand-up comic is you carry around a notebook everywhere you go.

But I started doing it with my day job as a biotech investor and wrote down all the things that annoyed me in the pharma industry. And that ended up becoming the business plan for me to leave my job as an investor and to start a biotech company, which I did. So I started Roivent in 2014, and there began my career as an entrepreneur. And I've started a series of businesses. You know, Roivent's the biggest one. It's a multibillion-dollar company that I built from scratch, led it as CEO. Five of them are approved products.

FDA approved drugs today. And, you know, I started a number of other companies along the way and enjoyed

immense success and I think that I'm grateful for the foundation my parents gave me and this country gave me to be able to achieve what I have. But it was only a couple of years ago when I started running your circles, Jason, when I stepped down from my job as a CEO to write Woke Inc., which is the first book that lifted the curtain on exactly what's going on in elite business in America.

And that is really what took me on the journey I've been on ever since. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Vivek Ramaswamy right after this. It's a fascinating background. And you've had obviously amazing success. Why did you want to put pen to paper, so to speak, and write woke ink? Because I mean, obviously I think that really helped put you on the map and it radiated out with a lot of people. And it was a,

a well-timed, well-named book. But what was the impetus when you said, yeah, you know, I'm going to, I've written a few books. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of time. And it's, you know, a book is 65,000 words or so. I don't know how long yours was. Yeah, I mean, Wokink was, I think, almost close to twice that. But it was, but, you know, for me, it was about lifting the curtain on a game. Okay. There was a game in elite America, including elite in elite corporate America, where,

And the game is you pretend like you care about something other than profit and power precisely to gain more profit and power.

And they lie about it. And so, you know, the fellow CEOs and, you know, even elite investors or whatever that I talked to behind closed doors, they would say, you know, they would complain about the woke stuff as much as the next guy about employees, you know, complaining after the BLM protests or whatever and behind closed doors would bemoan it yet in public. They're just towing the party line and even making the problem worse. And I thought that was a farce and even at my own company.

You know, there are a number of people after the George Floyd death that said that I missed the mark by not endorsing Black Lives Matter. And, you know, that led to a six month journey that by January of 2021, I wrote an op ed in The Wall Street Journal that argued against censorship in our culture and said that actually when tech companies respond to governmental pressure to censor speech, that's actually a First Amendment violation. That was

a wild idea at the time I introduced it then. Now it's become more mainstream and conservative political thought. But that caused three advisors to my company to resign ceremoniously in the 48 hours after I wrote that. So that was a wake up call to me say that we've got this culture of fear in America. And you know what, if I wasn't going to be free to speak out, I don't know who was. And so you know what, I wasn't, I didn't do what others who I respect do, others who work with me have done, you know, serving the front lines in Afghanistan or Iraq,

I'm not putting my life on the line, but the least I could do was actually speak openly and reveal what's happening behind closed doors so that we can find a better way forward. And so I decided that, look, I could either speak freely as a citizen or I could speak as a CEO through the filter of corporate self-interest and self-censor what I had to say.

And I made a choice. I said, I'm going to speak freely as a citizen. I'm not going to apologize for it. And that's what led to Woke Inc., which then led to me traveling the country and then read to the two other books that I've written since then. The first one, the second one's out. The third one's yet to come out. You know, and I've been on a journey where I've really been speaking freely without inhibition.

But, you know, at a certain point I said, look, I'm sick of just complaining about the problem. I want to solve it. So I put my hat back on as an entrepreneur. And one of the companies I founded, probably one of the most meaningful is Strive, which is today competing directly against the likes of BlackRock, which, you know, what Strive does is it offers a different voice to corporate America. It says that as a shareholder, unlike BlackRock, which tells these companies to adopt these one-sided political agendas, Strive delivers the opposite message.

Knock it off with the politics and focus exclusively on creating value through selling products and services to your customers without infusing any political agendas. And Strive had early success, which I'm incredibly proud of. But part of this was as much as I...

thought I was solving the problem, you know, through the market, through writing these books, et cetera. You know, it only works that the trick of the woke industrial complex only works if there's a culture willing to buy up what they're selling. Right. And so that was something I wasn't going to change just through market solutions. It was going to be something that I needed to change by driving a cultural campaign through our country.

And that's really when it clicked that there was no better way to drive that change in culture than to successfully win the presidency and do what Reagan did in 1980 to deliver a national revival at a time when we're in the middle of a national identity crisis. And that's really what led to this most recent final step that I've taken. Well, it's interesting. You're an important conservative voice and you have a unique American experience that I think is going to radiate out to a lot of people. And, yeah.

you're well founded in what you've done and you've lived that American dream. So I have a few rapid questions as we kind of wrap up the, the, uh, our discussion here. Sounds good. Um, all right, so let's fire through these. You ready? Uh, absolutely. First concert you attended. Oh, it was actually a, uh, Justin Timberlake concert. That's funny enough. He was on tour. Yeah, no, he, he's a fun guy. I actually, I actually really liked the guy. All right. Uh, what was your high school mascot?

So it was the mascots, we had the bombers actually, which ended up being kind of controversial because we went to high school during, you know,

from 1999 to 2003, and that included the 2001 attacks. So they shied away from that a little bit for a time there, but the Bombers. The Bombers is interesting. I think the most interesting one I've come across, maybe through your campaign, you'll end up in Yuma, Arizona, where you'll find a couple different schools, but they had the Yuma Criminals because they have a big federal prison down there to be called the Criminals. Yeah, they're pretty interesting. Exactly. Favorite vegetable?

Ah, very good question. Avocado. You could say it's a fruit. So in which case I would say tomatoes and avocados are my favorite. But if you really are going hardcore on vegetable, well, I kind of settle on those, but it's cheating a little bit, but I'll still stick to my story. Yeah, but you got a degree in biology and I don't. So I'll let you, I'll let it slide. First job, not, you know, mom saying, hey, tack out the garbage every Monday. Not that. What was your first job getting a check for somebody else?

Well, I was going to say ball boy, but that was technically a volunteer position. Right, right. So it was actually line judge. I was a line judge at that same tournament. So a human line caller at that. Were you good at it? I was okay at it. I mean, your number one job is like vision and movement and not getting hit by balls that are flying at you. Foot fault, yeah. I succeeded mostly at that, but that's where I got a paycheck from. What do you think is your superpower? And what I mean by that is,

things that you can do that, yeah, most people can't do that as well as I do. It's just something that comes naturally and I do really well at it. I think taking a complicated subject, understanding it, and distilling it in a way that everyone can understand.

is I think a gift that I've been given and I, you know, in some ways I'm using it in this career of writing books and traveling the country. Well, you wouldn't have had the business success that you had and get your way through the schooling that you had without being able to take that and then synthesize it down into something that's palatable and easy to understand and duplicatable. That makes total sense to me.

So if you could have one person over, if you called up your wife and say, hey, honey, guess what? We got somebody coming over tonight to have dinner. Dead or alive, just somebody in history that you would want to sit down and break bread with. Who would that person be? Thomas Jefferson. No doubt about it. I mean, there's a lot of people I would say, but I would put him pretty high on that list. Unique talent that nobody knows about.

Something you can do. I mean, can you juggle, play banjo with your feet? I mean, what? You know, I could probably do the best rendition of anyone you know of Eminem rapping to Lose Yourself. Do you want to give it a go right now? Because you're more than welcome. I'm going to get the background music.

All right, we'll save that maybe for the television portion of it. Yeah, if you get the background music going, I would do that for you. Yeah, you know, if you actually pull this off. Maybe we'll just do like an event at Fox. Let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. Well, better yet, if you, you know, pull off this, you know, and become the president, I think that would be a good way to maybe, you know, an inauguration party. Yeah, exactly. Let's do like one of the inauguration ball events. That would be great. Done. Commitment. I'm doing it. All right, just two more questions. Pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

I'm at a yes on it. Yeah. And you were rolling. And I'm sure that disappoints you. It does. Deeply. Here's what I would do. I like it with jalapenos too. So I don't like just cheese and pineapple, but if you've got like tomatoes and onions and like jalapenos on there. Yeah, you like it all. And mushrooms. Yeah. And mushrooms. Then I would say the pineapple really adds something. Well, you're a biologist. So again, we're going to, you got a degree in biology. You gave me a lot of slack for that. You gave me a lot of slack for that. Exactly. All right. Last one. Best advice you ever got.

You mentioned one earlier, which I thought was really good. Yes, from my parents. I mean, that was, I think, that was a good piece of advice. If you're going to be...

you know, an outsider, if you're going to stand out, you might as well be outstanding. I think that's great. I think that's great. I'm going to go with that one. I wish you nothing but the best again. I think you got an incredibly important voice because your message, it just, it is what the country needs. The country needs this type of, of, of straight talk and just reality check and,

that I think people are striving for in because the silliness every day that comes out of this, uh, you know, out of politicians and Hollywood and everything else, it's just crazy. And, um, there needs to be some sanity brought it back into the discussion. So I wish you nothing but the best.

I appreciate it, man. Good talking to you. All right. Where do people go to learn more about your campaign? Where do they go? Absolutely. Yeah. You know, go to Vivek 2024, V-I-V-E-K 2024 dot com. And you know what? You can learn about the campaign. But here's what also what I'm telling people is forget about the question of the who. The question of the who can be for next year. OK, yeah.

This year is all about the what and the why. What do we stand for? Why do we stand for it? And so our next milestone is elevate the debate on the debate stage. And people, you know, the way they do that for me is even if you give $5, if you give $1, it's not about the amount of money, but if at Vivek2024.com you give $1, that's what actually, you know, we think is going to determine debate stage placement. And then we're able to actually elevate this cultural revival where whoever it's going to be next year,

Let it actually be based on driving an agenda rather than just a biographical brawl. And I think that's an important part of what we hope to achieve this year. So, you know, appreciate people going to that website. Makes a lot of sense. Very generous with your time. And I look forward to crossing paths with you again. Thanks for picking up the phone. And thanks for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. Good talking to you, man. Listen, I wish Vivek nothing but the best. I can't thank him enough for joining us. And very kind of him to...

And gracious of him to give us so much time in what is a very busy time in his life. And it'll be interesting to see what he does. He'll certainly help drive the conversation because, as you can tell, the guy knows how to...

frame an argument and talk about issues that I think are on a lot of Republican voters' minds. So it'll be really, really interesting. I would appreciate if you could rate this. That's important to the podcast. You can subscribe to it. And I also want to remind you that you can listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

You can also head over to foxnewspodcast.com and you'll find a whole array of Fox podcasts over there. I thank you so much for joining us. We're going to be back with another exciting guest next week and appreciate you taking the time and hearing us out and engaging in this discussion. So I'm Jason Chaffetz. This has been Jason in the house.

From the Fox News Podcast Network, I'm Ben Domenech, Fox News contributor and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter. And I'm inviting you to join a conversation every week. It's the Ben Domenech Podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to FoxNewsPodcast.com.