Donald J. Trump should select 37-year-old anti-woke entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy as his vice presidential pick to give him the best chance of winning the 2024 general election, Brexit leader Nigel Farage argued.
While conventional wisdom would argue for Donald Trump to select a veteran politician as VP, such as South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, or perhaps a rising female star on the right like Tudor Dixon or Kari Lake, Nigel Farage has argued that the former president should pick an outsider like himself and choose Vivek Ramaswamy.
“To win the presidency, Trump must pick the right VP candidate. I believe that Ramaswamy may offer him his best prospect of success,” Farage wrote in The Express.
“I met him earlier this year and was seriously impressed. He has youth on his side, being 37, and he is personable and decent. The son of Indian immigrants who was educated at Harvard and Yale, he has a good story to tell,” he added.
Reminiscent of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Ramaswamy, who earned hundreds of millions after founding a biotech company, has largely self-financed his insurgent campaign for the GOP nomination. Although Ramaswamy boasts a New York Times bestseller under his belt, Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, he entered the presidential race as a relatively unknown commodity.
This has quickly changed, however, with recent polls putting him neck and neck with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for second place behind Trump at the national level and some local surveys putting the anti-woke businessman ahead of the governor.
Unlike DeSantis, Ramaswamy has largely refused to attack Trump, opting instead to praise the former president, with the exception of saying that he would go further than Trump did in implementing an American First agenda if elected. For example, he has said that he would deploy the military to protect America’s southern and northern borders, vowed to completely cut off trade ties with China, and scrap the Department of Education entirely.
“His refusal to worship at the altar of corporate wokeism and his hatred of virtue signaling have won him many fans. So has his stance on false accusations of embedded racism,” Farage noted. “He represents the kind of modernity that American conservatism needs if it is to prosper as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century.”
Mr Farage, who is one of Donald Trump’s closest and longest political allies on the world stage, argued that the “quietly spoken and intellectually forceful” Ramaswamy would be an effective messenger in reaching out to suburban women, a demographic Trump has struggled to gain support from. The Brexiteer pointed to last year’s gubernatorial race in Virginia in which Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin won on the backs of opposing far-left gender and racial ideologies being taught in schools.
Ramaswamy, Farage argues, could potentially break through to suburban moms on the issue and potentially win them from Biden. “And it is not just the parents of staunch Trump Republicans who feel it deeply,” he wrote. “Those who might not currently regard themselves as natural Trump supporters are very worried about it as well.”
It remains to be seen if Ramaswamy would accept the position of vice president, with the successful businessman previously saying he doesn’t do well in a subordinate role and therefore would not want the position. Trump would likely need to offer him something big in return, perhaps granting him large authority to oversee a major project, such as dismantling the administrative state or fixing the education system, in which he could demonstrate his value as an America first leader and set himself up as the frontrunner in 2028.