The Unforced Errors of Vivek Ramaswamy

The billionaire tennis fan, banished by Trump to run for governor in Ohio, was already a loser. But when independent journalist D. J. Byrnes uncovered a heinous campaign ad, he found it part of a "pathological" pattern. The Rooster returns to make sense of an embellished athletic legend, Wikipedia edits, private jets, libertarian rap... and that picture of Shrek. UPDATE: On October 28, the day after we recorded this episode, a Wikipedia editor with the handle “NapoliRoma” removed the phrase “according to himself” before the claim, “in high school, Ramaswamy was a nationally ranked junior tennis player." This, according to Wikipedia’s open source editing history. UPDATE: According to multiple sources, the Amy Acton ad featuring her mother, Donna Arthur, is no longer airing. When asked on Oct 29 if his campaign had pulled the ad, Ramaswamy responded: “It ran to completion and we put up four other ads.” Thank you!! Further reading: • "Vivek Ramaswamy hits disgusting new low with 'October Surprise' on Dr. Acton" https://www.rooster.info/p/vivek-ramaswamy-dr-amy-acton-donna-arthur-october-surprise(The Rooster) Previously on PTFO: • The Christian Nationalist Surge at Ohio State, with D. J. Byrnes https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmFiZWI5NzlhM2U2MTM0YWI3MjNlNTEw • The Goalie Who Went to Hell and Back https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjkzNzk0ZDkzZDg3NWNjMjU3MjIyNTlh • What Vivek Ramasawamy Was Like in College https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO5EWTs6GyQ More Pablo: • Send us your confidential tips https://www.pablo.show/p/tips • Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Reverse racism is racism.

• 0:11Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 0:22Pablo Torre?

  Love the crown molding.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 0:27Pablo Torre?

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 0:31Speaker 02

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 0:34Pablo Torre?

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 0:45Speaker 04

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• 1:17Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes,

• 2:01Pablo Torre?

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• 2:25Pablo Torre?

  Thank you for being here again, by the way.

• 2:27Speaker 05

  Anytime.

• 2:27Pablo Torre?

  DJ Burns, aka The Rooster. We're gonna get to the Venn diagram of how the ad that you broke the story of is at the center of like a zillion things we've been covering on this show for a long time now. But you were last here on a show that published October 2nd. I am proud to report that The New York Times covered your trial.

• 2:50Speaker 05

  They were there.

• 2:51Pablo Torre?

  Quote, "Blogger on trial, colon, is a lewd image of Shrek free speech or harassment?" Question mark.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  I would argue it was a tastefully edited image of Shrek in a state of undress, holding what may be interpreted as an erect penis while looking down upon its subject. And it was sent as part of a package of political criticism towards State Senator Jerry Sirino, who I learned at trial is a grandfather of 41 and was apparently in-

• 3:21Pablo Torre?

  41 grandkids?

• 3:23Speaker 05

  Yes, and-

• 3:24Pablo Torre?

  Do we know if they've all seen Shrek?

• 3:27Speaker 05

  He alluded that that's how he knew, what he was looking at. Apparently, he was standing in his kitchen on a Wednesday sometime afternoon on May 6th, and he opened a text message from a number he didn't have in his cellphone, and apparently almost had a brain aneurysm right there in his kitchen. And three weeks later, I was arrested at the State House.

• 3:50Speaker 06

  DJ Burns, who goes by his pen name, The Rooster, is known for his outlandish antics, busting up lawmakers at the Ohio State House, camera in hand.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  What the hell was that vote back there?

• 4:02Speaker 06

  He's amassed more than 100,000 followers on his social media and Substack account. He's described in court documents as anti-power. If you are the man, he's going after you.

• 4:12Pablo Torre?

  I want to just sort of take us inside the courtroom?

• 4:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would say Law & Order. It's a little dramatic. If you watch Law & Order, court trials are very tedious affairs. I think a lot of people expect it, you know, a few good men-style cross-examination of Jerry Sirino, where they break down and shout. You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. But the real big story that went underreported going into it was that the judge had unilaterally decided that the First Amendment didn't apply in this case. And so jurors, you know, to them, I was just some guy, you know, some weirdo from Columbus, who had them contemplating Shrek's anatomy for two days.

• 4:53Pablo Torre?

  Can I, you mentioned this wasn't a few good men, but there is a detail that Axios reported that I do want to spotlight here because, quote, "In closing arguments, prosecutor Matthew Lalo projected the naked image of Shrek on the courtroom wall"

• 5:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:10Pablo Torre?

  "and invited the jury to gaze upon it." End quote.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, it wasn't looking good, you know? It was in 4K, right over my shoulder.

• 5:20Pablo Torre?

  That is, "you need me on that wall" in a far more vivid sense than I think even Jack Nicholson had intended.

• 5:29Speaker 05

  It's a naked photo of Shrek, a character he probably watched videos with his kids.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  Obviously, a little bit altered. Masturbating. You know, it was a very good prosecutorial trick that he played because he made it seem like it was just that image I sent, and it wasn't Sirino responding, calling me a moron. And yeah, I literally had to summon my deepest childhood traumas to just keep it together because I was like, I can't, you know, just the outrage. Like, I was like, this is just spiraled completely beyond my imagination.

• 6:04Pablo Torre?

  What was on the line?

• 6:06Speaker 05

  Six months in prison was the possible sentence. And when you get found guilty and you realize you're stepping in front of a judge, and maybe he had a bad day, you never know.

• 6:16Pablo Torre?

  I just gotta quote the Cleveland Plain Dealer here, because the outcome of the trial, as you've been alluding to, quote, "A Willoughby jury has found a political blogger guilty of telecommunications harassment for sending an explicit meme to an Ohio senator. On Friday, the jury convicted DJ Burns, 39, of Columbus, of the first-degree misdemeanor. Retired Haynesville Municipal Judge Michael Chicanetti sentenced Burns to a $200 fine and to have no contact with the victim."

• 6:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that last part was weird because they asked for the no-contact order. The judge said, "No, I'm not gonna grant that." But then, in his written verdict, he put it in there. So I don't know what that discrepancy is, and I guess that's something for the appeals court to figure out.

• 7:02Pablo Torre?

  Wait, so I want to get back to business here in a second, why you're actually on the show today, but just explore what you're suggesting here, which is that you're gonna appeal.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  There is a non-zero percent chance that Clarence Thomas could one day gaze upon what has been termed a masturbating Shrek by the prosecution. It's a non-zero chance.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  And I really just, I feel like if this is how they're gonna play, and this is the, you know, the depths they want to plunge, then I feel I would be doing the American populace an injustice if I wasn't willing to take it all the way to the Supreme Court.

• 7:58Pablo Torre?

  So all of that is to say, DJ, that you do things that I personally cannot, in some cases, would not do out of like, I suppose, like polite, legal, and/or standards concerns. And I, at times, wonder if I should have the courage to do some of what you have done. But I guess where I land is that I believe democracy is an ecosystem where we play different roles. And I am extraordinarily glad that you do the work that you do. And I say that not just because of what we just said to start the show, vis-à-vis masturbating Shreks, but because what you've done more recently, since that, is break the biggest story of the midterms.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, Vivek Ramaswamy, I know he doesn't celebrate Christmas, but I'm gonna try to get him a Christmas card at the end of the year because I owe him a lot.

• 8:48Pablo Torre?

  He's the guy who made an ad that blew up his own race.

• 8:52Speaker 06

  This week, we are seeing some of the most genuinely desperate tricks I've ever seen in my career. And none are as despicable as this one ad going around in support of Vivek Ramaswamy. He's the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio. Do you remember him? In the ad, Acton's mother, Donna Arthur, accuses her daughter of being a liar and says she's not fit for office. Acton's mother is the same woman, the same mother, who fled Ohio along with her husband after a grand jury indicted him for sexually abusing Acton when she was a child. A pedophile. Today, Trump wrote that Ramaswamy should keep it up and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable candidate.

• 9:37Speaker 06

  Earlier, it was Ohio's current GOP- Governor Mike DeWine, who called for the ad to be removed. Needs to come down. It's just wrong to continue to want it. Acton agrees. I think it's despicable, but it's exactly like he has been this entire campaign.

• 9:56Pablo Torre?

  So Vivek Ramaswamy, who is, for those who have not heard me on all sorts of platforms, discuss this, my old classmate at Harvard, put the day since Pablo has mentioned Harvard sign up on the wall, please. Thank you. The biotech billionaire who is running as a Republican for governor of Ohio. I should say that I thought his campaign had been torpedoed with a different ad that he had posted himself before all this, if you remember this.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Here's 10 things I'm gonna do for Ohio. Slash your property taxes. Abolish your state income tax. Cut your electric bills. Prosecute Medicaid fraud.

• 10:35Pablo Torre?

  That is Vivek Ramaswamy at a batting cage interspliced with his platform as he's taken swings that could only be described how?

• 10:44Speaker 05

  If he was on a little league team of seventh graders, he would not, he would be riding pine as a 41-year-old. It was atrocious.

• 10:55Pablo Torre?

  This ad, which I really urge you to watch on YouTube because you can't find it elsewhere at this point, he was so mocked, he deleted it. I guess his resume is really important for people to understand because I would like you to just read this, DJ, according to one bio of his, if we could show that.

• 11:12Speaker 05

  Vivek Ramaswamy is the founder and CEO of Royvent Sciences. Vivek was born in Cincinnati to Indian parents. In high school, he was a class valedictorian, a nationally ranked junior tennis player, and an accomplished pianist. Vivek graduated from Harvard College in 2007, summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa with a major in biology. Later, he entered Yale Law School.

• 11:36Pablo Torre?

  And now, I would argue, what you have done with your reporting is sort of change what the first sentence of a public understanding of him might be, because now he's the guy who made an ad that blew up his own race.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  There's a decency that we should expect out of our public officials. And I don't know what's happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that. You know, no office is worth stooping that low. I have to admit that I'm a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across

• 12:19Pablo Torre?

  the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America. The question of how you got this ad, could you explain the origin of it?

• 12:33Speaker 05

  So we had done reporting that we knew that it was, they had at least cut the ad. And what they did was they sent it out through this messaging firm called Dynata. What's funny is my wife is actually a registered Republican because she voted for Matt Dolan in like a Republican Senate primary as like harm reduction. So she gets all these like Republican ads asking things like, you know, are you familiar with Vivek Ramaswamy dropping a child at a rally?

• 13:02Pablo Torre?

  The meme, which again, for those who aren't familiar, we'll show the video as well. He's trying to lift a child and can't.

• 13:11Speaker 05

  A beefy white child of a deployed troop over in Iran.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Here, I'll pick you up. There you go. Big guy.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  So I can only imagine what that father thought. And so

• 13:24Pablo Torre?

  But they were concerned about how he's doing in the polls on the basis of such things.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  So she had gotten these ads from Dynata, and we were kind of wondering, like, you know, they're asking, had you seen the video of him swinging a bat? And my understanding is that they put it out through Dynata. And about an hour later, I received a text message from a very well trusted source, I would call him an influential Cleveland area Republican.

• 13:50Pablo Torre?

  A Republican?

• 13:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, a Republican, because Vivek has tons of enemies.

• 13:53Pablo Torre?

  I've learned this as well in my travels.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  And he sent me, it was a screen cap of the ad with Dynata.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  My name is Donna Arthur, and I'm Amy Acton's mother. I work at Children and Family Service Association, building one of the first two sexual abuse programs in America. I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent, and it's not easy for a mother to say this, that Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, and she can't help you if she needs help herself.

• 14:43Pablo Torre?

  What were you thinking when you saw that ad and ultimately decided to post it, not knowing who would claim it or what the response publicly would be?

• 14:52Speaker 05

  I literally thought, I can't believe these idiots went through with it. Like, I can't believe it got to this point, because it's like, Dr. Acton's mother is, we went through this in 2020, just a non-credible person at all. And I really thought that the better senses would come to them. There was gonna be an adult in the room that was like, look, this, you do not want to make your closing message in a hotly contested gubernatorial election, coming from a woman who stayed married to her daughter's rapist. But I knew it came from his camp. And that's how I ran it originally, is like Vivek's

• 15:29Speaker 05

  camp is pulling this ad with Dr. Acton's mother. And it really, it really took off. I think by the time I woke up the next day, I had a quarter of a million. Vivek's team still hadn't claimed it. I had heard through the grapevine that VPAC, his, you know, his PAC was not claiming it. And then once I saw Donald Trump Jr. commenting on it, like, you know, check out this ad, I was like, oh, he's, they're gonna have to take the ride on this one.

• 15:57Pablo Torre?

  So Vivek Ramaswamy claimed via a campaign spokesperson, this was October 20th, quote, "We don't know what happened between Amy Acton and her mother," end quote. And what you're reminding everybody here is that in the state of Ohio, and Amy Acton, who is a doctor, who was a leader of Ohio's Department of Health in the early days of COVID, this character, the character of her mother, is a well-worn story. And in fact, according to public records, we do know an incredible amount of what happened, actually. We know that Amy Acton and her mother have been estranged since 1978, after Amy's stepdad was charged with raping her. That is a guy named Cledeth Arthur. Shortly after that, Amy and her brother

• 16:42Pablo Torre?

  Philip, who has supported Amy's version of events against their mother, they went to live with their biological dad. The Youngstown Vindicator, by the way, is just one of the outlets that covered this in the 70s. The ad says that the whole living in tent thing was a lie. In this ad about lying, and it seems like the documents prove otherwise.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, in her defense, I guess if I had my kid living in a tent, I would feel some type of way about broadcasting that. But her problem was she looked like a woman who would have her kid living in the tent. And it's not, again, this is something that's not up for dispute. Like, if you check the court records, her stepfather's address, their address at the time, was listed as a literal campground.

• 17:25Pablo Torre?

  You go to the court documents, I'm looking at pages 1, 7, and 24 from the time, and Cledeth Arthur's address is Terrace Lake Park, Route 7, Rogers, Ohio, which is where, of course, it all, it all seems like the story is well documented, man.

• 17:45Speaker 05

  They tried to serve warrants at the campground. He was no longer at this campground.

• 17:50Pablo Torre?

  On page 35, the clarification comes via a handwritten note from the deputy sheriff dated 1982, four years after that rape charge. It says, quote, "Sir, we have checked the address on Route 7 at Terrace Lakes and could not locate the subject that you are looking for. The manager of the park advised that he has not camped here for over two years," end quote.

• 18:09Speaker 05

  And they basically absconded to Pennsylvania, is my understanding, for the heat to eventually die down.

• 18:15Pablo Torre?

  And at this point, DJ, a logical thing to do would be back off of it. Once the country's aware of all of this, let alone, let alone the fact that the same stepfather, Cledeth Arthur, had previously been charged with incest in 1974, involving his 16-year-old biological daughter, according to documents and reports. And yet, Vivek Ramaswamy doubles down on the ad.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  Even getting to this point, even cutting this ad, getting to the point where you're focused testing and seriously considering it, this is not the campaign of serious people that are confident in their position, even as recently as six months ago. These guys were acting like they are an inevitable, well-oiled machine, and that Dr. Acton's gonna be this pushover, we're just gonna call her Dr. Lockdown, we're gonna bury her in ads.

• 19:09Pablo Torre?

  She's a COVID lockdown lady. That's what they could have been focusing on at the end here.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  COVID is a dead issue from the people that I talk to, because who wants to relitigate COVID? It's really not an animating factor for people who weren't already in the tank for Ramaswamy. And so they've spent over $100 million combined. His chances of winning have dropped, and he can't even appear in his own ads.

• 19:35Pablo Torre?

  One of the things he says about this, you know, as, again, regardless of how effective you think the COVID lockdown critique of Amy Acton would be, what Vivek ends up saying about this woman is this.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Amy Acton is lying. She has been lying this entire campaign about me, about her record, about her history in this state. The irony is they're lying about an ad that is about lying. That is the truth of the matter. It had nothing to do with childhood abuse, which I will be the number one governor to prosecute when I am the governor of this state, because it is wrong, and we together will fight against that across Ohio. That is the truth.

• 20:16Pablo Torre?

  I did like the, and by the way, I'll be the number one person to prosecute childhood abuse.

• 20:20Speaker 05

  The crazy thing about this is, if you reference an ad that features a woman who was in love with a, what appears to be a pedophile, that you would have to clarify which ad, because he has another ad.

• 20:33Pablo Torre?

  Could you explain this part?

• 20:35Speaker 05

  So the previous ad, he's got this woman on here crying like, if Dr. Acton becomes our governor, we're gonna lose our house. We just can't afford it. We probably would have to sell the home. I reached down to Vivek and grabbed his hand and just said, we need help to prevent losing. I do trust Vivek to solve this problem and make life a lot easier for the homeowners in Ohio. And there is a cameo by a convicted pedophile who is her husband.

• 21:05Pablo Torre?

  They're at like a state fair or something.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Yes, they're at a state fair. He's wearing the same shirt in the ad that he's wearing in his mugshot. And he was like basically accused of molesting his nieces, his family members.

• 21:18Pablo Torre?

  To the point where their campaign has since removed that man's image from that ad. And there's also just like the politics of it, which is to say, what is the conversation strategically about what happens when you release an ad like this? And the conversation, just to cite Amy Acton's own words here, quote, "The facts are, I was removed from custody from my mom. She was not well. From even a very young age, my brother and I experienced a lot of abuse and neglect, even before my stepfather. But my stepfather was not a good person, and it got worse then. He was indicted in a grand jury. He was a fugitive, and they left together. I have not seen her," referring to her mother, "since I was 12 years old in a courthouse. So this is a sad story," end quote.

• 22:00Pablo Torre?

  And so this is where I should say that we reached out to Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign for comment, and they did not reply to PTFO before our deadline. But his former spokesperson, Trisha McLaughlin, did say this in 2023 to the New York Post, which covered my previous coverage of Vivek, quote, "While Vivek doesn't recall ever meeting this gentleman, we wish Pablo the very best and hope he finds success in his career and life, whether that be through talking about former classmates as he is now, or possibly through something more productive like creating jobs or building a business as Vivek has done," end quote. But that name, Trisha McLaughlin, for people who've been listening to Pablo Torre Fines out

• 22:41Pablo Torre?

  for a little while now, it's a familiar one, DJ, because she also had another job at which department?

• 22:48Speaker 05

  The Department of Homeland Security under since-fired Secretary Kristi Noem.

• 22:55Pablo Torre?

  So Trisha McLaughlin, who had previously been the one we'd requested comment from amid all of our reporting around CICOT. And CICOT, for those not familiar, the de facto concentration camp into which President Trump and Kristi Noem, his former DHS secretary, had disappeared innocent people, including a Venezuelan pro soccer goalie that we interviewed and built a whole episode about. Trisha McLaughlin, of course, also used to be Vivek Ramaswamy's senior advisor slash campaign spokesperson, the very first person, in fact, to work on his 2024 presidential campaign.

• 23:32Speaker 05

  She is married to a guy named Ben Yeho, who is the Strategy Group CEO and the former manager of Vivek's presidential campaign. And I believe Vivek was at their wedding. There's photos of them at their wedding tying it all together. So through that lens, you start to get a sense of who ultimately has his ear on these issues.

• 23:53Pablo Torre?

  And so both you, DJ, as well as the independent news site Ziteo, you've now reported that the Ohio-based firm that created this ad, this disastrous ad with Amy Acton's estranged mother for Vivek Ramaswamy, is in fact The Strategy Group.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  Yes, and they are the largest expenditure in the media arm by far in his campaign.

• 24:16Pablo Torre?

  I do love that the firm is called The Strategy Group. And if you don't know that name off the top of your head, you should be aware that there was this headline reported by ProPublica, quote, "Firm tied to Kristi Noem secretly got money from $220 million DHS ad contracts." And it goes on to report that Ben Yeho, the Strategy Group CEO, is married to Noem's chief spokesperson at DHS, Trisha McLaughlin. "The Strategy Group's ad work is the first known example of money flowing from Noem's agency to businesses controlled by her allies and friends."

• 24:50Speaker 05

  It's going to be a tough look for them if the Democrats retake Congress in November. I feel that's going to be at the top of their chopping block.

• 24:58Pablo Torre?

  I'll point out that ProPublica, you know, when they asked for comment from Trisha McLaughlin, she'd said in an interview, quote, "We don't have visibility into why they, The Strategy Group, were chosen." This while she was, of course, Noem's spokesperson at the agency. And Ben Yeho did not respond to questions.

• 25:23Pablo Torre?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 26:02Speaker 07

  Love the crown molding.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 26:08Speaker 07

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 26:15Speaker 07

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 26:33Pablo Torre?

  But listen, man, the notion of money flowing in such a way that this seems beyond even what I was prepared for when it came to how unbelievable the Vivek Ramaswamy saga would be as someone who's, you know, vividly, vividly familiar with what it's like to sit in a small room with him when we're both freshmen in college debating philosophy.

• 27:03Speaker 05

  It reminds me of when Urban Meyer got hired by the Jacksonville Jaguars. To tie it all together, because I remember thinking...

• 27:11Pablo Torre?

  Another figure in your reporting.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  I remember thinking, oh, this is going to be a disaster. Because, you know, you just know college coaches and how Urban manages. Like, this is going to be a full-blown disaster. Now, never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine him not finishing the first year, right? So the same with Vivek. Like Vivek got this, they were able to get this Trump endorsement. And from my understanding, talking to people, it was basically orchestrated by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to get Vivek the hell out of Washington DC because he was so grating and so irritating.

• 27:45Pablo Torre?

  He was running Doge with Elon Musk.

• 27:47Speaker 05

  Yes. And so that should have been the first red flag about this guy, that he was too annoying for Elon Musk. And they were like, how can we get him out of here as a way, you know, to massage it?

• 27:58Pablo Torre?

  I mean, not to insult the great state of Ohio, but basically saying, can we just send him to Ohio?

• 28:05Speaker 05

  They put him on a train to Siberia.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  And to Vivek's credit, he went out and he hired basically all of JD Vance's team, guy by name led by Jay Shabria. He hired all their, his advisors, and Jay Shabria, they came from the John Kasich wing, who kind of reinvented themselves. And they successfully leveraged that endorsement in the Republican primary process. But I wrote about it at the time. I was at the endorsement in this sweaty basement in downtown Columbus in May 2025. He walked in, they crowned him, and they say, okay, it's all well and good. You've got this historical endorsement. What is that endorsement going to be worth in November 2026 on top of this guy? Like, this guy is not...

• 28:49Pablo Torre?

  I mean, the whole idea of we're gonna get the Indian-American Hindu vegetarian, who was a biotech billionaire, to be the face of the Trump-Ohio movement.

• 29:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. And we've seen it, and it really, the trouble with him really started with that Christmas, the day after Christmas tweet where he launches this screed defending HB1 visas and saying, "The problem with Americans is we don't respect Screech. We don't put enough respect on Urkel's name."

• 29:20Pablo Torre?

  I just got to clarify for people who don't know this thread, that is exactly what the argument was.

• 29:26Speaker 05

  And that is kind of what has led in, that's why we've been trying to see him as such like a sports guy in this campaign.

• 29:33Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is where, this is the whole thing. I mean, if nothing else, this is a story of unforced errors. And I mean that in terms of what you've reported, and I also mean that in terms of his personal athletic legend.

• 29:52Pablo Torre?

  I want to get to this because the question of how is it that Vivek Ramaswamy could be, I was shocked to see this, the first Ohio Republican to lose a gubernatorial bid in 20 years?

• 30:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:03Pablo Torre?

  Which is real defeat from the jaws of victory type [BLEEP]. I do want to actually clarify the bio, DJ, that we had you read before. Because that bio, I do need to clarify, came from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans website, posted in 2011. And for those who don't know, Paul Soros, older brother of George Soros, biggest individual political donor in the US during the 2022 election cycle, the boogeyman of so many conservatives as a funder of left causes. The idea that Vivek Ramaswamy was also a Soros Fellow. You might wonder, how, how has he been navigating that since?

• 30:46Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is where I should also say that according to the Wikipedia page edit history of Vivek Ramaswamy's personal page, he did pay an editor to remove it. And we know that because the editor, in accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use, disclosed his, quote, "that they have been paid by Vivek Ramaswamy for their contributions to Wikipedia." They tried to remove that. And a bunch of other stuff too, by the way.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Like, I don't have a Wikipedia page, so I don't have that problem yet. But even the stuff with that, and then like, they, they call him a nationally ranked tennis player.

• 31:22Pablo Torre?

  So the editor, this guy who discloses it, he removes lines about the Soros Fellowship. He removes from that same page on February 9, 2023, Vivek's role on the state of Ohio's COVID-19 response team. And then, the National Review, they report that the paid editor also removed references to Ramaswamy's religion and his relationship with Professor Douglas Melton at Harvard, a stem cell chemist who was one of the pioneers of the mRNA vaccine. Previously mentioned as a mentor to Vivek Ramaswamy on his Wikipedia page. And by the way, a guy who Vivek thanks is culminating senior thesis, which I also obtained a copy of.

• 32:04Pablo Torre?

  And it says, quote, "He taught me bioethics when I was in his classroom, and he taught me humility when I was on the tennis court. He has been a great teacher, a greater mentor, and an even greater inspiration." End quote.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  I just didn't know you could do that. Like, what? I thought Wikipedia was on the up and up. I didn't realize rich guys could just pay an editor?

• 32:26Pablo Torre?

  But the rub is, they disclose it. And so that's where I am thankful for that level of transparency in the Wikipedia universe. And if you're wondering, what did Vivek Ramaswamy's then senior advisor and campaign spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, say to HuffPo back in 2023? After all this, uh, well, she says that the edits were not a scrub, but corrections of factual distortions on a number of topics, including family members' names. But the part of the Wikipedia page that still exists that was not removed, not edited by anyone, is this.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  According to himself, according to himself in high school, Ramaswamy was a nationally ranked junior tennis player.

• 33:09Pablo Torre?

  And in Forbes, by the way, they reported this.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  Vivek Ramaswamy is any parent's dream. A nationally ranked junior tennis player who served could hit 120 miles per hour.

• 33:21Pablo Torre?

  And to prove it, here is another campaign ad by Vivek Ramaswamy that I had forgotten about, that I need everybody to see.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Here's 10 truths. God is real. There are two genders. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human flourishing. Reverse racism is racism.

• 33:40Pablo Torre?

  He's playing tennis at a very well-appointed tennis club or court of some kind.

• 33:46Speaker 05

  It's his neighbor, whose wife also appeared in an ad for him.

• 33:49Pablo Torre?

  The number of cuts.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:52Pablo Torre?

  In that edit.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  Um, yeah.

• 33:53Pablo Torre?

  This is before the batting cage stuff.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  This is before the batting cage stuff. And I remember, I talked to my friend who's like a Democratic pollster, does these focus groups, and she was very adamant where she's, she've said that, well, uh, you know, if he is under the impression that tennis is the everyman's sport, and it like, you know, humanizes him in front of voters, he is incorrectly mistaken in that belief. And fast forward to last week, the Democratic Governors Association, they dropped a hit, hit ad on him. And in that, it's like, they literally say. His favorite sport is tennis. And it shows him taking swings.

• 34:32Pablo Torre?

  The unforced errors of this whole thing of like, trying to be sports, but the thing he actually loves is not the sport that, of course, plays politically in the state of Ohio. And then he goes and makes the batting cage ad in exactly the same edit style.

• 34:47Speaker 05

  And this is, you know, tennis is like his true love.

• 34:51Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  He went to St. Xavier High School, one of those prestigious elite academies in Ohio.

• 34:55Pablo Torre?

  All-boys Jesuit school.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're not, uh, they're not a tennis powerhouse. He was a decent player. He was not even the best player on his high school team at any point in his high school career. So the idea he was nationally ranked, that's why the site is himself.

• 35:11Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is where we can bring in some reporting, trying to fact check this. The US Tennis Association has no records of him being a nationally ranked junior tennis player, period. And when I reached out to the USTA myself, they sent me every one of their yearbooks from the 1990s and the 2000s. It is very clear, based on these records, which they double-checked for PTFO, that Vivek Ramaswamy was never noted to be nationally ranked. But his name does appear once, not nationally, but regionally, in the 2002 yearbook. When he finished, according to the reporting down in front of you, DJ?

• 35:51Speaker 05

  And he finished, uh, number 48 in the Boys 16 and Under Division of the Midwest section of the USTA.

• 35:59Pablo Torre?

  Number 48 out of 50.

• 36:03Speaker 05

  It becomes pathological at a point, right? Like, but you were a valedictorian. You were a decent high school player at a well-respected program. Like, why, who is gonna think less of you if you say, you know, I was a, a third singles player my senior year? Like, why do you feel the need to embellish that you were a nationally ranked tennis player?

• 36:25Pablo Torre?

  I talked to one of his classmates at St. X, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And this is what they told me about the tennis stuff. Quote, "I think his reputation was that he was decent at tennis, but he wasn't amazing or anything. No idea where the nationally ranked thing came from." End quote.

• 36:44Speaker 05

  It's his true passion, and that's what's unfortunate about it. Like, we had done reporting on his private jet, and so he was trying to cool it for the stretch run. I think it was Labor Day weekend. He gives a, a dress in Las Vegas, and he says, you know, oh, I, uh, you know, I took the rare opportunity to leave the state. That Friday, he boards his private jet, flies to New York City, and gets popped sitting courtside at the US Open.

• 37:08Pablo Torre?

  He had good seats. He had pretty good seats at the US Open.

• 37:10Speaker 05

  And this is, it's his true passion, and I get it, you know, everybody loves sports. We're on, you know, we wouldn't be here if we didn't. But just the pathological need to embellish everything from, if you're gonna lie about that, come on, man.

• 37:25Pablo Torre?

  And so we again reached out for comment from Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign, and they did not comment.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 37:50Speaker 07

  Love the crown molding.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 37:55Speaker 07

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 38:03Speaker 07

  No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 38:21Pablo Torre?

  Look, man, I, uh, I get the challenge of being the Hindu vegetarian son of immigrants as no less than Ann Coulter once told Vivek to his face.

• 38:33Speaker 06

  I still would not have voted for you, um, because you're an Indian.

• 38:39Pablo Torre?

  The idea that you are voluntarily eating this level of self-degradation from the people that you're catering to and failing to cater to, and yet are still insisting that you're their guy, it gets from like...

• 38:56Pablo Torre?

  Comic to tragic comic and kind of like this perfect case study of where we are in our country right now.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  It's really a sad state of affairs because he ran to the New York Times, I believe, at the first of the year, had this whole op ed about racism within the Republican Party.

• 39:11Pablo Torre?

  Yes, after the Urkel tweet storm thing.

• 39:15Speaker 05

  And it's, well, you've got nothing to say when we're coming after Muslims, when we're coming after black people. You've got nothing to say about that, but somehow...

• 39:22Pablo Torre?

  You have as an advisor the DHS secretary's spokesperson who was deporting innocent people to a concentration camp, effectively.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  But that's not just how the cult of racism works, man. Like, if you think being, you know, one of the good ones and all your money and your wealth and your status and your status as a bio, you know, medical entrepreneur will protect you.

• 39:44Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, biotech billionaire investor.

• 39:45Speaker 05

  You're mistaken.

• 39:46Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I've talked to so many people about Vivek Ramaswamy, as I regret to inform everybody, but one representative quote I got from a high-level biotech investor who spoke on the condition of anonymity as well, who has direct familiarity with Vivek Ramaswamy and Vivek's former company, Royvent, is this, quote, "Vivek's main position is that the only thing a corporation should ever do is profit maximize. There's a lack of ethics." End quote. And in case you think that this is just cherry picking, because of course, I'm sure there are people in his life who really do enjoy the whole Vivek experience, I don't have another classmate in my life who has had their eighth-grade teacher protesting

• 40:27Pablo Torre?

  outside on grass, holding signs saying, "You owed Doctor Acton a full retraction and sincere apology. I am Mr. Ramaswamy's eighth-grade teacher and honor society advisor. Shame on you, Vivek. I taught you better!" exclamation point, who also has a petition circulating from alumni of St. Xavier, in which it says at the top, quote, "Vivek Ramaswamy's smear tactics do not reflect men for others." And then now, as was sent to me, just because I'm a member of the Harvard class of 2007, a petition that says, quote, "Harvard 07 rejects Vivek Ramaswamy. We are members and friends of the Harvard College class of 2007 who are disgusted by decisions that our classmate Vivek Ramaswamy has made in his political

• 41:11Pablo Torre?

  career, including in his current campaign for governor of Ohio. There is no place for Vivek Ramaswamy in politics, and we are committed to making sure he is not elected on November 2nd."

• 41:20Speaker 05

  When you've lost to St. X in the Harvard crowd, you're doing things wrong.

• 41:24Pablo Torre?

  I don't even have time to reference the fact that he literally was a libertarian rapper in college.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  That's crazy.

• 41:30Pablo Torre?

  Vivek, Vivek, which we saw, of course, in Iowa during the Iowa caucuses.

• 41:47Pablo Torre?

  And that performance, for the record, yeah, that did not, that did not work.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I believe he got cease and desisted from Eminem immediately after that, too, if I recall.

• 41:56Pablo Torre?

  Yes, you're right. Oh, my God. How have I buried the lead, which reads, according to NBC News, quote, "Eminem takes legal action against Vivek Ramaswamy over rapping his music at campaign events."

• 42:09Speaker 05

  And like, do you know how many people have disgraced themselves, like singing "Lose Yourself," and like, imagining that you're like, "Mom, spaghetti, that's me," and like, to the point where Eminem was like, "No, this is a bridge too far."

• 42:19Pablo Torre?

  And in Vivek Ramaswamy's defense, has anyone more embodied the concept of losing yourself than him?

• 42:28Speaker 05

  I think Vivek's problem with the ad ultimately was, he came from this business world, right? Like ruthlessness, ethics be damned. And so when it came time for this ad, you know, this was the most ruthless thing to do, that like, nobody else would go there, and that justified the righteousness of the ad. And it might have worked when you're amassing wealth in the golden age of corruption in which we live in, but I think he's gonna learn, and I would assume J.D. Vance might be next, that there's only one political figure in America that gets to act that way and be rewarded. And he has not named Vivek Ramaswamy.

• 43:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, no, the whole idea that I'm landing at here near the end, it's hard to deny. I mean, it's never been easier to be an unethical person and get elected to some of the highest office in our country. And the fact that he can't at this rate says kind of everything.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  And he sunk over $40 million in this race. I mean, if you add in his presidential ambitions, you're talking like $70 million he's spent. If he were to lose on Tuesday, and, you know, I'm never gonna underestimate the amount of stupid people in Ohio, God bless us. If he were to lose, I think he severely underestimates how quick they will turn on him. He will be the full scapegoat for the Republican Party. I had one Republican, they told me, they said, "You should go on election night, sit outside his office and run an exit poll on his staffers, because there is no way he is going to get a majority of his staffers to vote for him." And I think that if you extrapolate that, that just shows

• 44:19Speaker 05

  his problem at large. And hopefully, we'll never have to hear about him again, and he can just go to rich finance conferences in Switzerland and Paris where he ultimately feels at home.

• 44:30Pablo Torre?

  I got bad news for you. Vivek Ramaswamy is absolutely, in the events that you described, starting a podcast.

• 44:46Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lowman, Rob McCray, Laura Newcomb, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersik, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.