The FRONTLINE Interviews
Vivek Ramaswamy
Vance Law School Classmate
Vivek Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur and a former Republican primary presidential candidate. He attended Yale Law School with JD Vance.
The following interview was conducted by Gabrielle Schonder for FRONTLINE on August 8, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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JD Vance at Yale Law School
When did you first meet JD Vance, and did he seem like he was on a trajectory to politics?When did that change, and what was he like in law school?
Yeah, we first met in law school, actually.It's funny because we grew up in southwest Ohio.Probably where I was in kindergarten was maybe 10, 15 minutes from where he grew up in Butler County, Ohio, is where I was.But we didn't know that about each other until we got to law school.We were classmates.We were quickly introduced among different friends and said, “Oh, he's from Cincinnati.Oh, he's from Cincinnati area.” So we got to be friends, and we used to watch Bengals games together.Not a lot, but occasionally we would go to a bar in New Haven and bonded over our Cincinnatiness and our Ohio State fandom.
But that's about it in terms of how our friendship started.It wasn't based on politics.And we had a few classes together as well.I remembered him being, as many students are, right, pretty intellectually curious, pretty engaged.He was somebody who I think was thoughtful.I didn't feel like he was the kind of guy who I necessarily agreed with all the time.I couldn't even tell you if I remembered him being a political conservative.And if you asked him, I'm not sure he would have necessarily remembered the same about me either.It wasn't a relationship built on politics.
Did I get the feeling that he was somebody who was going to go into politics?I don't remember.I mean, if you're walking around Yale Law School, the truth is that's in part the aspiration of half the kids who were there.I was actually pursuing my career in business anyway.I had my job at a financial firm in New York that I kept while I was in law school, and I knew I was heading back there.But the way I looked at most of the rest of the classes, these are probably aspiring politicians of some kind or other, and so I wouldn't necessarily say JD stood out one way or another in that regard.
The Influence of Peter Thiel
In 2011, Peter Thiel visits campus.He gives a speech.Vance describes it as a very formative moment.Are you at the speech?I know you've talked about joining for a luncheon, I think, around the same time.
Yeah.So I think I must have been, actually.That was the lunch where Peter came, and I met him for the first time as well.I thought he was a sharp guy, obviously familiar with his business history, and Peter has gone on to be involved with me or back a number of the businesses that I've since started.I don't remember JD being there, actually.He may or may not have been, but I'm sure if he mentioned that in his story, then I'm sure that that was something that mattered to him.
Do you remember the tenor of Thiel's message in that speech?And around that time, it was sort of very anti-elitism, anti-academy.
Yeah, I think the things that I took away from that were much more focused on how do we create a culture of innovation.I would say he was very skeptical of upper education more generally, about higher education, about how much it costs relative to the value that students were getting out of it.
So Peter was interested in how do we spawn innovation in the United States?I think it was his view that the United States had fallen in its rate of raw innovation.How do we fix that problem?That was interesting to me.It drew me in.It was an apolitical topic.In that context, I found that he was also opposed to the cost of college education and the rigor of going through college education, or at least the ritual, I should say, of going through college education for its own sake.And I thought that was fascinating, somebody who challenged students, especially at an institution like Yale, to rethink the hoops that they jumped through.And it came from a person of some experience, right?Peter himself had gone through law school, himself had worked at a law firm over the standard track that many kids coming out of Yale Law School would go through as well.And so I thought that was an interesting way in which somebody who had been through certain experiences was offering contrarian advice to other people who were at an earlier stage of their career.So that's the way I took it.I thought it was interesting.I didn't particularly stay in touch with Peter.There were a lot of speakers I went to listen to.I didn't particularly stay in touch with him coming out of that experience at Yale, although we reconnected in a business context later on.
How do you think some of that message would have resonated with JD, specifically about being critical of advancement?
It's hard for me to get into JD's head on this exactly, but I know that JD has had a skepticism of what he's called elite institutions, and he didn't go to necessarily what was deemed to be an elite college.It was a great college, Ohio State; I'm a big fan of it.But ending up in Yale Law School, I think he was very conscious of that environment and that difference, maybe more so than I was.I grew up in southwest Ohio as well, not in particularly well-to-do circumstances myself, middle class, not upper class or lower class, but I went to public schools through eighth grade.But for me, I was always interested in being in an environment different than the one I grew up in, and that was the case from public schools to St.Xavier High School to Harvard to Yale.I think JD was much more conscious of the environment that he was in as being different from the one that necessarily he grew up in or had lived in up to that point in time.I do think that that created some tension in his own relationship with his experience at Yale.
I think he's been pretty open about this as well.For my part, I actually love my experiences, both at Harvard and Yale.I was surrounded by people who had different views than I did, often in politics and other issues.I feel like I got a better education because of it.My bet is JD got a better education because of it as well.I think that the fact that he was surrounded by people who had different experiences and often different viewpoints than people like me or him was probably good and taught him to be a more critical thinker.But I don't know that he would say that.You'd have to ask him, but that's my view of what his experience probably was.
Vance Publishes <i>Hillbilly Elegy</i>
Thank you.That's really helpful.Are you in touch with him when the memoir comes out, 2016, 2017, and do you know what it's like for him to go from JD to celebrity?
Yeah.So what happened was after law school, I was in a very different world than a lot of my classmates.I had a job at a biotech investing hedge fund when I graduated from college.I worked there for three years, kept my job while I was in law school, so I was still popping back and forth between New York and New Haven.I moved back to New York, and I was entering the business world.I then went on to start a biotech company called Roivant that I built.I didn't really stay in too close of touch with many of my other classmates just because building a company is an all-in endeavor, so I was all-in on that.Anybody who's built something substantial will tell you the first few years are the same experience.
So I was neck-deep in building my biotech company, very removed from the world that many of my classmates in law school were in.I was on the street of San Francisco at what's called the J.P.Morgan Healthcare Conference, a major health care conference that takes place every January.By that point, my company, Roivant, had become reasonably well known.We had gotten off the ground pretty quickly.And approaching me on the street as I'm running between meetings was none other than JD, and little did I know that he was in the world of biotech at that time.That surprised me.He wasn't somebody who I thought was going to be in what I thought was my different world of biotech.
He chased me down.We talked.Maybe I was on my way to a meeting.He walked with me.Might have been about two or three minutes of a conversation, and I just remember being taken to say, hey, this is interesting, right?I remember being a tad skeptical, right, because I know that biotech is one of these areas where you need a lot of domain knowledge to be able to punch your ticket, to be able to create value or identify value, and I knew JD didn't necessarily have a background in that area.But I remember mostly being encouraging and mostly pleasantly surprised that a kid from law school class that I thought was going to go in a very different direction ended up landing on the streets of San Francisco right next to me at the J.P.Morgan Healthcare Conference.
That caught me by surprise.And that was the beginning of our getting back into touch.But it ended up being far more in a business context than in a law school or certainly a political context.
Vance’s Conservative Shift
OK, so I'm going to jump ahead now to 2018, to 2018 to sort of 2021 period.
Sure, yeah.
Things are shifting a lot on the right and the left throughout this period.
Yeah.
JD appears to be changing in tone and position on a number of things.And I'm curious to see how you view this period and what you see happening on the right, because you have COVID; you have BLM happening.
First of all, as it relates to JD, he ended up in biotech.He ended up then working in the world of venture capital.I remember feeling very proud of him, one of my classmates going a different direction, a direction that felt closer to home for me.And that ended up bolstering our friendship and staying in touch.I did not realize that he had published his best-selling work.I hadn't heard of that.My head was down, focused in the world of biotech, until a couple friends in New York, or a couple friends visited New York, said, “You know JD Vance is famous now, right?” I said, “I have no idea about that.” We were talking about biotech or tech investing.They said, “No, no, no, there's this book, <i>Hillbilly Elegy</i>, he published.It's a <i>New York Times</i> best seller.” I said, “Oh, that's amazing.” And a couple of years later, he visited me in New York.This was about 2018, 2019, when he was thinking about really getting his start, potentially in leaving, working for somebody else and actually starting his own venture capital fund.So that's when we reconnected in earnest.
So it was on and off, mostly in a business context.When you think about what was going on in the country, the main thing that changed was the election of Donald Trump to the U.S.presidency, and I think that that just changed a lot of attitudes when I think about even my former classmates in law school.A lot of them became far more radicalized in their views.It was an environment when I was in law school, when JD was in law school, where you could still disagree, disagree vehemently with your peers, not even on questions of politics, but still get together and be friends at the end of it.This wasn't that long ago.
This was 2010 to 2013.I think after the election of Trump, things really changed, where it's either, for many people at least, it's either you're on their team or you're on our team, and there is no in between.Now, I wasn't in politics at the time; I was in the business world.And I can imagine that for JD as well, that was a bit of a transformational period.Obviously I think a lot of his views evolved over the course of that first Trump term and that first term of the presidency.So when you think about the changes in the country, obviously that was in advance of not only COVID-19, but the policy response to COVID-19, which in turn ended up largely tracking partisan boundaries.Republicans tended to believe, as I do, that lockdowns were unproductive; that vaccine mandates were going to be a violation on our liberty, especially when you think about the speed with which those vaccines were developed.I think many on the left favored approaches of caution: social distancing measures, lockdowns, vaccine mandates.And so that, I think, threw some kerosene on the already burning embers of cultural divide in the wake of the Trump presidency.And I think that was a period where people like JD—certainly JD in particular—was probably figuring out what a lot of his views actually were.
That was the way I viewed him during those years, is he seemed like a guy who was figuring out his convictions.I don't think he had his necessarily political or cultural or social or policy convictions set at that point in time.I'm not sure he did for quite a while after either.But I did see him as a guy who was figuring out what he actually believed, somebody who had a sense of curiosity about him, and I think those years were certainly formative for him.In some ways they were formative for me as well.
And help me understand, what do the cultural issues mean to him?
You're actually bringing out some interactions and memories that I hadn't talked about in the past when I was interviewed.So I met him at the streets of San Francisco, I told you, when he attended the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.I was there as a CEO myself.So I thought, you know what?I'd given him some advice on biotech, best advice I could give him on my world.What happened in 2020 was, a lot of things changed.I had my first son; he was born in 2020; COVID-19 hit.
By January of 2021, I stepped down from my job as a biotech CEO, and I went on to write my book, <i>Woke, Inc.</i>, that also went on to become a <i>New York Times</i> best seller.It was a cultural critique of the direction of business culture in the United States.But here I've got a friend who's written an overwhelming bestseller.Maybe he would have some advice for me.I've given him advice in biotech; now I'm writing a book and gave him the same kind of opportunity to give me advice in return.And I remember sending him an early manuscript of <i>Woke, Inc.</i>, and I do remember his response pretty distinctively, and I think it reflects where he and I may differ in our emphasis in where we see the core cultural challenge we're up against in the United States.
So he returned the favor, I should say, because when he asked me for advice on biotech, I told you I was a little bit skeptical.I was encouraging, but it was a little skeptical—“You don't have domain expertise.You're coming into biotech; make sure you know what you're getting into”— and gave him very candid advice.He returned the favor.When I was writing that book, <i>Woke, Inc.</i>, he had come off of writing a best seller.Probably his attitude was, “All right, man, everybody thinks they can write a book.But be careful what you think you're getting into,” was the tenor of his advice to me.But he read the text pretty thoughtfully.He ended up giving me a blurb for the book as well.
I think the book did, frankly, a lot better than both of us expected.But the advice he gave me was, “Listen, your book is focused on the culture, right?Your book is focused on issues of wokeness.By the summer of 2020 and in the aftermath of the George Floyd death and the riots that raged in the cities across this country afterwards, that was a really fraught moment from a cultural perspective.But you're not going to really go the distance.I don't think this book is going to be successful unless you connect that to the economic plight of Americans.So when you're dealing with issues like trade, immigration, when you're dealing with the economic plight of working-class Americans, unless you make that connection, I don't think this is really going to catch on.”
I remember taking that advice.First of all, I appreciated the candor.Second of all, it sort of showed the center of gravity of where his concerns really were.My concerns were mostly centered around the loss of American civic identity.That's a lot of what came out of my book, <i>Woke, Inc.</i>, was a vacuum of the loss of American civic identity.That's what I was concerned about.JD's read of the book was that, “OK, that's interesting.I think there's some points there, but you're really not going to cut through, and you're really not hitting into the issues that really matter unless you tie that to the economic plight of working-class Americans.” I didn't particularly take his advice because the book was already baked at that point in time, but it gave me an insight into what mattered to him, and it overlapped heavily with but wasn't exactly the same as my diagnosis of what was going on in America.
What I'm hearing you say is JD equals economic populism first and foremost, culture second.Is that—?
Yeah, I would say that economic nationalism, economic populism, that's at the heart of what gets him going, the economic plight of working-class Americans.That's, I think, what really gets him going.And that's in contrast to what really gets me going, right?What lights my fire is reviving the civic ideals that the United States of America was founded on and our national identity grounded in those ideals.Those are overlapping, but they're slightly different points.
But let me ask you, you're watching and he's watching what's happening in Minnesota in 2020.
Yeah.
He's seeing the Wells Fargo burning in Minneapolis, and what is he thinking when he's watching coverage of that moment?
I obviously can't speak to what he's thinking when he's watching the TV screen.I think we see the same thing, obviously.We see the loss of a country that is going the direction of Third World nations: violence on the streets of a country that was supposedly the shining city on a hill; a sense of shame, a sense of sadness as we see rampant crime affecting Americans who have been suffering from economic conditions that have deteriorated for many working-class Americans.I think we both see that.I think JD probably sees it as a symptom of a deeper betrayal of everyday working-class Americans in both parties.I see it a little bit as a loss of identity, people who are hungry for purpose and meaning at a moment when people have stopped believing in God, stopped believing in their country, stopped believing in the family unit or even themselves.
So for me, I think my diagnosis was far more psychologically grounded.I think JD's diagnosis, I could imagine, with some conviction, is far more economically linked.And I don't disagree with his characterization, but I think that we have a slightly different emphasis in what we see as the root cause of the problem.
Can I ask you about some of his language that's now changing in more of this contemporary period?
Yeah.
So he writes a foreword for [The Heritage Foundation Kevin] Roberts' book, and I'm just going to quote this.
I haven't read it.So you've read it?
That's OK.I've read it, but I don't want to quote it to you if you haven't read it.
OK.
But he's using more brash language.
OK.
He's using more extreme language.When it comes to the administrative state, for instance, he's saying things on podcasts like, “We need to dismantle it.We need to fire every mid-level civil servant.” When people hear that kind of language, and I should finish my sentence with the Roberts mention, he has this quote—and I'm paraphrasing—that “This is a time of dire—there's a lot at stake.We need to fill the muskets and circle the wagons.” Is that the JD you know from law school?What's going on with the tenor and the tone of some of the political vernacular?
So I think JD is somebody who has harbored real frustrations about the direction of our country for a long time.I think that that boiled over a little bit during our time at Yale and some of his frustrations towards what he would call elite institutions like Yale, but I think it ran far deeper than that.So no, I don't think it is a change in—the strength of his language doesn't reflect a change in his character.I think it reflects him gaining the conviction to really speak and verbalize some of the frustrations that he otherwise experienced more deeply.
I want to say a word about his apparent antipathy towards the administrative state.A lot of what he says, I mean, I use pretty strong language with respect to my attitudes towards the administrative state.I said in my presidential campaign on the idea that we need to dismantle a lot of that bureaucracy.I think part of what's going on in the United States is we are really suffering from a cancer of middle management in every aspect of our culture, and I don't think that's a particularly partisan issue.I think it exists in corporate America; it exists in our universities; it exists in the federal government, the state governments alike.Thinning out bureaucracy, I think, will revive American exceptionalism and American innovation.So yes, I do believe we need to dismantle the administrative state.I don't think that's extreme language.What JD said, which I think is interesting, is that not only do we need to fire a lot of those mid-level bureaucrats, but his view is we need to replace them with our people, people who have conservative worldviews.
Here I have a slightly different view.If we had stopped that sentence right in the middle and said that we should just dismantle the administrative state and send a lot of those bureaucrats home packing, period, that's closer to where I'm at.And I do think that that's an interesting part of our relationship, where we've never seen 100% eye to eye on even the future direction of the conservative movement.But what I respect about him is that, unlike so many politicians, he actually has an ideology.It's not the same as my ideology.It overlaps with it, but it's not the same.But he's somebody who I can respect is always going to still share his own view.And that's how our friendship has really been built on a lot of the debates that he and I have had over the years.
But can you understand where that language is worrisome to critics on the other side?
Look, I think that if you look at the language and you're going to airlift the most incendiary thing somebody in the opposition has said, you're going to find far worse than anything JD has said.So I do think that there is a little bit of selective airlifting going on where each side, if they look at the most incendiary thing that somebody has said in a particular context, airlift that out and say, “Isn't that extreme language?,” I think you're going to find a lot of that on both sides.I don't think JD is particularly guilty of that.
To the contrary, what I respect about him—and I think he believes this, too—is that there's two risks in the country when you think about discourse right now.There's two possible risks—and to say that no one's going to get it perfect, but you're always going to be taking one risk or the other risk.Here are the two risks.One risk is that you shield too many of your views from the public, that you attenuate what you have to say so the public doesn't know what you actually believe.That's one risk.The other risk is that you are so candid that on occasion, you say some things that if you look back a few years later, say, “Hey, maybe I would have said that a little bit differently if given a chance.” The third alternative of saying that everybody's going to say everything exactly what they believe, exactly precisely, but without ever being incendiary, that's not an option, because we're all human beings, right?So you're always going to be taking one risk or the other.The only question is, which risk are you willing to take?And I think JD and I share in common that we believe the bigger risk right now is not that people are too candid, but that people are not candid enough.And so if you believe that people are not being candid or transparent enough about their views because there's this culture of fear in the country, then the risk you're taking is sometimes you're going to say things that you might regret that you said, not in the substance of it, but just the manner of saying it, and that OK, if you had to go back and say it in a slightly different way, would you?Probably.Because I think that framing reminds me to say the same about the administrative state.
Again, you're going to be taking one of two risks with the administrative state.One risk is that you don't cut enough, that you still leave some of the bureaucracy intact, and the risk there is it grows right back.The other risk is that you're going to cut too much, and that you might not just cut the fat, but you might cut some muscle.This idea that you're going to cut exactly the right amount, not too much and not too little, is an artificial promise, because nobody knows exactly beforehand that they're going to get something right.
It comes down to a question of which risk you're willing to take.And again, I come down on the side of, I'm willing to cut so much that even if we cut some muscle, fine, we'll add that back.I think JD's view on that is still yet to be determined, because I think on one hand, he favors cutting the administrative state.On the other hand, I think he does have a more permissive attitude to using regulatory power or using state power to effectuate conservative goals.I'm a little bit different on that account.But one of the things I love about JD is that we're still able to have thoughtful dialogue around that type of question.
Project 2025
Let me ask you just for a moment about Project 2025, because we do have a bit of a framework there to look at what the next administration could be.It seems like that document outlines a lot of the positions of both JD and the Trump campaign.And I know there's been distance there, but what do you make of that?
Look, I think the Project 2025 issue has been overblown for a lot of reasons.As I understand it, it was still a work in progress at the time that both the Trump campaign distanced themselves from it as well as the time that the Democrats decided that this was going to be a top target of their criticism.The reality is the Heritage Foundation has historically put out documents for nearly every major president for the last four decades.So in some sense, it does feel like a bit of a straw man rather than what I prefer: Let's just talk about the content of what it says.
Most people now have heard the word “Project 2025.” They don't have the first idea of what's in there or what it means.Let's talk about the substance of the issues.And chances are, most Americans on both sides will agree with some of the things that are in there and that they'll disagree with some of the other things in there.Republicans generally will tend to agree with more things, although some will disagree with a few things.And Democrats may agree with a few things, even though they disagree with others.So I prefer to get into the substance of what it actually says.And I'd love to engage in discussion around that rather than what I feel like we do too often in our culture, [which] is we obsess over a particular label rather than actually asking what it's supposed to mean.
Totally.But there's a lot of things in there that create fear on the other side.
Give me an example.
There's been talk about the mass deportation.There's been talk about sort of the deconstructing of the administrative state.There's that [the] plan feels different even from the history of Heritage, which we've talked about.There seems to be a bit of a shift towards maybe more polarizing language.
I think that that is probably the function of marketing from both sides, actually.The reality is conservatives for the last 40-plus years have been calling for a mass downsizing of the federal government.Now, I think the neoconservative movement in the early 2000s and the late 1990s actually walked back some of that commitment.And the irony that we can get to another time is the so-called New Right, which rejects the neoconservatives on issues like foreign policy, actually has become far more permissive to the use of state power, which I reject.
But this document basically lays out a skepticism of the administrative state and says we want to downsize the federal government.Conservatives have been saying this for 40 years.Now, it does offer some greater specificity.I think we live in a moment where that's called for.The Supreme Court has given us cases in the last several years—West Virginia v.EPA in 2022; the Loper Bright [Enterprises v.Raimondo] case in '24; SEC v.Jarkesy, now this time in 2024 as well—that does give the chief executive of the United States, the U.S.president, and the litigation system as well the ability to reign in administrative power.
So the fact that we see that type of specificity coming out, I think, is a response to a changing legal environment, which I just think is warranted, thoughtful and relevant.But I don't see it as some type of marked departure from what conservatives have been calling for for a long time.
But when people hear about a powerful executive, a powerful executive authority, the dismantling of the administrative state—
Yeah.
—it sounds like top-down approach.There's echoes of authoritarianism, and I—
So let me address this, because this is—I hear this criticism a lot.We should just take this back again, OK.Yeah.
Let me just finish the question, too, which is, what do you say to those critics?
So what I say to those critics—I'll speak for myself, but I think I speak for a lot of people on the right—is that I am deeply skeptical of executive authority being abused.And the problem with the administrative state is it is the use of executive authority to pass rules that Congress never passed, so what I want is a far more restrained executive branch than we have today.I think it is ripe for abuse by both parties.The overturning of Chevron deference basically says the federal courts no longer defer to administrative agency judgments on the law.
I think that's a good thing.I think it will rein in the power of what Republicans are able to do when they're in office, and it reigns in the power of what Democrats are able to do when they're in office.So if you share with me the concern about overreaching executive authority and the march towards authoritarianism in the United States, then you should share with me the view that we need to constrain the power of that executive branch.That's really what shrinking the size of the administrative branch is all about, because there is no administrative branch.There's not supposed to be.There's only supposed to be three branches: executive, legislative and judicial.
Now, this is something that admittedly does open up a debate on the right, and I fall on one side of this debate.I don't speak for everybody on the right here.There are some on the right who believe that the right answer is not really to deconstruct, dismantle and downsize the administrative state, but instead to use the administrative state, three-letter agencies from the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] to the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to the CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau]—that's a four-letter agency—to advance affirmatively conservative ends.I disagree with that.That's part of what I call a national protectionist worldview.I'm not in that camp.
But I think a majority of conservatives actually, forgetting leadership, out there in the actual voting population are on my side of this, to say that we want to dismantle the administrative state.Does the president of the United States have the ability to rescind a lot of those regulations and to fire a lot of those bureaucrats?Yes.And is that an overreach of executive authority?No, it's not.It's actually restraining the abuse of executive authority that we've seen from, frankly, both political parties in the last 30 years.That's what it represents.
But there's a lot of people that have deep concerns about the future of the democracy when they hear things like this.What do you say to them?
Yeah.So what I say to them is the people we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government.
We bring up the word “democracy.” What does that mean?It means self-governance.It means the people who set policies, who issue fiats, rules, laws are elected and can be voted out of office.The problem with the status quo in the United States today is that most laws are effectively not passed by Congress.They're passed by what's called rulemaking, by bureaucrats who were never elected to their position and who can't be voted out of their position.That's not democracy.That is a perversion of the constitutional republic that our Founding Fathers envisioned.
One of the litmus tests I use is what would Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and George Washington and James Madison say if they were alive today?And if they saw that most of the rules in the United States were being made by bureaucrats who were never elected to their positions, they would say that is really a hollowed-out husk of the democracy and the constitutional republic that they fought a revolution to secure.I have full confidence on that, and I don't think you'd find a lot of legal scholars on the left who disagree with me.That would be the view of our Founding Fathers.
So if your concern is, as is my concern, restoring democracy and democratic self-governance in the United States, you want a restrained executive.You want the people we elect to run the government, whoever they are, to be the ones who actually run the government, not unelected bureaucrats.And so I do think there's an irony in saying that if we want to rein in the power of those bureaucrats, somehow that's the threat to democracy.That doesn't make sense.But it's also part of what calls me to speak out about these issues, because I do think that we're missing thoughtful voices on the right to explain that to the voting public.And that is the responsibility of Republican leaders.
Let me ask you, though, because at the moment that we're speaking in 2024, there are figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, incredibly influential political figures that are also political donors, right?And I wonder, we're not back in the period of the Founding Fathers.These guys have outsize influence at the moment in our political milieu.There's a lot of people that are worried about that.
Yeah.So historically, it was a left-wing position to be skeptical of the role of super PACs in American democracy.Well, you know what?In 2016 Donald Trump said this, and I said this in 2024 when I ran for U.S.president as well.I don't think that they're a good influence on American democracy.The basic premise of campaign contributions is that we have limits on campaign contributions for what the Supreme Court has called undue influence that a donor might have on policy.That's why it's not a First Amendment violation to put a cap on campaign contributions.But when super PACs are effectively functioning like arms of a campaign, which is the environment we live in today on both sides, then that defies the original logic for creating independent expenditures through super PACs in the first place.
I will note something, though.This used to be a popular issue on the left.Interestingly, it's not anymore.The left has actually mastered the art of super PAC puppetry far more effectively than Republicans have.If you look at the amount of money that George Soros alone has given to back Democratic candidates across the country, it far exceeds that of the two individuals you mentioned, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, combined, and then some.Reid Hoffman, the same thing.So I think it's a pervasive issue on both sides.But when you look today at which side is actually responsive to mass external corporate and donor influence, the irony is there's little doubt that it's actually the Democrats today, and that accounts for why the Democrats of 2010, who were deeply opposed to corporate influence on the electoral process, you hear nary a peep about it anymore.
For my part, I believe in standing on principle.I don't believe that we should have excess financial or corporate influence on the electoral process.I think that anybody should be able to make a campaign contribution up to the same maximum, regardless of whether you're an individual or a separate kind of entity.But in the meantime, I think it's fair game for both sides to play by the rules that they're dealt.
Why do you think the vice presidents matter so much at this moment?…
Yeah.Well, I would challenge the premise a little bit.We will see whether the vice presidents matter or not.Donald Trump has said this.I agree with him.And history shows us this as well.People vote for the U.S.president.This is, at the end of the day, going to be Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump deciding the presidency.Typically, if a vice president has mattered, it hasn't been in a great way.Sarah Palin in 2008 was a good example of an adverse impact on John McCain's electoral prospects.That's to say nothing negative about her, but the way that she was portrayed had an impact on that race.And so the reality is it's going to come down to the two candidates for U.S.president.
I do think that the media is sometimes a little bored at times.And the reality is the media runs on clicks; cable television runs on advertisements.And so whatever the latest news is, of course, that's something they're going to fixate on.I don't believe that the vice presidency typically has mattered to setting the course of policy in the United States, and I don't think that this cycle is going to be that different.
Vance’s Political Transformation
A lot's been made about the political transformation of JD Vance over the time period we've been discussing.Do you believe that he's gone through a political transformation?
I think obviously he has, right?He's changed some of his views relative to what he believed in 2016.And I think that that's a good thing for human beings to be able to engage in introspection and reflection and decide where their convictions actually are.So yes, I do think that he has evolved some of his views.Frankly, I think over any eight-year period, especially as eventful of an eight-year period we've had in our own country, I think it would be bizarre if somebody believed exactly the same things that they did a decade ago without responding to their own experiences, especially younger people.
It's one thing to say if you're 50, you believe the same thing when you're 60, but it's another thing to say that if you're 35, you believe something that you did when you were 25.I think it's a very different calculus.People are figuring out what their own views are, and I think JD is somebody who, as recently probably as a few years ago, maybe even now, is still discovering what his actual convictions truly are.And that's one of the things that I've observed about him.Is he somebody who's curious?Even when he won that Senate race, I don't think that he was somebody who fully figured out who he was going to be when he grew up.And I mean that in a good way, because it shows that he's actually open to reflection and open to introspection in a way that few politicians are.And I say this as somebody who does not agree with all of his perspectives, and he doesn't agree with all mine.But I think that's actually something that has strengthened our friendship.
I miss that in the United States of America, including the people on the left as well.Most of my friends, certainly through my education—just look at the places I've gone to college and law school—tended to be left of center.And the America I miss is one where we could disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it.I still live by that as best I can.Many of my closest friends don't have the same political beliefs as me.
I think that's good.It's good for me, selfishly, but it's also good for the country.It makes us stronger.And even though JD and I are both in the Republican Party, he and I have some deep philosophical differences of opinion on certain questions relating to economic policy, industrial policy.And I think our relationship is stronger, and I hope, given the roles that we're each playing in the future, our country is going to be stronger because of that as well.
I think that's a really interesting point.I wonder, though, if people can sit down with JD at the dinner table and have a discussion about some of his perspectives on the traditional issues and some of the social issues that we've just talked about.
I hope so.I hope so.I think it would be a pretty harsh indictment of our country if we couldn't have neighbors get together and break bread while actually speaking openly about our own disagreements.I go out of my way to do it.I think it's something that represents the best of America, something that in some ways is unique about American cultures that we have this culture of free speech.It's not just the free speech rights codified in the First Amendment.That's, of course, critical to say the government can't stop you from saying or expressing an opinion.That's what the First Amendment basically says.But it also is about creating a culture of free speech, too.
That's what our founders envisioned, a marketplace of ideas where the best ideas win through free speech and open debate, where you get to try on a set of ideas, like a set of clothes, and if they don't fit, you can put them back on the rack.But once in a while, they will.And you know what?You change your mind then.That's the beauty of the human experience.It's part of the beauty of the American experience.I do think we've lost that.I don't think that I could put that blame at the feet of anybody.You might see a lot of people in the media try to put that blame at the feet of JD Vance or Donald Trump or somebody else.
No, I think it's up to all of us to look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves, how have we contributed to creating a culture of fear?It goes for both sides, to say that we've lost that sense of openness, seeing our fellow neighbor as a fellow citizen rather than as a political enemy.I do think it's perfectly appropriate to speak in harsh terms.I've said it at times, too.We are in the middle of a kind of soft cultural war in the United States.But I say this every time, too.Our enemy is not our fellow neighbor.It is an ideology.And as long as the people on the other side of this debate see it the same way, I'm still confident that we're going to have a country left at the end of it, and I hope if we're able to revive that culture of open exchange, a country that's even stronger than the one that JD and I grew up in.
In 2019, he converts to Catholicism.I'm curious about the return to kind of traditional values that he's been talking about lately as a parent.Is that part of it, being informed by his faith?
JD and I have not had a serious conversation about faith.We probably should.I think we would enjoy that.I'm Hindu.I think Usha certainly was raised Hindu.She's also a good friend of ours.I think JD converted to Catholicism.He's clearly been thoughtful about theology and his approach to faith and where his religious convictions are.So I imagine we would have a thoughtful and interesting conversation about each of the convictions of our own faith, about theology.It just happens not to be one of the areas that he and I have covered in our relationship.
Oh, good.Thanks for entertaining the question.Can I quickly ask you about 2020 and the election and then specifically Jan.6?He's moved on that position.
OK.
How do you understand his views on that?
Look, I think a lot of facts have changed in terms of what's come to light over the last several years.Initially, there was one portrayal of what happened on Jan.6.I think over the course of time, we've seen new facts that the public didn't have: when you think about some of the statements that Donald Trump made but that were suppressed at the time; when you look at the actual transcript of what he said versus the media's reporting of whether or not he incited a riot, when he actually used the word specifically to march “peacefully”; when you also look at the fact that much of the video footage that day was suppressed.1Some of the earliest footage that was released did look pretty bad, and there were some really bad acts committed that day.But at the same time, you have a lot of people there who were also there peacefully, many of whom were arrested and often at behest of constitutional rights that were violated.Don't take that from me; take it from the Supreme Court that's come down on the same side of these questions—charged using outdated laws like those that were passed in the aftermath of the Enron scandal, used to prosecute people who were physically present in a government building.That didn't make sense.And it seemed like a tortured violation of the spirit of the rule of law.The Supreme Court has since come down on the same side of those questions.
So I do think that we should be able to take a nuanced look at what happened that day and say, “You know what?There were some really bad things that did happen that day, but we have to get to the root causes of it.” And it's deeper than just putting that and pinning that at the feet of one man, which was the initial narrative, but to say there was a broader environment in the country—a year of being locked down; a year of being told to shut up, sit down, do as you're told, to have your social media posts censored; to say that people also had been locked down in their home at behest of the government; a lot of frustration from the pandemic and the policy response to it.
A Second Trump Term
There's been discussion about this potential next Trump administration as a do-over from the first term.And I'm curious, we've heard terminology about there was “sand in the gears” in those first 180 days in 2017.How is this moment, how is potentially a second Trump administration, a do-over?
Look, I think that one of the unique opportunities that President Trump has is the one that Grover Cleveland had.This is a rare opportunity to be able to have served in office, taken the time to learn from that experience, reflect on it, see how a different president approached things, and then to go back with the benefit of those learnings and aspire to an even better second term.I think it's a good thing.So I don't know about the framing of a do-over.What I think about is what was different about the first term is Donald Trump came to office with the idea of making America great again, sort of a wistful call to restore an older America that doesn't exist today.I think what I'd like to see the second term be about, and you're hearing some of this between the lines of Trump's rhetoric as well, is we don't just want to make America great again.We aspire to make America greater than it has ever been before.And speaking personally, as the kid of legal immigrants who came to this country with no money, and as somebody who's founded multibillion-dollar companies and run for U.S.president at the age of 37, it's only possible in the United States of America.
That second vision speaks to me even more.I don't just want the same country that I grew up in as great as it was.I want a country greater than the one I grew up in, and so the fact that we have a U.S.president, potential U.S.president, certainly a Republican nominee for U.S.president, who's had the experience of being U.S.president but aspires to do more in the second term than he did in the first term, I think is a good thing.I think it's why the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump, by the way.One of the things that I learned in my primary experience of running was that no matter how good the policies or how good the candidate this time around, Republicans wanted to go with somebody who already had that experience and was tried and true in that role.And I think that's fair.And so for Donald Trump to be able to say that I want to go further in success for the country than I did in that first term I think is heartening, rather than to just say, “I want to repeat everything that I did.” To say that “I want to go further than I did” shows that American ambition, shows that idea that we don't just settle for the status quo, but we believe in exceptionalism and we are not perfect.We've never been, but we are founded on the pursuit of a more perfect union.And I'm up for that ride.
The Teneo Network
You and JD are both involved in the Teneo network.Can you just give us a small description of what that is?
Yeah.Teneo is a group of younger, conservative-minded, but more importantly, patriotically minded, successful leaders whose conference they've asked me to speak at a couple of times.I haven't been certainly one of the more involved members, but they've asked me from time to time to speak at their conferences, which I've enjoyed doing.And I do think it's important that we have positive culture on the right as well, not just the kind of attitude that tears down political opponents, but really asks the question of who are we and what do we stand for.
In some ways, I think that's the path forward for the Republican Party.… A great mistake that Republicans risk committing this November and the path to November is that we get so obsessed with criticizing the other side that we forget to tell the American people who we are and what we actually stand for.If you ask me, embracing the individual, family, nation and God beats race, gender, sexuality and climate, if we have the courage to stand for our own vision.So I do think that civic institutions that pull the best out of us to be able to offer our own vision say we're not just running from something but we are running to something, that we believe in success, not just in politics, but through the private sector, that success and excellence are part of the heritage of this country.Organizations like that, I think, are going to be good, not just for the right, but for elevating the caliber of the American spirit.And I think that that's something that I'm seeing as a positive trend for those on the right that are maybe taking a little bit of a different approach to just relentlessly criticizing our fellow citizens and opponents on the left.And I think some level of policy criticism is important, but we can't just do that.We've got to offer our own vision as well, and that's one of the things I've tried to do in some of my speeches at the Teneo retreats.
Do you all feel like you've lost the culture war in that regard?
I think it's still to be determined.I think there's a question of what the victory looks like.I don't want it to be a Pyrrhic victory.I want it to be a victory for the United States of America.I think what victory looks like here is really reviving that common thread, the ideals of the American Revolution enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, codified in the U.S.Constitution.Do we believe those ideals still exist today or not?I do.I think it feels like we've lost them.The American dream feels fragile.It feels ethereal.
I call it a dream, I guess, for a reason, right?You wake up from a dream.You forget what it was all about.You remember what it felt like for a little bit.I think that's the state we're in right now.Wait a little longer, you forget that, too.So I do feel some sense of urgency, but what winning this war looks like to me is for all of us, Black or white, Democrat or Republican, to come out with a commitment and a celebration of that actual American dream, not some fake version of it, but the actual thing; the idea that no matter who you are or where your parents came from or what your skin color is, that you can get ahead in this country and live a good life and achieve anything you want with your potential, with your own hard work and commitment and dedication.And I would add that you're also free to speak your mind at every step of the way.
If we win that, then this war has been won not just for the right, but for the United States of America.That's what I'm rooting for.And I think the next few months and maybe the next few years will determine whether we get there.
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