Donald Trump is reportedly pushing failed presidential candidate and billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy to take JD Vance’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat in Ohio.
According to the Washington Post, Trump has encouraged Ramaswamy to take the position if offered by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who will make the appointment for the vacated seat once Vance is sworn in as vice president. The outlet also reports that Ramaswamy was planning to run for Ohio governor in 2026.
If Ramaswamy assumed the position, Ohio would be represented by a senator whose history is checkered with promoting debunked conspiracy theories.
During his unsuccessful presidential campaign, Ramaswamy said that the Jan. 6 insurrection of the U.S. Capitol looked like it was an “inside job,” amplifying a conservative conspiracy that it was undertaken by shadowy forces within the government.
“Why am I the only person on this stage, at least, who can say that Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job?” Ramaswamy asked his fellow Republican candidates during a December 2023 debate.
He also posted on social media on the anniversary of the insurrection, writing “Happy Entrapment Day,” a nod to the debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that federal agents staged the event to entrap Trump supporters. Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee, Pete Hegseth, has espoused similar beliefs.
Ramaswamy has also claimed that the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that increased immigration from Mexico is a plan to replace white people with Latinx people, is “a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”
He also promoted the falsehood that the 2020 election was “stolen by Big Tech.”
Perhaps the most absurd conspiracy that Ramaswamy has embraced is his theory that the result of the 2024 Super Bowl was rigged in favor of the Kansas City Chiefs and that it would be connected to a future endorsement of President Joe Biden from Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift.
When he’s not promoting conspiracies, Ramaswamy has embraced unpopular conservative policy ideas, like privatizing Social Security.
In a video for AARP, Ramaswamy endorsed the failed proposal from former President George W. Bush to allow partial privatization of the popular pension program by investing funds in the stock market.
Along with Elon Musk, Ramaswamy is currently co-chairing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a non-governmental pressure group created by Trump. DOGE representatives have reportedly been harassing federal workers in an effort to undermine federal spending.
And recently, Ramaswamy denigrated U.S. culture in a lengthy post on X claiming that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote.
So, if Ramaswamy assumes the Senate seat in Ohio, he’ll be representing the very people he believes to be subpar.
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