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Let's break down the presidential debate from last night with Vivek Ramaswami, a former Republican candidate himself. He joins me now from Atlanta. Mister Ramaswami, good morning to you this Morningberg Technology. We're a technology show, and I've wanted to ask you to come on following the debate because of your background, because of the reporting of your relationship with former President Trump and the Trump campaign team. But we should talk about last night, So the floor is yours.
Your reaction to that debate.
Well, look, I was in Atlanta last night, got back to my home in Columbus today, and after sleeping on it, my conclusion is the same as what we saw last night, which is this was sad for the United States of America to see the current President, Joe Biden in the mental state that he is actually in.
There was a lot of joking.
About drug testing or were they going to drug him up? It looked more like he had a lobotomy, and I just think that that's a sad thing, speaking as an American regardles of partisanship, when you think about the country that has produced the greatness of innovation and the leaders leading companies in the private sector. To see the person who's leading the federal government himself be as absent as he was yesterday, I think is really a damning indictment of the.
Modern Democratic Party the president.
Yep, mister Ramswami, may I just jump in, and it's interesting that that you ran as as a president's candidate for the Republican Party. You you're representing former President Trump, but you started by speaking about President Biden's performance.
Many are frustrated this morning.
That we actually didn't hear any answers to the questions posed to former President Trump about what he would do if re elected, what some of his policy platforms were. What did you learn about what former President Trump might do were he to be re elected to the White House.
Well, he asked me about my impressions, and I think the number one most salient thing about the debate for anybody who watched it was in need the surprise of Biden's performance, which is why I can't on it in response to your question, But I agree with you it's much more productive to talk about the policy vision of the man who's likely to be the next president, which is Donald Trump, and I think one of the things we took away from yesterday was talking about the revival
of American success and a focus on the economy. The fact of the matter is President Trump, I think demonstrated that despite being a member of a different economic class than most Americans, is a billionaire, he is still somebody who understands prices have gone up but wages have remained flat. And I think that part really landed. I wish the debate had gone into greater depth on policy. Frankly, if Biden had shown up with greater mental acuity, we might
have had that opportunity. In many cases, the things he said were incoherent. That stopped that debate for me as useful as it could. But what do we learned last night and then the combination of recent speeches that President Trump has given. Economic growth is a core objective for Donald Trump. That's not a left leaning message or right leaning message. Economic growth is an inherent and worthy objective.
From bringing down the tax burden to the regulatory burden, to drilling for oil and natural gas and increasing the supply of energy to bring down costs, those are core issues that I think matter not only to business owners, and economically minded voters. It's a factor that matters to all voters. And that was one of the more powerful things that came out of last night was the discussion about the economy and the economic vision for the.
Next four years.
Mister ramswamme, may I just point out what you said on prices and also wage inflation. You said prices have gone up, what wages have remained flat? That is no longer true if you look today. We saw inflation in May down fractionally, almost comman to be, but wages were up seven tenths of a percent. I just want to get the latest dates to me out.
Let me just comment on that in direct response to so your numbers, guy, I like that, as you well know.
I believe you well know.
Inflation is accumulative, right, So that is the inflation rate. But inflation over the course of the last several years, you want to look at actual mini consumer goods and products are up by over fifty percent since the.
Time Biden took office. How much does a cart and a egg cost, how much does a car cost? How much is your electric bill? Those are undoubtedly higher than when Joe Biden took office.
And it is a hard fact that we just have not gone up at the same rate. So I don't want to play this verbal jiu jitsu of the last month's numbers. If you want to get into facts, I'm all in favor of it. Those are the hard, indisputable facts, and we don't have to argue the facts because most Americans who pay those bills already have a deep understanding of that, and I do think that that is going to be a guiding force in what we see this November.
Mister Ramasami, you and I both agreed on one thing, which is that we will talk about technology and policy from it. From a technology standpoint, you mentioned energy and oil in particular. One of the things that I reported was that you act as almost an intermediary between former President Trump and Elon Musk, and it seems as if the former president in Elon Musk are now speaking, or
at least have spoken. Where do you see them finding middle ground and an influence if former President Trump were to return to the White House.
I respect the two of them individually, both as people who have succeeded in this country through the private sector. I think we all share a belief, all three of us, that we need more of those voices in American politics driving change, not as professional politicians, but people who look at political problems through the lens of an entrepreneur and a business leader objectively.
And so I think that.
That's a common cause that I would say is form my basis for the friendship with both of them.
The reality is one.
Of the things that we're all rooting for as well is not only an economic revitalization of the US, but a revitalization of innovation in the United States of America. I think we have seen a decline in the rate of innovation in the US, but that is ultimately our competitive advantage in the end is the ultimate innovation and the innovative spark of starting the greatest companies known to mankind, generally here in the United States, which then has collateral
benefits of creating jobs and creating wealth. But it's also the founding spark of American exceptionalism. Right Our founding fathers were the likes of Time Thomas Jefferson, who not only wrote the Declaration of Independence, he also invented the swivel chair and the polygraph test.
Benjamin Franklin.
I think of Elon Musk as a modern Benjamin Franklin type of figure invented the lightning rod and the Franklin stove. Yet these were also the people who led the country politically and set it into motion. So I think we have a chance to revive that seventeen seventy six kind of spirit. And I think there's a role for a modern Washington, a modern Jefferson, a modern Benjamin Franklin. I think in many ways, Donald Trump is stepping up to
be the modern George Washington of our time. Elon Musk reminds me of the Benjamin Franklins of their day, and so I think we found different common cause in our love of this country to revitalize that founding spirit, even though each of us have had our own successes separately in the private sector.
And I'm biased, but I'm of.
The view that we need actually more of those people stepping up to play different roles in defining the future of our politics in America.
Mister Ramswami, can I ask, just very quickly, as a matter of checking, have you spoken to the former president since last night?
I haven't spoken to him since last night. No.
The reason I ask is about your role with him directly and also his team you know, one of the areas of reporting of focuses been discussions you may have had with him around crypto and the role that crypto may play if former President Trump returned to the White House. Could you tell me a bit about that and the conversations that you've had.
Some of that started actually after I left the race. I left the race after the Iowa caucus, but before the New Hampshire primary, and I could tell you one part that was sort of totally public on that stage was in New Hampshire, I began my conversations with Donald Trump about why in my campaign I had been opposed to a central bank digital currency as CBDC. And one of the things that impressed me about President Trump was
this intellectual curiosity about that issue. I've met a lot of politicians, including Republicans, who have heard the vague acronyms CBDC, but don't know the first thing about what it actually means, but they pretend like they do. Donald Trump was the opposite of that. He actually said, what the heck is that? Tell me what it is? And then he asked, what are the best arguments for why they're actually supporting it?
And I thought that was a mark of a good leader who wanted to understand the best arguments for the other side, and later on he said it from the campaign stage and from an event, So I feel comfortable sharing this part of it where he came out then after a thoughtful consideration, after careful study of the issue of his opposition to a central bank digital currency, and he explained why.
It's a threat to liberty.
The flip side of that is why you might favor decentralization and alternative options from people just staying tethered to the dollar of holding the Fed accountable by having other options in.
The marketplace of alternative currencies.
So I think there's been a number of productive conversations he and I have had. And one of the things that I look at this for is it's not a sector.
I don't look at cryptocurrency as a sector.
To the contrary, I look at the first principles of the United States of America, founded on competition and choice and financial freedom, and I think those principles are certainly what motivated my interest in these issues in the campaign, and I think that's what's also helped a lot of my conversations with the President Trump. Is let's start with first principle, what's right for America, not what's good for
one sector or another. But then let's adopt the kinds of policies that actually allow America to remain the beachhead of innovation rather than playing from behind.
Mister Ramaswami, just one item on the idea. The president has to block anything or anyone from doing CBDC. I think the FED has said clearly many times that it's not going to introduce one unless mandated by Congress. Now that's the Fed's position on that. I want a little bit about artificial and just.
Since we're closing the loop on that, Janet Yellen has certainly stood for her advocacy in the executive branch, off in sponsors legislation that goes through Congress.
That's other things work in Washington, DC.
But I do think it's good to have a president, one way or another that's clear about his position, and I think that Donald Trump adopted the right position in his clarity.
I would like to talk about artificial intelligence, and I appreciate that this was not a question posed last night, but any of the policy questions posed weren't really answered by either participant. But when former President Trump was in We weren't talking about the idea of an existential threat from a large language model in the many hundreds of billions of parameters. We weren't talking about the need to regulate AI. So former President Trump doesn't have the experience
of that. But do you think that he has the sort of academic study enough or he's thought about it because going into office if he were to regain the White House would be an issue to consider.
I do wish this had been a topic both of that debate and even in the Republican primary debates, where this issue did not come up once as well, even though I suggested it many times. It's an important issue for the future, and it falls outside of traditional partisan boundaries, So.
I'm glad you're bringing it up.
Is President Trump going to claim to be a domain expert in AI or something that he's not a domain expert in knowing that's.
What I love about him. But I think he's going to be able.
To attrack the best minds around him to set rational policy that at once allows the US to be a leader in innovation while at the same time acknowledging a different kind of risk than we've faced in the past from different types of generative AI.
Personally, one of the things that I think.
Makes a lot of sense as a first step rather than creating some sort of central government bureaucracy to handle this, is just treat it the same way you treat other sectors, just in the same way that you're a chemical's manufacturer and you can't dump in somebody else's river.
If you're the developer of a.
Protocol or an algorithm that has unpredictable but nonetheless realized negative effects, that you're liable for those effects. Basic principles of the law that we already use elsewhere, but to use them in this new domain as well.
And what I have seen from.
President Trump, it's the same question that came up even in the last topic we discussed, is a level of intellectual curiosity somebody who has been an executive, somebody who, unlike Joe Biden frankly, from seeing what we saw last night, is still intellectually with it enough to be able to go deep on the details, attract the best people, and
make the rational policy decision. Not in an ideological or ideologue driven manner when it comes to AI, but in a manner of this it's driven by our actual understanding of the facts, and so I do have confidence in his ability to lead.
Here, mister Ramaswami, I'm sorry to instruct you a shorter time, and I want to make the most of it. Have you been asked to submit documentation for vetting for a potential cabinet position in the event of a Trump white House.
We've got a lot of conversations about the future.
I have not been asked to be the vice president, but whatever it is, I'm going to look at what maximizes impact on the country and how we make sure that second Trump term is as good as it possibly can be. And I am hopeful that we're going to see the strongest ticket not just of this century, but of my lifetime. And I think after last night, we have a unique opportunity in this country.
For this not to just be a fifty point one election.
We've had a lot of thin margin, thin ice elections. This could be a Reagan nineteen eighty nineteen eighty four style landslide, remixing minorities, Hispanics, Blacks, young people, creating a new coalition in this country that's pro American and goes beyond the boundaries of the traditional Republican Party wall streams from those America First principles that Trump ran on.
So that's what I'm rooting for. I appreciate that answer.
I am out of time, but I need to ask you about BuzzFeed, but also the idea I'm being told over and over your interests in a media company something like a vice. You know you've been buying up BuzzFeed shares. It's reported your statement, what happens? What are you aiming to do here?
Well, look, I'm now the second largest Class A shareholder at BuzzFeed. I've been very public in my letter that this is a company that has struggled and failed for reasons that I still think are fixable.
A lot of people know what BuzzFeed is.
They don't know what the what the brand actually stands for, and I think they have a historic opportunity to do what many in the mainstream media have an opportunity to do, build a brand centered on trust and the pursuit of truth by saying that you know what we platform all voices left right, doesn't matter across the cultural spectrum, and use that to define a coherent and powerful brand that I think audiences are hungry for, especially of younger audiences
today that are sick and tired of yesterday's legacy, but want authenticity, want to trust content creators.
So I've given in the context.
Of the letter that I sent to their board, I've also proposed three directors.
Mister Rames joined the board, a.
Direction strategy that I hope will create.
The value of a company that sadly has I'm sorry to cut you off.
We are out of time. Did that, Ramaswami? Thank you. This is Bloomberg