Vivek Ramaswamy’s MAGA Reality Check

December 23, 2025

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Indian-American Republican currently running for Ohio governor, has suddenly found himself in an unexpected fight not just against the political left, but against parts of his own base. At Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest and in a New York Times op-ed, he took aim at racism and anti-Indian bigotry growing among some MAGA supporters, drawing both applause and sharp criticism from the far right.

Ramaswamy’s message kicked off with a pretty simple premise: being American isn’t about where your ancestors come from, it’s about shared ideals. He rejected the idea of “heritage Americanism,” a belief circulating in certain conservative online circles that people with deep colonial-era roots are somehow more truly American than recent immigrants or their descendants. Ramaswamy said that notion has “no place in the GOP,” and explicitly condemned any rhetoric that elevates white or ancestral identity above constitutional values like free speech, merit, and the rule of law. What made that speech stand out is how directly he called out anti-Indian hate that’s been bubbling up among some MAGA activists. Ramaswamy noted that slurs and racist comments targeting Indians and South Asians more broadly — have become disturbingly common on platforms like X (formerly Twitter). He used examples of ethnic slurs against public figures, and made it clear that normalising hatred toward any group whether whites, blacks, Jews, Hispanics, or Indians is un-American and should be rejected outright. That stance hasn’t come without blowback.