Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t know what hit him when Jesse Watters forced him to address this elephant in the room

Vivek Ramaswamy did everything he possibly could in 2024 to make himself into a potential Vice Presidential candidate or cabinet Secretary within the new Trump administration.

But that never came to fruition.

And now Vivek Ramaswamy didn’t know what hit him when Jesse Watters forced him to address this elephant in the room.

Change of plans

It was well-established throughout the final months of the 2024 Presidential election that, when elected, President Donald Trump would bring Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s brainchild for eliminating the deep state’s waste, fraud, and abuse of American tax dollars to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to life with Musk leading the charge.

At the time, though, few predicted that Trump would ultimately also tap entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to help Musk tag-team the effort, which compared to the ultimate prize he was undeniably after all along – the Vice Presidency, or at least a prominent cabinet role – amounted to a mere consolation prize for his efforts on behalf of the Trump campaign throughout the 2024 election.

But in an even more surprising twist, Ramaswamy didn’t even make it to Inauguration Day before rumors and reports began circulating that he had already stepped down from his role with DOGE.

He ultimately confirmed the news in a statement in which he expressed that he was “confident that Elon & team will succeed in streamlining government.”

Of course, Ramaswamy’s exit from DOGE really wasn’t that surprising for those who paid attention, as it’s seemed inevitable since he exited that 2024 Presidential race that in the event he wasn’t part of the Trump administration, he’d ultimately return to his home state of Ohio to run for statewide office, like the Governorship or U.S. Senate.

At the same time, just before he announced his departure from DOGE, Ramaswamy angered many working-class Americans, especially those who are all-in on President Trump’s America First agenda, when he took to social media to argue that the U.S. needed to import untold sums of cheaper, foreign workers for Big Tech – an industry through which he’s made the bulk of his estimated $1 billion net worth – through the disastrous H-1B visa program, rather than taking the America First approach of simply training and hiring American workers who are more than capable of doing those high-paying jobs.

Worse yet, he claimed the anti-American approach was necessary because natural-born Americans are lazy and mediocre compared to their foreign counterparts.

“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.”

“Elon didn’t fire you?”

Despite the fact that the writing had been on the wall that Ramaswamy wasn’t long for DOGE, Democrats and their media allies nevertheless decided to claim that Ramaswamy was simply forced out by Musk, who they’re desperately attempting to paint as some sort of grand puppet master attempting to take over the entire U.S. government for his own personal gain, even though he’s simply exposing government waste, fraud, and abuse, as ordered through Trump’s decision to tap him to lead DOGE.

But when questioned on the matter by Fox News’ Jesse Watters, Ramaswamy was quick to reveal his true motivation for leaving DOGE.

Unsurprisingly, in a move he telegraphed long ago, Ramaswamy revealed that “the reality is, I’m pursuing elected office very shortly. We’ll have an announcement soon.”

Like most in the media, though, Watters was more interested in pushing Democrats’ narrative about a potential rift between Ramaswamy and Musk.

“People are saying you didn’t get along with Musk,” Watters stated. “What happened there?”

“I think that’s incorrect,” Ramaswamy shot back. “But what I would say is, we had different and complementary approaches. I focused more on a constitutional law, legislative-based approach. He focused more on a technology approach, which is the future approach.”

When Watters continued pressing on the matter, asking point blank, “So Elon didn’t fire you?” Ramaswamy simply replied, “No.”

“We had a mutual discussion,” he added. “I wish him well and we’re on the same page – divide and conquer. It’s saving the country. It’s not a one-man show from top-down or the bottom-up. It’s all of the above. That’s what I’m in for.”

Now that Ramaswamy has made clear that his departure from DOGE wasn’t the blow-up the media painted it as, his focus is reportedly solely on winning the race for Governor in Ohio.

According to a recently released poll conducted by Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, Ramaswamy currently leads the field of prospective candidates in Ohio’s 2026 Republican Gubernatorial Primary, holding a 34-point lead over his next closest rival, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

But only time will tell if Vivek Ramaswamy can maintain that lead, win the Primary, and potentially, Ohio’s race for Governor, all while avoiding another catastrophic blunder – you know, like his position on H-1B visas and those “lazy” Americans.