Vivek Ramaswamy has cast doubt on Kamala Harris’s ability to reign in corporate overreach, while praising Donald Trump’s handling of Google following Monday’s antitrust ruling.
“I think this is going to be President Trump and JD Vance’s most powerful argument against Kamala Harris,” Ramaswamy said. “Is that she’s just the latest puppet to come along.”
Newsweek has contacted the Harris campaign for a response to Ramaswamy’s comments.
The pharmaceutical entrepreneur, who briefly challenged for the Republican Party nomination, made the comments during a Tuesday morning interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
The pair discussed the two candidates’ respective attributes and the landmark ruling against Google in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
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On Monday, the court ruled that the tech giant violated U.S. antitrust laws through its monopolization of the search and advertising markets.
In his ruling, Judge Amit Mehta wrote: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
The case was first filed in October 2020, when the Department of Justice accused Google of spending billions of dollars each year on securing contracts with Apple, Samsung and others to ensure that it remained the default search engine on their devices.
Laura Ingram called Trump a “Google slayer,” given that the case started in the final weeks of his administration, and labeled the company “the evil death star of Silicon Valley.”
Ramaswamy said that this represented a “major evolution in the Republican Party,” who are now tackling the “backdoor deep state nexus to Big Tech.”
“There’s a common thread, which is that we are not running against individual candidates here,” Ramaswamy added. “We are running against a machine.”
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He went on to claim that Silicon Valley support for Kamala Harris was due to her lack of firm policy positions, and the ability of companies to purchase a “call option” with donor support, allowing them to exert influence on a candidate once in office.
Last week, a group of more than 200 investors and tech leaders, including Mark Cuban and Vinod Khosla, pledged their support for the vice president’s campaign.
On their website Venture Capitalists for Kamala, the group wrote: “In this pivotal moment, we are united in our support for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
“That’s what they’re making right now is a down payment on a puppet who they can control,” Ramaswamy said. “They know President Trump is not that.”
He cited the public support of Reid Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn.
On Saturday, The New York Times published an op-ed by Hoffman, in which the entrepreneur argued that “Harris’ familiarity with the needs of the tech industry and her ability to innovate and protect the public interest mark her as a 21st-century leader.”
“He’s made very clear what are some of the policy prescriptions he would like to see her adopt,” Ramaswamy said. “The fact that he’s putting this out there while also giving money suggests that it’s not her policies that they’re actually backing, it’s their policies that they hope to actually shape.”
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