Who Goes to See Vivek at Ohio State?

Standard MAGAs, America First groypers, internet trolls, and a mime duo—that’s who.

(Photo illustration by The Bulwark / Photos: Jim Swift)

Columbus, Ohio
LIVE, UNSCRIPTED QUESTION-AND-ANSWER SESSIONS are a uniquely high-risk proposition for marquee events. Failed Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, now running for governor of Ohio, received an opportunity to reflect on this fact anew when, in an appearance at Ohio State University on Tuesday night, he found himself being questioned by a mime whose eloquent gestures were being translated into audible English by a clown.

OSU’s Mershon auditorium often serves as a venue for comedy shows—but not usually quite like this Turning Point USA-sponsored event. The balcony was cordoned off with pipe and drape, meaning that in a venue with about 2,500 seats, something short of 1,000 people came.

I found much of the programming amusing, as did a buddy I ran into there, independent journalist D.J. Byrnes. If you don’t know Byrnes, all you really need to know is that he once tricked Ramaswamy into meeting him in a Raising Cane’s parking lot by leading him to believe he was going to address the OSU football team there.

Ramaswamy’s whistlestop—part of TPUSA’s “This is Turning Point” campus tour series—had already been through a rough sixteen minutes before the pharmaceutical-entrepreneur-cum-presidential-candidate-cum-co-DOGE-boss-cum-gubernatorial-candidate took the stage. The ostensibly student-focused event had drawn a mostly older audience, whose patience had worn thin after a cavalcade of erratic speakers.

Byrnes and I had watched with growing discomfort as the itinerary, which began with a guy who pitched his delinquent private student loan restructuring company, progressed to a local TPUSA organizer, and then to Savannah Chrisley, the reality TV star (The Masked Singer, Chrisley Knows Best) who became a MAGA darling after successfully lobbying Trump for pardons for her reality-TV-star parents following their convictions on tax fraud charges.

Here’s how she opened on Tuesday night:

What’s up, everyone? I swear, every time I come to a Turning Point event, I get more and more excited because this is exactly what Charlie [Kirk] would have wanted to happen. Coming into this, it is bittersweet because trust me, I would much rather see Charlie up here than me. But we do have to keep his mission alive.

And first off, I want to comment on my outfit. It is a very loose outfit. And the reason being is because I just went through surgery on Friday for my egg retrieval, because I do believe in bringing more children into this world and teaching them. . . . [Confused applause.]

This was just the first moment of whiplash in a speech that careened so hard throughout that it became all unexpected swerve, from complaints about biased AI to motivational speaking about Charlie Kirk’s mission to a tubthumping endorsement for Ramaswamy’s campaign. She concluded by inviting conservative audience members to take libs out for coffee, change those friends’ minds about things, and then charge the drinks to Chrisley via Venmo.

Chrisley introduced Ramaswamy, and he gave a vaguely Reaganesque (rather than explicitly Trumpy) stump speech. But then—then came the Q&A, and with it, the mime and the clown.

They waited patiently as Diana—a recent grad, Christian, and mom—asked Ramaswamy pointedly about the AI data centers popping up all over Ohio. She was concerned they were going to ruin Ohio’s farmland aesthetic. She came armed with stats and talking points, and after declaring the candidate’s answer unsatisfactory, she turned to go, smiled, and said “Vote for Casey Putsch!” (“Who’s that?” an older woman in the row in front of me asked her friend. “The other guy,” her friend responded. “Oh.”) “It’s a free country,” Ramaswamy shrugged.

By all appearances, the performance artists who stood up next were not there on behalf of any candidate. They served the cause of spectacle alone. As his silent, grease-painted friend mimed under the lights, the red-nosed clown offered an account of his meaning. It turned out they were friends in spite of deep ideological differences: “Unlike my Franco Marxist friend over here, I am a red-blooded American clown, right? I’ve never been infected with the woke mind virus.” Come on, Vivek. You deserve this.

They performed a comic filibuster before the question finally came out: “Because [Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Amy Acton is a physician and has health care experience, does she have an advantage over you on health care policy, given your business/biotech background?” The students who recognized the pair, even the conservatives, ate it up.

Ramaswamy made their question into an opportunity to attack Acton for her pro-lockdown stance during the pandemic, and waved the wavy pair away.

Then the questions got more serious. A student named Ari asked, “How can someone like me call myself Republican when people reject me because of my religion or skin color?” He noted this problem extends to the event’s sponsor, recalling a controversial “report” by TPUSA’s Savannah Hernandez, who stood inside a Hindu temple in Texas and concluded: “Immigration is destroying America.”

“I’m nobody’s pawn. I’m my own man,” Ramaswamy insisted, saying he would call out that kind of discrimination on the right before celebrating the GOP’s “big tent,” which allows room for “healthy disagreement” even on issues like, presumably, whether racism is merely acceptable or actually part of what makes America great. In case that didn’t satisfy, he also threw in a “you will see hypocrisy everywhere you look in life,” just to make sure these impressionable students weren’t getting too comfortable about having ideals.

There were some earnest questions from liberals, the evening’s sin-eaters; the audience savored the delectation of booing them. One older man seated a row or two behind me yelled “Deport him!” after a ginger-haired questioner, Ashton, wondered whether undocumented immigrants were really a threat to the economy or public safety.

But the last few questions brought the MAGA GOP’s identity crisis to the fore. They centered on Israel, the Jews, and an ejection.

Mara asked Ramaswamy if he’d “commit to lobbying Congress to stop funding Israel in the name of America First.” Ramaswamy rejected the framing and advocated an old campaign plank of phasing out aid to Israel over time. But he also asked why some of his fellow travelers (not Mara, specifically) seem obsessed with that particular disbursement of federal money. The clear implication was that their concerns were overwrought and possibly rooted in antisemitism.

A woman in a row where people with walkers were predominantly seated shouted: “MINNESOTA GAVE PALESTINE $20 MILLION!” I hope that one of her rowmates let her know that she was confusing Palestine with Somalia. But they didn’t seem much like let-one-another-know types. They were seniors, but not at Ohio State, if you get my drift.

Finally, Brandon took the mic, and when he did, it became apparent that he was about to prove the truth of Vivek’s point about right-wingers obsessed with aid to Israel.

But before he could speak, a man waiting in line realized he was about to lose out on an opportunity for attention, which prompted him to shout that he wanted to know why Vivek was cheating on his wife. (Ramaswamy’s supposed infidelity is a widely circulated hothouse internet rumor.) The moral policeman became unstable and was escorted out by the real police. (Well, the campus police, anyway.)

Amid the commotion, Brandon posed his question:

“I wanna know what you’re gonna do about the Israeli lobby problem and the ideals of the central text of Rabbinic Judaism called the Talmud.” He then continued: “Practices like usury, charging interest to strictly non-Jews, are clearly intended to keep the average American and European citizen down.” He concluded: “When the country that is our biggest ally practices and supports these ideas, it’s important that I know the candidates I vote for will fight against these twisted ways that are meant to keep us down.”

Yikes. This is bog-standard Protocols of the Elders of Zion–type stuff. Vivek, to his credit, responded capably:

I disagree with the premise of your question. What I will not abide is the vilification or mockery of anyone’s faith. When it was the secular left mocking Christianity, I said the same thing. When it is someone today mocking Judaism, I say the same thing now. The mockery of anyone else’s sincerely held faith is a mockery of faith itself, and that is un-American. If you want to have a rational debate about foreign policy, let’s have that debate. But to come at it with a vengeful attitude by singling out one religion and quoting the Talmud as a way to vilify people. . . . I just don’t think that’s right.

It was a good answer. An audience member quickly shouted after, “This is the true Republican party right here, folks!” But allow for a moment his comment to have been ambiguously directed: He could have meant it the ugly way and been partly right. After all, young MAGA operatives—the future of the Republican party—keep showing themselves to be unreconstructed racists and Nazi-curious edgelords. The heckler could also have meant it about Vivek’s answer—similar in spirit to John McCain famously defending Barack Obama—and he would be wrong on the facts, though right in upholding the old ideals, no matter how far the party has strayed from them.

Which way is the future? “Regular” MAGA? Or America First groyperism? Either way, old-school Republicanism isn’t on offer.

Fortunately for me, that’s not my party anymore. Though, if Vivek manages to win, it does remain my problem, as an Ohioan. But that’s a concern for another day. My only quandary after the Q&A was finished on Tuesday night was deciding which White Castle to stop at on the way back home to Cincinnati.