‘I Don’t Believe You’: Charlamagne Refuses to Let Vivek Ramaswamy Off the Hook on His DOGE Exit and Tensions With Elon Musk

Charlamagne tha God rejected Vivek Ramaswamy’s explanation of his exit from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday’s edition of The Breakfast Club, coming right out and telling him “I don’t believe you,” after Ramaswamy described it as a “mutual decision.”

The conversation began with Charlamagne asking “What happened with DOGE? Did you get pushed out? Did you get fired?”

“It was a slightly different vision from where we started to where we landed. And it’s not that it’s- one’s right or wrong, but if you take a look at where we began, right? DOGE is gonna be an outside body to the government, one of my core areas of focus throughout has been the constitutional and legal basis for shutting down the bureaucracy, and the federal government, and downsizing it. That’s what our focus, I’ve written my books on, etc.,” began Ramaswamy. “It evolved in more of a direction of a technology project, using a technology-first approach. And so Elon [Musk] and I were on good terms, good personal relationship, slightly different approaches to the project. And what he and I both concluded — and I think this is right — is given my focus on law, on legislation, the right way to realize my vision is through elected office, so that’s what I’m gonna be pursing.”

“So it was true. There was an exclusive report in The Washington Post that said you were pushed out because your vision didn’t align with Elon’s,” observed Charlamagne.

“I would say that we arrived at it pretty mutually. I mean, I think when it came that DOGE was in the government-, so there’s actually a law, it’s called the Hatch Act, boring stuff, but you literally can’t run for office while you are an employee of the government unless you’re the president or vice president,” replied Ramaswamy. “I’ve been committed to this path of likely running for governor of Ohio for a long time. My plan initially might have been to do those at the same time. Once it became clear that was impossible to do at the same time, once it became clear to me that that was the right next leadership destination for me, it felt like the start of the project on day one was the right way to start that next chapter.”

Later in their conversation, Charlamagne brought the discussion back around to DOGE and Ramaswamy’s exit from it.

“Do you think you were pushed out of DOGE because Trump rolled back the DEI initiatives?” asked the radio host.

“No, to the contrary, an you know, I would say just to be super clear about it — I have no problem with, you know, framing or whatever — it was really just an actual mutual decision where you look at here was one vision on approach, here’s a different vision on an approach. That’s great, there’s no right or wrong answer,” answered Ramaswamy. “With a technology-driven approach and a technology-first approach, there’s no better person than Elon to run with that. With a constitutional law focus, with a legislation focus, some of the areas I was focused on, probably the right place to do it is elected office. And so we all agreed on that, and I think that that’s actually a good thing where we’re able to, where we’re actually able to collaborate, divide and conquer.”

“I hear you, Vivek. I don’t believe you,” shot back Charlamagne. “I think you either got pushed out, or you know that it’s going to implode. I think that you know Elon is going to crash and burn. And you’re a smart guy, and you said, ‘You know what? Let me get out of Dodge and go do my governor of Ohio thing.'”

After Ramaswamy again insisted that his exit was just a commonsense, mutual decision, Charlamagne asked if Musk and Trump would endorse Ramaswamy.

“We’re all on very good terms. And so I wouldn’t want to speak for anybody else, but I will say that they’re very supportive of of the decision that I made to pursue as my next step,” said Ramaswamy.

The Washington Post reported last month that Ramaswamy’s exit was the result of “deep philosophical” differences with Musk, and that Musk “lost interest in Ramaswamy’s contributions.”