‘The Breakfast Club’ Grills Vivek Ramaswamy On His Lack of Public Service in Testy Interview

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was put to the test by the hosts of The Breakfast Club, who grilled the 2024 contender on his qualifications to be president.

Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur turned presidential hopeful, has always had one lingering question following his campaign — what qualifies him to be president with minimal political experience.

The same question was top of mind for Charlamagne Tha God, DJ Envy, and Tezlyn Figaro during their, at times, contentious interview with Ramaswamy on Friday.

Figaro kicked off the questioning, noting that she’s a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and wanted to see what kind of civic duty Ramaswamy had accomplished that would prepare him for potentially becoming president. At the beginning of their conversation, it was noted that Ramaswamy, who is currently 37 years old, had not even voted until 2020, a fact Figaro regarded as “sitting around.”

Aside from listing student council as a previous leadership role, he said, “I’ve held leadership roles over my life, but those don’t qualify me to do what I’m doing now.”

“It kind of does,” Figaro replied.

Ramaswamy also pointed out that he’s also led various companies.

He corrected Figaro’s statement that he was “sitting around” during his years of not participating in the voting process.

“I wasn’t sitting around. I’ve developed medicines, five of which are FDA-approved products today, one of which is a life-saving therapy in kids… another one for prostate cancer,” Ramaswamy said. “I don’t apologize for making contributions.”

“I don’t want you to filibuster that. Because that’s not the question that I asked and I don’t consider — as a veteran, I’m talking about service. I’m not talking about what you did for profit,” Figaro said.

Both Ramaswamy and Figaro began talking over each other until Envy stepped in to allow Figaro to ask her question yet again.

“You want people to believe in country and you want people to have civic engagement. I just find it very telling that you haven’t had any civic engagement at all,” Figaro noted, specifying that she was talking about service.

“I wanna change how people look at politicians. And when I see that someone hasn’t did anything at all to be of service to mankind, to take a leadership role, it’s not good enough to just be on student council — were you a leader, all of that applies,” she added.

Figaro noted that, in her opinion, Ramaswamy was trying to go from “preschool to President of the United States.”

“Have you done anything of service besides yourself that has not benefited yourself? It’s just a simple question,” Figaro said.

“The acts of service that I have performed are small, so small that I don’t even want to talk about them to boast. But yes. Have I volunteered for this country? Yes, I have,” Ramaswamy replied.

The hosts reassured him that it was not boasting but in fact the entire point of the interview. Ramaswamy said that he volunteered in a local hospital in high school

“If I’m being really honest, why did I do that in high school? A part of the motivation, I’ll be just brutally honest with you, was that’s actually what allows you to get into a good college when you graduate,” Ramaswamy said.

“So it was about you — so it was about self,” Figaro said, baffled.

The full interview can be watched on The Breakfast Club’s YouTube channel.

Watch above via The Breakfast Club.