Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy announced that he’s quitting social media after receiving backlash over his speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest last month.
The Indian-American entrepreneur and former GOP presidential candidate delivered a rousing speech in which he denounced so-called “racists” in the conservative movement while defining what he believes it means to be an American, an address that drew raves from the New York Times and National Review but was savaged by others who aren’t down with importing foreign workers and who have a more traditional view of what America should stand for.
“If you believe in normalizing hatred towards any ethnic group — toward whites, towards blacks, towards Hispanics, towards Jews, towards Indians — you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. Period. And I will not apologize for that,” Ramaswamy told the crowd in Phoenix.
But less than two weeks later, he said that he would “become a social-media teetotaler in 2026” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that was published on Monday.
When those in power mistake online commentary for real-world consensus, they make decisions based on a distorted picture of what those citizens really want. I plan to become a social-media teetotaler in 2026, writes @VivekGRamaswamy https://t.co/4aih5zkw1I
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) January 5, 2026
“On New Year’s Eve, I deleted X and Instagram from my phone. I’ll spend my newfound time listening to more voters in real-world Ohio, developing more policies to make our state affordable, and being more present with my family,” the candidate said. “I predict that ending my consumption of social media will make me a better leader and a happier man.”
“I delivered a speech arguing that the U.S. is a nation defined above all by ideals, not shared bloodlines. Based on social-media comments beforehand, I expected to be booed. If you scrolled through them after, you’d believe that’s what happened,” Ramaswamy wrote. “But in reality, I received a standing ovation from a politically engaged audience of well over 20,000 attendees.”
He added that the “spate of shocking racial slurs and worse on social media” contributed to his decision to pull the plug, although his social media team will maintain his accounts, but that he would not “browse any of it myself.”
“I think the idea of a ‘heritage American’ is about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up. There is no American who is more American than somebody else,” Ramaswamy declared in his speech. “Either you’re an American, or you’re not.”
Having made a name for himself with his combative demeanor and for skewering GOP establishment candidates Chris Christie and Nikki Haley on the debate stage during the 2024 primaries, Ramaswamy is now being mocked for quitting social media over being called mean things.
The candidate’s GOP primary opponent, Casey Putsch, mocked Ramaswamy’s GBCW op-ed and shared a previous post from Ramaswamy stating, “If you’re scared of your comments section, you’re not fit to lead.”
Which is it, Vivek? Should politicians engage with their voters on social media or not? Why are you really leaving X?
I’m not going anywhere. pic.twitter.com/mr6cYs5xVR
— Casey Putsch (@CaseyPutsch) January 6, 2026
Controversial right-wing podcaster Nick Fuentes, who was torched by Ramaswamy and other speakers at AmericaFest, crowed that “We bullied Vivek off Twitter.”
We bullied Vivek off Twitter 😂 pic.twitter.com/xjEhIUO7yh
— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) January 5, 2026
Prior to his speech, Ramaswamy penned a New York Times op-ed condemning the “blood and soil” vision of Fuentes and the so-called “Groyper right.”
“As Ronald Reagan quipped, you can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman; but anyone from any corner of the world can come to live in the United States and become an American. No matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you are every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant, as long as you subscribe to the creed of the American founding and the culture that was born of it. This is what makes American exceptionalism possible,” he wrote.
Last December, Ramaswamy whacked a hornet’s nest on X with his Christmas post, maligning American culture and defending the importation of Indian workers.
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. Tough questions demand tough answers & if…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 26, 2024
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote in the controversial post dubbed as Ramaswamy’s “Christmas Crash Out” that alienated some conservatives who once supported him.
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