Vivek Ramaswamy, who was tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to co-lead the new Department of Government Efficiency along with Elon Musk, appears to have taken a hiatus from posting on X—and everyone can’t stop speculating why.
Ramaswamy’s most recent post is from Jan. 5, when he replied in agreement that extended families should live “at least within a 1-day driving distance.”
While a nine-day posting break is far from atypical for many social media users, Ramaswamy is generally a prolific poster—accumulating nearly 15,000 posts since launching his account in February 2020, for an average of more than eight posts per day.
And his disappearance has not gone unnoticed.
“Where did Vivek go?” asked one person on Monday.
“Where’d my man Vivek go? He’s been dead silent for almost a week now,” echoed someone else.
Others began to speculate that the drop in posting was linked to his ardent support of H-1B visas, a nonimmigrant visa program that allows employers to hire skilled foreign workers.
That program was thrust into the spotlight in late December and swiftly divided conservatives—with Musk and Ramaswamy the two most vocal defenders of it on the right.
Both came under fire from right-wingers who disagreed, with Ramaswamy in particular drawing ire for stating that American culture is “venerating mediocrity over excellence” and will not produce the best engineers by celebrating “the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian.”
Ramaswamy called for “more tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin’. More extracurriculars, less hanging out at the mall.”
His comments were interpreted by critics as deeming Americans to be lazy and inferior to foreign workers.
Where is Vivek Ramaswamy?
“What happened to Vivek Ramaswamy? Did he vanish into thin air after calling white people lazy?” swiped one person. “Bold move, but now he’s as MIA as his self-awareness. Classic case of shoot, miss, and hide.”
“That Vivek Ramaswamy has basically disappeared–hasn’t been heard from or Tweeted for a about 10 days–is probably the clearest confirmation that Trump didn’t approve of his intervention in the H-1B debate, especially his opinions about the defects of ordinary Americans,” speculated someone else. (Trump, for his part, said he has “always been in favor of the visas” and has “many H-1B visas on my properties.”)
“kind of funny that vivek ramaswamy just stopped tweeting and disappeared after calling white people lazy,” wrote one.
“What happened to Vivek Ramaswamy? He’s been MIA since he called white people lazy lol,” echoed another user.
One person even joked: “I think Vivek Ramaswamy has been deported to India” (Ramaswamy is a U.S. citizen).
But others think Ramaswamy’s absence has nothing to do with the content of what he had been posting.
“My guess is he was a target of the ‘cabinet appointees need to stop posting on social media’ memo,” mused one person.
“He is probably working hard somewhere, he has no time for X,” theorized someone else, despite him having, prior to this, plenty of time for X.
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