Tag: Vivek Ramaswamy

Racism as a Weapon of Marxism: The violence in Cincinnati was about more than name calling

There is a lot wrong with what the mayor of Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, did after the fight that broke out in the streets after a music festival that became a grotesque example of violence from minority communities.  And the reason for it was perfectly uttered by city councilwoman Victoria Parks, who said in the aftermath, “They begged for that beat down!  I am grateful for the whole story.”  Regarding some white victims of a horrible beating, where a mob of attackers consolidated on them ruthlessly.  A young woman by the name of Holly ended up sucker punched and knocked cold in the middle of the street, leading to what everyone already assumes: it’s dangerous for white people to walk around downtown.  Otherwise, they might get attacked like these people did after a music festival.  And they might not live through the encounter.  The whole incident has brought up something much worse that needs to be discussed, and that is how Marxism has been taught in these communities of color to destabilize capitalism in America and how they have hidden it behind skin color to always have a destabilizing element present to undercut American society.  It’s not a matter of skin color that is the problem; it’s what people believe and how racism has given them a victimized status that is always ready to advance elements of socialism to a cityscape environment, to destabilize it.  As the city leaders were getting vast amounts of criticism from Senator Bernie Moreno, Vivek Ramaswamy, Jennifer Gross, and many others, they dug in even deeper on the mob rule elements and justification for the beatings that took place on July 26th in the small hours of the morning.  It doesn’t matter what camera angle you look at; there was no justification for the mob that broke out to do what they did, because it wasn’t about words and feelings.  What they did intended permanent harm to the victims and was brutally hostile in its intent. 

There are very few people who get called as many names as I do.  Most of the people I know dislike me for some reason or another.  They might be nice to my face, but behind my back, they hate me very much and call me every name in the book, and even some in books that have never been written.  So I can say authentically that no amount of name-calling justifies the violence that we saw in Cincinnati.  It doesn’t matter what anybody said to anybody; nothing justifies a fight at that level. Remember, sticks and stones?  People would do well to teach that to young kids in school once again.  Instead, political movements like what we have experienced from Democrats have sought to use victimization status to weaponize entire groups of people, preferably by color, into doing their work of radicalism in overthrowing American society.  The things people say to me are that people wouldn’t say such nasty things about me if I fought people more.  But the truth is, I care so little for what people think of me that I don’t waste time on it.  To get violent with someone to convince them to change their mind, you have to care what they think, and I just don’t.  And for the people of color to react to something that a group of white Russians said to them that they believe provoked this level of violence, they would have to care what those white people thought of them to get upset about it.  I never get upset when people call me names because I don’t care what they think. 

And as far as conflicts, and I know Vivek Ramaswamy thinks this way as well, there is no reason to fight people with violence when you can destroy them with debate.  If you have to resort to violence to get your point across, you have already lost.  As I tell people who criticize me for my lack of engagement with my enemies, I say it’s because forcing someone to think something out of fear of a beating is an dishonest exchange.  I would rather want to know what they believe than to beat them into submission to make them think what I want them to.  The best tool for convincing people to accept your way about something isn’t to win them over the head with pain and suffering, but to convince them that what you think is in their self-interest.  So when there is violence like this, there is a lot wrong that indicates a very unhealthy society.  And racism isn’t the problem.  Racisim is the weapon of the Marxist movement in America that has been trying to advance socialism and communism in communities of color to use their lack of judgment to build armies on the street to drive through fear a social discourse, such as, white people aren’t welcome on the streets of Cincinnati, especially after dark unless they appease the tribal chiefs of the community like visitors from a foreign land.  Never forget, it was Republicans who freed the enslaved people, who fought a civil war to free people of color.  Democrats were fighting to keep people slaves, and that is still a problem, because people of color are still serving the political efforts of Democrats.  All the problems of this fight are Democrat problems.  Republicans have been the critics.

We’re talking about purposely not knowing what good conduct is in society and believing, because people on city council like Victoria Parks, or Mayor Pureval let them think it as social victims, that violence is acceptable as a means to restore to them as people of color, a restitution to the notion that all American society was built on the backs of slave labor.  Slave labor that those same Democrats utilized and fought a war to continue, against Republicans.  So racism in this case, and most cases, has been kept alive to drive forward Democrat complaints about the kind of society Republicans want to build, which then becomes a quest to destroy capitalism with Marxism, and that is the case with most race wars all across the world.  And people never get around to talking about it properly because Democrats need a hostile demographic that will fight for change, meaning a shift from capitalism to micromanaged socialism, or even communism.  A quick study around the world among most race troubles will have as its root cause provoked racism to create the ground troops for change, which is what was behind the fight in Cincinnati, Ohio, after that music festival.  White people aren’t allowed to say anything to people of color, otherwise they will get a beating down.  And that is the message of fear that is laying territorial claim to all that the taxpayer streets of Cincinnati belong to the mob, not the people with property value who pay for everything.  It doesn’t matter what anyone said to each other; there was nothing that deserved what happened.  The city was likely not well-prepared for the music festival.  It was Democrat incompetence on all levels.  But it wasn’t all because they were stupid.  Most of it was part of the planned attack against capitalist society by overt Marxists hiding their malice behind skin color to advance their diabolical cause.  And that was why there was violence in Cincinnati.  It’s not about fairness or equality.  It was exclusively about overthrowing our society and strengthening Marxist cells within American culture for power politics from a Democratic viewpoint.  And it is ruthless on all levels and can’t be tolerated. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

We Have To Teach People Why Capitalism is Good: The Vivek Ramaswamy approach to Zohran Mamdani

I think people misread Vivek Ramaswamy’s comments about Zohran Mamdani incorrectly, for the most part.  However, when Vivek placed an ad in New York challenging the socialist candidate for mayor to a debate, it raised several interesting questions that will undoubtedly be part of future discussions about politics.  Vivek, of course, is jumping into the conversation about New York politics because, as a capitalist who made a lot of money in New York and is now planning to be the governor of Ohio, he is uniquely positioned to have a debate with what the political left thinks of as a bright young star, in Mamdani.  But critics of communism and socialism expect a more visceral hatred of Mamdani than Vivek shows to people.  I’ve had the fortune of knowing Vivek personally, and this is true for most people: bright individuals who can debate any topic with anyone don’t have to get defensive every time a challenge arises to their belief system.  So Vivek can have a very cerebral discussion about Mamdani without getting too upset that the trend in Democrat politics is a radical leaning towards far-left, Marxist policies.  And most people have been taught, through years of Cold War policy from the over 50s crowd and onward, that we are to approach communists and socialists with anger, like they are the invaders we saw in the movie Red Dawn.  Vivek comes from a much younger generation, and that’s a good thing because, in the post-Trump years, many things are going to change.  People are realizing right now, and with Mamdani, just how dangerous all the socialist instruction in our public schools has been.  And most young people have had extensive exposure to it through public education. For too many voters, this issue has snuck up on them, evoking a lot of fear in people like Mamdani.

I have been warning everyone about the problems with socialism for many years.  And while public schools don’t overtly have classes teaching Marxism in general, it is implicit in the background of almost everything done in the teaching process, including in kindergarten, when the teacher instructs you to share your toys with your neighbor.  And that everyone is equal.  Vivek Ramaswamy’s approach to the communist problem is to debate it, because he can.  Not to fight them in the streets or call them names.  There are many young people, like Zohran Mamdani, who will be able to utilize social media to capture the attention of young voters who lack opportunities to surpass their parents’ achievements.  For many young people who can’t afford to buy their own home or have children, life seems unappealing and not worth fighting for.  While most MAGA supporters of today’s politics likely have their own car, their own home with lots of property, maybe even a boat.  Several kids.  A pretty good life, and something that they want to defend from people who want to take all that from them.  Vivek understands that the under-50 crowd has vastly different motivations and perspectives, and that they don’t feel the need to fight for anything, because, from their perspective, they don’t have much to fight for.  Their minds have mainly been rotted out by the public education experience that taught them all the wrong Marxist things about social equality and the value of private property ownership.  Therefore, portraying our political enemies as revolting figures will not win over new voters, because those new voters essentially share Mamdani’s perspective. 

That’s why the future of the MAGA movement needs to include people like Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance, who can debate any issue with anyone, anywhere.  And Vivek certainly can, and that is the way to win over the next generation of voters.  If, during the Trump years, the goal was to overcome all the lies that had been told to us by a government that sought global socialism as its governing principle, now the shoe is on the other foot.  It’s not enough to question the government of socialists and to run them out of office.  The problem that J.D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy will face with young people is that many of them have to be taught the virtues of capitalism from scratch.  We can’t just hold up Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and tell them to read it.  They need to understand it relative to their thoughts as young socialists who we have let get out of control, rob away their hopes and dreams.  Fighting socialism and communism with the kind of Cold War hatred that we have in the past won’t work on today’s social media.  Capitalism has to be sold to people all over again.  It will help to have a successful Trump administration to point to so that young socialists can see for themselves how much better a capitalist system is than their socialist and communist teachings.  In the world’s plans, they never thought a Trump character would ever hold a position of power, revealing just how powerful capitalism could be.  His election was crucial in many ways at this particular point in history.  But do not assume that the new generation will have a hatred for communism as previous generations in America have.  It’s quite the opposite.  Most young people will have to be taught from scratch why capitalism is so much better, because they certainly haven’t been taught why in school, or entertainment, or their social groups. 

The shock everyone has felt at hearing Mamdani utter outright communist sentiment, wanting to be the mayor of New York City, what many think of as the capitalist capital of the world, is the reality that this new generation of young people is more prone to accept elements of Marxism because it’s all they know.  And for many, this issue snuck up on them as they realized how much of modern-day social media is dominated by young people who are just like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and now Mamdani.  We say today they won’t and can’t win elections if this is what the Democrat Party is.  However, this is what the Democratic Party has been for quite some time.  They just hid it all behind a social mask, but it’s always been there, and now that people see it and hear them talk, the realization they have toward it is hatred.  However, be cautious not to demonize all these young socialists, as the goal is to win over that generation in a competitive race for the minds of a new generation.  And understand that capitalism has to be sold to them because they were not taught its value, and they do not have a natural love for it.  It will take someone like Vivek Ramaswamy to explain it to them and show them why it works.  They can’t expect just to read Adam Smith’s book and draw their conclusions.  They will have to be taught, with considerable debate.  And Vivek is just the right mind for all that.  He understands the problem all too well, even as many are just now waking up to it and have been caught off guard.  The next generation in America has to be mainly taught from scratch.  Their minds have been ruined.  And hating them won’t convince them to join you.  We have to earn them to our side person for person. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Dismantaling the Department of Education: The Ohio House overrides DeWine’s veto on property taxes

Remember, I told you this was going to happen, and now it is.  However, with the July 14th ruling by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision, the court granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily pause a federal judge’s order that required the Department of Education to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees fired as part of a reduction-in-force.  The majority ruling lifted the injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Massachusetts, who had concluded that the administration’s actions aimed to dismantle the department without congressional approval and couldn’t be done.  A lot was happening with this ruling, which is why I am so proud of the tie clip I always wear that people comment on so much. I got it at the Supreme Court when I visited there in March, ahead of all these significant rulings.  Regional district judges were not going to be able to stop the Trump administration, and the mass layoffs that would dismantle the Department of Education were going to happen, sending the management of education back to the states, where, in Ohio, we know what that means with the incoming new governor, Vivek Ramaswamy.  Many education-oriented individuals point to a decision like this and argue that we are becoming a country not committed to education.  However, it’s the exact opposite; we need to get the administrative types out of the way so that positive reform in education can happen. This is why a Governor like Ramaswamy in Ohio is so important, as he has many fresh ideas that would improve education.  And getting the Department of Education types out of the way makes all that possible.  There is a lot to be happy about, but it’s hardly a surprise.  I’ve been warning about it for years, and as of 2025, everything is right on schedule. 

I would also add on July 21st 2025 in the state of Ohio the Ohio House voted 61-28 to override Governor DeWine’s vetos on property tax measures in the 2026-2027 budgets, specifically Item 66 which eliminates the authority for political subdivisions to levy replacement property tax levies and restricts school districts levying certain types of levies such as fixed-sum emergency, substitute emergency, and combined school district income tax and fixed-sum property tax levies.  That measure is now headed to the Senate, where I fully expect it to pass, and change the way the state sees property tax in general—another benefit of the upcoming Vivek Ramaswamy administration.  Property tax is no longer the crutch for big government that it has been.  Trump’s administration is headed in a similar direction, viewing property as something precious and not forcing owners to become perpetual renters of their property through excessive taxation.  DeWine was concerned about the budget submission, specifically how property taxes are used to fund schools.  What all this means is that public school districts are going to face numerous changes, including how they collect taxes to fund union-run public schools.  It’s not just the elimination of the centralized Department of Education that is coming to them, but also in how they collect funds from local property taxes to run their progressive endeavors.  What is happening here is that education is being redefined into a marketplace value as opposed to what it has been, which has been a kind of Brave New World socialist indoctrination center that seeks to produce more Democrats as voters.  Many people believe that the previous rules have been fueling our nation’s destruction.  And across many changes, that perception is headed in a different direction.

When the Department of Education was created in 1979, it proposed using the power of the central government to protect union employees from the scrutiny of judgment while teaching children the same socialist values.  Such as taking the category of History in school and changing it to “Social Studies.”  And during this period, kids were being taught not that the creation of America was a great thing, but that it was built on the backs of enslaved people, corrupting thousands of children in the process through central government oversight, taking away from the states the ability to compete with other states for a better education system.  Because essentially, everyone was being taught the same flawed information.  Now, the priorities for education will be decided at the state level.  School Choice will become much more common, as it was well represented in Trump’s recent Big Beautiful Bill, meaning that we are moving toward a society where tax money will follow the student, not the zip code.  And that’s why this veto override in Ohio was so important, because it initiates a process of shifting away from property taxes funding all this centralized government and its growing expansion, to the point where people can no longer afford to own their property.  The public schools have, for years, not had to manage their finances well, which the teachers’ unions have been delighted with.  However, it has driven the per-pupil cost of teaching children out of the realm of reality and is too high.  This makes it impossible for the state to determine how to fund education for students, as the costs are so high and dependent on property taxes to cover the state’s funding gaps.  To achieve a truly competitive cost structure, the Department of Education must relinquish its power and be decentralized. 

What that means for public schools like Lakota, which I discuss frequently because they are in the district where I live, is that they will have to rethink everything they do.  And they will have to compete with other schools in the immediate area for the right to teach a student.  This year, in 2025, they have some costly levy requests that add up to half a billion dollars for infrastructure, the building of new schools after tearing down some of the old ones.  And for what, for teaching jobs that are changing dramatically and are being pushed by A.I. for ability.  When states like Ohio apply funding to students, rather than to the zip code institution, the fat cow that government schools have been living on will be gone.  And they are going to have to earn their dollars, which they are not used to.  This union-dominated structure was always poised to fail.  You can see it when you visit the White House; all the big unions are in the buildings just outside the front gates.  Government unions view the collection of taxes from an ever-growing government as the foundation of their existence, which means low performance standards for all involved.  However, we don’t like what these government schools have been producing, and we have been intent on changing it for the better.  And that starts with mass firings at the Department of Education by the Trump administration.  And for all the government school administrators who are tempted to cry foul, I warned you, and you should have listened. They were mad that I said such things, and now they are going to find themselves extinct. And the fault for that will be theirs, because they were told what was going to happen and did not prepare for it.   Reforms to education are necessary because what we have had has been inadequate and expensive.  And at every level, from funding to curriculum, significant changes are coming.  And schools will have to adapt, or fail to exist at all. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Showing Courage on Ohio Property Taxation: It was always a socialist game that should have never started

It takes a lot of guts to try to override a governor’s veto, and that is just what Matt Huffman and the House Republicans are poised to do on July 21st, 2025, in Columbus, Ohio.  They have been trying to reform property taxes in House Bill 96 in three key areas, eliminating replacement levies, which often lead to tax increases.  Republicans want to phase them out.  The second thing is that they wish to implement county-level cuts, giving county budget commissions the authority to lower property taxes if the local governments or schools collect more than they need.  Then the third thing is to adjust the 20-mill floor, changing how the formula is calculated to reduce school funding as property values continue to rise, potentially.  DeWine vetoed these parts of the bill, arguing that they’d create enormous problems for schools by disrupting funding stability.  It takes a lot of guts for Huffman and other Republicans, including the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, to stand behind these reforms and push for a 60-vote majority.  It will be close.  If the House can get it over to the Senate, the Senate has the votes, so it really will come down to whether Republicans dare to part with DeWine and override him as they should.  Many people talk tough on the campaign trail, and this is one of those times when real courage is needed.  It would be beneficial if Republicans could step up and take the lead at this critical juncture.  Many people would take pride in a good government headed in the right direction.  Because what DeWine is protecting is loaded with bad government misery that is headed for reform regardless.  There is no stopping the reforms to private property that are going to take place. 

I feel like everywhere these days, I have to say it, and there are a lot of people who don’t think about these things very much who don’t want to hear it.  However, I’ve been pointing it out for years, so the road to this July 21st vote is a very long one.  And it’s just the start of many things to come.  The next governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I had the chance to discuss this very topic with just a few weeks ago, is looking at major reforms on private property taxation.   President Trump is discussing the same concept, namely, the elimination of private property taxation all together.  It will take several years to get there, but that’s where the current sentiment is headed.  And people like Mike DeWine, who have been a part of building that old system, know that it will disrupt the way they envisioned funding for government and services.  However, those old trends are what have put us in our current budgetary situation.  We are going to have some tough discussions, just as we are currently with the Federal Reserve.  A group of independent bankers can’t be allowed to strangle billions of dollars of opportunity cost out of our economy just to protect lenders’ profit margins, when the growth potential of reform could generate so much more than the old static measures.  For those who think that punishing property ownership is the way to fund the level of government we may want as a society, it essentially comes down to choice: do you trust the free market, or the minds of humanity to impose burdens to pay for government services, such as school funding?  For DeWine, he’s just never going to be ready to admit that years and years of socialism are behind the creation of property tax penalties to pay for public education.  And, of course, the teachers’ unions control that entire industry, leading to cost overruns that our out-of-control local governments must deal with, leaving behind expensive chaos.

So you can’t help but talk about socialism, communism, and Marxism in general when we discuss how taxation against private property came into our culture to begin with, because we have gone through a period where Democrats and soft shelled Republicans didn’t want to believe to what level Karl Marx influenced legislative policy making going back to the beginning of the last century.  Much of the American expansion period, from 1850 on, saw a significant influx of European socialists who entered the country and introduced their Karl Marx-inspired ideas, which ultimately infected our free enterprise system with penalties against private property.  And it has gone on for so long that we just assumed that’s the way it has to be.  However, this has led to runaway costs, as we have seen in public schools currently, and penalties against those who own property, as they pay more for the same services than, say, an apartment dweller who requires far more tax services, far more than they pay.  It’s a very unfair system that undermines the premise of private property, destroying the American idea, and it was baked into all the progressive taxation policies that came with the creation of the Fed in 1913, a mistake at its inception that has only worsened over time.  There are old politicians, like DeWine, who have carried these mistaken ideas throughout their entire political life, and they are trying to preserve them for all kinds of unhealthy reasons.  However, the temperament lies in reforming that basic concept. 

Of course, what would replace these revenue devices would be a use tax of some kind, as well as sales tax in general.  However, that relies on the market’s growth mechanisms, similar to Trump’s tariffs.  People were against those for the same reason, and only now, a few months into his second term, are people beginning to see the logic, fruitfully.  After a few years of Trump, many significant economic developments will become a reality that people cannot see now.  Yet, as with the trend on private property, we should incentivize people to own as much private property as possible.  The taxes on it are part of a socialist scheme from the beginning that was always part of the plan to grow government.  There is no way to determine the correct funding model for public schools if property owners bear the burden for the benefit of those who can’t afford property.  It’s a wealth redistribution scam that’s baked into the policy of collecting taxes to grow government in ways that nobody can reliably control, because it’s a tax against the few for the needs of the many.  And it takes away the incentive to invest and create.  What we know now is that encouraging growth would generate significantly more revenue through optimism, as opposed to the current system of oppression.  In short, take the socialism, communism, and Marxism out of the legislative process, and the economy works far better, and at that point, you can see what your actual revenue stream would be, and can make much better decisions for how to construct society, such as elements of school funding and per-pupil budget needs.  With the system as it is, we can’t even have the discussion.  There is a significant chance for the Ohio House to take a bold, Trump-like action.  However, the trend, regardless, is working against old politicians like DeWine and is moving away from penalizing private property ownership.  Whether that happens on July 21st, 2025, or at a later time, the taxation of private property is headed for significant reform and disruption of the current methods.  It would be better sooner if people could find the courage.  But eventually, it’s happening anyway, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.  Because it never should have been created in the first place.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Ohio Campaign for Governor is all About Family First: Getting rid of red tape in Liberty Township

Vivek Ramaswamy discussing taking the red tape out of a red state!

It was good to see Vivek Ramaswamy again.  Mark and Leslie Williams had a nice, private event for him to talk about the campaign status and the going-forward steps and probably the best thing I have heard in politics so far was what Vivek said about Ohio, that it was a deep red state, but that it would not be the state of red tape.  That his run for governor was committed to restoring Ohio to the nation’s greatest status in wealth generation among all the states.  And given his understanding of things and personality, I think it is very much possible.  The moment I found out that he was running for governor, I was excited about it.  And since he launched his campaign just a few months ago, he has turned his efforts into a nice running machine that will cascade into many exciting opportunities that many have never thought possible.  Vivek Ramaswamy understands, and as I have watched these GOP events develop over the years, there was something very different going on that was exciting —a festivity to it that was not politics as usual.  But before we get into all that, I have to say, Mark and Leslie did a great job with the event, including the fantastic food table set up with finger foods that they had in the middle of the gathering space, established for this meet and greet for Vivek.  I took a picture of what was left of it after a few hours, but it was quite something to see.  All the little things in the event were done with just a little extra flair that makes spending time with people on a Saturday night of political talk more enjoyable.  And once Vivek gave his speech, took pictures with people, and had to get on to the next thing, people stayed around talking and catching up because they didn’t want to leave such a wonderful occasion.

When this started it was quite an exhibition. It was a lot of food!

I was one of them, I was happy to see so many people I like to talk to all in the same place.  I enjoyed seeing most of Nancy Nix’s family there, mom, sister, aunts, grandchildren, her husband Bob, we all like each other naturally, and it was nice to catch up under those conditions.  Everyone knows I love Nancy Nix; she is one of the best for a reason, and a lot of it is that she has a nice and loving family, which is evident to everyone who can see.  I had just spent time with one of my favorite trustees, Todd Minniear, a few nights before.  With his wife Jamie, they are a couple of my absolute favorite people and they were there.  Thomas Hall and his family were there too.  His mom and dad are good, solid people, and if you haven’t noticed, there is a pattern to my accolades.  I often judge the value of people by the kind of families they come from and are creating for themselves, and for me, it was a great evening because I had a break from the broken dysfunction that often comes with associating with a lot of people from diverse backgrounds and social structures.  Here, almost everyone shared the same strong family values that I greatly appreciate, making it a great evening for me.  My wife doesn’t always get to come to all these events.  When we launched the campaign event for Vivek a few months prior, she had to miss it due to other family commitments that we had.  However, this time we were able to coordinate things in a way that allowed her to attend, and she enjoyed herself as well.

As usual, I always enjoy seeing George and Debbie Lang when they are in a place where things go as well as the Williams event allowed.  Where the accommodations are set up thoughtfully, so that people can easily discuss essential political matters.  As a critical Senator in Ohio, everyone wants to talk to George, so my time with him is often spent with me looming in the background to discuss as many important things as possible.  However, in a large group like that, it’s not easy to convey everything in brief statements, as time may not allow.  But when people wonder why I like George and Debbie so much, it’s that core value system again. They are a great family that really loves each other, and I value their sincerity, both with each other and with the world around them.  When people wonder why George Lang is good at his job, a common theme among those who have come out in early support of Vivek Ramaswamy for Governor of Ohio is that they see the state in the same way they see their families, with love and care.  And those are their primary political motivations.  No matter what personal success they have had in life, and I know that is the case with Mark and Leslie Williams too, who hosted the event, they want to put that same effort into making Ohio the top state in the country, and the world, for people to live in and raise good families.  If you are a family-first kind of person, knowing these kinds of people makes sense.  And I enjoyed myself for all those reasons.  One of the primary values that everyone I knew shared at this event was a love of family, and they all did just a little bit more than average to have good families. 

I enjoyed catching up with Darbi Boddy.  People have been wondering about her since her time as a Lakota school board member concluded in legal gymnastics.  People have asked me a lot why I like Darbi so much.  She is a good mom who talks to God frequently.  And since she left the Lakota school board, she has been hanging out with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago.  My wife noticed the pin she was wearing, and it was the same one that she had.  Let me say, Darbi is doing some great things that will manifest into goodness in a few years.  She is more deeply engaged in politics than ever, and I am very happy and proud of her for all that she has accomplished.  A common theme I have been discussing is that many people are unaware of Darby: she loves her family, and her involvement in politics is aimed at helping more families emerge in the world. I have a lot of respect for her hard work in this regard.  I like her kids, and I like her husband.  I want to see people like that succeed in the world.  I also enjoyed catching up with Bob Hutsenpiller.  We have a long history together. Similarly, he and his wife have been together for a long time, and his business has been a family affair throughout his long career.  And he’s just a good person trying to make things just a bit better in the world.  My joke with Bob is that he usually comes to these political events with work shoes because he is always on construction sites and has worked hard all the years I have known him.  And I would say that was the common theme among all the people I mentioned, and many more that there isn’t enough time to discuss.  But Vivek Ramaswamy makes it easy, just as President Trump has; these are all people who value family, and they are treating their state and country with the same love they pour into their families.  And it shows.  I met Vivek’s parents and got to know his wife at the event we had at CTL Aerospace, and I was happy that he recognized me out of all the people he has spoken to over the last several months.  But Vivek loves his kids.  He loves his wife.  He loves his parents.  And anyone who is that caring about the people in their life can show the same love to the state they are running.   And for me, that’s why I care so much about the people who were at that event.  The common theme was family first, even if nobody explicitly stated it.  You won’t catch any of the people I mentioned in some sex scandal where they are cheating on their spouses for power and prestige.  In most cases, everyone at that Vivek event already had power and prestige.  But what they were fighting for was something much more important: the power of family and the values that come from it, and carrying that attention over into political office, where it can genuinely make a significant impact.  And for me, being around such people is the best evening I could hope for.  I’m very much looking forward to Vivek Ramaswamy being the governor of Ohio.  That will be a good day!

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Dismantaling the Department of Education: Our current system values all the wrong things

It doesn’t matter what kind of technicality some opposition to the Trump executive order that dismantles the Department of Education hides behind; the reality is that education in the United States needs to change.  And no amount of foot-dragging will change the minds of people tired of a losing product.  When Trump issued his order to initiate the process of eliminating the Department of Education and returning policy to the states, he did something that no Republican had the courage to do since it was created in the first place.  Reagan was supposed to eliminate the DOE in early 1981 or 1982.  Then he was almost killed by an assassin’s bullet and was never quite the same.  And the George Bushes were part of the problem, and made things worse.  So, until Trump came along, nobody had the guts to undo what Jimmy Carter had started, a big government approach to a very intimate concept of education and how society approaches it.  Knowing what we do now, competition is the best and really only method of reform, and the way teacher unions have embedded themselves into the education profession, they have done to the minds of children what unions typically do to everything they touch, whether its steel, car manufacture, or even food production and movie making.  Unions only benefit the losers at the expense of the good, and that brings down the quality of the entire effort.  So, it’s no wonder America is not even in the top ten on most education charts, despite being the wealthiest country.  Public education was a noble concept, but the government’s funding of a subpar product has diminished its appeal and has not served our society well.  When you examine the literacy rate among graduating students, it’s clear that if we continue on our current path, our society will crumble into dust.  And we can’t have that.

And I don’t say what I do in a vacuum.  Even as I write this, people are urging me to run for the school board in my community, because the schools there have received a significant amount of funding, yet they are failing in detrimental ways.  And I know what needs to be done, but I don’t want to help facilitate a failed system. Joining a five-person school board that defends a system I am ready to scrap isn’t a good way to spend my time.  I think a society should have an education system, but I think Dewey was way off in the means of delivery.  I would be in favor of a highly competitive model that is more merit-based, similar to the one Vivek Ramaswamy is proposing in Ohio as a future governor.  Currently, school boards act like a moderator for government money allocation, and that entire system, in my thinking, needs to be scrapped.  And for context, I work with many people who hold PhDs and have multiple advanced degrees, and I do not see them offering a solution for the future.  In my opinion, academia has not been very effective and has never been in the history of the human race.  While specific knowledge is honorable, it often comes at the expense of general knowledge, which is far more useful.  I don’t see people with advanced degrees as any different from the geeks at Comic Con who gain particular knowledge about a topic and then build their lives around that specificity at the expense of logic.  No matter what it is, when people lose touch with reality and seek to prop themselves up in a social context with the merit of group acceptance, the results are never positive.  And doing that very thing is the goal of our current education system, so in its current form, I see no hope for it.

And Trump doesn’t have the answer either, nor does Vivek Ramaswamy, nor does Mike DeWine; people who are currently in the midst of redefining what public education means in America, and specifically in Ohio.  Achieving a high academic honor only benefits the system that created that honor. For instance, receiving an Academy Award for a movie used to be considered an outstanding achievement, but woke politics have undermined the entire enterprise.  Now, after years of witnessing Hollywood failure and Democrat political positions, the concept of an Academy Award means nothing to anybody.  And the same has happened in all fields, especially the sciences. I was on a phone call just a few days ago with the head of the EPA and a panel of experts who were trying to explain the rules of conduct for a future project.  And there were reasonable people involved until there was that one guy who wanted to make sure everyone knew how smart he was and how he had built his entire life around making rules and then explaining to people how to live their lives around those rules, rather than dealing with the grim reality that the world didn’t want to deal with his dumb rules.  I am not mad at the guy because he was essentially getting in the way of something I needed to do.  But because he was uselessly in the way of things that needed to be done, which he thought had value and merit, when in reality he was the kind of guy who likely had a mom who put a bicycle helmet on him one too many times.  And his wife and kids were probably miserable with his views about life.  They were built on a bad foundation that the rest of the world could have cared less for.  It’s the same kind of people who are always encountered at the patent office.  Or with a new scientific discovery, especially with this new news about what’s under the Giza plateau in the form of tunnels and a Hall of Records potentially at the feet of the Sphinx.  Academia has become a public validation for individuals who rise in these fields, as they protect their status through stonewalling and bureaucratic rules, believing their social standing is respected.  And they are terrified of that status ever changing because, as people, they are timid at the prospect of competition and have built their lives around that insulation, hoping that nobody ever discovers how worthless they are. 

The first thing that people think who build their lives around such a social enterprise is that Trump is acting in an anti-educational way, and they are agitated and even hostile to the idea of removing the Department of Education which sets social policy for the bench marks of education achievement in the far away land of Washington D.C.  And people who have spent their lives chasing those made up standards want that system to continue because they are personally terrified of competition.  As I’ve experienced with high-degree personalities, they are often shocked in a competitive discussion to discover that they are not the most intelligent people in the room.  They have a paper that shows that someone told them they were.  However, reality has other opinions, and those become apparent in a competitive environment.  Every child in America needs a unique set of educational goals to achieve, as the current benchmarks are mainly ineffective.  If our schools were producing students like Elon Musk, I would have a different opinion.  But what we get are kids who think going to a Tayler Swift concert is a great thing and they grow up to become terrors of the world dropping their kids off at child care while they pursue a life on a second marriage and run like bats out of hell to pay their next car payment and achieve a social status to other people who mean absolutely nothing as well.  I want to see an education system that inspires more people to achieve great things in the world at all levels of society.  Because what has been produced so far has not been very good, and it needs to change dramatically in the years to come.  There is nothing anyone in the world can do to make public education work under the current Department of Education priorities.  It can’t be saved, and the sooner everyone realizes that, the sooner we can have an intelligent discussion about what comes next.  But saving garbage is not it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Capitol Hill is the Most Intelligent Place on Earth: Correcting humanity where they fell short in the Book of Judges

For the first time in my life, I was ready to give Washington D.C. a fair shake, only because Trump was in the White House, and Republicans now controlled the House and the Senate, and the Supreme court has a general 6 to 3 majority toward the thinking I think is necessary in our American Republic.  And I would say at no point before this precise moment would I say otherwise, because there has always been something wrong with our system of government which I affiliate with George Washington himself and his attachment to the Bible’s Book of Judges and the character of Gideon.  With those political conditions fulfilled, I wanted to return to Washington with a fresh perspective and allow myself to see it the way it was designed to be, not to the level that humans failed to live up to the lofty expectations that established the capital of America to begin with.  We typically view these kinds of things by how people fall short of the goals to achieve high honor.  But looking at Washington D.C. from the perspective of centuries, not days, weeks, months, or decades, I saw something coming together with Trump that I think our young nation was designed from the beginning to achieve, and now we have arrived at that moment.  So, with that in mind, my wife and I allowed ourselves to see Washington from a scholarly perspective and to love it.  To come to terms with it.  And to help lead it to this next phase of America’s fascinating story and in what I would say was the purpose all along, to restore to humanity the intention established in the Book of Judges to create the kind of government God wanted for the world, from the beginning. 

So before my wife and I could do what we intended to do, which was go and spend a few days specifically on Capitol Hill in the legislative corridors itself, then the Library of Congress, as well as a whole day at the Supreme Court, I needed a few days at the Museum of the Bible, and a day a George Washington’s home of Mt. Vernon.  We spent significant time on the Mall just reading and thinking and getting away from the noise of the current world and dug deep into the Masonic references that were all over the layout of the city that Pierre L’Enfant had intended with all of George Washington’s Master Mason friends from Alexandria just to the south.  To step beyond the conspiracies that have not understood the purpose from the very beginning, which had come into fulfilment through a lot of blood and sacrifice, to what kind of government we now had, with Elon Musk and President Trump up Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, past Ford’s theater where Lincoln was shot, past the Trump hotel that has the steeple of the Old Post Office that points to celestial references on August 12th from the vantage point of the Capitol steps, to the truth of the matter.  And I mention those names, President Trump, and Elon Musk who are new best friends in all sincerity, only America could have produced people like that to do what they are doing now.  To see it, I needed to dive deep into Washington D. C’s history, to walk and touch things myself.  Over a couple days I bought 56 new books and read most of them by the middle of the following week in a fury because I was looking for an answer and upon visiting Capitol Hill with a fresh perspective and the context of 5000 years of human history, I felt I understood it in the way it was always intended.  And I can honestly say that I love the place for all its lofty ambitions. 

I was standing outside Speaker Johnson’s office with Steve Scalise when they recessed due to the disruptions in the Well during the censor of Al Green, for the mess he and other Democrats made of themselves during Trump’s State of the Union speech just a few days prior.  And I was thinking of that even in the context of the history I referenced.  The place itself, Capitol Hill, was dedicated to the best and most intelligent perspective that human beings could strive to unleash, and that was the point of the censor.  It wasn’t political as much as an insistence on a specific level of sincerity as a representative republic.  As I stood there, I thought of the J6 protestors overwhelming the security and what they were rightfully angry about.  The place had failed to live up to the expectations of “The People,” and they were letting the political characters know that they had failed and weren’t entitled to the gifts of Capitol Hill by default.  I had been to Washington D.C. on other occasions, but this was the first time with this perspective. After much research, I could honestly say that I understood it as intended.  To that point, I had never been to the Library of Congress, even though I’ve had a lot of interactions with it over the years.  I was impressed with the Capitol building, but I was astonished at the beauty and splendor of the Library of Congress once we took the tunnel from the Capitol cafeteria after eating some lunch down there with many recognizable characters that are on television all the time, and emerging directly into the basement of the Library of Congress.  My first thought was that this was a place intended to be Heaven on Earth, which is what my idea of Heaven would be.  The foyer was laced with gold and high ceilings of white marble, which was a purposeful statement about lofty American ambitions.  Why isn’t this place promoted more to the outside world? It was every bit as impressive as anything they have in Europe.  I would have to say that the Library of Congress is my favorite place on Earth because I love books so much. It is such a collection of intelligence placed into the context of Heavenly ambitions that seeing it in person, then going into the reading room, was as good as Heaven. I could spend an eternity there and never get tired of it. 

From there, my wife and I spent the day at the Supreme Court, next door.  I asked a lot of questions, so many that we were able to get into places that visitors aren’t typically allowed to go, and of course one of those places was the courtroom itself.  But I wanted to see the world the way members of the Supreme Court did.  Thinking of the Bible and the laws that successfully made their way into the creation of all Western Civilization, and were the foundations of the American Constitution, here was a place in the Supreme Court that was trying to do what the Israelites couldn’t in the Book of Judges, and that is have a prosperous self-governed society without screaming for a king to rule over them.  We sat on the Supreme Court’s steps after much reflection and looked over at the Library of Congress, then the Capitol building right in front of us.  I was thinking of Steve Bannon doing his famous podcast behind me over on A Street and all the intelligence happening on that little hill in Washington D.C., and it was the most intelligent place on Earth.  Many people don’t live up to that expectation, but the place was built to evoke in people the best they could utter.  From my perspective, I could see that it was working, and working better than any place in the world.  And finally, after many years of striving, it is evident that the American experiment in republic government, meant to correct humanity where they had failed in the Book of Judges, was succeeding in ways that were always intended.  But that it had taken a few hundred years to come into bloom.  And it was wonderful to see. 

The spot where Trump gave his Inauguration speech

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Steve Hilton For Governor of California: With Trump, state competition is the key to Making America Great Again

It’s not just Vivek Ramaswamy, or Byron Donalds who are Trump endorsed candidates running for governor of their respective states in 2026, but I learned at Vivek’s West Chester event from Vivek himself that the Fox News personality Steve Hilton was also planning to run for governor of California once Gavin Newsom terms out after this current term.  Steve Hilton is best known for his show, The Next Generation, which he had on the 9 PM time slot on Sunday nights and was popular; it ran from 2017 to 2023.  But I hadn’t heard what Steve was doing since then, other than showing up here and there as a guest on various shows.  He’s a very positive person and is part of the next generation of political commentators that I have been talking about lately, and that is certainly the case here.  Once Vivek arrived at CTL Aerospace to speak about his announcement to run for governor, I learned that Steve Hilton was flying out from California to speak for two minutes to give Vivek Ramaswamy a warm announcement.   I realized that a very positive pattern was emerging, leading straight out of the Trump White House.  Trump was building a brand in politics that would carry others to succeed him, and once he put his name on that person, the Trump machine would get behind that person and take them to victory.  Steve Hilton has become good friends with Vivek Ramaswamy, and now that Vivek has put his hat in the ring, Steve told us all at that West Chester event that he was planning to do the same in California, which provoked a long conversation with me backstage after he concluded his speech for Vivek. 

If you haven’t noticed Fox News lately, even they can’t ignore the world trend that eluded them for the previous decade as they wanted to turn more to the center and not be known as a right-winged network once Roger Ailes died.  The Rupert Murdoch kids are not conservative at all, and the wives of the boys wanted to take the station toward New York high society politics rather than conservative populism that was put forth by personalities like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Tucker Carlson, and it hurt them.  Then, their position against President Trump was outrageously radicalized.  Again, when discussing left/right politics, the “left” represents Karl Marx’s ideas.  The “right” represents capitalism.  So, being called one or the other is a more profound indication on the political scale of right and wrong, and Fox News was trying to move to the “left” while Roger Ailes had built the network toward the right.  It was not something Rupert Murdoch was politically inclined to, but it was popular, so he went with it as long as the channel made money.  But the kids don’t care so much about making money; they were more concerned with social status, so they made a bad business decision, parted ways with top talent at Fox News, and drove a wedge with Trump himself that they thought they could survive.  They falsely believed that they were the news, not that they reflected their audience, a common mistake everyone is learning from now that Trump is back in the White House.  Woke is out, and common sense is back in.  Even in NFL football, my favorite team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, have reinstated their old coach, Jon Gruden, back into their Ring of Honor.  They took him down after a fake scandal was invented to drive him out of football over leaked emails Gruden had written.  The whole premise was that Gruden could be kicked out of the NFL just for thinking and saying something, and that trend has gone the other way, leaving the Buccaneers under this Trump administration to get with the program and to reinstate Gruden to their Ring of Honor. 

That’s kind of what has happened with Fox News, many of the people who were frequently on Fox News are now in Trump’s cabinet and are doing very well, and it has been good for Fox as a business and they are having to make decisions to step away from their commitment to left winged politics.  The Trump family was pushed away from the network before the election, but now they can’t get enough of Trump, leaving Lara Trump to have her own show on the weekends like Steve Hilton did.  So Steve, always an upbeat personality, talked to me about all this as Vivek was speaking in West Chester, and we talked about this trend, the kind of people Trump was building to extend his government beyond the reach of any critics and to destroy conventional politics on its face.  And specifically with California, everyone thought that Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be a good Republican governor, but he turned out to be a RINO loser who could never stand up to the unions and ended up disgraced.  And at that point, California turned radical left and is currently miserable.  A prime time for someone like Steve Hilton to run and win the state and bring the fifth largest economy in the world back to sensibility.  Trump had a plan to make America Great Again, and that started by decentralizing the presidency and moving things back to the states where his hand-picked people would be running those states two years into this current administration, and through state competition, Trump was going to change the political landscape forever.

Remember when NBC tried to replace Trump on The Apprentice with Schwarzenegger because they thought the whole success of that show was a tough guy telling people they were fired?  Well, Schwarzenegger bombed, just as he did as governor because he was an actor, not a leader.  Trump is a battle-hardened leader who learned how to be successful in show business.  And these picks for governor positions are similar; they were privately successful but have learned to master the media to convey authentic leadership.  And Steve Hilton could do what Schwarzenegger or Gavin Newsom could never do in California.  Those personalities knew how to manipulate an audience behind the camera but were paralyzed regarding real-world activities.  And Democrats don’t have any other personality that can step forward and explain the massive failures that the people of California have suffered under Gavin Newsom.  So, another endorsement of Steve Hilton by Trump could easily carry him into a win there, too.  The world is changing for the better, and as I told Steve, you can see a pattern emerging that he is undoubtedly a part of.  And he would be great in California.  Like Vivek Ramaswamy, Steve Hilton is an excellent public speaker who can convey a message.  But more than that, he understands how to identify problems, which he always did on his Fox show.  And like many of the successful personalities on Fox, they need a chance to show their stuff on a political stage.  So, California won’t be left behind in all the fun regarding governor races in 2026.  I think it’s excellent, and the radical political left of Karl Marx won’t have a way to deal with it.  Trump endorsements are a new brand in politics that Democrats have no plan for, especially in states they have ruined, like California.  Once he announces, Steve Hilton is poised to win there in a big way. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Trump Endorses Vivek Ramaswamy: Dumb things Dave Yost and Amy Acton said

Again, I don’t want to see Dave Yost embarrass himself because I like the guy, the current Attorney General of Ohio.  But one of his biggest problems that was obvious to me when I went to his governor run announcement event was that he’s out of step with a skipping record, just a little too late on everything and slightly off-kilter with the flow of reality.  Under normal conditions, he might be able to run for governor and win, especially against the person the Democrats are going to put up, Amy Acton.  But these aren’t regular times.  I’m supporting Vivek Ramaswamy for Governor of Ohio, and the GOP should get behind him and make it happen.  Vivek is going to be governor no matter what any opposition tries to do to prevent it.  On the same day that Vivek announced he was running from West Chester, Ohio, President Trump came out immediately and endorsed Vivek to settle the issue and let all the other GOP contenders know where the President’s heart was on the matter.  And the person who wins in Ohio, no matter how good Vivek Ramaswamy is, will be the person President Trump picks.  The Trump endorsement is crucial because voters will rally to whoever that is. And for the Governor race of Ohio in 2026, it is Vivek Ramaswamy.  And to make sure nobody gets any funny ideas, Vivek Ramaswamy will be all over the media and state in an overwhelming fashion to make sure that he gets a chance to meet everyone he could possibly meet along the way.  He has been doing media on television almost every day since his announcement, which shows that he will work hard to win people’s votes.  Vivek will not take anything for granted, and he will win the election and be Ohio’s next governor. 

Vivek/Lang has a nice ring to it, I think

But upon hearing that Vivek was running, Dave Yost said some foolish things that won’t help him and actually make that skipping record syndrome much worse, and I have to warn him that if he wants a political future, he needs to not say such dumb things.  Among these was his attack on Vivek and trying to paint him as someone who starts a lot of projects but never finishes them, such as dropping out of the Presidential race, dropping out of D.O.G.E. with Elon Musk, and moving his company STRIVE to Texas because Ohio costs too much to do business in.  Yost is trying to portray Ramaswamy as a quitter.  But instead, Yost showed himself grotesquely out of touch as he didn’t get the GOP memo.  I learned about Vivek Ramaswamy’s running for governor with an early morning phone call two weeks before Christmas of 2024.  Something of a deal was made, and Trump wanted Vivek Ramaswamy to be Ohio’s governor because the goal was for the Trump economy to turn a Rust Belt state into one of the world’s tech leaders.  It’s the home state of J.D. Vance, who many in the MAGA movement would like to see carry the torch of the next four years of Trump.  Vivek is the right guy to bring all those elements together in Ohio.  Yost pointed out that Vivek dropped out of the presidential race after a fourth-place showing in Iowa, as if that said everything.  But the reality was that Vivek, while running for President, never went after Trump but was loyal the entire time.  So, Vivek wasn’t an either-or candidate but was a continuation of the MAGA movement, and if that were the criterion, people would have rather had Trump finish what was started during the first term.  Vivek instead ran on a MAGA platform to build on the issue rather than try to corrode it away with debate.

Most people who are affiliated with the GOP know about this Trump arrangement.  I asked my sources if I could talk about it, and they said I could, so it wasn’t super secret.  Mike DeWine, Ohio’s current governor, was then called to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump.  He and Jon Husted did this, and the deal was made.  DeWine would appoint Husted to the vacant senate seat left behind by Vance so that he wouldn’t be destroyed by Vivek becoming governor because Husted wanted to run too.  Trump is the party’s leader and will likely remain that way for the rest of his life.  He is the one who won that right, and people need to follow that vision.  Vivek Ramaswamy also had to do that to run for governor of a state when he wanted to be president.  That’s how you build successful teams, and all these guys played their part in creating a bigger vision of what the MAGA movement would be like after Trump was no longer in the White House.  But to make the most of it while he was there.  Time is short, opportunities are limited, and Dave Yost, to be wise, should hitch his wagon to one of these Trump strategies and not stick himself on the outside looking in.  Because once the window closes, it will close forever.  The Ohio GOP doesn’t need a media-driven mess for the upcoming primary.  It requires a unified party with the hands of Trump on it, and Dave Yost needs to find a place in it, not out of it, for his own good.  That’s the only warning shot I’ll give. If he didn’t know that Vivek was running, then that’s even worse because everyone else did, and it only shows how out of step he is, made even worse by every day that he does not get behind Vivek Ramaswamy. 

Then there is the Democrat Amy Acton and her dumb comments about Vivek as if she knows how to run against him.  I’ll make a prediction: She is going to be crushed by the debate skills of Vivek Ramaswamy.  Acton is the former Health Director of the State of Ohio appointed by DeWine, which caused all kinds of problems with COVID-19.  Amy Acton shut down Ohio as one of the leaders of all states to be the first to lockdown, which was standard of all the Democrat led states.  Only Ohio was supposed to be a red state.  DeWine allowed himself to be suckered by the stringy hair hippie style of Yellow Springs politics that Amy Acton represents, and it won’t go well for her.  I’m looking forward to it because Vivek can tell a story about her that has not been told yet.  She would have been wise to stay under a rock for what she did to Ohio during COVID-19, but she’s the best Democrats have, which says a lot about them.  She is running, but I don’t think the Democrats have any idea of what kind of buzz saw they are going to run into with this one.  Trump has his ideas about it because Ohio did lockdown during his last year in office, making it much harder for him to keep the nation together during that crisis.  So he will support Vivek vivaciously; let me just put it nicely.  Once everyone is done with Amy Acton, there won’t be a rock in the world to hide under, and she will not be able to hide her shame for the rest of her life, which she deserves.  And that’s just how it’s all going to go down.  So plan accordingly. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Story of the Card: When people do good things for all the right reasons

Interestingly, just a few weeks after Vivek Ramaswamy announced he was running for Governor of Ohio at CTL Aerospace in West Chester, we both found ourselves at the Library of Congress, for different reasons, on the same day.  Vivek is all in and doing media interviews every day on the prime-time Fox News shows and other places, and he was at the Library of Congress to celebrate Ohio’s birthday for statehood, which is a pretty interesting story.  And that, too, is interesting: since President Trump has returned to the White House, where he was rightfully supposed to be, many of my close friends have suddenly had a lot of business in Washington, D.C.  But one of the aspects of all this that I get asked about the most is that when Vivek came to West Chester to make his big announcement, people wondered why Vivek and I seemed to know each other and what was it with that card I showed him when he arrived.  The truth is, I didn’t know if he would remember me after all he had been through since the last time I saw him.  But he seemed to upon sight once he arrived and met with a small group of people responsible for the event at CTL Aerospace.  When it came time for him to greet me, his wife was already speaking with me. I wanted an ice breaker.  After all, he has met many people over the last couple of years and spent his time helping campaign for Trump, hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, and creating D.O.G.E. with Elon Musk.  So, to start our conversation, I showed him a card he gave me four years ago, which everyone has been asking about.  And when he saw it, he laughed.  He and his wife instantly knew what it was, and it kicked off a nice conversation about his personal political journey, which started at CTL Aerospace five years earlier. 

The card in question was a little promo thing he did for his book Woke Inc, which went on to be a game-changing bestseller, as I thought it would at the time.  Vivek was really one of the first in the country to figure out just how dangerous woke politics was, and the great Butler County Auditor Nancy Nix invited me to come to a special launch of his new book at the Middletown Republican Party Headquarters.  Vivek was trying out his messaging for a national campaign that would encompass Fox News, specifically Tucker Carlson, so he was trying out his platform to a kind of test showing in his hometown of Butler County, Ohio.  But that isn’t where the story started, as Vivek told me the same story he said at the governor’s announcement and why he wanted to return to CTL Aerospace to make his big pitch.  A year earlier, from the book launch, where all he had to give out was that card, because the book hadn’t officially come out for another three months at that point, I had set up a rally in support of President Trump.  He was in his last year in office and was starting to run again for a second term.  And Democrats were entrenched in impeaching him and trying to use the Russian story to knock him off.  So I, along with several other prominent Butler County Republicans set up a rally to support Trump during a very dark period, and the rally was at CTL Aerospace which many thought was bold, to politically stick their necks out to show open support for President Trump when everyeone else in the world was running away.

J.D. Vance was still coming off his popular book The Hillbilly Elegy and was getting attention wherever he went, and he already knew Nancy Nix, who of course was coming to the rally I was putting on.  And as the story goes, the future Vice President wanted Nancy to introduce a friend of his, Vivek Ramaswamy, to the world of politics because he was stepping away from a CEO job he had been doing at the time and was looking for something new to wrap his brilliant mind into next.  So he came to the rally, got a good taste of politics, and saw an anti-woke company that was not afraid to tell the world at the time.  Vivek told me a year later that the rally helped him define a virus he and his wife had been considering curing.  Not a disease of the body, but one of the mind, wokeness.  After that CTL rally, he sat down and refined those ideas into the now famous book, Woke Inc. There were many people in the audience that day at that rally, so I didn’t know Vivek from any other face in the crowd.  But a year later, as he explained, he had written his book and was pitching it to a hometown crowd before going nationwide with a more extensive campaign.  But my joke to him then was that he was doing a book launch without a book because it wasn’t out yet.  But he did bring little cards with the cover printed on it.  I sat in the front row, because I love new books, and he gave me one of those cards and signed it.  And I looked at it and joked, “Is that it?”  Because I wanted an actual book to read, not just a silly little card. 

Well, it was a pretty good story, and I kept that card as a bookmark in some of my other books in my library.  A year after the Middletown event, I saw Vivek again at a Lincoln Dinner, and we were all in the VIP section as he was scheduled to speak that night.  Mike Pompeo was back there too, with a bunch of my personal friends, so it was a festive environment.  But I didn’t forget about the joke between Vivek and me, so I brought a copy of his book, Woke Inc, that I had long since read.  I got it for him to sign, which he did, and we joked about that card.  So now fast forward to three years after that, and Vivek was coming back to CTL Aerospace to make his governor announcement, and I pulled out that card for our greeting, curious as to whether he would remember all those events.  I didn’t want it to be weird for him to wonder, after seeing so many faces on his journey of running for President and traveling all over the United States, to see me and wonder how he knew me.  So I showed him that card before we even shook hands, and our conversation picked up exactly where it had last resided, and we had a lot of fun with the topic.  People watching and seeing all the pictures have been wondering what the story of the card was, how Vivek Ramaswamy stepped into politics to contribute his massive brain to the cause of freedom along the trajectory of the MAGA movement.  But I was there initially and played a part in his journey and was happy to see him doing good things with it.  You never know who might be in the audience when you host a rally or write articles like these daily.  But I have found many Vivek Ramaswamys out there thinking about doing something significant with their lives; sometimes, they need someone to hold the flashlight in the right direction so they can find their way to it.  And things cascade from there, so doing things is always important.  Vivek will be a great governor in Ohio and, undoubtedly, a great president after that.  He will do a lot of great things in the years to come.  And it will be because he is good and is willing to do all the hard work.  But sometimes great things happen just because of a little card and a story that grows with it.  That is the story of the card I have kept and the movement it launched, with the efforts of many people brought together with the common bond of just wanting to do the right thing. I’m very proud of Vivek Ramaswamy; he’s the right guy at the right time for all the right reasons and when you see things like this you can see the hidden hand of God working from behind a veil with a yearning for good things to happen with little miracles that make no sense under any other condition.  And I wouldn’t say that anything in this story is a miracle.  But what it is only happens when people refuse to bend the knee to darkness, and people so inclined to resist come together under a common cause and change the world, one little card at a time.

Rich Hoffman

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