Vivek Ramaswamy’s political ascendency has drawn attackers. All the attacks boil down to the same thing: Vivek is a Manchurian candidate. He came from nowhere (unlike Trump, who, while not a politician, was known to all), and his past belies many of his current stands. We’re told he’s a WEF or Soros creation, supports 9/11 conspiracy theories, and hates Israel. Vivek’s team has now created a page that rebuts the charges against him. It’s good, but there is still one piece missing.

You can find the page—“TRUTH. Over Myth”—at Vivek’s campaign website. It rebuts the following charges:

• The World Economic Forum Connections: ЁЯдб
• Vivek Supports Legalizing “Hard Drugs”: ЁЯдб
• Vivek Doesn’t Support Israel: ЁЯдб
• Vivek is really just a secret “Trojan Horse” for George Soros: ЁЯдб
• Vivek Supports Mask Mandates: ЁЯдб
• Vivek Supports a Death Tax: ЁЯдб
• Vivek Has Done Business in China!?! ЁЯШ▒
• Vivek Wants Transgender People in the Military: ЁЯдб
• Vivek is Part of Big Pharma and Made $$ on a Failed Alzheimer’s Drug: ЁЯдб
• Vivek Didn’t Vote Very Much in His 20s ЁЯди
• Vivek is a 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist!

Image: Vivek Ramaswamy. YouTube screen grab.

All the rebuttals make sense. For example, I heard from many Jewish friends who were worried that Vivek said he wants America to stop funding Israel. My suspicion was that this couldn’t be true. I knew he’d said he would expand the Abraham Accords. I also assumed he’d come down hard on Iran. This is an approach holding that the best defense Israel can have is to live in a friendly neighborhood. And indeed, my assumptions were correct:

Vivek Doesn’t Support Israel: ЁЯдб

WRONG. Keep lying, Nimarata Randhawa. The desperation is showing. By the end of Vivek’s first term, the US-Israel relationship will be deeper and stronger than ever because it won’t be a client relationship, it will be a true friendship. The centerpiece of Vivek’s Middle East policy in Year 1 will be to lead “Abraham Accords 2.0” which will fully integrate Israel into the Middle East economy – by adding Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Indonesia to the pact which was one of President Trump’s crowning foreign policy achievements.

Vivek will also partner with Israel to ensure that Iran never acquires nuclear capabilities. That’s a hard *never.*

Most importantly, he won’t cut aid to Israel until Israel tells the U.S. that it no longer needs the aid. That’s what true friends do: they’re honest with each other. We expect that of our friends in Israel, And when Israel gets to that point, we should all rightly celebrate it as a mark of achievement and pride for both the U.S. and Israel. That’s what Vivek actually said, so don’t believe the opponents’ lies that he wants to cut aid to Israel – which makes zero sense as a foreign policy priority any time in the foreseeable future. We will not leave Israel hanging out to dry – ever. (But that didn’t stop his opponents from pouncing to lie about his position).

Good friends also learn from each other, and Vivek has said we have much to learn from Israel. He’s traveled there countless times with one of his most important business partners – a founding investor at Roivant – who is based there. Vivek wants the U.S. to learn from Israel’s border policies, crime enforcement policies, national identity, and missile defense capabilities – and will lead the U.S. accordingly.

The above may not be the Israel policy some people desire, but it’s certainly not an anti-Israel policy. It’s also significantly better than what the Biden administration is doing, which is funding Iran while giving the nudge-nudge-wink-wink to further nuclear development and keeping money flowing to the genocidal Palestinians.

Still, while each rebuttal is solid, Vivek’s effort still fails. That’s because he doesn’t address the central issue, which is how he got to his current fundamentally conservative stances. The response to the claim that “Vivek Didn’t Vote Very Much in His 20s” goes part way there, but he needs more:

The truth is Vivek was libertarian in his college days and voted for the libertarian candidate for U.S. President back in 2004 when he was 19 years old. He wasn’t inspired by George Bush and John Kerry. Or by McCain and Obama. Or Romney and Obama. So, like most young people, he sat it out for his 20s.

That certainly describes me in my 20s, although I was a Democrat in the 1980s, not a libertarian in the early 21st century. But having read all the bullet points, I still don’t know—and nobody else does—where Vivek’s current conservative (not libertarian) views come from.

What we need to hear from Vivek is his Road to Damascus moment, whether that moment occurred in a blinding instant or was an accretion of smaller moments. Voters will not trust him if he cannot explain his political journey. No matter how much Vivek explains his past or his policies, if there is no visible bridge from past to present, he will always be viewed as untrustworthy. He can silence the criticism against him only if he fills in the blanks.