Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has teased a possible role in Donald Trump’s future cabinet, saying that he has a “couple great options” before him.
The biotech CEO appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday where he was asked by Jonathan Karl whether he will be part of a second Trump administration, one which the Trump transition team is thought to be crafting around political appointees who value loyalty to Trump above all else.
Ramaswamy was evasive about what exact role he might play but confirmed he was having “high-impact discussions” about his path forward.
“There's a couple great options on the table,” Ramaswamy said, as Karl mentioned both the soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat in Ohio, currently occupied by Vice President-elect JD Vance, as well as the position of Homeland Security director.
“I want to have the biggest possible impact on this country,” he added.
The two options hinted at by Karl are largely thought to be the two prizes Ramaswamy is most likely to seek. He remained largely deferential to Trump during his presidential run, and had been clearly angling for an alliance with the former president since the Iowa caucus results in January made it clear the former president was going to bulldoze his way to the nomination.
Ramaswamy, in his own campaign, concentrated resources on Iowa in a bid to make a surprise early showing, one that would generate a snowballing of support. It never materialized.
As director of the Department of Homeland Security, Ramaswamy would be in charge of carrying out and crafting the specifics of Trump’s immigration policy. The former president pledged over the summer to launch America’s first mass deportation program of the modern era, with the intent of removing one million immigrants living in the US illegally if re-elected.
In Ohio, meanwhile, Ramaswamy has possibly a more direct route at building his own political star. His home state has trended increasingly red in recent election cycles, in large part due to Democrats at the DNC and elsewhere in Washington writing off the state as a lost cause in presidential races. The party has now also lost two Senate races in Ohio in as many election cycles.
With Vance’s election to the vice presidency, his seat in Ohio will become vacant in January and the state’s Republican governor will fill it with an appointment. A special election will then be called in 2026 to determine who will finish out Vance’s term.
As a senator, Ramaswamy could carve out his own political brand in the Senate free of the burden presented by the prospect of becoming the face of Trump’s immigration and border control policies — among other duties — for the next however-many years. But it would, in return, require Ramaswamy to rebuild his fundraising apparatus to the point where he could defeat a Democratic candidate in 2026, though it’s questionable how competitive that race would even be.
One of the Republican Party’s few truly young national figures, Ramaswamy is set up better than most to build his brand over the next four years.
Having never truly emerged as a rival to the president-elect in a way that Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis did during the primary, Ramaswamy could very well end up in the spotlight before long.
