Vivek Ramaswamy absorbed a jab from his Harvard classmate Pablo Torre and sent one back in return.
Last week, Torre, a former ESPN broadcaster who is now a podcaster for Dan Le Batard and John Skipper’s Meadowlark Media, went on MSNBC and provided some mocking memories of the Republican presidential candidate from their time in school.
The Post reached out to Ramaswamy’s campaign for comment.
“While Vivek doesn’t recall ever meeting this gentleman, we wish Pablo the very best and hope he finds success in his career and life whether that be through talking about former classmates as he is now or possibly through something more productive like creating jobs or building a business as Vivek has done,” Tricia McLaughlin, senior advisor and communications director for Ramaswamy, told The Post in an email on Tuesday.
Torre sent a one-word response to The Post regarding the statement from the campaign: “lol.”
In an appearance on MSNBC’s “11th Hour”, Torre said that he remembered Ramaswamy and that he has been making jokes about the candidate for 20 years.
“There’s a taxonomy to that guy,” Torre said.
“That guy always raises his hand in class … and is somebody who is insanely ambitious and insanely image-conscious, but also totally numb to the idea that everyone around them is cringing.”
Torre recalled that Ramaswamy would raise his hand in “Moral Philosophies” class in the shape of a V, saying that “it was like he was shining his own bat signal for terrible libertarian takes as a freshman in college.”
Ramaswamy, now 38, is reportedly worth about $950 million after founding the biotechnology firm Roivant Sciences in 2014, seeking to develop or acquire drugs that had fallen through the cracks of big pharmaceutical companies.
The firm went public in 2021 and is now valued at over $8 billion; Ramaswamy retained a 10 percent stake.
In August, Ramaswamy wrote about the key tenets of his Republican presidential campaign in an op-ed for The Post.
Torre wrote for Sports Illustrated from 2007-12 before landing at ESPN the Magazine, eventually appearing on studio shows such as “Around the Horn” and “Pardon the Interruption” before co-hosting the program “High Noon” with Bomani Jones.
Torre wrote in 2020 that he learned that the program was canceled when he was at the hospital for the birth of his daughter.
Earlier this year, Torre left his full-time role at ESPN — though he still has some appearances on the late afternoon studio shows — to launch the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” at Meadowlark Media.
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