Vivek Ramaswamy is waging an expensive trolling campaign on BuzzFeed

The former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy outlined his plan on Tuesday to revive the once high-flying progressive media company.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here. Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — who has an extensive history promoting lies and conspiracy theories, including around the January 6 insurrection, the Sept. 11 attacks, and legitimacy of the 2020 vote — outlined his plan on Tuesday to revive the once high-flying progressive media company, which he disclosed earlier this month he had taken an activist stake in. In a letter to BuzzFeed’s board, a copy of which Ramaswamy posted online, the MAGA hardliner and former Republican presidential candidate recommended laying off large swaths of the company’s existing staff. He encouraged BuzzFeed’s board to transform the outlet into a creator-driven platform, suggesting it hire personalities akin to fellow radicals Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. He requested that the board add three unnamed directors to its ranks to increase “diversity of thought.” And, finally, Ramaswamy implored BuzzFeed to issue a public apology to the country for having supposedly lied about Donald Trump, Covid-19 and various other issues. “Address your audience directly and candidly admit: We failed in our obligation to tell you the truth,” Ramaswamy encouraged BuzzFeed. “By both omission and commission, we repeatedly lied on issues of national importance, and so did the rest of the media.” Needless to say, Ramaswamy’s proposal is not a serious one. He obviously knows that BuzzFeed is not going be issuing any apologies for supposedly lying to the public. And it goes without saying that BuzzFeed co-founder and boss Jonah Peretti is not going to adopt a business plan that would deform his company and remold it into a Rumble-like platform that would disseminate MAGA disinformation for profit. “What few business ideas he presents in his letter are distinctly un-original and reflects media truisms and conventional platitudes, none of which could possibly be new to BuzzFeed or any experienced media leaders,” Jeffrey A Sonnenfeld, the renowned professor and senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, told me Tuesday. “He praises his three nominees for the board and pressures BuzzFeed into accepting them without publicly identifying who they are and whether they are qualified beyond their loyalty to Vivek. He is, in short, trying to hijack BuzzFeed and turn it into a pliable Vivek Ramaswamy in-house news organ — VivekNews so to speak.”