Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur

Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy quickly emerged Wednesday night as both the black sheep of the first Republican debate stage and a darling of former President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

Standing near center stage with a cocky demeanor, Ramaswamy, 38, beamed as his rivals dog-piled on him, seemingly aghast at his positions on issues ranging from supporting a pardon for the 45th president to allowing Russia to keep hold of parts of Ukraine it has conquered in the 18-month-old Eastern European war.

The Milwaukee showdown took place six months and two days after Ramaswamy announced his candidacy and was promptly and widely dismissed as a longshot, or a no-hoper.

But rising from obscurity is nothing new for the man who would be the youngest president — ever — if he wins the White House next year.

Who is Vivek Ramaswamy?

Ramaswamy, a father of two, was born in Cincinnati to immigrants from southern India. His mother worked as a geriatric psychiatrist, while his father worked as an engineer and patent attorney.

Raised in the Hindu religion, Ramaswamy was sent to a Catholic high school and credits his Christian conservative piano teacher for spurring his political awakening. After high school, he attended Harvard College where he obtained a degree in biology and moonlighted as a rapper — stage name “Da Vek.”

While attending Yale Law School, Ramaswamy worked as a hedge fund investor and claimed to have a net worth of around $15 million by the time he got his J.D. in 2013. The following year, he founded biotech company Roivant Sciences.

Ramaswamy’s estimated net worth is at least $630 million, according to Forbes, making him the second-richest man on the debate stage Wednesday after North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

So how did he get into politics?

Like many Americans, Ramaswamy was astounded by the rise of Donald Trump during the 2016 election.

“If he hadn’t done what he did, I’m going to give him full credit here, I wouldn’t even have thought about doing this in a serious way,” Ramaswamy told Newsmax in February.

Though Ramaswamy would be the youngest-ever president — eclipsing Theodore Roosevelt who ascended to the White House at age 42 after William McKinley’s assassination — as well as the first Indian-American president, first Hindu president and second minority president after Barack Obama, he evinces no interest in identity politics.

Instead, he claims to be on a quest for an “American revival.”

“It’s not morning in America, we live in a dark moment and we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold cultural civil war and we have to recognize that,” Ramaswamy argued to former Vice President Mike Pence Wednesday night.

What happened at the first debate?

Ramaswamy didn’t shy away from any of his unconventional policy positions.

He dismissed “the climate change agenda” as a hoax, argued against US aid for Ukraine, and promised to pardon Trump on his first day in office.

Taking a page from the 45th president, Ramaswamy knocked his rivals for dusting off “ready-made, pre-prepared slogans” against him and promised he was “the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for.”

Foes such as Haley, Pence, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie each took turns hurling rhetorical zingers his way, but Ramaswamy was unwilling to back down.

“Hold on, I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” Christie jabbed at one point before noting Ramaswamy had stolen a line from Obama’s seminal 2004 Democratic National Convention speech during his opening statement: “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?”

“Give me a hug! Give me a hug just like you did Obama,” Ramaswamy shot back, referencing Christie’s embrace of the 43rd president following Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Haley drew audible cheers from the debate audience when she told Ramaswamy: “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the only candidate consistently polling above Ramaswamy, remained above the fray, while Trump went so far as to crown him as the debate winner.

“This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you Vivek!” Trump posted on Truth Social, posting a clip of Ramaswamy arguing he was “the best president of the 21st century.”

Georgia radio host Erick Erickson summed up the view of many Ramaswamy skeptics who view him as a stalking horse for the former president.

“Vivek just said Donald Trump was the best president of the 21st century,” he tweeted. “So why is he running against him?”

What’s wrong with strongly held views?

Ramaswamy’s crusade to upend the establishment has been rife with controversy.

This week, he was accused of trafficking in 9/11 conspiracy theories for questioning whether there may have been federal agents aboard the hijacked planes that hit the World Trade Center.

Audio from an interview with the Atlantic magazine confirmed the quote, but Ramaswamy still insisted it was misleading — claiming that he didn’t actually believe federal agents were on the plane, but was simply making a point about why he wants more information on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

In addition, Ramaswamy repeatedly implied in interviews that the first election he ever voted in was in 2020, when he pulled the lever for Trump. However, he conceded last month that he also voted for the Libertarian Party’s nominee in 2004 at the age of 19.

Ramaswamy has also faced accusations of flip-flopping.

Earlier this month, he told The Post that he would “be open to evaluating pardons for members of the Biden family in the interest of moving the nation forward,” but quickly backtracked.

Following Wednesday night’s debate, National Review quoted Ramaswamy as saying he would have conducted himself “very differently” to Pence if asked to throw out the election results on Jan. 6.

“I think that there was a historic opportunity that was missed to settle a score in this country, to say that we’re actually going to have a national compromise on this — single-day voting on Election Day as a federal holiday, which I think Congress should have acted in that window between November and January to say: paper ballots, government-issued ID,” the candidate said. “And if that’s the case, then we’re not going to complain about stolen elections. And if I were there, I would have declared on Jan. 7, saying ‘Now I’m going to win in a free and fair election.’”

Apart from being of dubious coherence constitutionality, Ramaswamy’s answer cut against what he wrote in his 2021 book, “Woke, Inc.”

“Mike Pence, a man I have great respect for, decided it was his constitutional duty to resist the president’s attempts to get him to unilaterally overturn the results of the election, even in the face of the January 6 Capitol riot,” Ramaswamy said at the time. “Our institutions did hold, in the end, but they shouldn’t have been tested.”

Another recent dust-up came on the issue of Israel. Earlier this year, Ramaswamy denied that he was open to cutting off military support to Israel, but then later contended that he may do so after getting Arab nations to mend fences with the Jewish state — something he believes he can achieve in a single term.

“I didn’t know much of this six months ago. But the only difference between me and the other candidates is I’m the only one actually willing to admit that,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last week during a discussion on Taiwan.

What else does Ramaswamy believe?

While the candidate goes further than Trump in questioning America’s foreign policy, openly musing about cutting aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, Ramaswamy breaks with the former president on issues such as trade.

“I think we should re-enter it,” Ramaswamy told Elon Musk last month during a conversation on X, formerly Twitter, about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“I think this is a little bit different than what, you know, the course of action taken by Trump in exiting the TPP. I think that was actually a poor decision.”

He did emphasize that he wanted to tweak the TPP agreement, calling for “fairer” terms.

During that same conversation, Ramaswamy also echoed Musk’s call for more migration.

“I agree with that. I actually fully agree with that” he said, implying that illegal immigration is where the problem is. “Merit-based immigration is one of the fixes to economic growth in this country.

Another issue where Ramaswamy has somewhat bucked the conservative base is on abortion.

“I don’t believe a federal abortion ban makes any sense,” Ramaswamy told CNN, “and I say that as somebody who’s pro-life.”

Still, at the state level, Ramaswamy has taken an aggressive anti-abortion stance.

“Life ends right when … brainwaves end — that’s how we determine when life ends on the back end,” he told Fox News back in April. “I think we should apply a consistent principle on the front end, that’s around the six-week mark that brainwaves do begin.”