For any American voters out here.. Vivek is a once in a generation presidential candidate. An educated politician, an American first patriot, with the non-political non-vote bank, 'right' solutions that will address most of our nations current problems by addressing the heart of the issue. For Centrist like me, he is the best choice out there. I don't agree with him on some things, but he is real. It will be a big loss to not vote for him.
Don't get carried away by dishonest journalists like Mehdi Hasan who is smart enough to know that his audience is pretty dumb and will latch on to flash words and cheap quotes over facts.
I will address the artificially made controversies and outright lies in this so called interview, a shameless propaganda propagated in the name of journalism by mendacious Mehdi:
1. Vivek became rich by selling a failed Alzheimer's drug: Vivek runs a pharma company where each of his subsidiary develops a drug. The Alzheimer's subsidiary failed, but Vivek didn't sell any of his shares in this subsidiary and took a big hit on it. But he sold shares from some of his other subsidiaries that developed successful drugs and made money. Mehdi who knows his viewers are ignorant of this and then goes on to build a narrative that he sold his shares in the failed drug after hyping it (which is an outright lie) by only showing his capital gain returns despite knowing full well Vivek made his money by selling his shares from other drugs (which are now worth billions). My wife works in a biotech firm, she was laughing at Mehdi's disingenuity. He is not an idiot but plays on his viewers ignorance to drive a narrative.
2. Vivek's Alzheimer's drug failed, which means he must be an idiot: He goes on to criticize Vivek's quality as a entrepreneur by calling out that his drug failed . Most Alzheimer's drug fails. Vivek tried. Only idiots with zero understanding of the pharma world would take anything Mehdi says seriously. His points about drug passing Phase 3 is not the same as getting approval after an year is another joke. He uses this to put down Vivek's achievement. Sad thing is Mehdi knows all of this, but he is piping his ignorant viewers to the river.
3. Vanguard, Black Rock etc., are major investors in Vivek's own company while he goes around criticizing them: People must understand that most mutual fund investors use money from their customers (normal American Citizens who are interested in mutual funds) and invest them in all major publicly traded companies including Vivek's company in order to make money and Vivek has no control over this. Mehdi knows this very well, but again touts like Vivek is dishonest as if in one place he discredits these companies and then makes them a part of his company. Vivek's contention is that companies like BlackRock which are investing american consumer's money in publicly trading company are abusing their majority share holder position (obtained by investing public money) to push woke agendas without informing it to their customers. This is a valid concern which Mehdi never brings up.
4. Vivek's statement on Pence Certifying elections: Vivek is very clear that despite all the BS claims from Trump about Election Fraud, there is an underlying distrust amongst republican vote base about Election integrity that needs to be addressed. He says if he was in Pence's place as a VP, the leader of the senate, he would have put in concerted effort to push through congress laws that will ensure Election integrity and remove these doubts from conservative base once and for all. We can discuss the feasibility of this and whether his policies are voter suppression/not - such as He wants to announce National Holiday for election, Voter Id match etc. But dishonest Mehdi again reduces Vivek's words to something like "on that night of Jan 6th' I would certify the election only if voter changes are made making him sound like an idiot. And once Vivek says he didn't tell the night of Jan 6th and explains he would have done it over a period of time, Mehdi responds saying you didn't mention any dates conveniently ignoring how he brought up the same night to confuse the viewers.
5. Vivek getting a scholarship: This is elementary stuff, yet there are people who are dumb enough to buy this as an argument against Vivek.
6. Mehdi wants Vivek to openly call out Trump on his BS: Despite Vivek saying he wouldn't have made the same judgement and Trumps actions are abhorrent, The only reason Mehdi wants to bring this out is to alienate Vivek from his Maga base and Vivek didn't bite it.
Any which way I see it, Mehdi got owned in this hack job masquerading as an interview. Its not even close and I see an entirely sheepish narrative here with a lot of laughing emojis living in Lala land. If Mehdi has an ounce of shame, he would stop this 3rd rate journalism similar to most main stream journalism here from Fox to CNN. His interview with Irshad Manji was the last I saw of his shamelessness and stopped with that. The AlJazeera propagandist Mehdi has zero compunction and the kids who are hailing him here don't know anything about him.