Vivek Ramaswamy Blames 90s Sitcoms for Tech Companies Hiring Smarter Immigrant Workers

Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the leaders of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, blamed a series of 1990s TV sitcoms for what he saw as a decline in U.S. dynamism in science and technology, leading tech companies to hire more qualified foreign-born and first-generation workers over their mentally lazy American counterparts.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote in a post on X.

“A culture that venerates Cory from Boy Meets World or Zach & Slater over Screech in Saved by the Bell, or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in Family Matters will not produce the best engineers,” he noted.

Ramaswamy, who himself is the child of immigrants to the U.S., argued that the nation needs a new “Sputnik moment” to spur domestic advancement in science and technology.

“We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again,” Ramaswamy added. “Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up.”

His comments are part of wider tensions that have been exposed in recent days within the Trump coalition, which includes both far-right anti-immigration views, and an increasing embrace of the tech industry, whose workforce is highly diverse and made up of many immigrants and first-generation Americans.

During the campaign, Trump doubled down on his long history of “America First” nativism and racism, calling for “bloody” mass deportations, the end of birthright citizenship, and claiming immigrants were “poisoning the blood of the country.”

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