Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy slammed American culture for valuing “mediocrity over excellence,” claiming it has had a strong impact on the tech industry.

Ramaswamy, who will soon co-head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), blamed such culture on Thursday in a lengthy X post for causing tech companies to “often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans.” He advised Americans to confront the “truth,” arguing “tough questions demand tough answers.”

“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. “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.”

Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated to the U.S., added he knows “multiple sets of immigrant parents” who limited their children’s consumption of such television shows “precisely because they promoted mediocrity.”

“Most normal American parents look skeptically at ‘those kinds of parents,’ ” Ramaswamy said. “More normal American kids view such ‘those kinds of kids’ with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.”

“’Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a—- handed to us by China,” he concluded. “This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again.”

The sentiments drew outrage from fellow Republican and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who asserted “there is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture.”

“All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have,” Haley wrote in response to Ramaswamy. “We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

Elon Musk, who will also co-head DOGE, wrote in an X post later Thursday that “bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent” is “essential for America to keep winning.”

“This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA,” Musk said. “Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.”

Have a news tip? Contact Kristina Watrobski at kwatrobski@sbgtv.com or at x.com/kbwatrobski.