Vivek Ramaswamy demands BuzzFeed hire Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson, Charles Barkley and Aaron Rodgers

Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants Buzzfeed to hire the likes of Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson, Aaron Rodgers and Charles Barkley to help turn around the struggling news site’s fortunes.

Ramaswamy, who recently disclosed an 8.3% stake in the failing media company, fired off a letter on Monday to BuzzFeed’s board demanding that the company slash jobs, appoint three new members to its board of directors and give more prominent roles to conservatives so as to embrace “greater diversity of thought.”

Shares of BuzzFeed, which is listed on the Nasdaq, soared by around 20% last week after it was learned that Ramaswamy took an activist stake in the company.

In his letter, Ramaswamy criticized BuzzFeed for several moves that fed into public “distrust of the media,” including its decision in 2017 to publish a dossier by ex-British spy Christopher Steele that contained salacious and unproven allegations against former President Donald Trump.

“Distinguish yourself from competitors by openly admitting your past journalistic failures and redefine BuzzFeed’s brand around the pursuit of truth,” Ramaswamy wrote in the letter.

Jonah Peretti, the founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, claimed in a written response that Ramaswamy held “fundamental misunderstandings” about BuzzFeed’s business operations, adding that Buzzfeed was “definitely not going to issue an apology for our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism.”