When Donald Trump descended the escalator in 2015 to announce his presidential bid, he already had a persona—albeit a distorted one—as a successful New York real estate developer with keen business instincts.

But Trump’s rapidly emerging mini-me, Vivek Ramaswamy, arrived on America’s political stage as a virtual piece of putty that could be molded into anything. And mold is exactly what Ramaswamy has done, shaping his entire identity around what pro-Trump Republicans want to hear.

“[Ramaswamy] is an interesting experiment—he believes none of this,” Dan Pfeiffer, former Obama White House communications director, said in a post-debate breakdown on “Pod Save America.” He noted that Ramaswamy didn’t even vote in 2012 or 2016. “This is some sort of experiment in reverse-engineering a candidacy where you go see what the voters want and then you build a campaign platform to fit that,” Pfeiffer added.