In late November 2025, a rumor spread that Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, had made a video proposing that children in the state go to school year-round and until 4 p.m. as a remedy to expensive child care. Some people said the video couldn’t be real but must have been generated with artificial intelligence.
For example, conservative commentator Tim Pool claimed on X that a Democrat had circulated this video as a way to attack Ramaswamy (archived):
Gabe Guidarini, an Ohio field representative for Turning Point USA, said on X (archived) that politicians who circulate AI video to attack their opponents should be fined.
A Democrat running for governor, Amy Acton, did share a seven-second video of Ramaswamy purportedly making this policy proposal (archived):
Ramaswamy said in the clip:
Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going until four o’clock instead of three o’clock so you don’t have to pay for child care.
Snopes could not see the original video directly, therefore we have left the claim unrated. We reached out to Ramaswamy’s campaign asking whether this was a proposal he was considering for Ohio and will update this report should we receive a response.
A search revealed a 41-second video, apparently taken from TikTok, on the Daily Beast website. Addressing Republicans, Ramaswamy lists various proposals to make life more affordable. He is heard saying those words at the 25 seconds mark, preceded by the sentence “I’m a dad.”
At the end of the video, Ramaswamy says, “Bring down electric bills, bring down housing costs, make health care more affordable and make parenting a reality. That’s how we win this thing, let’s go get it done.” A number of social media users shared that same video.
The Columbus Dispatch, an Ohio newspaper, reported on Nov. 25 that Ramaswamy had “floated” the idea of year-round schooling to deal with childcare costs.
Snopes found nothing in this video to indicate it was a so-called deepfake or made using AI technology. A search for this 41-second video on Ramaswamy’s official social media accounts (X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook and TikTok) showed he had posted — on all of those feeds — a video of himself (archived) wearing the same suit and tie and saying the same things before and after the year-round school proposal. The video, captioned “How to ACTUALLY make life affordable,” was 24 seconds long.
Here are the two quotes Ramaswamy said in the longer video that were missing from the 24-second one:
I’m a dad. Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going until four o’clock instead of three o’clock so you don’t have to pay for childcare.
[…]
Bring down electric bills, bring down housing costs, make healthcare more affordable and make parenting a reality.
This shorter video led some users to claim (archived) he had deleted the longer video, edited it to remove the quote about year-round schooling, and reposted it. Some said on Nov. 25 that he had changed the video on most of his accounts, but that it remained visible on Threads (archived).
Further searching for a longer video on Google brought up one result that was still indexed, but directed to a TikTok page that said “this video is unavailable.” The date on the Google search showed it was posted “two days ago” as of this writing, or Nov. 24, 2025. An archived link for this video showed it had once existed, suggesting it had been removed from TikTok. The Google result said the missing video was also captioned “How to ACTUALLY make life affordable” and appeared on Ramaswamy’s feed:
(Google Search / TikTok user Vivek Ramaswamy)
This Google search result gave credence to claims that the video in which Ramaswamy said children in Ohio should go to school year-round was authentic and had been deleted. We contacted Ramaswamy’s team and await a response.
