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[0] The 2024 presidential field is rapidly expanding.
[1] One of the first to jump into the Republican ring comes from the business arena, and he's bringing a message that he says we'll see his party winning in a landslide.
[2] I am all in on the America First agenda.
[3] Believe me, I'm an America first conservative.
[4] I will not apologize for it.
[5] But to put America first, we now need to rediscover what America is.
[6] And that is why last week I announced my run for you.
[7] President to deliver a national identity that we are missing in this country.
[8] In this episode, we talk with Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramoswamy as part of a series of interviews with the 2024 contenders.
[9] It's Sunday, July 9th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[10] Joining us to discuss the reason he's throwing his hat into the presidential ring and his platform and vision for the country is entrepreneur Vivek Ramoswamy.
[11] Welcome.
[12] So Vivek, you have a successful career you've launched Strive, Ascentia.
[13] at management, you're working outside the system to fix the country.
[14] Why launch a presidential campaign?
[15] Yeah, so to be honest, for the last couple of years, I have been focused on the merger of state power and corporate power, the cynical forces behind the scenes that are propagating cultural poison in America, from climateism to COVIDism, to gender ideology, to, you know, to racial wokeism, of course, I've talked extensively about.
[16] But I look myself in the mirror and said, look, if we're being really honest about this, it's not just a top -down scam.
[17] It only, that's part of the story.
[18] It's half the story, but it only works if there's a culture willing to buy up what they're selling.
[19] And that's this national identity crisis we're in, where, you know, our generation, really, every generation in America is so hungry for purpose and meaning right now.
[20] But they lack their sense of purpose and meaning because national identity and faith and family, these things have disappeared.
[21] And I wasn't going to be able to fix that just by.
[22] pointing out the problem, or even by writing books, or even by starting companies like Strive, that I think Strive was the closest I got to do in it through the market.
[23] But I think the right answer, there is no silver bullet, but the right answer has to include a bottom -up cultural revival.
[24] And I thought there was no better way for me to lead that revival, answer the question of what it means to be an American today than by successfully running for president.
[25] And so I think it's in all of the above approach.
[26] I've done this through thought leadership.
[27] I've done this through the market, but if we really want to finish the job, we've got to lead a bottom -up cultural revival in the country.
[28] And I think we're going to do it by hopefully delivering, and I say this without hyperbole, a landslide election in 2024, which I think could be the single most unifying thing for our country.
[29] And I think there's an opportunity to actually do it.
[30] So what would the core of that be, a revitalized American culture?
[31] What shared ideas and identity would you be promoting?
[32] I do think some of it is based on, most of it is based on the ideas in print.
[33] principles that are enshrined in the founding of the country.
[34] But I think there's a cultural component to it too, and also I'll talk about both.
[35] I think the principles are the principle that set America into motion, free speech and open debate as our mechanism to settle questions rather than aristocracy and force.
[36] I think that's basic to the American experiment.
[37] The idea of self -governance over aristocracy, the idea that the people who we elect to run the government ought to be the people who actually run the government, which is absolutely not the case today.
[38] It is a new managerial class, a bureaucracy that runs the show.
[39] That's not what the framers envisioned, and I think that's a big part of what's sucking the air out of American cultural life today.
[40] I think the idea of unbridled meritocracy that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and contributions.
[41] As true is when Martin Luther King said it six decades ago as it is today, and yet we have toxic ideologies implemented through public policies like affirmative action in America that service an obstacle to that.
[42] Truth, rule of law, the basic idea that your first act of entering this country can't be a law -breaking one if you're to be part of America.
[43] These are basic ideas that I think most people in this country, whether they're black or white, or even Democrat or Republican, actually agree with.
[44] And if we can make that clear again, you know, people can't be sure of that anymore because they don't feel free to talk about it.
[45] But if we can break down those conversational barriers, I think we have an opportunity to rediscover that the right, real dividing line in this country is not even between Republicans and Democrats.
[46] It is between those who are pro -American and those who are fundamentally anti -American.
[47] And I think the pro -American movement, I think, wins this in the landslide if we can really frame the election in that way.
[48] I think that's what we're aiming to do.
[49] And I think deliver what Ronald Reagan did in 1980 or even in 1984.
[50] You know, America was in a middle of a national identity crisis in the late 70s and he led our, he led the country through it and out of it.
[51] And that is what I intend to do, starting in 2024.
[52] I think this is one of those moments.
[53] Now, you talked about the bureaucracy and the dangers of a top -down mentality.
[54] One of the things you've said you do as president is to abolish the Department of Education.
[55] Would you do that and what would you replace it with, if anything?
[56] Yes, so I think that there are certain agencies that need to be shut down and replaced with something new built from scratch to take their place.
[57] I've put the FBI in that category.
[58] I think with the Department of Education, I think it needs to be shut down and not replaced because the federal government should not be involved in education, which should be a local, local bottom -up institution rather than something that's imposed top down from the federal government.
[59] But here's an invisible fact that a lot of people don't know.
[60] There's obviously been a lot of attention paid to the rise of wokeism and racial ideology and gender ideology in schools.
[61] A lot of people don't know.
[62] That's actually driven by the federal government.
[63] Because the federal government, when they provide money, that comes with strings attached, that money is like a handcuff that forces these schools to bend the need to that ideology.
[64] So it's not just the school board members that are the problem.
[65] It's school board members that are responding to economic incentives created by the federal government itself.
[66] And they're also tilting the scales.
[67] I mean, we know we have a worker shortage in this country.
[68] But again, a dirty little secret is you get what you pay for, which is our Department of Education shifts the scales in favor of four -year college education for people who don't actually have useful skills versus two -year college education or two -year vocational programs for people who want to be plumbers or welders or carpenters.
[69] You know what?
[70] That doesn't get the same level of subsidy that the U .S. Department of Education provides for four -year gender studies majors sitting on either coast of the United States.
[71] And I think that that's a mistake.
[72] So it's no surprise that that's actually what creates, in part, the worker shortage that we have in America today.
[73] There are a lot of causes for it, but this is one of the invisible ones.
[74] And so what I say is you take that $80 billion that runs through the Federal Department of Education, distribute it to the states.
[75] And you know what, even if that went to poorer school districts, those schools could actually compete with, you know, in the model of school choice, which is now spreading, with private and charter schools across the country.
[76] And that's actually how you revive education bottom up by giving people opportunity rather than trying to do this top down through the federal government.
[77] And just one example of the kind of thing that other candidates have been either unwilling or unable to take on.
[78] This is something that I have a strong view grounded in the Constitution.
[79] I think this can be done by executive order.
[80] That's a controversial view, but it's grounded in my bone deep constitutional conviction that civil service protection, and what they call so -called impoundment prevention protections passed by Congress are unconstitutional.
[81] I know this because I've been a CEO, right?
[82] And so this is, you know, I've been a legal scholar of sorts too.
[83] I've been a law student, but I've also been a CEO.
[84] And take it from a CEO's interpretation of Article 2 of the Constitution, which says that if somebody works for you and you can't fire them, that means they don't work for you.
[85] It actually means you work for them.
[86] And I think that's not what the framers said into motion.
[87] And I think the current Supreme Court will likely agree with my view on this.
[88] such that we can codify this through not only my executive action, but injudicial president, precedent to make sure that no future president has to actually be a slave of the managerial bureaucracy and federal government.
[89] And Donald Trump, you know, I think in recent days after I've pounding the pavement on this, I'm glad to see yesterday.
[90] I saw an article last night saying that he's now calling for the abolition of the Department of Education too.
[91] I think we're going to see a lot more of that from him, from DeSantis, from others in this race.
[92] We're already seen it from the two of them, you know, taken – and I'm happy about this, but taking the ideas that I've led with and, you know, echoing them.
[93] That's a good thing, because actually it's not about claiming these ideas as my own.
[94] It's about a national revival, and the more of us that are actually talking about it, the better.
[95] But I think that, and it is my expectation.
[96] I think it's our core campaign strategy here is that the voters next year will select the person who led the way this year in defining the agenda.
[97] And bluntly, even though we're coming in as an outsider with, you know, not some of the name ID that the leaders in this race have, I think that that is going to be our competitive advantage that propels us to the win.
[98] You mentioned affirmative action and also the power of executive orders.
[99] We've just seen an executive order from President Biden mandating equity and all the federal government departments.
[100] How would you handle the issue of equity and affirmative action in your administration?
[101] I think we're done with it.
[102] And I've been very clear about this.
[103] Actually, I launched with an op -ed in the Wall Street Journal the day we announced, I was expressly clear.
[104] I will end affirmative action as U .S. president.
[105] because you know what, it came into existence by executive order under Lyndon Johnson.
[106] Executive Order 11246 is what introduced the idea of racial quota systems for anyone who does business with the federal government and other categories too.
[107] If it started by executive order, it can end by executive order.
[108] And frankly, I'm a little disappointed that other Republicans haven't stepped up to the plate and done it.
[109] Every one of the Republican presidents, since Johnson could have done it, they didn't for fear of political backlash.
[110] I don't have that fear.
[111] To the contrary, one of the first things I'll do, and this one's easy.
[112] I could do it on day one.
[113] Just cross the line.
[114] Take the pen and cross the line through that executive order and unshackle America from the real systemic racism that holds Americans back today.
[115] This form of de facto racism in the form of race -based quotas in our toxic system of affirmative action.
[116] And it's an easy thing, again, that I think a president can do, I will do, I intend to do, if I'm elected.
[117] But very few other Republicans, if any, I'm not aware of one other Republican who's ever run for president, who's actually been that expressly clear about it because they dance around these touchy subjects.
[118] you're not supposed to talk about, from affirmative action to climate change, to the use of military force to decimate the cartel that are responsible for the fentanyl crisis in America.
[119] These are things most Americans agree on.
[120] And I think we need leaders, including a leader in the White House in 2024, who's unafraid to take it on.
[121] And Republican or Democrat, I don't see that, which is what pulled me into this race.
[122] And this is just the beginning.
[123] And so, you know, I hope we talk more through the course of this, but that gives you a taste of how I'm thinking about things.
[124] Final question.
[125] You've mentioned freedom of speech as being core to your guiding principles.
[126] How is president can you actually promote a sense of free speech?
[127] So I think there's a lot we can do.
[128] I think that actually the real threat to free speech comes today through a hybrid of state power and government power that is more powerful than either one alone.
[129] Unlike other conservatives, I don't call it big tech censorship anymore.
[130] I call it what it is.
[131] It is government tech censorship.
[132] And I think that the first thing a president of the United States can do is to instruct the managerial bureaucracy to stop pressuring private companies to do through the back door, what they can't get done through the front door.
[133] And that's a rampant practice today.
[134] And so kind of like Elon Musk did at Twitter, where he released the so -called Twitter files.
[135] As president, I will mandate the release of what I called the state action files, which is to say any instance in which a federal bureaucrat over the last five years, pressure to private actor to do what the government could not legally do.
[136] That is a, you know, I think that is going to be a big log to roll over.
[137] We'll see what crawls out.
[138] It will not be pretty.
[139] But I think transparency and sunlight is the first step to a solution.
[140] I've also called for political expression to be enshrined as a civil right in this country, right, alongside race, sex, national origin, and religion.
[141] And I think that you can't have it both ways to say if those are protected classes, you can't leave political expression off the list when everything under the sun is otherwise on the list, too.
[142] That actually creates the conditions for viewpoint discrimination while leaving viewpoint discrimination unprotected.
[143] And I've got to tell you, I'm just scratching the surface here, because this is a short conversation.
[144] But as you can tell, I think that what we needed in the White House, I think, is we live in complicated times.
[145] The threats to liberty are not exactly what they were in 1980.
[146] It's not just big government.
[147] And you need a president who first personally understands these issues, bone deep understanding and conviction rather than just doing what someone else told them to do.
[148] And I think that over the course of the next year, people are going to get a sense that that's exactly where I am on this.
[149] And that's what compelled me to join this race.
[150] And, you know, I think it'll be up to the voters to decide who that person is.
[151] But I think that my advice to them would be picked.
[152] the person who has a first personal, original understanding of these issues that's deep and that's unafraid to take them on, not in a performative way, not just about pummeling the other side into the ground.
[153] That's easy to do.
[154] The hard part is actually offering an affirmative national vision of identity.
[155] Pick the person who's doing that the best, and I think we're in this race already, you know, less than two weeks in, leading the way on that front.
[156] Well, Vivek, thank you so much for talking with us today.
[157] That was Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and this has been a Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.
[158] Thank you.