00:00:03.000This is one of my favorite conversations I've had in recent memory.
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00:01:59.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:02:08.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:22.000No, I want to make sure you know that.
00:03:24.000And it's out of respect for the, it's out of respect.
00:03:27.000Charlie is the one who lobbied me, but it's out of respect for the people who are here because I've been here before and I know patriots who love this country, especially people from the next generation, who our party in the Republican Party, which I increasingly cannot stand, writes off as somehow an undesirable population to actually go after, are the people you're drawn here.
00:03:48.000And so I was important right now, but if we're talking about the future, you know, the people here give me energy, man.
00:04:12.000Vivek, you changed all the, let's just say, debate norms when you went up on stage and you said that, by the way, Rana Romney should resign as RNC chair.
00:04:32.000She said that I wouldn't, and in many ways, she, it's a funny funny thing about her.
00:04:35.000She accidentally proves my point by literally that night saying that I won't get another cent of funding from the RNC, which is like, okay, I'm fine with that.
00:04:45.000That doesn't affect me one way or another.
00:04:47.000But it proves the point that the people in charge think of the money that they're collecting as donations as though it's their money.
00:05:30.000Hire the best and brightest, and the average person off the street in a weekend like this when you've got good people walking around in Phoenix would do a better job.
00:06:19.000But it lives in every sphere of our lives, right?
00:06:22.000The HR department at every major company, the associate dean of God knows what at some public university, or even within the Republican Party itself, right?
00:06:33.000It is the swamp, the managerial class that runs even the Republican Party itself.
00:06:38.000And so even if it's not Rana, you don't want Rana 2.0, right?
00:06:42.000In the same way, if it's not Christopher Wray, you don't want James Comey 2.0.
00:06:46.000And so we've got to be careful, even in our, and this particular individual irritates the heck out of me too, but not to make it about one individual, it's a machine.
00:06:55.000And that's what we actually got to take aim at.
00:06:57.000Yeah, and so I want to just pinpoint this for a second because Vivek, you and I have some similarities, right?
00:07:05.000And we have a little bit of a different political perspective in the sense that there's a lot of urgency for both of us, right?
00:07:12.000We're both husbands, we're both fathers, and we can kind of see things cross-generationally.
00:07:16.000And I think that's one of the reasons why Turning Point is growing the way it is right now, where I really sense, I have such agreement with people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s where they remember America that was dead.
00:08:03.000They think things are going really well.
00:08:05.000You got to know you're in a war to win one.
00:08:07.000I mean, the first basic step, if you're in the middle of a war on a battlefield, but you don't know that you're on that battlefield, you have no chance of winning.
00:08:53.000And this is one of the things I actually want to do in the next phase of this race, and I've been trying to do this year: what are the cardinal principles of our America First movement, right?
00:09:06.000This is a movement that lives, it's bigger than one man.
00:10:11.000You've heard me talk about this all throughout the year, and time is running out on this great dollar-for-dollar match.
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00:12:22.000And I think that that's part of why, thank you for saying that, Charlie, but I think it's part of why in the early phase of this race or the first six months or whatever this year, they didn't mind, right?
00:12:31.000I think that, okay, there's a, you know, yeah, young guy, check some boxes for us.
00:12:36.000But when we actually started to, you know, get traction, end up on the debate stage, start that first debate near the middle of the debate stage, that's really when the gloves came off from the establishment.
00:12:47.000They had an anaphylactic reaction to my presence in this race.
00:12:51.000The good news is I don't report to them.
00:12:52.000And the sad part is it does take somebody who can avoid the mother's milk of politics, which is other people's money, to be able to do this.
00:13:01.000But you have a lot of small dollar donors.
00:13:03.000Oh, small dollar donors have lifted this up.
00:13:28.000I think the super PACs are a cancer on American politics.
00:13:31.000And one of the things I've seen is it's far worse than you'd imagine.
00:13:37.000I mean, I think every one of these politicians is dancing to the tune of their biggest donor.
00:13:42.000And I think it helps to have somebody whose biggest donor is me by dollars, but by numbers, is actually lifted up by, you know, hundreds of thousands of small dollar donors.
00:13:50.000And I think that that's something that's been the character of this campaign and hopefully becomes more the character of our movement.
00:13:56.000So I want to just kind of, I've never told you this, but, you know, and I want you guys to understand, Vivek writes this book, Woke Inc., and Vivek is a darling of like the billionaire class in Palm Beach.
00:14:18.000And I would say that probably half of the billionaire elite in that Palm Beach area, they no longer give us money because we're too conservative, we're too radical, and all that sort of stuff.
00:14:29.000And it was amazing to see Vivek, how some of them, I'm still friendly with a lot of them, right?
00:14:34.000That you were, at the beginning, they were super high on Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:14:39.000And then all of a sudden, now they're super low.
00:15:00.000I mean, even for me, it's been a journey, right?
00:15:03.000So I was a biotech CEO three years ago, right?
00:15:06.000And if you told me, I said this to CNN the other day, I mean, if you told me three years ago that January 6th looked like an inside job or government entrapment, I would have said that was crazy talk.
00:15:39.000Take the position I am on Ukraine, that we shouldn't give another dime of support to Ukraine because this war doesn't advance American interests.
00:15:45.000And so my experience, this was interesting, was when I wrote Woke Inc. A few years ago, so when George Floyd died and I refused to bend the knee to BLM as every other CEO was supposing to do, I thought I was hitting the third rail of American politics by going on the crusade against wokeness.
00:16:02.000And it felt like it, because I did take criticism from the left and otherwise, but I was wrong.
00:16:06.000Actually, that was a safer space to be in than to go after the real deep sickness in our country, which is a permanent establishment,
00:16:17.000sort of a permanent state that has objectives that are deeper than woke or not, mostly related to foreign policy and a national security overreach, and I would just say a national security overreach here at home that has lied to the people from everything from 9-11 to what happened on January 6th.
00:16:36.000So to build this out, guys, is that in traditional Republican politics, there is this three-legged stool of sacred cows that you don't talk about, which is we're allowed to spy on as many Americans all the time, no matter what, and you cannot ask any questions.
00:16:53.000Number three, we're going to have wars every 18 months.
00:17:49.000And the wokeness ends up being a distraction, actually.
00:17:52.000And here's what I'm getting at, though, is, and you guys understand this, if you want to find a candidate who actually is ready to blow up the establishment as Donald Trump and Vivek aim to do and continue to go and do it, it's about these issues.
00:18:06.000The administrative state spying on the permanent bureaucracy, who runs the country, the foreign policy stuff.
00:18:12.000And Vivek, like 20 years ago, like conservative world was not where it is now on the foreign policy stuff.
00:18:18.000It's moved dramatically, which is why don't we represent our own country before foreign countries?
00:18:48.000So, because I think it's part of an ideology.
00:18:50.000I mean, even this idea of the great replacement theory, these words you're not supposed to say.
00:18:58.000I generally believe people and take them at their own word when they say what they're saying.
00:19:02.000This has been a stated objective for much of the left, which is the idea that a lasting path to electoral majorities is to just change the underlying numbers in your favor.
00:19:12.000Now, the funny thing is after the third, the fourth debate, whichever one it was, I'm going to be able to do that.
00:19:19.000I mean, you know, I like to keep things pretty fluid and not overly prepped on that stage.
00:19:24.000But afterwards, we get off, I'm talking to this woman at CNN.
00:19:27.000And she's hitting me hardest for pushing this anti-Semitic, has nothing to do with Jewish anti-Semitism or anything else, for saying about the great replacement theory being a theory of immigration.
00:19:36.000And so we're sparring for about eight minutes.
00:19:38.000And I cite for her Joe Biden, Maorkas.
00:19:41.000You could go all the way to Stacey Abrams, to much of the Democratic Party.
00:19:44.000And then immediately it flips to say, well, I'm not going to use the word, but suppose what you're saying, suppose that were true.
00:19:51.000Why is it so, why is that such a bad thing?
00:19:54.000This is the Michael Anton thing, which is amazing.
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00:21:29.000I mean, you go from critical race theory in the schools to sort of even more important and foundational issue, this question of the great replacement theory.
00:21:37.000I would say let's at least get to the place, I think this is a win for the country, where if somebody earnestly believes that it is indeed a good thing for the country to pursue policy X, whatever that is, mass migration, including illegal migration to change the electoral composition of this country, but at least they honestly own that, and then we can have a debate about the policy merits of it.
00:22:00.000But where we are today is somewhere else, which is to say that if you describe what the other side has offered as their own stated policy objective, but do it as somebody who disagrees, then you're a conspiracy theorist, a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe censored from being able to have that debate on social media or in polite company.
00:22:58.000And I think we're going to, you know, when you have, as I often say, if you have a people of sheep that breeds a government of wolves, that's in many ways what the Second Amendment's about.
00:23:07.000But we don't have to stay a people of sheep, but it's going to take in burned enough times we have been to now wake up and say, I'm hungry to see it differently.
00:23:18.000And I'm even seeing many people who would have considered themselves to be formerly liberal, especially amongst young people and otherwise.
00:23:24.000I mean, you go to college campuses, Charlie.
00:23:27.000It's not what it was, what people assume it to be.
00:23:31.000You know, the people who have the culture of fear that are told to shut up, sit down, do as they're told, that are sick of being told to shut up, sit down, and do as they're told.
00:23:38.000And I think we're on the cusp of something potentially big happening here, but it's going to take more people willing to step up and be courageous.
00:23:45.000And what you'll notice is that when you do, you're going to find other people picking up on that cue far more readily than you expect.
00:23:53.000It just takes more of you when you're the only person in a room who believes what you do.
00:23:58.000For God's sake, stand up for now more than ever and say it.
00:24:02.000And you will find that there's going to be other people in that room who believed what you did too.
00:24:56.000We are living through a cultural revolution.
00:24:59.000And one of the ways that we defeat them is just enough of our best and our brightest, like Elon, like you, like PBD, like Tucker, go that extra step, the step you're not supposed to go.
00:25:15.000I think it could take 20 or 30 people that could move this whole thing.
00:25:19.000I don't think it has to be, I mean, obviously the grassroots, but the 20 or 30 people that then can change the instrument of X and change the ability to speak.
00:25:36.000I think that actually you're seeing, I think historically you've tended to have people who have been the most, whatever, innovative American entrepreneurs or whatever, historically lean left, but not joining and harnessing their innovation to advance a left-wing agenda.
00:25:51.000Here, what we're seeing is the opposite is I think we're seeing, again, the beginning of what you call that awakening.
00:25:57.000Some of the most talented people who feel a sense of purpose now to say, what the hell is the point of it all?
00:26:05.000Yes, if you're not going to actually use the short time that you're given to use the skills for betterment.
00:26:10.000There's only so many three-week vacations in Paris that you could take.
00:26:38.000And I think we're starting, and this is a good trend, is the people that don't have to fight are now getting into the arena and saying, honestly, there's more important things in life than comfort and money.
00:26:49.000And we've been, you know, I think I was initially, there's two ways you can do this if you're successful.
00:26:54.000And for me, part of this has been trying to be philanthropic or otherwise.
00:26:58.000But there's an element of this that you can't be a bystander watching from the sidelines.
00:27:04.000I actually have stopped being a donor to major Republican Party-oriented stuff, though for a while I was trying that.
00:27:09.000You know, donors to other causes, that's a good way to move the needle.
00:27:13.000But I think it's just going to be each of us looking ourselves in the mirror and asking ourselves, how can we use the unique gifts that God has given each of us?
00:27:22.000Every person in this room has a unique God-given gift.
00:27:28.000I think one of the hardest things in life is finding and figuring out what that is.
00:27:33.000But once you do, then you have a moral duty to use that God-given gift in whatever way you possibly can to, I believe, better this country in the short time you've been given.
00:27:47.000I like that gentleman's pants, red, white, and blue.
00:28:01.000exactly traditionally the same Christian faith that most U.S. presidents have espoused when running.
00:28:07.000Still the same shared value set that I was raised in.
00:28:11.000But in many ways, it was my faith that led me to take this step, which is my belief that God puts us here for a purpose, and we have a moral duty to realize that purpose.
00:28:27.000And I think that that's deeply consistent with the Judeo-Christian vision that this nation was founded on.
00:28:34.000But the more we revive that sense of faith in this country, the more I think you're going to see people like Elon, like Patrick, like Tucker.
00:28:41.000I'm not going to say like myself, but like many of us to step up to actually do our own unique work.
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00:32:19.000I'd say the other thing is this is going to be the hard, the flip side of this is going to be hard for conservatives, and I'll tell you why.
00:32:26.000I mean, it's even the word of conservative, it's in the part of our nature is to conserve.
00:32:32.000What happens when the thing that you're conserving ceases to exist?
00:32:39.000We then require creators, actually, to recreate that which we have lost.
00:32:46.000And I think that's why you're seeing the Elons and the Patricks of the world.
00:32:56.000I mean, Jefferson invented the swivel chair.
00:32:58.000Benjamin Franklin invented the Franklin stove, bifocal spectacle.
00:33:02.000He invented a remedy for the common cold, for God's sake.
00:33:05.000These are the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
00:33:07.000And so there's moments, you know, you'll have the Reagan Revolution.
00:33:10.000It's not really a revolution, really, right?
00:33:13.000It's a basic preservation and housekeeping function.
00:33:16.000That's not to take away from the importance of what happened in the 1980s.
00:33:19.000But we live in a different moment where I think that the very ideals that we seek to conserve, when those have disappeared, I really mean we live in a 1776 moment where it's on us to revive that.
00:33:32.000And that's going to take creators and historically conservatives haven't had the emotional or skill-based orientation to be the people who create.
00:33:41.000So that's going to be the challenge and the work we have cut out for us is we have to step up and create that which has been lost.
00:33:48.000But if we do, and I think we're on the cusp of doing it, we might just have something that's even greater than the country that we grew up in.
00:33:56.000But it's not going to happen automatically, but that'll be, I think, the closest version of optimism that I'll leave you with, which is not a fake optimism, but an optimism grounded in what's at least possible if we step up and do our jobs.
00:34:10.000Let me build on that before we get Vivek on stage.
00:34:30.000Now, you might say, well, these business leaders are liberal.
00:34:32.000They don't build them on left-wing values.
00:34:33.000They use our value system to build it, or they inherit it, and then they use the other value system, and it goes down.
00:34:40.000Their value system cannot, because it has the lower parts of humanity, is what they believe in, which is greed, resentment, bitterness, complaining.
00:34:52.000Our value system is gratitude, joy, purpose, enlightenment, spirituality.
00:34:58.000And so the founding fathers were at a much higher spiritual level, which is why they were able to found something, right?
00:35:57.000Charlie or myself or Musk or Trump or anybody else doing this single-handedly.
00:36:04.000In our civic realm, maybe different from our spiritual realm, but in our civic realm, it's not somebody coming from on high from the White House to save us.
00:36:27.000Charlie is going to do his, but we each do our part.
00:36:30.000And then I think it's possible that our country's best days, not in some cheesy, you know, fake kind of way, but in a true way, our best days, I think, can be ahead of us.