The Charlie Kirk Show - Vivek Ramaswamy Has Fresh Ideas and He’s Running for President

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, a full hour with the presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is running for the presidency.

00:00:06.000 Do not underestimate him.

00:00:08.000 He is incredibly articulate, interesting.

00:00:10.000 I think you'll learn something, and I'd love your thoughts.

00:00:12.000 What do you think of him after you listen to this episode?

00:00:14.000 Email me freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:17.000 Make sure you're subscribed to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast and thank you for supporting us.

00:00:22.000 As of the recording of this episode, we are the number one podcast on Apple News.

00:00:27.000 That is a conservative.

00:00:29.000 So thank you for that.

00:00:30.000 Thank you, Diane, for supporting us at charliekirk.com slash support from Arizona.

00:00:34.000 Donna from Alabama.

00:00:36.000 Thank you.

00:00:37.000 Kathleen from Florida, charliekirk.com slash support.

00:00:40.000 Molly from Illinois.

00:00:42.000 Michaela from Texas.

00:00:43.000 Mike from Arizona.

00:00:45.000 Grace from California.

00:00:47.000 Allie from Kentucky.

00:00:49.000 Chris from California.

00:00:51.000 William from Illinois.

00:00:53.000 Stephen from Pennsylvania.

00:00:55.000 And Andre from California, charliekirk.com slash support.

00:01:00.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:01.000 Here we go.

00:01:02.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:04.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:06.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:09.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:13.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:14.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:15.000 His 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.

00:01:23.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:32.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:35.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.

00:01:44.000 Everybody running for president, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you are welcome on this show.

00:01:49.000 We're Trump here, Trump 2024.

00:01:52.000 We've made that clear.

00:01:53.000 But anybody running for office, we want to have a discussion of what do you believe?

00:01:58.000 Why do you believe it?

00:01:59.000 Why are you running for office?

00:02:00.000 We will treat you with respect.

00:02:01.000 We'll give you uninterrupted airtime to make your case to our audience.

00:02:07.000 And someone running for office who I think is super interesting announcement is running on a campaign of ideas.

00:02:14.000 That's a unique concept.

00:02:17.000 He's actually done something in his life.

00:02:19.000 He has successfully started businesses.

00:02:21.000 According to public reports, he's made hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:02:24.000 God bless him.

00:02:25.000 That's the American dream.

00:02:26.000 He's running on an anti-woke agenda.

00:02:30.000 Certainly agree with that.

00:02:32.000 He's lived the American dream.

00:02:34.000 He's extraordinarily articulate, full of optimism and positivity.

00:02:39.000 And he joins us right now.

00:02:40.000 It's Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:02:41.000 His website is vec2024.com.

00:02:45.000 Vivek, welcome to the program.

00:02:47.000 Good to be on, Charlie.

00:02:48.000 How are you doing?

00:02:49.000 I'm doing well.

00:02:50.000 You are running for the presidency.

00:02:52.000 Why?

00:02:54.000 I think we're in the middle of this national identity crisis, Charlie.

00:02:58.000 You and I have talked about it on this show before.

00:03:00.000 We're so hungry for a cause and purpose and meaning at a time in American history when faith and patriotism and hard work have disappeared.

00:03:10.000 That's what allows wokeism and transgenderism and climatism to fill the void. 0.97

00:03:15.000 But I think we conservatives can do better if we fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes this woke agenda to irrelevance.

00:03:26.000 Yes, most people my age, your age, really any age today in America, what does it mean to be American today?

00:03:32.000 You get a blank stare in response.

00:03:34.000 I have a vision on what the answer to that question should be, a policy agenda that backs it up.

00:03:39.000 And I am running for president to revive the ideals that actually set this nation into motion 250 years ago.

00:03:47.000 And with a firm belief that we can't take for granted, but a firm belief that I have that we actually can be one nation again.

00:03:53.000 Not by showing up in the middle and saying, hey, guys, can't we all compromise kumbaya?

00:03:58.000 But to the contrary, by embracing the extremism, the radicalism of the ideas that made America itself 250 years ago in the American Revolution.

00:04:08.000 So that's why I'm running.

00:04:09.000 What is that radicalism and that extremism?

00:04:11.000 Well, these are extreme ideas in most of human history, that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, as Martin Luther King said it, but on the content of your character and contributions, that you have free speech and open debate as our mechanism for settling political questions rather than centralized aristocracy and censorship.

00:04:30.000 How about this one?

00:04:30.000 The people we elect to run the government are the people who actually run the government.

00:04:36.000 That's not the case today, but that was the American way.

00:04:39.000 And you know what?

00:04:40.000 For most of human history, Charlie, in old world Europe and before, that wasn't the norm.

00:04:44.000 We were the weirdos.

00:04:45.000 Okay, we were the weird guys on this side of the pond in 1776 that set that experiment into motion.

00:04:51.000 Turns out it created the greatest nation in human history, known to mankind.

00:04:55.000 Today, we're taught to apologize for those ideals.

00:04:58.000 And I'm running for president, not just to revive those ideals, but with a pretty clearly defined policy agenda to turn that back into reality today.

00:05:06.000 And there's one more piece to it, Charlie, which is that I don't think we have the luxury of time on our side anymore for a lot of reasons.

00:05:11.000 But one of the reasons is the rise of communist China, where if we don't get this right now, we will be subservient to China 10 years from now.

00:05:19.000 It will require some sacrifice to do things like declaring independence from China.

00:05:24.000 I'm the first candidate who's on the record saying we need total decoupling, declaration of independence from China. 0.99

00:05:30.000 That is the true declaration of independence of this century.

00:05:33.000 But I'm also honest about the fact that that will involve some sacrifice, a sacrifice that makes a lot of establishment Republicans upset.

00:05:40.000 But that's what we're going to need to do.

00:05:42.000 But it is my belief that we can make that sacrifice if we know what we are sacrificing for.

00:05:48.000 That is this thing we call America.

00:05:50.000 That is this thing that calls this that we call the set of ideals that bind us together across our different shades of melanin, which is all we know how to celebrate today.

00:05:59.000 So it gives you a taste of how I look at this.

00:06:01.000 I think you're correctly diagnosing the problem.

00:06:04.000 We are in the midst of a national identity crisis.

00:06:06.000 When I ask college students the question I'm about to ask you, they will kind of stare into the distance in confusion.

00:06:13.000 They've never thought deeply about it.

00:06:15.000 So Vivek, let me ask you, what does it mean to be an American?

00:06:20.000 Yeah, what it means to be an American is you believe, first of all, in merit and the unapologetic pursuit of excellence.

00:06:27.000 The American dream isn't just about money.

00:06:28.000 It isn't just about green pieces of paper.

00:06:30.000 It is about the pursuit of excellence itself.

00:06:33.000 It means you believe that the people who get into this country ought to get in this country on the basis of merit.

00:06:38.000 It means the people who get ahead in this country get ahead based on their own hard work, their own commitment, their own dedication, not based on the genetic characteristics they inherited on the day they were born.

00:06:48.000 It means you have the right to express and speak your mind freely as long as your neighbor has the same right in return, that you don't have to choose between speaking your mind freely and putting food on the dinner table.

00:06:59.000 That we're the quintessential nation on earth that allows you to do both of those things at once.

00:07:05.000 That is what it means to be American.

00:07:07.000 And you know what else it means?

00:07:08.000 It means that you don't have to apologize for those ideals.

00:07:11.000 It means you can embrace the view that is grounded in truth, that these are the ideals that form the backbone of the best nation known to, most successful nation on this earth, known to mankind in human history, not having to apologize for it.

00:07:27.000 That too, American exceptionalism, is part of what it means to be American.

00:07:30.000 Why is America exceptional?

00:07:33.000 Yeah, America is exceptional.

00:07:34.000 I mean, we have a beautiful country.

00:07:36.000 There's a lot of beautiful, naturally beautiful places around the world.

00:07:39.000 The thing that made America beautiful was the idea, the set of ideals that set it into motion.

00:07:45.000 And at the top of that list was this idea we call sovereignty.

00:07:49.000 It was this radical idea that the people of this country, the citizens of a nation, could be trusted to sort out their problems, to sort out their differences.

00:07:59.000 Back in old world Europe, they had a division.

00:08:02.000 You had to decide those questions in the backs of palace walls.

00:08:05.000 Church leaders, labor leaders, business leaders had to get together behind closed doors and decide what was right for the rest of society at large because the people could not be trusted.

00:08:12.000 America was born in a different idea.

00:08:14.000 What we said was for better or worse.

00:08:17.000 And by the way, that's a crucial part of the bargain.

00:08:19.000 We got to admit that.

00:08:19.000 For better or for worse, in the short run, that is how we settle our questions on this side of the Atlantic.

00:08:27.000 And I think we live in this 1776 moment where actually the defining political divide as I see it today isn't actually even between Democrats and Republicans.

00:08:35.000 That mostly bores me because, especially on the Republican side, the party label has come to mean nothing.

00:08:40.000 It is a 1776 moment of whether or not you believe in self-governance or whether you believe in aristocracy, whether you believe in the existence of nations or whether you believe in the existence of global governance.

00:08:53.000 Fundamentally, whether or not you believe in America, whether you are pro-America or whether you're anti-American.

00:08:58.000 But there's an optimistic note in that, Charlie, which is this.

00:09:01.000 When you divide up the political boundaries that way, not by Republican and Democrat, but by pro-American and anti-American, and I do think it's important to say that as many times as we can, it is an anti-American agenda. 0.56

00:09:12.000 The numbers work in our favor.

00:09:13.000 Okay, it's not 50-50 anymore.

00:09:15.000 It's like 70-30.

00:09:17.000 It might be 80-20 in the other direction, which actually means that I think 2024 should be a landslide election.

00:09:25.000 I know that sounds like a ridiculous thing to say right now, but I believe deep in my bones that if we make this election about those basic rules of the road, okay, not whether corporate tax rates should be high or low or whatever.

00:09:38.000 Those are details.

00:09:39.000 Different people can disagree about that.

00:09:40.000 But in the basic rules of the road, do the people we elect to run the government actually run the government?

00:09:45.000 Whether or not they're the guy I voted for, and at least better be the guy that somebody voted for, rather than a permanent state that's an aristocracy that actually runs the show.

00:09:52.000 Whether or not we reject the demands of a global climate religion that shackles the United States while leaving nations like China untouched to say that, no, no, we're going to declare independence just like we did in 1776, whether we're Democrat or Republican or black or white.

00:10:05.000 If we make the election about that issue, this is a 1980-style or 1984-style landslide election.

00:10:12.000 You mark my words.

00:10:13.000 And I think that, you know what?

00:10:15.000 2023 shouldn't even be about the question of the who.

00:10:17.000 Okay, we're getting to that too early.

00:10:20.000 It should be about the question of the what and the why.

00:10:22.000 What do we stand for as a conservative movement, as in my language, pro-American movement?

00:10:27.000 Why do we stand for it?

00:10:29.000 If we get that right in the next 10 months, then next year it's up to the voters to decide who's going to be the best standard bearer for that message.

00:10:35.000 I wouldn't be running for president if I didn't think that I was going to do that best job.

00:10:39.000 I think there's a lot of reasons that I believe that.

00:10:41.000 But that doesn't even matter.

00:10:42.000 We can get to that next year.

00:10:44.000 This year is about the what and the why.

00:10:46.000 And if we get that right, we finally revitalize the Republican Party.

00:10:50.000 That's a sideshow.

00:10:51.000 But most importantly, we revitalize this nation.

00:10:54.000 And that is why I'm running for president.

00:10:56.000 Incredibly gifted communicator.

00:10:58.000 You have to acknowledge that.

00:10:59.000 Vivek is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

00:11:02.000 He describes what a lot of people know at their core in a very articulate way.

00:11:10.000 Look, everybody, we're nine meals away from anarchy.

00:11:14.000 You are.

00:11:14.000 Balloons flying overhead, possible EMPs, UFOs, unidentified flying objects being shot out of the sky.

00:11:21.000 Do you have food for your family?

00:11:24.000 If things fall apart, I think there might be food shortages.

00:11:27.000 There might be electromagnetic pulses.

00:11:29.000 You better be prepared.

00:11:30.000 That is the Boy Scout motto.

00:11:32.000 Be prepared.

00:11:33.000 If you go to mypatriotsupply.com right now, you could take advantage of their special new offer.

00:11:39.000 You could stock up on emergency food so you have a fighting chance when things fall apart.

00:11:44.000 So, grab their three-month emergency food kit, and they'll throw in $200 worth of top-quality survival gear.

00:11:51.000 Head on over to mypatriotsupply.com to see all this amazing gear.

00:11:56.000 The gear you'll get, the variety is truly impressive.

00:11:59.000 But best of all, all these items will help you survive when the power grid goes down and you need to fend for yourself.

00:12:04.000 And the food is in the three-month emergency food kit.

00:12:08.000 It's totally delicious.

00:12:09.000 Your whole family will love it, and you'll be the hero who ordered it before it was too late.

00:12:12.000 Go to mypatriotsupply.com and get your $200 worth of top-quality survival gear with each three-month emergency food kit.

00:12:19.000 You order, go to mypatriotsupply.com.

00:12:22.000 That is mypatriotsupply.com.

00:12:27.000 So, Vivek, I'm going to push back just a little bit, and maybe you can clarify on the notion or the argument that America is an idea.

00:12:36.000 Do you believe it's more than an idea?

00:12:38.000 The reason being is if it was just okay, what else is it then other than an idea?

00:12:43.000 I said America isn't just a place, it is a vision of what that place can be.

00:12:47.000 And I think we need to revive that.

00:12:48.000 That's part of what we're missing.

00:12:50.000 I think the question you asked me is: what makes America itself?

00:12:52.000 I think part of what makes America great is the set of ideals.

00:12:55.000 However, you can't be a nation that lives in the clouds.

00:12:57.000 You are a nation grounded around a geographic border.

00:13:01.000 That too is part of what it means to have a nation.

00:13:03.000 Actually, a lot of my policy agenda, Charlie, has been directed head-on at this issue.

00:13:08.000 I mean, you talk about the use of the military in this country, okay?

00:13:12.000 It's still, like you, I'm always open-minded and open to persuasion.

00:13:16.000 But I traveled to the state of New Hampshire yesterday.

00:13:18.000 I'm in Iowa today.

00:13:19.000 I am yet to get an objection from anyone to one of the things that I plan to do as president, which is make a proper use of the U.S. military to, who would have ever thought, protect our own turf and soil.

00:13:31.000 I want to use it to decimate the cartels.

00:13:34.000 The defense establishment doesn't like this for some reason.

00:13:37.000 They do like sending money to Ukraine by the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:13:41.000 For a tiny fraction of that, we can actually defend this place we call our land.

00:13:46.000 And I think that enthusiastically agree with that.

00:13:48.000 So, you would use the U.S. military as president of the United States, you would mobilize tanks and drones and troops and say, we're no longer going to be invaded 8,000 people a day.

00:13:56.000 We're going to do it.

00:13:57.000 Obviously, it's humanely impossible, but we're going to secure our turf from being invaded.

00:14:02.000 Yes, and I want to be very honest.

00:14:04.000 There will be, as safely as possible, for sure, there will be some casualties.

00:14:08.000 You just got to be honest with people that you don't take on an action like that without casualties.

00:14:12.000 But there are casualties today, 100,000 fentanyl-related deaths on our side of the border, 80% of which, probably more than 80% of which, but at least 80% of which is the product of crossings on the southern border, Swiss cheese of a southern border, if we can even call it that.

00:14:27.000 Now, I think that is a national security issue.

00:14:29.000 Republicans sometimes talk about turning them into domestic terrorist organizations and classifying them as not as domestic terrorists, that's Biden, but terrorist organizations for the purpose of freezing their assets.

00:14:40.000 That is too meek, okay?

00:14:42.000 You're not just freeze their financial assets.

00:14:44.000 If they're terrorists, we got to go bin Laden on.

00:14:47.000 We got to go solemani on them. 0.95

00:14:48.000 And I think we can do it.

00:14:49.000 Drone strikes, targeted airstrikes, tactical use of special forces.

00:14:53.000 This is the use case.

00:14:54.000 Now, it's got to be done well.

00:14:55.000 I think it's got to be done in one cycle of shock and awe.

00:14:59.000 If you do it too gradually, it allows one cycle of adaptation and then this becomes harder.

00:15:04.000 I don't want a long-drawn out conflict.

00:15:06.000 I think it can actually be a pretty easy solution delivered in the first six months of a presidency.

00:15:12.000 I certainly intend to follow through on that.

00:15:14.000 There's even an easier way to do it, which is right now, Oberdoor is in the pocket of the drug cartels.

00:15:18.000 I think that is pretty clear south of the border.

00:15:20.000 Okay, it's a failed narco state where the president itself is a puppet of a series of drug cartels.

00:15:26.000 They're their sugar daddy, all right?

00:15:27.000 Well, call them up, show up on the first day, be polite about it.

00:15:30.000 I know they're your sugar daddy.

00:15:32.000 There's a new daddy in town.

00:15:33.000 We're going to need you to do this problem for us.

00:15:35.000 We're going to help you.

00:15:36.000 If you're not going to do it yourself, we're coming in and we're doing it for you.

00:15:40.000 That's what the U.S. military is supposed to do: protect American interests on American soil, not fighting for somebody else's soil somewhere else where there's no actual clearly identifiable American interests.

00:15:50.000 And I just think foreign policy is all about prioritization.

00:15:53.000 For me, the top two priorities are declare independence from China, total decoupling. 0.97

00:15:58.000 I'm on the record.

00:15:59.000 I want to hear the other Republicans say it too.

00:16:01.000 Yes, that involves some short-term sacrifice, but that's what it's going to take to make sure that we have a nation still left 50 years from now.

00:16:08.000 And the second is this radical idea of actually protecting our border.

00:16:12.000 And you know what?

00:16:13.000 If there's one good use case for the U.S. military, it's not to fight a pointless war somewhere else, but actually to use it to protect our border and our soil, because that too is part of what it means to have a nation.

00:16:23.000 Vivek, why is this not widespread public opinion with Republicans?

00:16:28.000 They say we need to kind of get more funding.

00:16:30.000 No, you're saying, no, We want Marines, we want drones, we want tanks, we want missiles.

00:16:35.000 You have just used the W word.

00:16:37.000 You want to declare war on the Sinola cartel.

00:16:39.000 I totally agree.

00:16:40.000 Why is that considered radical?

00:16:43.000 So I cannot explain it to you, Charlie.

00:16:45.000 The defense establishment just believes you cannot say this in polite company.

00:16:48.000 I'm just giving free advice to the other candidates.

00:16:50.000 I traveled to New Hampshire today.

00:16:51.000 I'm in Iowa today.

00:16:53.000 I mean, the people who came into that room in Iowa, in Scott County, where I'm talking to right now, were converted before and after.

00:16:58.000 I got to tell you how many people told me they were like, I didn't, I was skeptical and I'm with you now.

00:17:04.000 The one policy they agree with me, probably top five among any other, is this one.

00:17:08.000 And I think the defensive establishment is uncomfortable with it.

00:17:11.000 I know some people will even have sort of conspiratorial theories saying that there's even capture within the U.S. government.

00:17:15.000 I'm evidence-based.

00:17:16.000 I haven't seen direct evidence of that, but it doesn't have to be hard capture.

00:17:20.000 It can just be soft capture.

00:17:21.000 It's not this hard conspiracy theory.

00:17:23.000 It's what I call emergent conspiracy, where somehow we have this mentality that the only thing you're supposed to use the U.S. military for is something that doesn't directly protect American soil, when in fact, that was the thing that was created to protect in the first place.

00:17:34.000 Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, all far lower priorities than whether or not Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California are being invaded every single day.

00:17:47.000 8,000 people a day.

00:17:51.000 I want to talk about relieffactor.com.

00:17:53.000 I want you guys to check out relieffactor.com, 100% drug-free, knee pain, back pain, joint pain, elbow pain.

00:17:58.000 Check out Relief Factor Energy, help makes your body make nutrients readily available. 0.96

00:18:03.000 Relief Factor Sleep.

00:18:05.000 I know a lot of you are probably having trouble sleeping.

00:18:07.000 Relief Factor Sleep could be the best solution for you.

00:18:10.000 Everybody goes to bed.

00:18:11.000 Not everybody sleeps.

00:18:13.000 We're all about helping people live lives that are filled with connection, exploration, passion, and emotion.

00:18:17.000 That is what his life is all about.

00:18:19.000 Make sure you guys are sleeping well.

00:18:21.000 It's a major part of life.

00:18:22.000 Check it out right now: relieffactor.com, relieffactor.com.

00:18:28.000 Vivek, I want to talk about your affirmative action stance, and then I do want to go through some of the recently surfaced objections, which I know you'll be a good sport to just kind of go through.

00:18:37.000 I actually think it's helpful for you to kind of clear them up.

00:18:40.000 But let's, I do want one of the things that just got me actually applauding, literally, in my living room when I heard it.

00:18:46.000 I was like, did he just say that on television when you were having your interview with Tucker Carlson and you said you're just going to repeal affirmative action via executive order?

00:18:56.000 As Tucker Carlson accurately responded, he said the entire federal government is built on affirmative action.

00:19:03.000 So are you running for the presidency with a promise and a pledge that you are going to eliminate all forms of affirmative action in the government? 0.83

00:19:11.000 Hard yes. 0.97

00:19:12.000 That is a pledge, and I will start on day one because the U.S. president can actually do it.

00:19:18.000 Not a lot of people know this, Charlie, but there's a Lyndon Johnson-era executive order that mandates that anyone that wants to do business with the federal government, and that's read very broadly.

00:19:28.000 It comprises 20% of the entire U.S. workforce has to adopt race-based quota systems. 0.87

00:19:34.000 That is one of the original sins that gives us this race-based woke religion. 0.90

00:19:38.000 And I know this, Steph.

00:19:39.000 I mean, I've been spending the last three years of my life intellectually studying this stuff, going deep.

00:19:43.000 Turns out, not a lot of Republicans want to talk about it.

00:19:46.000 No, it's worse than that.

00:19:48.000 No, they run for the hills, Vivek.

00:19:50.000 Are you kidding?

00:19:50.000 They run for the hills.

00:19:51.000 They run for the hills.

00:19:52.000 So I've pushed people on this.

00:19:53.000 And Charlie, again, it's like the Mexican drug cartel use of military.

00:19:56.000 I don't understand why Republicans hide from this stuff.

00:20:00.000 Every Republican president since Lyndon Johnson could have taken a pen and crossed it out and begin to rid ourselves of this national cancer that has unleashed hell on the American spirit through the actual systemic racism in America today.

00:20:14.000 You want to talk about systemic racism?

00:20:16.000 It is affirmative action in America as we know it.

00:20:19.000 I will tell you, you hold my feet to this fire.

00:20:22.000 January 2025, I'm in that office.

00:20:24.000 Day one, first thing I do, 11246, it's out.

00:20:28.000 And that's the beginning of eliminating race-based affirmative action in every sphere of our lives.

00:20:34.000 I was giving a speech here in Scott County today, okay, to a room that actually had a lot of different looking faces in it, different shades of melanin.

00:20:40.000 I could care less for how people look.

00:20:42.000 It was in the middle of the speech.

00:20:43.000 The whole room is standing up when I commit to making that commitment.

00:20:46.000 Again, free advice to the other GOP candidates.

00:20:49.000 I care about the agenda.

00:20:50.000 Make that commitment.

00:20:51.000 And if you're not, you better explain yourself as to why you're not willing to, because people deserve to be able to.

00:20:55.000 Yeah, I know.

00:20:56.000 I can't wait because, again, every candidate's welcome to my show.

00:20:58.000 I'm going to ask Nikki Haley if she comes on our show, like, hey, are you going to eliminate affirmative action day one by the stroke of a pen? 0.52

00:21:04.000 Be super curious to her answer.

00:21:05.000 I don't kick it with heels.

00:21:06.000 Take her heels and kick affirmative action with heels. 1.00

00:21:09.000 That's what I say.

00:21:09.000 Yeah, I mean, whatever you want to kick it with.

00:21:11.000 And I appreciate your candor, Vivek.

00:21:12.000 You're actually answering questions.

00:21:13.000 It's so weird.

00:21:14.000 I'm not used to that.

00:21:15.000 So, let me ask you, just as a follow-up here, and just to reinforce this, by the way, the idea of going after affirmative action is so unbelievably popular.

00:21:25.000 Every time it goes up on a ballot referendum, people reject racial preferences.

00:21:29.000 It's not who we are.

00:21:29.000 We don't like it.

00:21:30.000 It's not in our DNA.

00:21:32.000 It's this fringe, hyper-radical idea that was put by LBJ, and every Republican is afraid to do it.

00:21:40.000 Now, Vivek, this is interesting.

00:21:41.000 I think one of the reasons why you're so willing to talk about using the military to declare war on the cartels and go after affirmative action is you are not plagued with what I think is one of the biggest issues in American politics, which is white guilt, which is white demography. 0.53

00:21:56.000 You nailed it.

00:21:57.000 Tell me why.

00:21:59.000 So that's what I, I mean, I don't think of myself as the color of my skin or whatever, but in politics, you know, your age, your demographic, these things tend to matter.

00:22:06.000 And so, and so the reality is, I feel uninhibited to say the quiet part out loud.

00:22:11.000 And you know what?

00:22:12.000 Somebody could say it's easier for me to do than somebody else.

00:22:14.000 Maybe it is.

00:22:15.000 Maybe it isn't.

00:22:16.000 I'm just sticking to truth here.

00:22:16.000 I don't really care.

00:22:18.000 But in the commitments I'm making here, you're right.

00:22:20.000 I am a first-generation American.

00:22:22.000 My parents were immigrants to this country.

00:22:24.000 They came legally.

00:22:25.000 They raised actually two kids, both of whom started businesses, both of which went on to help thousands of Americans.

00:22:31.000 We don't apologize for that, but you know what?

00:22:32.000 That allows me to be unapologetic, hard lining.

00:22:35.000 You can't call me racist for saying it when I say that.

00:22:37.000 No, your last name's Ramaswamy.

00:22:39.000 Like them calling you racist.

00:22:40.000 That's kind of DOA.

00:22:41.000 Continue.

00:22:43.000 It's kind of laughable, right?

00:22:45.000 And so, you know, maybe it does make it easier for me to say I draw a hard line on affirmative action.

00:22:50.000 And it's also personal to me, Charlie.

00:22:51.000 I mean, this is not, I didn't poll test any of this stuff.

00:22:54.000 I have no idea how these policies poll.

00:22:57.000 I'm just telling you how I feel.

00:22:58.000 Achievement was actually my ticket to get ahead in America.

00:23:01.000 All right.

00:23:02.000 Just to tell you a little bit of the truth here.

00:23:04.000 I grew up in Southwest Ohio.

00:23:06.000 I was actually okay at sports and basketball and whatnot.

00:23:09.000 But other than that, I was a nerdy kid with funny-looking glasses, funny last name, dad who had an accent, who went to a mostly black public school through eighth grade and then went to a mostly white Catholic high school after that.

00:23:22.000 I was the odd man out.

00:23:24.000 Achievement was my ticket to get ahead.

00:23:24.000 All right.

00:23:27.000 My parents literally, my dad had this corny saying, but it actually held true.

00:23:30.000 If you're going to stand out, you might as well be outstanding.

00:23:34.000 All right.

00:23:34.000 So this is deeply personal to me.

00:23:36.000 And you know what?

00:23:38.000 The assault on American merit based on affirmative action, that is an assault on the American soul itself. 0.92

00:23:43.000 We're talking about what it means to be American.

00:23:45.000 This goes to the heart of what it means to be an American, that you get ahead based on your hard work and your commitment and your dedication, not on your genetics.

00:23:54.000 And so it's also not, the sad part is it's actually fueling more anti-black racism now because there's no better way to cause racism against a group than to take something away from a different group on the basis of the color of their skin.

00:24:06.000 That's exactly what affirmative action does.

00:24:09.000 And again, I'm going to say really clearly: the president can solve this problem.

00:24:13.000 We should not be here.

00:24:15.000 It doesn't require bipartisanship in Congress.

00:24:17.000 The president can do it.

00:24:18.000 The president with a stroke of a pen, we moved the embassy to Jerusalem, right?

00:24:22.000 We did a lot of things.

00:24:23.000 We pardoned people.

00:24:24.000 Trump did some awesome things.

00:24:26.000 This is something that is in need of addressing.

00:24:28.000 All right, Vivek, I'm going to go through just some of the kind of chattering class objections. 0.90

00:24:32.000 Okay, let me start with one that I'm going to personally need clear.

00:24:35.000 I think there's some really silly ones, but you said here that, and I want to make sure I get the quote, the most important step in fighting COVID-19 pandemic was the distribution of vaccines.

00:24:45.000 That's an unpopular opinion running in the Republican primary.

00:24:49.000 What is your position on the vaccine?

00:24:51.000 And what is my position on it today is a key question, Charlie.

00:24:53.000 And I want to say something about this.

00:24:55.000 I'm actually proud, I don't like to brag a lot, but I'm proud of being ahead of the curve on a lot of things over the last few years, from government tech censorship, which was initially rejected as a conspiracy theory when I proposed it, to fighting the World Economic Forum's agenda, stakeholder capitalism, ESG, you name it.

00:25:10.000 I've actually been ahead of the curve now on the climate religion.

00:25:13.000 So I'll take my credit there.

00:25:15.000 I don't like to boast a lot.

00:25:16.000 On this one, I was not number one on this issue.

00:25:19.000 I'm going to admit that.

00:25:20.000 I'm not God.

00:25:21.000 I'm a human being.

00:25:22.000 I follow facts as they emerge.

00:25:24.000 And on this one, I didn't foresee actually the reality as it unfolded.

00:25:28.000 I will tell you this, though, and it's up on my social media now, actually.

00:25:31.000 In 2021, I was on with Tucker Carlson when he asked me about, you know, what do you think about the distribution plan of vaccines based on race-based criteria, as the Biden administration was proposing?

00:25:41.000 I said at the time, this is a powder keg waiting to explode.

00:25:44.000 Imagine if something goes wrong, this would be like Tuskegee all over again.

00:25:48.000 I did say that in 2021.

00:25:50.000 Also, even before, when I was a biotech CEO in 2020, I said there was too much of an emphasis on vaccines relative to treatments for people who were in the hospital.

00:25:59.000 I also put my money where my mouth was by attempting to develop a treatment for people who were in the hospital.

00:26:05.000 And I don't think anybody objects to that if somebody's on a ventilator to try to save their life with a therapy.

00:26:10.000 We didn't emphasize that enough in this country.

00:26:12.000 So those are just true facts.

00:26:14.000 But it's not one of the areas where I was the most ahead of the curve.

00:26:17.000 I think that the facts have changed my mind.

00:26:19.000 Great.

00:26:19.000 So, what is your position?

00:26:20.000 Because you're going to get asked on the trail, right?

00:26:21.000 It's like a top three issue for Republican primary voters.

00:26:24.000 Not just the mandates, but the actual vaccine itself.

00:26:27.000 What is your stance as of today?

00:26:29.000 I think the government did not disclose information that they should have.

00:26:32.000 I think that that has been a form of deception on the American people.

00:26:35.000 It's one more reason why people haven't been able to trust the people in authority and in power.

00:26:40.000 And I think that a lot of us, from President Trump to DeSantis to me in this field, need to admit humility about that fact.

00:26:46.000 I, for my part, I appreciate that.

00:26:48.000 And I mean, I think it was an absolute catastrophe against humanity.

00:26:52.000 And we'll put that issue to rest.

00:26:54.000 You're going to get that question, though.

00:26:55.000 So be prepared.

00:26:56.000 All right.

00:26:57.000 Some of the more, I think, laughable ones against you, Vivek.

00:27:00.000 People are saying that, first, that you are a George Soros guy and part of the World Economic Forum.

00:27:06.000 Want to just nip this one in the bud?

00:27:08.000 I mean, this is hilarious, Charlie.

00:27:11.000 So let's talk about the World Economic Forum one first.

00:27:15.000 I'm just going to give anybody who's going to give this criticism a challenge.

00:27:18.000 Okay.

00:27:18.000 You find somebody in America who has been a more vocal opponent of the globalist agenda of the World Economic Forum and who has actually done something about it in the market than me.

00:27:29.000 I will wait.

00:27:30.000 Okay.

00:27:31.000 If you really pressed me for somebody who I could suggest making that list, Elon Musk would be on the list.

00:27:36.000 Guess what?

00:27:37.000 He shows up on that same website on the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders website that they posted my name on, or Peter Thiel or anyone else they post their pictures on.

00:27:45.000 You want to know why?

00:27:46.000 We know how this game works.

00:27:48.000 The World Economic Forum has a really bad habit of posting people's pictures on their young global leader sites who never consented to it.

00:27:56.000 In fact, they called me.

00:27:57.000 They contacted me.

00:27:58.000 I, as politely as I could, told them, hell no.

00:28:01.000 I stand for the exact opposite agenda.

00:28:03.000 Weeks later, months later, wake up to congratulatory texts from billionaires suggesting that I was a young global leader.

00:28:10.000 And I said, absolutely not.

00:28:11.000 I never agreed to it.

00:28:12.000 And they said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand, Vivek.

00:28:14.000 Here are the people you're going to meet at the World Economic Forum.

00:28:17.000 I chose not to go and I demanded that they actually take it down.

00:28:20.000 I went to them on social media.

00:28:22.000 Actually, the only way to get somebody sometimes is actually to embarrass them publicly, which I did, which eventually led them to take it down.

00:28:28.000 And you could probably find those tweets that eventually I had to put out.

00:28:30.000 Someone was on one of my Twitter threads.

00:28:32.000 They said, Hey, why are you on this?

00:28:34.000 I was like, I don't.

00:28:35.000 They told me they were going to take me off because I never consented to it.

00:28:38.000 Then they tagged them and finally the World Economic Forum got embarrassed.

00:28:41.000 The other one is they say you're a Soros fellow, but I don't know if this is, it's a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

00:28:46.000 Yeah, I mean, let me just, let me just, let me just sort of, this is like hilarious.

00:28:50.000 So I was 25 years old.

00:28:52.000 I was applying to law school.

00:28:54.000 I actually had applied to law school.

00:28:55.000 I got in.

00:28:56.000 There's a fellowship that's not George Soros, it's Paul Soros that funds people who are high-achieving to help pay for graduate school.

00:29:03.000 I won it and I took it.

00:29:05.000 You want to know why?

00:29:05.000 Because I'm smart.

00:29:06.000 Now, in both of these cases, all right, I just want to say something.

00:29:09.000 This is not a criticism of Donald Trump. 0.93

00:29:11.000 I think these would be stupid reasons to criticize Donald Trump, but it does say a lot about these sort of clickbait conservatives that are trying to, I don't know, make a buck for themselves in the process. 0.95

00:29:20.000 Okay. 0.98

00:29:21.000 That was a scholarship when I was 25 years old to pay for law school paid for by somebody who's related to George Soros.

00:29:28.000 Donald Trump took $160 million loan from George Soros to build a building.

00:29:32.000 I don't hold that against him because he knows what he's doing.

00:29:34.000 That's just business.

00:29:35.000 You want to talk about the World Economic Forum.

00:29:37.000 Trump, I think, spoke there.

00:29:38.000 You'd know better than I. In 2018, 2019, he's somebody who, you know, has been involved in various ways.

00:29:44.000 That's okay.

00:29:44.000 I don't hold that against him because if you're Elon Musk or me or Donald Trump or people who have been successful, that's just what you get invited to.

00:29:51.000 The fact that somebody invited you to something is a silly reason, but I think that's a fair response.

00:29:55.000 Clickbaits conservatives are hilarious.

00:29:58.000 I think it's a fair response.

00:29:59.000 And I will defend, though, that some of the people that are asking these questions of Vivek are doing it from a position of, we've been betrayed so much.

00:30:06.000 Okay.

00:30:07.000 We've been betrayed by Paul Ryan.

00:30:08.000 We've been betrayed by Boehner.

00:30:10.000 We've been betrayed by McConnell.

00:30:11.000 And there is a sense of understandable hawkishness, paranoia.

00:30:15.000 Like, hey, we're not going to let this happen again.

00:30:18.000 You do this and that.

00:30:18.000 And then, look, you got to have prudence and you have to always be factual.

00:30:21.000 You cannot allow yourself to get into deception or lies, which is why I'm offering you an opportunity to clarify it.

00:30:26.000 But I also just want to defend, you know, some of the people that are asking these questions, albeit very shaky, it comes from a good-hearted place of like, hey, man, we don't want to get swindled again.

00:30:39.000 That's super fair, Charlie.

00:30:40.000 And you know what?

00:30:40.000 You're going to run for president.

00:30:41.000 You better be prepared to deal with that scrutiny.

00:30:43.000 And people should be skeptical.

00:30:45.000 That's what I would say.

00:30:45.000 I'm new on the scene.

00:30:46.000 You should be skeptical.

00:30:47.000 History teaches us to be.

00:30:48.000 It's a long process for a reason.

00:30:50.000 Let me build the trust with you.

00:30:52.000 And I think that on the other side of it, you'll realize that I'm for real.

00:30:54.000 We're fighting the same fight together.

00:30:56.000 Pick the best guy to do it.

00:30:59.000 So, Vivek, you are a son of immigrants.

00:31:02.000 What is your immigration proposal or policy?

00:31:05.000 Do we have too many people coming into America? 1.00

00:31:07.000 Do we have not enough people coming into America? 1.00

00:31:09.000 Not the illegal.

00:31:11.000 I'm talking about legal immigration, right?

00:31:13.000 So let's just put the border jumping aside.

00:31:15.000 We're obviously in harmony there.

00:31:16.000 What is your legal immigration plan?

00:31:19.000 Because the president has a ton of authority, doesn't need Congress.

00:31:22.000 So what's your plan?

00:31:24.000 I would say intentional immigration policies over accidental ones.

00:31:29.000 We should be unapologetic about who gets in.

00:31:31.000 Meritocratic immigration, a points-based system.

00:31:35.000 Points for both contributions you are likely to make to this country in areas where we need it, as well as your commitment and loyalty to this country.

00:31:44.000 So, I think that's actually really important, too.

00:31:46.000 You want to pledge allegiance to this country.

00:31:48.000 There's so many immigrants who actually do want to be part of this nation in some ways, shamefully, more than people who are many generations into this country who are so apathetic towards it.

00:31:57.000 If we're getting the right kind of immigrants, I'm all in favor of it. 1.00

00:32:00.000 So, if we're getting the wrong kind of immigrants, I'm not intentional rather than actual.

00:32:04.000 Just in the spirit of time, so currently there are 1.1 million green cards issued.

00:32:09.000 What do you think?

00:32:10.000 What are the RAISE Act proposed by Senator Tom Cotton wants to reduce that to about 400,000 green cards a year?

00:32:16.000 What would your number be?

00:32:18.000 So, I don't have a number right now, but I think that that's because focusing on the number is the wrong question first before we've actually decided on the criteria of who we want to let in.

00:32:27.000 So, once you decide on the criteria, here are the people who are actually going to contribute to America's industrial base, which we need to shore up to get economic independence from China. 0.56

00:32:35.000 Here are the people who are going to lead America to be more economically successful while also pledging allegiance to this country, including being willing to serve it, even militarily or otherwise, should the need eventually ever arise.

00:32:44.000 Great.

00:32:45.000 Let's see how many of those people actually line up.

00:32:47.000 And then, out of that falls the question of the number.

00:32:49.000 So, I'm not in this camp of believing that you set a number when you don't have even an idea of who you even want to allow to come in.

00:32:55.000 If that number is zero, then let it be zero.

00:32:57.000 If that number is over a million, let it be over a million.

00:32:59.000 But if it's the right type of people come into the country as Americans in the way that I described and are actually going to contribute to what this country needs, let's figure out that number.

00:33:10.000 I'd say let them in.

00:33:11.000 But the problem is, many, if not most of the people who are coming today, don't fit that stringent description.

00:33:15.000 Day one, what do you do?

00:33:16.000 What are you signing?

00:33:17.000 What are you advocating for?

00:33:18.000 What does day one, hour one, look like?

00:33:21.000 Okay, we already talked about a few of them.

00:33:22.000 End affirmative action right away. 0.52

00:33:24.000 I'm going to do that with the stroke of a pen.

00:33:25.000 Fire people in the federal government, shut down agencies.

00:33:28.000 I went on record in the last 24 hours, shutting down the Department of Education, shutting down a number of other parts of the national security apparatus, committing to actually replace them with something new.

00:33:40.000 Once managerial cancer has gotten so bad, you can't actually reform it.

00:33:44.000 You actually have to shut it down.

00:33:45.000 The other thing I would say is eight-year sunset clauses, where if I'm assuming the presidency and I can't be a federal employee for more than eight years, most federal bureaucrats should not be employees for more than eight years either.

00:33:57.000 Now, they will say that there's congressional provisions that override this.

00:34:00.000 I say no.

00:34:01.000 I believe in Article II of the Constitution, and those statutes and civil services protections are unconstitutional when measured against that.

00:34:09.000 Like Elon did at Twitter, I'm going to release the state action files from the federal government.

00:34:14.000 Anytime in the last five years that a government bureaucrat or a government official pressured a private company to do something that the government actor couldn't do directly, we got to expose that and put sunlight on it and eventually actually press charges on the back of it.

00:34:29.000 Twitter will just be the tip of the iceberg.

00:34:31.000 We're going to roll that log over, see what crawls out.

00:34:34.000 The other thing I'm doing on day one, it's one of these sacred cows.

00:34:36.000 Even if you're a Republican, you're not supposed to touch, is abandoning climate religion in America, the climate religion that shackles America while leaving China untouched.

00:34:46.000 We're going to unleash fossil fuels.

00:34:47.000 We're not going to apologize for that.

00:34:49.000 We're going to deregulate a lot of the unnecessary constraints applying to nuclear energy.

00:34:53.000 It's an American energy revival that rejects the demands of this globalist climate religion without apology.

00:35:00.000 I think as it pertains to social media in this country, think about the depression and anxiety epidemic across this country.

00:35:05.000 The federal government can tell you you can't smoke an addictive cigarette till the age of 18 or drink alcohol till the age of 21.

00:35:11.000 I don't think you should be able to at least use an addictive social media product like TikTok until the age of 15 or 16 either.

00:35:17.000 That's not a partisan proposal, but I think it's something that makes sense when you think about the next generation of Americans and what's actually holding them back.

00:35:25.000 And that's all I'm telling you.

00:35:26.000 And by the way, we talked about the Mexican drug cartel piece of this.

00:35:29.000 I think that's not a day one thing.

00:35:30.000 That's a first three to six months thing.

00:35:32.000 Get that right.

00:35:33.000 Use the military, use military force to solve that problem with shock and awe in one cycle.

00:35:37.000 The fentanyl problem is over.

00:35:39.000 Then we build the wall and we're in good shape.

00:35:41.000 And I'm just giving you, Charlie, even just scratching the surface.

00:35:45.000 That's anywhere between day one and month one on the Mexican drug cartel proposal, the first three to six months.

00:35:51.000 Just a taste of what my administration will look like.

00:35:55.000 I think that the piece of bureaucratic reform, though, is actually probably at the heart of it.

00:35:59.000 Because if you're the executive and you run the show, if someone's working for you and you can't fire them, that means they don't actually work for you.

00:36:07.000 It means you work for them.

00:36:09.000 And today, the president of the United States works for the bureaucracy, whether they're Republican or Democrat.

00:36:13.000 I'm reversing that relationship and making sure that the people who report to me can be fired.

00:36:18.000 Vivek 2024, check out the website.

00:36:20.000 Vivek, thanks so much.

00:36:23.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:24.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:28.000 Thank you so much for listening and God bless.

00:36:33.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 24, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy Has Fresh Ideas and He’s Running for President

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript