Vivek Ramaswamy： The Path To The Presidency with Michael Knowles
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Summary
Vivek Ramaswamy is an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, the founder of a major biopharmaceutical company, the co-founder of Strive Asset Management, and the author of a couple of books, notably Woke Inc. He s a graduate of Harvard and Yale, and now Vivek is seeking the Republican nomination for President in 2024.
Transcript
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Vivek Ramaswamy is an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, the founder of a major biopharmaceutical
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company, the co-founder of Strive Asset Management.
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He's the author of a couple of books, notably Woke Inc.
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And now Vivek is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024.
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Every presidential campaign has the usual suspects, the governors and the senators and
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And then, every so often, some totally unexpected figure pops up and shakes up the race.
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And this year, that person would be my friend, Vivek Ramaswamy.
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This is my first stop after getting off the CPAC stage here, so that was fun.
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When you first told me that you were thinking about maybe running for president, you know,
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my only thought was, huh, I would have expected he'd wait until 2028.
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I don't even know if you knew that you might run someday, but I did.
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A lot of people do not know who you are exactly.
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The people who do know who you are have been saying, don't write this guy out just because
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This is a very impressive guy who brings in a wealth of knowledge from a lot of different
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So I'm very excited to help introduce you to the rest of the public.
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Now, now that I've been very nice to you, I'm going to be cold.
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I think Thomas Jefferson embodies the founding culture in the United States.
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So I'm a big founding principles guy, for sure.
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Actually, the whole premise of my candidacy, by the way, is reviving the principles that
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This actually should be a really easy election.
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There's hard elections where everyone agrees on the basic principles and then you disagree
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This should be an easy election where free speech, open debate, all the stuff that Thomas
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Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence and beyond, this is the stuff
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And yet we live in this moment where they're artificially fraught.
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But anyway, why is Thomas Jefferson my favorite president?
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It's not just because he wrote the Declaration of Independence and as a, whatever, startup guy,
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as a founder, as a company, you guys built companies.
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That is the best mission statement for a nation ever written, the Declaration of Independence.
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But there was also a founding culture to go along with it, right?
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Now a lot of people know this about him, but he studied Sanskrit later in life.
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He actually, after he left the White House and he would, and these guys, they were also
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He would put it in his letters to TJ because he knew that posterity would read about it.
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He says, oh, if I was to do it again, I would have been a Sanskrit scholar rather than, you
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But they, so there was a little showmanship there, but there was showmanship grounded in
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And I kind of love the showmanship too because it just, it's real in a certain sense.
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And so Thomas Jefferson, he's writing the Declaration of Independence with his hand, but he realizes
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I don't really like the chair I'm sitting in, so I guess I would love this idea of a swivel
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It didn't exist before then, so he just made one.
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He invented the swivel chair to write the Declaration of Independence so that he could actually write
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the great founding document providing the greatest mission statement for not only the United
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States or a nation, but the free world as we know it.
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I think we miss the people who look at somebody else's domain and say, hey, that's for somebody
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And I'm not supposed to do that because I'm not trained versus saying, you know what?
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No one is born with all the knowledge they need to have to do anything.
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And if I'm hungry enough, most things I could probably figure it out.
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And if I feel like doing, I'm going to do it, whether somebody tells me to or not.
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That's part of what we're missing too, is not just the founding principles, but a little
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And the other reason I like Thomas Jefferson from the standpoint of history is that as is now
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all too trite and familiar, I mean, he was a flawed man.
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He was, in a very real sense of the term, hypocrite, life, liberty, and the pursuit of
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Now, of course, this deserves to be talked about.
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Over the last few years, it's been over-talked about because that's all anybody can fixate
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on about an important man's legacy who had much more to him than the worst aspects of
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But he's also a reminder that hypocrisy is only made possible by the existence of ideals.
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There's a reason we can't call, a big part of my speech just now was about the CCP.
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Say what you will about the Chinese Communist Party.
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You can never call them hypocrites because in order to be a hypocrite, you had to have ideals
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You can call Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite because he had ideals.
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And so he's a reminder of not only the existence of ideals, but the fact that we as human beings
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There will be people 250 years from now that look back at us today and say, weren't they
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We just don't know what basis they're going to have for saying it, but it's definitely
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La Roche-Foucault said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.
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I don't use speechwriters, but if I did, you know, a few years from now, if I'm successful
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They've been trying to can me from Daily Wire for years, so that would be a great opportunity.
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Stay in play for another about two years, and then January 2025 we'll talk.
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So speaking of these great men and these great writers and thinkers, which book has most
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I would say Friedrich von Hayek's Constitution of Liberty.
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I think it's an underappreciated work because, you know, people read the summaries of someone
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like Hayek and then they conflate it with like a Nozick or they conflate it with just
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the broader theory of libertarian thought, Austrian economist von Mises.
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And I love all these guys, but they actually had very different and distinctive views from
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Hayek was a cut above because his case for, you know, what is in bastardized form referred
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to as libertarianism, it's so reductionist, I kind of cringe as I even acknowledge that
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But it was really grounded in fundamental human respect, human dignity.
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And so his view was that, you know, I'm going to distill it to sort of a modern practical
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form here, but let's just take the arguments about redistribution or whatever.
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His point would be, look, if the argument for redistribution is grounded in human worth,
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to say that your human worth is tied to the number of green pieces of paper that sit in
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your bank account, that's the basis for making sure everyone has the same equal number of
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You've got it backwards because you're actually committing a moral error.
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You're tying someone's moral worth to their financial worth.
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And that's actually what creates the conditions for rampant mutual disrespect amongst what should
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And so people miss the fact that his case against unbridled merit and excellence in what we would
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call free market capitalism today was grounded not in some economic account, which, you know,
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is maybe better tied to Milton Friedman's tradition, but is actually tied to the basic dignity of
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man itself and the basic dignity of citizens, of nations who are co-equal citizens regardless
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In some ways, the problem is actually the redistributionists are the ones who also commit
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the error of fetishizing the accumulation of paper.
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When, in fact, there's more to life, there's more to human worth, there's more to human
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And so I thought that was, I think, what makes some of his work profound and I think should
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be more persuasive to more people than you would think.
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Speaking of relating to all of our citizens, some of whom we don't always want to relate to,
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what is one issue on which you could see yourself reaching across the aisle?
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And what is one issue on which you could probably never see yourself reaching across the aisle?
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So I got to say one thing off the gate here, out of the bat.
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I don't really care about partisan politics that much.
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So like even this talk of the aisle makes me, you know, recoil a little bit because it's
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I just don't even think Republican versus Democrat is the most relevant political distinction
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I mean, I'm an unapologetic conservative and we can talk about my views, but the Republican
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I mean, the Democratic Party, what does that mean?
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It's sort of designed to shoehorn the real political debates into these sort of artificial
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I think the real political divide in the modern West, certainly in America, but in the modern
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West more broadly is this divide between what I call the Great Reset and the Great Uprising.
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The Great Uprising is the response to the Great Reset, a view that says you have to dissolve
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the boundaries between the private sector and the public sector, between nations, between
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That's a different dissolution of boundaries, actually, between the genders.
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It's all about dissolving boundaries so that the leaders of institutions may work together
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And it's different from the side I'm on, if I had to pick between the two, the Great
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We, the citizens of nations in America, the citizen of this nation, as a citizen of this
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nation, say, we decide in a self-governing democratic republic how we sort out our political
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That's really the divide, the managerial class versus the everyday citizen.
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You know, one way I might frame it as well is between those who are unapologetically pro-American
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and those who are, and I think these exist in America today, those who are fundamentally
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If that's the way I draw the aisle, I'm not reaching across the aisle.
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And I'm not making a concession to the anti-American camp, other than through persuasion, to get
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There's nothing about me that will cause me to reach across the aisle to the Great Reset.
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I am on the side of believing that I'm not a citizen of the globe or a citizen of the
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I'm a citizen of a nation, and I'm proud of it.
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I mean, these things don't even, these words, these are words.
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Of course, there are many issues in which I'll bring a lot of Democrats along with me.
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I mean, I think one of my proposals is to make political expression a civil right in
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To say that if you can't fire somebody or deplatform somebody because they're black or
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gay or Muslim or white or Hindu or Jewish or whatever, that you shouldn't be able to
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fire them just because they're an outspoken conservative.
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I guess theoretically means an outspoken liberal.
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The conservative piece is what's relevant because that's what's happening in America.
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You know, so it would be silly for me to say, but in principle, you know, I would say the
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Today, a lot of the people who stand up to me are sort of federal Democrats that don't
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know the first thing about American history, legal history, when they say, oh, no, that
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When they don't know, it's kind of rather embarrassing to them when they find out that
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actually this protection exists in a good number of states, including and especially blue
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states that actually passed this protection during like the Bush era in California, for example,
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because they were fearful of the expansive, you know, military state under Bush and Dick
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Cheney that they were going to suppress people who wanted to stand up to the post 9-11, you
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Well, they said, no, no, no, we need to give space to those people to have those protections
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And so it sort of proves that that isn't a Republican or Democratic issue, but it's just
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an example of the kind of thing that I'm in favor of.
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One of my, you know, I wouldn't call it a signature policy.
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I just view it as a simple, it's on the list, right?
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Yeah, that one, but I was about to say a different one, which is, you know, look, I think that
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if you can't smoke an addictive cigarette by the age of 18, if you can't have an addictive
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sip of alcohol by the age of 21, I don't think you should be using an addictive social media
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product like TikTok before the age of 15 either.
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You know, even principled libertarians, God love them, but kids aren't the same as adults.
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So there's a lot to sort of my policy perspectives that, you know, transcend the traditional partisan
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You know, call that reaching across the aisle, call it reaching across the aisle, but I don't
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even pay much heed to the traditional partisan aisle.
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I'm an unapologetic, America first, conservative, will not apologize for it.
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But I think that just reciting those slogans means very little until you first rediscover
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You've got at least one supporter for this proposal of banning social media for kids.
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Well, at least that vice sharpens your mind a little.
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Social media, especially if you're a kid, it melts your brain.
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It's designed to melt your brain because it's picking at insecurities.
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I mean, Mark Zuckerberg's core insight, he was a year ahead of me when I was in college
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and, you know, Facebook was invented, if we were to call it that, while I was in college.
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It's designed to prey on your insecurities, right?
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I mean, you're going to click on this versus this faster, gives you a window into your soul
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So we can have that debate about what that means for the loss of virtue amongst adults
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that lends us vulnerable to this kind of algorithmic, you can call it exploitation
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It's their job to fortify themselves in the offline world.
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But for kids, by definition, you haven't formed that moral or psychic foundation.
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And there's a reason why China doesn't allow the version of sexualized dance videos or whatever
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In the Chinese version, ByteDance-operated version of their product over there, it's like,
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you know, they send fentanyl across our southern border in Mexico effectively through
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cheap raw materials that they sell to the cartels.
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If I had to take the analogy further, it's financial fentanyl in the form of national debt.
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But that's a whole separate discussion of our broader addiction to China.
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But bringing me back, even China, actually, I'll go there too.
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I think that recognizing that the CCP is the single greatest threat that America faces
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over the next 30 years, that ought to be a point of bipartisan consensus.
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I think that we need conservatives who are able to, in greater detail, make the case for
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that to the American people, make the case because there's going to be some sacrifices
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We get addicted to everything, from the fentanyl to the digital fentanyl to the cheap stuff.
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But we can make these sacrifices if we know what we're sacrificing for.
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Make sure our children and grandchildren aren't a bunch of Chinese serfs that are somehow citizens
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of some sort of co-equal, bilateral, global governing equilibrium created between the
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United States and China, which is what China hopes for.
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No, they should be the citizens of the greatest nation on earth.
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I think America could use, bluntly, a little less Chamberlain and a little more Churchill.
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And I think that's a big part of the premise for my candidacy is to deliver that kind of vision.
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Speaking of China, President Ramaswamy gets the call.
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So because I think the scenarios are basically different.
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I do think that we have to vigorously protect Taiwan.
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I don't like enmeshing ourselves in foreign wars that don't matter.
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I think we have overspent, and it's a lesson we ought to learn for a long time to come.
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I'd take a fraction of that money and protect our own southern border.
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But the reason Taiwan matters is that, unfortunately, our modern way of life depends on it.
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I mean, the semiconductor chips that power our phones, the semiconductor chips that power
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our refrigerators that kept this water cold before we're drinking it, all of that comes
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from this tiny little island nation off the southeast coast of China.
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And this is a shame that we ever got here, but we are where we are.
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And so if China holds the keys to Taiwan, that's the final step in the long-run bargain
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they've always wanted to reach with the United States, the final coup they wanted to achieve
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in the 50-year game that they played with Henry Kissinger and won without our knowing
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it, which is to say that there's a grand bargain.
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We get your intellectual property, and we'll make your stuff.
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So if the U.S. right now—I mean, we have no reason to accept that bargain.
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Because we can source the stuff from somewhere else, right?
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However, once China's squatting on Taiwan, they can really squeeze the leverage out of
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that negotiation, and then it's a permanent bipolar new status quo.
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I don't think they're quite yet ready to invade Taiwan.
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I don't think they will be ready to invade by the time I take office, should I succeed
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And I think there's things we can do that can pull the economic rug out from under China
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I say defeat them in the sense that the fall of the CCP may not be as far away as people
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Xi Jinping actually did a lot of damage to China over the last year as part of his quest to
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I think there's actually an interesting window here that we might be working within that,
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just like we found out Putin's military capacity was sort of an emperor has no clothes situation.
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Not so much for Chinese military capacity, but even for Chinese economic capacity.
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And remember, the grand bargain between the CCP and the people is at least you take care
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of our material way of life and we'll cede our freedoms to you.
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But that doesn't work if they're no longer supporting the material way of life.
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And so I would go so far as to ban most U.S. businesses from doing business in China unless
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and until the CCP either falls or reforms its behaviors.
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I think our willingness to make that sacrifice, it's not a small sacrifice, probably is the
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single greatest lever to make sure that we never have to make it.
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And so for me, I think that also semiconductor capacity here at home is rising too.
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We do have this little divest to invest thing going on in the U.S. Navy.
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So it's a long story, but we have a divest to invest program where we're decommissioning
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And so our nadir of military capacity in the South Pacific, China's already got more ships
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But our nadir really is kind of going to be in the 2026, 2027 timeframe.
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So I think the window between January 2025, when if I'm successful and I take office, and
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in mid-2026 or 2027, that's the window where we got to pull the economic rug out from under
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China, declare independence from China, decouple.
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But actually, I think the way it's going to play out is that guts the economic fortitude
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And we actually are in a very different situation than we should have been and start to get back
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on the right track that we would have been on had the decisions not been made in 1970s
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I know that's long and complicated, but hopefully some of that made sense.
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And you've partially answered my next question, which is on trade.
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The Republican Party founded on protectionism and tariffs.
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Then for much of the 20th century, certainly the second part of the 20th century, the Republican
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Now the Republican Party doesn't quite know what it is.
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But vis-a-vis China, the reason I adopt policies that align with those advanced by protectionists
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Because I think that this is about China is operating according to mercantilist rules,
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deputizing capitalism, I use capitalism in air quotes, to advance their geopolitical end
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of achieving long-run even military parity with the United States.
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In China, economic policy and military policy are two sides of the same coin.
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We in the West, in the United States in particular, adopt a dualist view that military policy
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is over here and economic policy is over here, but that was what China exploited.
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That was the whole wedge they exploited because they view them as part and parcel of the same.
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And I don't think that we should conflate that with coddling American workers who don't
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Now, I think we also look at a couple other dimensions here.
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One is the dollar as the U.S. reserve, as the reserve currency of the world, the U.S. dollar
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However, that does create some distributive consequences here at home, right?
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So what does the dollar as a reserve currency mean?
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It means there's an extra bid for the dollar above and beyond what would have existed under
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free market conditions where the dollar was not the reserve currency.
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Why do we want the dollar as a reserve currency?
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We can freeze the terrorists' assets on demand, whatever.
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It means, on average, that tilts the scales of U.S. exports costing more to other countries
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So that systematically does disfavor U.S. manufacturers.
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So I think there's some areas where we have to not be willfully blind to distributive consequences
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we create at home from policies that are still good for the nation as a whole.
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And therefore to implement other policies to kind of balance them?
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To make sure that anything that's protecting the nation as a whole, that we don't abandon
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the dollars, the reserve currency of the world, but say that we're in that together and that
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we're not just blind, purposefully blind to the consequences of who's left holding the
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And so I think that some of this case for industrial policy bleeds into and even takes
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support from people like me because I'm coming at it from a very different angle vis-a-vis
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China to marshal support for what could easily devolve into a form of really economic laziness.
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I do think that U.S. competitiveness is in part created by having our feet held to the
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fire and being the best on the planet means that we're actually doing it because we're
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And so vis-a-vis China, what is decoupling from China means it's not going to all be reshoring
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into the United States, although it will involve some of that, but it'll also involve
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looking at, you know, Southeast Asia, India, South America.
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And I think that's got to be all of the above approach because the real objective is economic
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And I use the word enemy intentionally here vis-a-vis communist China.
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But I think that that's something that we can do in a more focused way with respect
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So we're talking about the free flow of goods and services.
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Assuming that you are opposed to illegal immigration and would like to stop that, then there are
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The question is what to do with the people already here.
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Does one provide a path to citizenship, say, for the illegal aliens who are currently in
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And then further, polls have suggested that many, many Americans want to reduce not just
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illegal immigration, but legal immigration as well.
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So when it comes to legal immigration, would President Ramaswamy restrict it, expand it,
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I believe in the use of the U.S. military to protect our border.
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It's a shame that that's a controversial idea, that using our military to protect our border
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is actually the most controversial use of our military when, in fact, using it to protect
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somebody else's border is somehow perfectly fine.
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So I'm what you would call a hardliner on the issue of illegal immigration.
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On legal immigration, I think that we've gotten it wrong.
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We have a policy of accidental immigration when I think we should have a policy of intentional
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Why on earth would you want to leave it to a lottery when you could actually just pick
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Best ones as measured by commitment to the country, likelihood of making contribution to
00:24:34.420
the country based on their track record and even their educational economic position
00:24:39.740
So I believe in meritocratic, points-based immigration.
00:24:45.600
Say someone is skilled at some job and so the company says, we really need this person
00:24:53.140
You said commitment to the country, which would not presumably just be quantifiable.
00:25:01.020
So I think there's this step later on of, first of all, I think we need to bolster the citizenship
00:25:07.260
Not just knowledge, but even enthusiasm, commitment.
00:25:10.180
I think at best, a lot of people grow up and are born as citizens just because they inherit
00:25:14.060
their citizenship and they don't know the first thing about what it means to be an American.
00:25:16.820
Well, a lot of immigrants come to the country today and they're every bit as bad what they
00:25:21.680
No, I think it's got to be somebody who pledges allegiance to that flag and understands the
00:25:26.640
history behind it, understands how we got to where we are, understands what makes America
00:25:32.680
And so I'm big on this idea of revival of citizenship.
00:25:36.180
And what I'm about to say, I say jokingly, okay, it's not a policy that I think we can
00:25:42.440
So these are risky things to say as a political candidate, but I don't care because it's just
00:25:45.720
the kind of thing we ought to talk about openly.
00:25:47.980
I don't hate the idea of pick a sum of money, $50,000, $100,000, whatever it takes for somebody
00:25:53.940
to go make a pretty good life for themselves in some developing nation and God knows where.
00:25:57.520
Take the citizens of this country and say, if you don't want to be part of this country
00:26:01.500
and you never want to come back, the only condition is you never come back.
00:26:08.320
Go make a great life for yourself because if you don't believe in what this nation stands
00:26:14.960
The only thing, then we got to really secure the border because what's going to happen
00:26:17.120
is a lot of them are going to kind of come back and now you've got to make sure we
00:26:20.400
But it's a thought experiment for the kind of nation that I think we need is a nation of citizens
00:26:24.240
who are actually committed to what that flag symbolizes.
00:26:27.520
And I think that immigrants, if we're selecting them in the right way through meritocratic
00:26:31.980
admission, not just through contributions, but through commitment to the nation, I think
00:26:35.280
that can be part of the national civic revitalization as well.
00:26:40.500
You say you don't like the country, be my guest.
00:26:51.160
They say that this country was evil and rotten from the very beginning.
00:26:55.640
Increasingly, a number of people on the right seem to have trouble with patriotism and love
00:27:02.420
of country because they view America as a woke empire that is dedicated, perhaps first
00:27:08.300
and foremost, to spreading, I don't know, transgenderism overseas and that America basically
00:27:19.560
How would President Ramaswamy recultivate this patriotic love of country in Americans
00:27:30.840
This is a cultural tone that we're able to set for the country.
00:27:36.120
The last time America was in a national identity crisis, which was in the late 70s.
00:27:39.500
I'm committed to restoring the ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago.
00:27:47.020
OK, I don't think we achieve national unity by showing up in the proverbial middle, say,
00:27:56.460
OK, if that was ever going to happen, that's not happening today.
00:27:58.340
I think we achieve national unity by embracing, unapologetically embracing the extremism,
00:28:06.980
the radicalism of the ideas that set this nation into motion.
00:28:09.880
Free speech, open debate, unbridled meritocracy, self-governance over aristocracy.
00:28:15.620
These are the things that it really means to be American.
00:28:18.600
A belief in the Declaration of Independence, even if we channel into that Declaration of
00:28:22.460
Independence from China, get that policy in there too.
00:28:24.720
But truth be told, this is what it means to be American.
00:28:28.600
And I think done this way, we actually find the common thread that unites us across our
00:28:40.860
We have a bunch of different shades of melanin here, right?
00:28:42.780
I'm looking at the camera crew, a bunch of us here.
00:28:45.240
Sicilian, it's always been kind of a liminal, racially ambiguous.
00:28:53.380
It is neither beautiful nor our strength unless there's something greater that binds us together
00:29:00.760
Without that, we're really just going through the motions as a bunch of higher mammals,
00:29:04.060
like a bunch of animals roaming across this American plain.
00:29:07.180
Yeah, sure, America's beautiful, but so are a lot of other countries, visually speaking.
00:29:10.240
What makes America actually beautiful, what makes America itself,
00:29:12.880
is the existence of that common thread of ideals.
00:29:16.840
And that's what makes e pluribus unum, from many one, mean something.
00:29:19.900
And I think that a policy agenda that flows from those principles, I mean, what have I
00:29:25.500
pledged to that no other U.S. presidential candidate has ever done, I think, but certainly
00:29:30.400
in this cycle no one's yet done, is ending affirmative action.
00:29:39.680
Lyndon Johnson created affirmative action in America.
00:29:41.840
Any president, including a Republican president, including Donald Trump, could have ended it.
00:29:48.380
They said, well, it's not a political hill we wanted to die on.
00:29:51.420
Maybe it's hard if you're a white guy in the White House to end affirmative action.
00:29:56.520
Well, I don't, maybe it's because I don't care.
00:30:00.920
The heart of climate religion is really apologizing for the success of the modern West and modern
00:30:07.600
But I think that these can actually be unifying ideas.
00:30:10.620
In some ways, these are extreme ideas to some people.
00:30:12.740
But I think it's by embracing the extremism of the ideals that underlie them that will
00:30:16.340
actually unify Americans across the lines of not just identity politics, but even partisan
00:30:21.280
And again, you know, maybe I'll eat my words, but I think 2024 will be a landslide election.
00:30:26.500
And I'm bluntly running because I think I'm going to be the guy that delivers it.
00:30:32.480
I've told people from the beginning, as I mentioned, I said, don't underestimate this
00:30:44.500
And so let's bring that coherence from the national malaise that you're describing right
00:30:51.200
Right now, marriage rates are at or near all-time lows.
00:31:05.000
What policies would President Ramaswamy undertake to reverse that decline of the family?
00:31:12.740
So I think there is a bit of an assault on the family undertaken through the assault on
00:31:19.740
So this is a longer discussion about religious liberty, but I think it's closely linked to
00:31:23.460
I think the Equality Act, which I don't think was appropriately termed, but nonetheless could
00:31:32.920
I think for me, as president, it's important to hold the line there to say that now you're
00:31:38.080
not going to create the conditions for using that law as a basis for labeling a religious
00:31:42.100
organization to be a hate group or whatever that changes their lending standards.
00:31:50.340
But I think it was a symptom of a deeper trend in this country.
00:31:53.020
And so one of the things that I'm able to do, because I'm not a Christian nationalist,
00:31:59.600
I went to Christian schools and whatever, and I'm a deeply faith-based person.
00:32:03.380
I can do what somebody who wears their Christianity on their sleeve can't do.
00:32:10.620
I just mean that literally in modern American culture, it's really difficult for them to
00:32:13.840
do what I can do in offering a staunch defense of not another inch budging on the issue
00:32:19.080
And I think that's intricately linked to family formation as well.
00:32:23.280
Now, I'm very clear about what my priorities are and what they aren't.
00:32:27.880
And there are some things that I think are important that still aren't my priorities.
00:32:30.520
One of the things, it's my belief that you do five or six things, and I've laid out what
00:32:35.420
You do those five or six things well as U.S. president, you're going to be one of the
00:32:40.900
So for me, that's shutting down the administrative state.
00:32:43.820
Actually, I've identified specific government agencies to shut down.
00:32:46.460
I've specifically flagged the Department of Education.
00:32:50.660
In the Department of Education's case, it needs to be shut down and not come back.
00:32:53.560
In the FBI's case, we need to shut it down and create something new to take its place.
00:32:57.600
There are so many presidential, probably every Republican presidential candidate, I don't
00:33:01.360
know about the FBI, but has said, I'm going to shut down the Department of Education.
00:33:06.020
Yeah, because they all have a flawed view of Article 2 of the Constitution.
00:33:13.940
I think the Constitution says that the president of the United States runs the executive branch
00:33:18.280
If you run the executive branch of the government, that means you run the executive branch of
00:33:26.340
I did go to law school, but here it's actually my private sector view that allows me to interpret
00:33:30.600
the Constitution as it ought to be interpreted here, which is that if someone works for you
00:33:35.320
and you can't fire them, that means they don't work for you.
00:33:39.140
It means you work for them because you're responsible for what they do without having
00:33:45.620
And now I'm the full run for the White House where supposedly that's the position, right?
00:33:57.600
There's a lot of things that give me a sense of urgency to run for president in this
00:34:02.140
I think we have a Supreme Court that likely shares my view of the Constitution here.
00:34:06.420
And then we codify it in judicial precedent to make sure that I'm not just the first president,
00:34:09.620
but the first of many who will actually be able to be the person who's not only elected
00:34:13.680
to run the government, but who actually does run the government.
00:34:16.500
I give Donald Trump a lot of credit for identifying that as a problem.
00:34:19.180
But if he had actually fixed it, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it.
00:34:23.260
The way you're talking about executive power is different than the way many Republicans
00:34:28.120
and conservatives in my lifetime have talked about it.
00:34:31.140
Many conservatives have said, we want fewer executive orders.
00:34:36.600
You've suggested perhaps executive power is a way to protect the people.
00:34:42.300
In a one-way ratchet, as a downside, as a downsizing mechanism.
00:34:46.860
So I think the proper concern is that actually they needed to make sure Congress authorized funds
00:34:54.400
But the problem is there was the inverse then built in by Congress, which is an overreach.
00:34:58.180
So this is like the 1974 Impoundment Protection Act passed under Nixon,
00:35:02.680
or it was actually to protect against stuff Nixon was doing,
00:35:05.120
which basically said that even if Congress allocates money to a specific agency
00:35:11.880
and the president doesn't want to spend that money, the president still has to.
00:35:16.100
I think it's an unconstitutional overreach of Congress.
00:35:18.820
I think the symmetric point is the president can't spend money that Congress never budgeted.
00:35:22.040
But just because Congress budgeted doesn't mean the president actually has to spend it.
00:35:24.720
If they see as the leader of the executive branch that there's waste, fraud, abuse, and so on.
00:35:28.480
Just like a board of directors to a CEO says, here's your budget and research and development,
00:35:32.640
but the CEO says that actually I know that that project is going to fail.
00:35:39.400
I think it is the relationship intended between Congress and the president, too.
00:35:42.180
So I'm all about being very high resolution on this stuff,
00:35:46.040
but I think as it relates to the exercise of restraint, firing someone,
00:35:51.140
not hiring someone in an agency that didn't exist,
00:35:54.280
but firing someone in an agency that does exist,
00:35:56.560
if you're running the executive branch of the government,
00:35:57.720
you've got to be able to do that or else you're not actually running it.
00:35:59.580
So in a one-way ratchet, in the downsizing realm,
00:36:02.780
I think executive order is absolutely an appropriate mechanism.
00:36:05.840
And I think I'm on constitutionally solid grounds.
00:36:07.580
And I think the current Supreme Court is highly likely to agree with me,
00:36:14.020
whether they're of the Democratic Party or Republican Party, for that matter,
00:36:16.360
thanks, hopefully, the next administration, if I'm successful,
00:36:25.200
And as president, you will be the top law enforcement officer in the United States,
00:36:33.400
Now, we have a big crime problem in the country right now.
00:36:35.760
Now, some say we have an over-incarceration problem.
00:36:42.700
They say we have an under-incarceration problem.
00:36:48.580
I guess one could say that we should keep it exactly the same.
00:36:52.900
I do think that there are too many people incarcerated,
00:36:58.680
but there's a problem of being over-inclusive and under-inclusive, right?
00:37:03.000
We're not actually arresting people who ought to be arrested.
00:37:07.200
And we're channeling that to put a lot of people in prison
00:37:12.920
even in ways that don't really respect even a law and order culture,
00:37:17.220
because the asymmetry between the two is itself, I think, a legal betrayal.
00:37:22.900
This isn't a policy answer, but it's just a first-person answer.
00:37:25.540
There's a guy who works for me, and I'm glad he works for me,
00:37:29.160
but I'm not glad about the circumstances that brought him to me.
00:37:31.100
He was a cop in Oregon, and he always wanted to be a cop.
00:37:36.780
because he knew the fastest path to being a cop
00:37:39.080
was to actually join the military for a couple of years
00:37:41.320
because that would make him eligible to be a cop.
00:37:44.080
And then he goes to Oregon, streets of Portland, Oregon,
00:37:46.080
and this is where he can actually do some good as a cop
00:37:49.020
until they tell him, here are the people you can't arrest.
00:37:51.080
The people who are actually known to be burglars,
00:37:53.960
people who are literally shooting meth on the street,
00:37:58.660
they've decided that these are the people you can't arrest.
00:38:11.040
So he said, I refuse to pull over the people who speed.
00:38:14.380
but what I started to do is I just refused to write him a ticket.
00:38:16.480
I would just pull him over and roll down the window
00:38:19.180
and just say, sir, do you mind not running the red light next time?
00:38:21.540
And he would say, yeah, sure, and I'd let him go.
00:38:24.080
you should be able to get away with the red light.
00:38:25.320
Yeah, and I said, why did you even bother pulling him over?
00:38:30.740
so I would just pull him over and then have a conversation
00:38:39.180
But I think the problem is the uneven enforcement
00:38:46.960
the civil rights revolution into the 21st century
00:38:50.800
We talked about political expression as a civil right.
00:38:54.540
But I do like one of the things I'm going to do with the DOJ
00:38:57.620
is actualize a legal theory that I advanced in Woke Inc.
00:39:01.700
I think it's on solid ground, if I may say so myself,
00:39:03.920
but we lay out all the historical legal precedents
00:39:07.080
So the civil rights protection against discrimination
00:39:14.640
that you cannot discriminate against an employee
00:39:19.560
cannot force an employee to bow down to your religion.
00:39:22.160
So the question is whether the modern DEI agenda
00:39:24.280
or wokeness or whatever fits the Supreme Court's test
00:39:31.320
Certain clothes you can't wear, words you can't say,
00:39:34.780
It's a systematic worldview rather than a worldview
00:39:39.100
Secular humanism meets the Supreme Court's test
00:39:46.220
And so actually much of what you see in corporate America,
00:39:52.400
not under a change law, under existing law today.
00:39:57.740
to prioritize ridding ourselves of this national cancer
00:40:14.540
I've not won but two chapters of this in Woking.
00:40:18.440
Actually, the next chapter is actually wokeness
00:40:22.260
but the second we actually just legally meter it against,
00:40:47.260
Okay, if you want to get rid of the civil rights laws
00:40:56.200
I do think that the use of executive authority,
00:40:59.320
even in legal enforcement of civil rights violations
00:41:01.660
or legal violations that are rampant in America today
00:41:11.560
But the policies instituted by your campaign staff