The Michael Knowles Show - Vivek Ramaswamy： The Path To The Presidency with Michael Knowles

00:00:00.000 Vivek Ramaswamy is an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, the founder of a major biopharmaceutical

00:00:07.980 company, the co-founder of Strive Asset Management.

00:00:12.160 He's the author of a couple of books, notably Woke Inc.

00:00:16.680 He's a graduate of Harvard and Yale.

00:00:19.800 And now Vivek is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

00:00:30.000 Every presidential campaign has the usual suspects, the governors and the senators and

00:00:36.200 sometimes the congressmen.

00:00:37.440 And then, every so often, some totally unexpected figure pops up and shakes up the race.

00:00:45.940 And this year, that person would be my friend, Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:00:50.820 Vivek, thank you for making the time.

00:00:53.040 I know you're very busy on the campaign trail.

00:00:54.860 It's good to be on.

00:00:55.380 This is my first stop after getting off the CPAC stage here, so that was fun.

00:00:59.200 And you know what?

00:01:00.660 We're having fun with this.

00:01:02.160 When you first told me that you were thinking about maybe running for president, you know,

00:01:06.500 my only thought was, huh, I would have expected he'd wait until 2028.

00:01:12.400 But I was not surprised that you would.

00:01:13.760 I don't even know if you knew that you might run someday, but I did.

00:01:17.140 I sort of had this thought.

00:01:18.300 You have good instincts.

00:01:18.980 Yes.

00:01:19.480 Yeah.

00:01:19.900 But you've jumped right into the race.

00:01:22.680 A lot of people do not know who you are exactly.

00:01:26.360 The people who do know who you are have been saying, don't write this guy out just because

00:01:31.760 you haven't heard his name.

00:01:33.620 This is a very impressive guy who brings in a wealth of knowledge from a lot of different

00:01:38.120 segments of the public life.

00:01:40.200 And I happen to agree with that take.

00:01:42.940 So I'm very excited to help introduce you to the rest of the public.

00:01:47.560 Thank you, Ben.

00:01:48.000 Now, now that I've been very nice to you, I'm going to be cold.

00:01:51.980 I'm going to grill you.

00:01:53.500 I'm going to give you very tough questions.

00:01:55.740 Oh, like you've done in the past.

00:01:57.600 I know the real Michael, so I'm ready for you.

00:01:59.920 Okay.

00:02:00.280 First question.

00:02:02.340 Who's your favorite president?

00:02:04.040 Thomas Jefferson.

00:02:05.680 I think Thomas Jefferson embodies the founding culture in the United States.

00:02:10.260 So I'm a big founding principles guy, for sure.

00:02:12.700 Actually, the whole premise of my candidacy, by the way, is reviving the principles that

00:02:16.200 set the nation into motion.

00:02:17.140 This actually should be a really easy election.

00:02:19.700 There's hard elections where everyone agrees on the basic principles and then you disagree

00:02:23.080 on some really important policy issue.

00:02:25.420 This should be an easy election where free speech, open debate, all the stuff that Thomas

00:02:30.380 Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence and beyond, this is the stuff

00:02:34.240 that actually most Americans agree on.

00:02:36.140 And yet we live in this moment where they're artificially fraught.

00:02:39.540 But anyway, why is Thomas Jefferson my favorite president?

00:02:41.980 It's not just because he wrote the Declaration of Independence and as a, whatever, startup guy,

00:02:46.720 as a founder, as a company, you guys built companies.

00:02:49.540 I'm a big on mission statement.

00:02:50.940 That is the best mission statement for a nation ever written, the Declaration of Independence.

00:02:55.160 But there was also a founding culture to go along with it, right?

00:02:58.660 He was a polymath.

00:02:59.540 He was, as were many of these guys.

00:03:00.920 Benjamin Franklin, on down.

00:03:02.700 These guys, even John Adams.

00:03:04.060 Now a lot of people know this about him, but he studied Sanskrit later in life.

00:03:07.140 These guys, yeah.

00:03:08.080 He actually, after he left the White House and he would, and these guys, they were also

00:03:11.260 kind of boastful about it.

00:03:12.460 He would put it in his letters to TJ because he knew that posterity would read about it.

00:03:16.360 He says, oh, if I was to do it again, I would have been a Sanskrit scholar rather than, you

00:03:20.140 know, being the U.S. president.

00:03:21.240 Yeah, exactly.

00:03:22.520 But they, so there was a little showmanship there, but there was showmanship grounded in

00:03:26.100 reality.

00:03:26.740 And I kind of love the showmanship too because it just, it's real in a certain sense.

00:03:30.200 They're proud of it.

00:03:31.080 Yeah.

00:03:31.520 And so Thomas Jefferson, he's writing the Declaration of Independence with his hand, but he realizes

00:03:35.000 that, oh, well, you know what?

00:03:36.540 I don't really like the chair I'm sitting in, so I guess I would love this idea of a swivel

00:03:41.180 chair.

00:03:41.520 It didn't exist before then, so he just made one.

00:03:43.320 He invented it.

00:03:44.020 He invented the swivel chair to write the Declaration of Independence so that he could actually write

00:03:48.060 the great founding document providing the greatest mission statement for not only the United

00:03:51.400 States or a nation, but the free world as we know it.

00:03:54.280 That's missing today.

00:03:55.300 I think we miss the people who look at somebody else's domain and say, hey, that's for somebody

00:04:02.620 else who has expertise over there.

00:04:04.780 And I'm not supposed to do that because I'm not trained versus saying, you know what?

00:04:09.040 I'm a human being.

00:04:09.960 We have free will.

00:04:11.360 No one is born with all the knowledge they need to have to do anything.

00:04:14.380 And if I'm hungry enough, most things I could probably figure it out.

00:04:17.700 And if I feel like doing, I'm going to do it, whether somebody tells me to or not.

00:04:20.780 That's part of what we're missing too, is not just the founding principles, but a little

00:04:24.800 bit of that founding culture.

00:04:26.740 And the other reason I like Thomas Jefferson from the standpoint of history is that as is now

00:04:32.640 all too trite and familiar, I mean, he was a flawed man.

00:04:36.080 He did not live up to his own ideals. 0.98

00:04:38.360 He was, in a very real sense of the term, hypocrite, life, liberty, and the pursuit of 0.99

00:04:42.340 happiness, but not for his slaves. 0.97

00:04:44.360 Now, of course, this deserves to be talked about.

00:04:46.960 Over the last few years, it's been over-talked about because that's all anybody can fixate

00:04:50.160 on about an important man's legacy who had much more to him than the worst aspects of

00:04:54.540 his hypocrisies.

00:04:56.480 But he's also a reminder that hypocrisy is only made possible by the existence of ideals. 0.52

00:05:04.140 There's a reason we can't call, a big part of my speech just now was about the CCP.

00:05:09.640 Say what you will about the Chinese Communist Party. 0.97

00:05:11.460 You can never call them hypocrites because in order to be a hypocrite, you had to have ideals 0.99

00:05:15.660 in the first place. 0.98

00:05:16.380 You can call Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite because he had ideals. 0.70

00:05:20.760 And so he's a reminder of not only the existence of ideals, but the fact that we as human beings 0.92

00:05:26.100 are flawed, deeply flawed.

00:05:27.720 There will be people 250 years from now that look back at us today and say, weren't they 0.99

00:05:32.440 hypocrites?

00:05:32.920 We just don't know what basis they're going to have for saying it, but it's definitely

00:05:35.920 going to happen.

00:05:36.820 La Roche-Foucault said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

00:05:40.840 That's exactly right.

00:05:41.620 You said it better than I did.

00:05:42.960 Well, at least La Roche-Foucault did.

00:05:44.420 I don't use speechwriters, but if I did, you know, a few years from now, if I'm successful

00:05:48.680 in the White House, maybe we've got to talk.

00:05:50.180 They've been trying to can me from Daily Wire for years, so that would be a great opportunity.

00:05:54.140 Stay in play for another about two years, and then January 2025 we'll talk.

00:05:58.260 Right.

00:05:58.620 So speaking of these great men and these great writers and thinkers, which book has most

00:06:05.720 influenced your political views?

00:06:08.140 That's a good question.

00:06:08.980 Most.

00:06:09.540 That's a pretty high bar.

00:06:10.600 I would say Friedrich von Hayek's Constitution of Liberty.

00:06:15.080 I think it's an underappreciated work because, you know, people read the summaries of someone

00:06:20.100 like Hayek and then they conflate it with like a Nozick or they conflate it with just

00:06:23.820 the broader theory of libertarian thought, Austrian economist von Mises.

00:06:27.520 And I love all these guys, but they actually had very different and distinctive views from

00:06:30.520 one another.

00:06:31.280 I think Hayek was a cut above.

00:06:32.680 Hayek was a cut above because his case for, you know, what is in bastardized form referred

00:06:40.680 to as libertarianism, it's so reductionist, I kind of cringe as I even acknowledge that

00:06:45.100 description.

00:06:45.480 But it was really grounded in fundamental human respect, human dignity.

00:06:52.800 And so his view was that, you know, I'm going to distill it to sort of a modern practical

00:06:58.860 form here, but let's just take the arguments about redistribution or whatever.

00:07:02.580 His point would be, look, if the argument for redistribution is grounded in human worth,

00:07:09.240 to say that your human worth is tied to the number of green pieces of paper that sit in

00:07:14.540 your bank account, that's the basis for making sure everyone has the same equal number of

00:07:18.200 green pieces of paper.

00:07:19.620 You've got it backwards because you're actually committing a moral error.

00:07:22.700 You're tying someone's moral worth to their financial worth.

00:07:26.600 And that's actually what creates the conditions for rampant mutual disrespect amongst what should

00:07:32.660 be co-equal citizens.

00:07:33.620 And so people miss the fact that his case against unbridled merit and excellence in what we would

00:07:40.480 call free market capitalism today was grounded not in some economic account, which, you know,

00:07:45.640 is maybe better tied to Milton Friedman's tradition, but is actually tied to the basic dignity of

00:07:51.040 man itself and the basic dignity of citizens, of nations who are co-equal citizens regardless

00:07:57.160 of the number of green pieces of paper.

00:07:59.480 In some ways, the problem is actually the redistributionists are the ones who also commit

00:08:04.040 the error of fetishizing the accumulation of paper.

00:08:07.380 Right.

00:08:07.780 When, in fact, there's more to life, there's more to human worth, there's more to human

00:08:11.220 value than that.

00:08:12.740 And so I thought that was, I think, what makes some of his work profound and I think should

00:08:16.620 be more persuasive to more people than you would think.

00:08:20.520 Speaking of relating to all of our citizens, some of whom we don't always want to relate to,

00:08:24.520 what is one issue on which you could see yourself reaching across the aisle?

00:08:31.280 And what is one issue on which you could probably never see yourself reaching across the aisle?

00:08:38.160 So I got to say one thing off the gate here, out of the bat.

00:08:42.120 I don't really care about partisan politics that much.

00:08:45.420 Like partisan politics boards me.

00:08:46.860 So like even this talk of the aisle makes me, you know, recoil a little bit because it's

00:08:51.480 so reductionist.

00:08:52.380 I just don't even think Republican versus Democrat is the most relevant political distinction

00:08:56.380 in America today.

00:08:57.540 I mean, I'm an unapologetic conservative and we can talk about my views, but the Republican

00:09:00.640 Party, I mean, what does that mean?

00:09:02.480 Right?

00:09:02.640 I mean, the Democratic Party, what does that mean?

00:09:04.120 These are relatively incoherent concepts.

00:09:06.800 It's sort of designed to shoehorn the real political debates into these sort of artificial

00:09:11.740 categories.

00:09:12.640 I think the real political divide in the modern West, certainly in America, but in the modern

00:09:18.280 West more broadly is this divide between what I call the Great Reset and the Great Uprising.

00:09:23.560 The Great Uprising is the response to the Great Reset, a view that says you have to dissolve

00:09:27.960 the boundaries between the private sector and the public sector, between nations, between

00:09:31.560 the online world and the offline world.

00:09:33.080 So everybody can work.

00:09:34.020 Between men and women. 0.99

00:09:34.820 Yeah.

00:09:35.260 That's a different dissolution of boundaries, actually, between the genders. 0.90

00:09:37.300 It's all about dissolving boundaries so that the leaders of institutions may work together

00:09:42.700 towards the common collective good.

00:09:44.320 That's the vision of the Great Reset.

00:09:46.140 And it's different from the side I'm on, if I had to pick between the two, the Great

00:09:50.660 Uprising, which says hell no to that vision.

00:09:52.580 We, the citizens of nations in America, the citizen of this nation, as a citizen of this

00:09:56.600 nation, say, we decide in a self-governing democratic republic how we sort out our political

00:10:03.040 differences.

00:10:03.460 That's really the divide, the managerial class versus the everyday citizen.

00:10:08.520 You know, one way I might frame it as well is between those who are unapologetically pro-American

00:10:13.380 and those who are, and I think these exist in America today, those who are fundamentally

00:10:17.820 anti-American.

00:10:20.320 Okay?

00:10:20.780 There's a distinction there.

00:10:22.960 The good news is that's an 80-20 divide.

00:10:24.780 It's not a 50-50 divide.

00:10:26.100 So here's what I'll say.

00:10:27.040 If that's the way I draw the aisle, I'm not reaching across the aisle.

00:10:30.160 I'm unapologetically in the pro-American camp.

00:10:32.960 And I'm not making a concession to the anti-American camp, other than through persuasion, to get

00:10:38.620 them to join our camp.

00:10:40.340 There's nothing about me that will cause me to reach across the aisle to the Great Reset.

00:10:44.480 I am on the side of believing that I'm not a citizen of the globe or a citizen of the

00:10:48.380 world.

00:10:48.580 I'm a citizen of a nation, and I'm proud of it.

00:10:50.800 So draw it that way.

00:10:52.360 There's no reaching across the aisles.

00:10:53.920 But Democrat versus Republican?

00:10:55.700 I mean, these things don't even, these words, these are words.

00:10:57.740 They're meaningless.

00:10:58.280 Of course, there are many issues in which I'll bring a lot of Democrats along with me.

00:11:01.980 I mean, I think one of my proposals is to make political expression a civil right in

00:11:06.160 America, right?

00:11:07.080 To say that if you can't fire somebody or deplatform somebody because they're black or 0.94

00:11:10.760 gay or Muslim or white or Hindu or Jewish or whatever, that you shouldn't be able to 1.00

00:11:15.720 fire them just because they're an outspoken conservative. 0.88

00:11:17.680 I guess theoretically means an outspoken liberal.

00:11:19.780 That's not relevant.

00:11:20.580 The conservative piece is what's relevant because that's what's happening in America.

00:11:22.600 Nobody gets fired for me.

00:11:23.720 It just doesn't.

00:11:24.440 You know, so it would be silly for me to say, but in principle, you know, I would say the

00:11:27.480 same thing.

00:11:28.060 But why do I bring up that example?

00:11:30.440 Today, a lot of the people who stand up to me are sort of federal Democrats that don't

00:11:34.000 know the first thing about American history, legal history, when they say, oh, no, that

00:11:37.200 would be a bad idea.

00:11:37.700 When they don't know, it's kind of rather embarrassing to them when they find out that

00:11:41.180 actually this protection exists in a good number of states, including and especially blue

00:11:49.280 states that actually passed this protection during like the Bush era in California, for example,

00:11:54.600 because they were fearful of the expansive, you know, military state under Bush and Dick

00:12:00.480 Cheney that they were going to suppress people who wanted to stand up to the post 9-11, you

00:12:04.880 know, expansive state.

00:12:06.340 Well, they said, no, no, no, we need to give space to those people to have those protections

00:12:09.400 from getting fired.

00:12:10.740 And so it sort of proves that that isn't a Republican or Democratic issue, but it's just

00:12:14.540 an example of the kind of thing that I'm in favor of.

00:12:17.080 One of my, you know, I wouldn't call it a signature policy.

00:12:19.540 I just view it as a simple, it's on the list, right?

00:12:22.180 I'm sure it would have a lot of support.

00:12:23.200 Yeah, that one, but I was about to say a different one, which is, you know, look, I think that

00:12:28.540 if you can't smoke an addictive cigarette by the age of 18, if you can't have an addictive

00:12:32.400 sip of alcohol by the age of 21, I don't think you should be using an addictive social media

00:12:37.460 product like TikTok before the age of 15 either.

00:12:40.460 That's not a partisan point.

00:12:41.780 It's not a Republican point.

00:12:42.440 It's not a Democratic point.

00:12:43.480 I think it makes sense.

00:12:45.080 You know, even principled libertarians, God love them, but kids aren't the same as adults.

00:12:49.200 I think everyone acknowledges that.

00:12:50.300 So there's a lot to sort of my policy perspectives that, you know, transcend the traditional partisan

00:12:57.640 boundaries or whatever.

00:12:59.380 You know, call that reaching across the aisle, call it reaching across the aisle, but I don't

00:13:02.080 even pay much heed to the traditional partisan aisle.

00:13:04.900 Which aisle?

00:13:05.660 I'm like, I'm not a politician. 0.92

00:13:07.380 Like, this stuff is silly to me.

00:13:10.380 I'm an unapologetic, America first, conservative, will not apologize for it.

00:13:14.860 But I think that just reciting those slogans means very little until you first rediscover

00:13:18.640 what America is.

00:13:20.080 I love the idea of banning.

00:13:22.160 You've got at least one supporter for this proposal of banning social media for kids.

00:13:26.440 I think, you know, I love cigars.

00:13:29.360 I'm not a cigarette fan, but I love cigars.

00:13:31.020 And some people say it's a vice.

00:13:32.460 Well, at least that vice sharpens your mind a little.

00:13:34.640 Social media, especially if you're a kid, it melts your brain.

00:13:37.280 Oh, it's designed.

00:13:37.780 It comes out your ears.

00:13:38.400 It's designed to melt your brain because it's picking at insecurities.

00:13:41.200 I mean, Mark Zuckerberg's core insight, he was a year ahead of me when I was in college

00:13:44.320 and, you know, Facebook was invented, if we were to call it that, while I was in college.

00:13:48.420 It's designed to prey on your insecurities, right?

00:13:51.040 I mean, you're going to click on this versus this faster, gives you a window into your soul

00:13:54.240 deeper than you have into your own soul.

00:13:56.920 Yeah.

00:13:57.680 And so that's what it's about.

00:13:58.700 So we can have that debate about what that means for the loss of virtue amongst adults

00:14:03.100 that lends us vulnerable to this kind of algorithmic, you can call it exploitation

00:14:07.900 and manipulation.

00:14:08.820 But adults are adults.

00:14:09.740 It's their job to fortify themselves in the offline world.

00:14:13.820 That's a whole separate and deep discussion.

00:14:15.740 But for kids, by definition, you haven't formed that moral or psychic foundation.

00:14:22.340 And there's a reason why China doesn't allow the version of sexualized dance videos or whatever 0.99

00:14:27.760 that exists on TikTok here over there.

00:14:29.400 It's about math and engineering.

00:14:30.700 In the Chinese version, ByteDance-operated version of their product over there, it's like,

00:14:34.380 you know, they send fentanyl across our southern border in Mexico effectively through

00:14:37.500 cheap raw materials that they sell to the cartels.

00:14:39.560 This is digital fentanyl.

00:14:40.940 If I had to take the analogy further, it's financial fentanyl in the form of national debt.

00:14:43.920 But that's a whole separate discussion of our broader addiction to China.

00:14:47.560 But bringing me back, even China, actually, I'll go there too.

00:14:50.420 I don't think that has to be a partisan point.

00:14:52.840 I think that recognizing that the CCP is the single greatest threat that America faces

00:14:56.880 over the next 30 years, that ought to be a point of bipartisan consensus.

00:15:02.980 It isn't.

00:15:03.640 I think that we need conservatives who are able to, in greater detail, make the case for

00:15:07.680 that to the American people, make the case because there's going to be some sacrifices

00:15:10.120 in weaning off of China.

00:15:12.240 Cheap goods.

00:15:12.760 Yeah, we got addicted to cheap stuff.

00:15:14.100 It's a form of addiction.

00:15:15.080 We get addicted to everything, from the fentanyl to the digital fentanyl to the cheap stuff.

00:15:19.840 But we can make these sacrifices if we know what we're sacrificing for.

00:15:26.200 It's this thing we call America.

00:15:27.320 Make sure our children and grandchildren aren't a bunch of Chinese serfs that are somehow citizens 1.00

00:15:31.880 of some sort of co-equal, bilateral, global governing equilibrium created between the

00:15:37.500 United States and China, which is what China hopes for. 0.94

00:15:39.780 No, they should be the citizens of the greatest nation on earth.

00:15:42.800 But that requires some short-run sacrifice.

00:15:45.460 I think America could use, bluntly, a little less Chamberlain and a little more Churchill.

00:15:50.120 And I think that's a big part of the premise for my candidacy is to deliver that kind of vision.

00:15:53.880 Speaking of China, President Ramaswamy gets the call.

00:15:58.780 China has invaded Taiwan.

00:16:00.480 What do you do?

00:16:02.200 So invaded is what we're talking about here.

00:16:03.960 Blockade, right?

00:16:05.860 Either.

00:16:06.720 Yeah.

00:16:07.000 So because I think the scenarios are basically different.

00:16:10.840 I do think that we have to vigorously protect Taiwan.

00:16:14.020 I don't like enmeshing ourselves in foreign wars that don't matter.

00:16:17.860 I'm on that side of the Ukraine issue.

00:16:19.880 I think we have overspent, and it's a lesson we ought to learn for a long time to come.

00:16:24.400 I'd take a fraction of that money and protect our own southern border.

00:16:27.060 But the reason Taiwan matters is that, unfortunately, our modern way of life depends on it. 0.97

00:16:33.760 I mean, the semiconductor chips that power our phones, the semiconductor chips that power

00:16:37.640 our refrigerators that kept this water cold before we're drinking it, all of that comes

00:16:42.480 from this tiny little island nation off the southeast coast of China.

00:16:45.620 And this is a shame that we ever got here, but we are where we are.

00:16:49.900 And so if China holds the keys to Taiwan, that's the final step in the long-run bargain 0.95

00:16:56.040 they've always wanted to reach with the United States, the final coup they wanted to achieve

00:17:00.900 in the 50-year game that they played with Henry Kissinger and won without our knowing

00:17:04.740 it, which is to say that there's a grand bargain.

00:17:07.780 We get your intellectual property, and we'll make your stuff.

00:17:12.300 That's what China is saying to the U.S.

00:17:13.520 So if the U.S. right now—I mean, we have no reason to accept that bargain. 0.92

00:17:16.880 It would be foolish, right?

00:17:18.040 Because we can source the stuff from somewhere else, right?

00:17:21.280 So we have that leverage going for us.

00:17:23.760 However, once China's squatting on Taiwan, they can really squeeze the leverage out of

00:17:30.760 that negotiation, and then it's a permanent bipolar new status quo.

00:17:35.780 Now, here's where I'm at.

00:17:37.120 I don't think they're quite yet ready to invade Taiwan.

00:17:39.460 I don't think they will be ready to invade by the time I take office, should I succeed

00:17:44.920 in January 2025.

00:17:46.280 And I think there's things we can do that can pull the economic rug out from under China 0.99

00:17:50.760 to effectively defeat them.

00:17:53.320 I say defeat them in the sense that the fall of the CCP may not be as far away as people

00:17:57.360 think.

00:17:58.620 Xi Jinping actually did a lot of damage to China over the last year as part of his quest to

00:18:02.280 hold on to power.

00:18:03.400 I think there's actually an interesting window here that we might be working within that,

00:18:06.900 just like we found out Putin's military capacity was sort of an emperor has no clothes situation.

00:18:12.360 Not so much for Chinese military capacity, but even for Chinese economic capacity.

00:18:16.720 And remember, the grand bargain between the CCP and the people is at least you take care

00:18:20.320 of our material way of life and we'll cede our freedoms to you.

00:18:23.000 But that doesn't work if they're no longer supporting the material way of life.

00:18:25.940 And so I would go so far as to ban most U.S. businesses from doing business in China unless

00:18:31.720 and until the CCP either falls or reforms its behaviors.

00:18:34.360 Now, that'll hurt us a little bit.

00:18:36.300 It'll hurt them more.

00:18:37.220 I think our willingness to make that sacrifice, it's not a small sacrifice, probably is the

00:18:42.900 single greatest lever to make sure that we never have to make it.

00:18:45.800 You got to think about this stuff.

00:18:47.360 It's not static.

00:18:48.700 And so for me, I think that also semiconductor capacity here at home is rising too.

00:18:55.220 So then that gap is going to close.

00:18:56.800 We do have this little divest to invest thing going on in the U.S. Navy.

00:18:59.800 You're familiar with this or not?

00:19:00.740 No.

00:19:00.900 So it's a long story, but we have a divest to invest program where we're decommissioning

00:19:06.800 ships in the South Pacific.

00:19:08.800 And so our nadir of military capacity in the South Pacific, China's already got more ships 0.73

00:19:13.500 in its Navy than we do.

00:19:14.520 But our nadir really is kind of going to be in the 2026, 2027 timeframe.

00:19:20.100 Xi Jinping's not quite ready yet.

00:19:21.140 So I think that's what he's playing for.

00:19:22.300 So I think the window between January 2025, when if I'm successful and I take office, and

00:19:27.180 in mid-2026 or 2027, that's the window where we got to pull the economic rug out from under

00:19:32.100 China, declare independence from China, decouple.

00:19:35.460 But actually, I think the way it's going to play out is that guts the economic fortitude

00:19:40.200 of the CCP.

00:19:40.900 They lose their mandate in China itself.

00:19:43.820 And we actually are in a very different situation than we should have been and start to get back

00:19:47.020 on the right track that we would have been on had the decisions not been made in 1970s

00:19:51.120 to totally couple with China. 0.95

00:19:52.260 I know that's long and complicated, but hopefully some of that made sense.

00:19:55.080 It's a good answer.

00:19:55.700 And you've partially answered my next question, which is on trade.

00:20:00.020 The Republican Party founded on protectionism and tariffs.

00:20:04.020 Then for much of the 20th century, certainly the second part of the 20th century, the Republican

00:20:08.700 Party is the party of free trade.

00:20:11.080 Now the Republican Party doesn't quite know what it is.

00:20:14.380 TBD, right?

00:20:14.980 TBD, so trade under...

00:20:16.440 So I'm not a protectionist.

00:20:17.980 Okay.

00:20:18.200 But vis-a-vis China, the reason I adopt policies that align with those advanced by protectionists

00:20:23.700 is for national security reasons, right?

00:20:25.400 Because I think that this is about China is operating according to mercantilist rules,

00:20:30.340 deputizing capitalism, I use capitalism in air quotes, to advance their geopolitical end

00:20:34.400 of achieving long-run even military parity with the United States.

00:20:38.380 In China, economic policy and military policy are two sides of the same coin.

00:20:42.180 We in the West, in the United States in particular, adopt a dualist view that military policy

00:20:46.060 is over here and economic policy is over here, but that was what China exploited. 0.99

00:20:49.360 That was the whole wedge they exploited because they view them as part and parcel of the same.

00:20:52.260 And you know what?

00:20:53.060 You got to give it to somebody when they win.

00:20:54.280 They won that game.

00:20:55.000 Henry Kissinger was wrong.

00:20:55.880 China was right. 0.99

00:20:57.700 But I think that that's with respect to China.

00:21:01.480 And I don't think that we should conflate that with coddling American workers who don't

00:21:08.520 need coddling.

00:21:08.940 Now, I think we also look at a couple other dimensions here.

00:21:12.840 One is the dollar as the U.S. reserve, as the reserve currency of the world, the U.S. dollar

00:21:18.300 being the reserve currency.

00:21:19.060 I think it's a good thing.

00:21:20.740 However, that does create some distributive consequences here at home, right?

00:21:24.760 So what does the dollar as a reserve currency mean?

00:21:26.980 It means there's an extra bid for the dollar above and beyond what would have existed under

00:21:31.800 free market conditions where the dollar was not the reserve currency.

00:21:34.000 Why do we want the dollar as a reserve currency?

00:21:36.140 We then control the financial system.

00:21:37.840 We can freeze the terrorists' assets on demand, whatever.

00:21:40.760 It's a good thing for America. 0.87

00:21:41.640 But what does that mean?

00:21:42.580 It means, on average, that tilts the scales of U.S. exports costing more to other countries

00:21:48.560 and U.S. imports costing less.

00:21:50.920 So that systematically does disfavor U.S. manufacturers.

00:21:53.520 So I think there's some areas where we have to not be willfully blind to distributive consequences

00:21:59.640 we create at home from policies that are still good for the nation as a whole.

00:22:03.220 And therefore to implement other policies to kind of balance them?

00:22:07.120 To make sure that anything that's protecting the nation as a whole, that we don't abandon

00:22:11.540 the dollars, the reserve currency of the world, but say that we're in that together and that

00:22:15.900 we're not just blind, purposefully blind to the consequences of who's left holding the

00:22:21.020 bag as a consequence.

00:22:22.200 So I think we've got to be in that together.

00:22:23.800 But I think that that is at the margin, right?

00:22:26.560 And so I think that some of this case for industrial policy bleeds into and even takes

00:22:31.040 support from people like me because I'm coming at it from a very different angle vis-a-vis

00:22:34.120 China to marshal support for what could easily devolve into a form of really economic laziness.

00:22:40.680 I do think that U.S. competitiveness is in part created by having our feet held to the

00:22:45.700 fire and being the best on the planet means that we're actually doing it because we're

00:22:49.420 the best on the planet.

00:22:51.100 And so vis-a-vis China, what is decoupling from China means it's not going to all be reshoring

00:22:55.000 into the United States, although it will involve some of that, but it'll also involve

00:22:58.400 looking at, you know, Southeast Asia, India, South America.

00:23:02.720 And I think that's got to be all of the above approach because the real objective is economic

00:23:07.640 independence from an enemy.

00:23:09.260 And I use the word enemy intentionally here vis-a-vis communist China.

00:23:13.140 But I think that that's something that we can do in a more focused way with respect

00:23:18.320 to China.

00:23:18.740 So we're talking about the free flow of goods and services.

00:23:21.440 How about the flow of people on immigration?

00:23:24.740 Assuming that you are opposed to illegal immigration and would like to stop that, then there are

00:23:29.640 some other questions.

00:23:30.820 The question is what to do with the people already here.

00:23:33.120 Does one provide a path to citizenship, say, for the illegal aliens who are currently in

00:23:37.480 the country?

00:23:38.260 And then further, polls have suggested that many, many Americans want to reduce not just

00:23:43.140 illegal immigration, but legal immigration as well.

00:23:46.020 So when it comes to legal immigration, would President Ramaswamy restrict it, expand it,

00:23:52.820 or keep it about the same?

00:23:54.040 So on illegal immigration, I'm a hardliner.

00:23:56.940 I believe in the use of the U.S. military to protect our border.

00:24:00.840 It's a shame that that's a controversial idea, that using our military to protect our border

00:24:05.280 is actually the most controversial use of our military when, in fact, using it to protect

00:24:08.540 somebody else's border is somehow perfectly fine.

00:24:10.760 So I'm what you would call a hardliner on the issue of illegal immigration.

00:24:14.020 On legal immigration, I think that we've gotten it wrong.

00:24:17.660 We have a policy of accidental immigration when I think we should have a policy of intentional

00:24:21.940 immigration.

00:24:23.140 We have lottery systems for H-1B visas.

00:24:25.100 I mean, this makes no sense.

00:24:26.120 Why on earth would you want to leave it to a lottery when you could actually just pick

00:24:29.300 the best ones to actually come?

00:24:31.100 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

00:24:37.940 in a different country.

00:24:39.740 So I believe in meritocratic, points-based immigration.

00:24:43.220 Now, I've heard that answer before.

00:24:45.600 Say someone is skilled at some job and so the company says, we really need this person

00:24:50.680 and that's the case.

00:24:51.480 But you said something very interesting.

00:24:53.140 You said commitment to the country, which would not presumably just be quantifiable.

00:24:59.580 Civic commitment.

00:25:00.360 Yeah.

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

00:25:05.820 tests in this country.

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 1.00

00:25:20.780 don't really know either.

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

00:25:31.040 great and then wants to be a part of it.

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

00:25:41.100 actually implement.

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.

00:26:07.180 Here's the money.

00:26:08.320 Go make a great life for yourself because if you don't believe in what this nation stands

00:26:11.380 for, you don't have to be a part of it.

00:26:13.140 That's okay.

00:26:14.540 You know what?

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

00:26:19.240 keep our end of the bargain.

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 0.99

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.

00:26:38.560 I like that.

00:26:39.080 The be my guest plan.

00:26:40.500 You say you don't like the country, be my guest.

00:26:42.240 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:26:43.140 You certainly leave.

00:26:43.580 Well, this ties in with another question.

00:26:46.560 Many on the left don't like the country.

00:26:49.580 They mock the idea of patriotism.

00:26:51.160 They say that this country was evil and rotten from the very beginning.

00:26:54.840 We've heard that for years.

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

00:27:13.920 has lost its way.

00:27:15.280 And so it's very difficult to be patriotic.

00:27:19.560 How would President Ramaswamy recultivate this patriotic love of country in Americans

00:27:26.960 on the left and the right?

00:27:28.620 So I think first is it does start at the top.

00:27:30.840 This is a cultural tone that we're able to set for the country.

00:27:34.000 I think Ronald Reagan did it.

00:27:34.900 He drove a national revival.

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,

00:27:52.480 hold hands, compromise, guys.

00:27:54.100 Can't you get along?

00:27:54.900 Kumbaya.

00:27:55.440 That ain't happening.

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. 0.99

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

00:28:35.580 diversity.

00:28:37.100 And I think our diversity is not our strength.

00:28:39.380 Our diversity isn't even beautiful.

00:28:40.480 Who cares?

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.

00:28:49.420 We've got a spectrum of melanin content.

00:28:52.360 I think it is utterly meaningless.

00:28:53.380 It is neither beautiful nor our strength unless there's something greater that binds us together

00:28:58.100 across our diversity.

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.

00:29:33.700 Simple thing.

00:29:34.400 You can do it with an executive order.

00:29:35.560 Stroke of a pen.

00:29:36.700 Executive order 11246.

00:29:38.620 Okay?

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.

00:29:45.420 I know why they didn't.

00:29:46.500 I talked to many of the policy people.

00:29:47.700 I pushed them on this.

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.

00:29:53.680 I don't know.

00:29:54.840 Maybe it's because I'm 37.

00:29:55.800 Maybe because I'm not.

00:29:56.520 Well, I don't, maybe it's because I don't care.

00:29:58.560 I'm going to end affirmative action. 0.94

00:29:59.800 Abandon climate religion.

00:30:00.920 The heart of climate religion is really apologizing for the success of the modern West and modern 0.87

00:30:04.680 America as we know it.

00:30:05.660 I refuse to apologize for that.

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

00:30:20.640 politics.

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.

00:30:30.240 I'm not kidding.

00:30:31.300 I think it's going to happen.

00:30:32.480 I've told people from the beginning, as I mentioned, I said, don't underestimate this

00:30:36.360 guy.

00:30:37.660 He's thought through these things.

00:30:39.220 And there is a coherence.

00:30:41.400 Maybe people totally reject your agenda.

00:30:43.180 But there is a coherence to it.

00:30:44.500 And so let's bring that coherence from the national malaise that you're describing right

00:30:49.220 down to the fundamental political unit.

00:30:51.200 Right now, marriage rates are at or near all-time lows.

00:30:55.260 Birth rates at all-time lows.

00:30:57.540 You're seeing abortion is still pretty high.

00:30:59.220 So the American family is in free fall.

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

00:31:17.520 religious liberty in our country too.

00:31:19.740 So this is a longer discussion about religious liberty, but I think it's closely linked to

00:31:23.160 family.

00:31:23.460 I think the Equality Act, which I don't think was appropriately termed, but nonetheless could

00:31:30.820 be a Pandora's box if we let it be.

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.

00:31:46.220 Does it not already?

00:31:47.640 It already does.

00:31:49.060 The Equality Act worsened it.

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,

00:31:57.340 I'm not even Christian.

00:31:58.800 I'm Hindu, right?

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. 0.97

00:32:09.660 And I don't mean that in a bad way.

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

00:32:18.480 of religious liberty.

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

00:32:34.520 those five or six things are.

00:32:35.420 You do those five or six things well as U.S. president, you're going to be one of the

00:32:39.380 greatest presidents in modern history.

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.

00:32:48.600 I've specifically flagged the FBI.

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.

00:32:56.740 Now, how do you do it?

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.

00:33:04.780 And then none of them ever get it done.

00:33:06.020 Yeah, because they all have a flawed view of Article 2 of the Constitution.

00:33:09.500 They think they need Congress to do it.

00:33:11.320 I think it's a mistake.

00:33:12.380 I don't think they need Congress to do it.

00:33:13.940 I think the Constitution says that the president of the United States runs the executive branch

00:33:17.560 of the government.

00:33:18.280 If you run the executive branch of the government, that means you run the executive branch of

00:33:21.100 the government.

00:33:22.600 Maybe it's my private sector view here.

00:33:24.120 Maybe it's not being a politician.

00:33:25.420 But I can hear that.

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

00:33:43.880 any authority over it.

00:33:45.620 And now I'm the full run for the White House where supposedly that's the position, right?

00:33:49.280 Well, that's what I'm going to change it.

00:33:51.680 I'm going to do it by executive order.

00:33:53.640 And it will be litigated.

00:33:55.660 But I think it's an interesting time to do it.

00:33:57.600 There's a lot of things that give me a sense of urgency to run for president in this

00:34:00.140 cycle to deliver this change.

00:34:01.180 This is one of them.

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.

00:34:34.420 We want less executive power.

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

00:34:51.100 before the president actually spent it.

00:34:53.160 That's actually the historical concern.

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.

00:35:15.060 I think it's unconstitutional.

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.

00:35:35.620 Do I still have to spend that money?

00:35:36.620 Absolutely not.

00:35:37.100 It makes no sense.

00:35:38.380 That ought to be the relationship.

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,

00:36:09.880 which means we codify that in precedent.

00:36:12.220 And I hope every future president,

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,

00:36:19.360 for actually delivering it.

00:36:20.560 I, in fact, share this more expansive view.

00:36:23.100 Oh, good. Okay, okay, all right, good.

00:36:25.200 And as president, you will be the top law enforcement officer in the United States,

00:36:30.820 the capo di tutti capi.

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.

00:36:41.380 Some look around at the murder rate.

00:36:42.700 They say we have an under-incarceration problem.

00:36:44.980 Some people say we need to abolish prisons.

00:36:46.680 Some people say we need to build more prisons.

00:36:48.580 I guess one could say that we should keep it exactly the same.

00:36:51.400 Where does President Ramaswamy stand?

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

00:37:11.180 and spend a lot of money on it,

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.

00:37:34.320 That was all he ever wanted to do.

00:37:35.340 In fact, he didn't even go to college

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.

00:37:42.740 It was his life dream.

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,

00:37:56.740 you can see it, but for whatever reason,

00:37:58.660 they've decided that these are the people you can't arrest.

00:38:02.320 Full stop.

00:38:02.960 They've just made that executive decision.

00:38:04.920 It doesn't make any sense why.

00:38:06.720 And so he's left writing traffic tickets

00:38:08.540 for guys who speed or run red lights.

00:38:11.040 So he said, I refuse to pull over the people who speed.

00:38:12.920 I pull over the people who run red lights,

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.

00:38:23.200 If you can get away with murder,

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?

00:38:27.720 He said, sometimes people would just complain

00:38:29.080 that I didn't pull him over if they saw me,

00:38:30.740 so I would just pull him over and then have a conversation

00:38:32.840 because I couldn't in good conscience do that.

00:38:35.220 Eventually, he became so jaded

00:38:36.280 that he left law enforcement altogether

00:38:37.540 and works for me in a different capacity.

00:38:39.180 But I think the problem is the uneven enforcement

00:38:43.560 of laws as they stand.

00:38:44.440 Now, you know, talk about the DOJ.

00:38:46.000 You know, I'm a big fan of bringing

00:38:46.960 the civil rights revolution into the 21st century

00:38:49.280 by applying it even-handedly.

00:38:50.800 We talked about political expression as a civil right.

00:38:52.520 That's a legislative point.

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

00:39:06.080 that would justify it.

00:39:07.080 So the civil rights protection against discrimination

00:39:11.400 on the basis of religion doesn't just mean

00:39:14.640 that you cannot discriminate against an employee

00:39:17.180 for their religion.

00:39:18.040 It also means that you as the employer

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

00:39:27.380 for what counts as a religion.

00:39:29.080 Turns out it meets that test in spades.

00:39:31.320 Certain clothes you can't wear, words you can't say,

00:39:33.740 apologies you must recite.

00:39:34.780 It's a systematic worldview rather than a worldview

00:39:37.360 on a narrow set of questions.

00:39:39.100 Secular humanism meets the Supreme Court's test

00:39:40.900 for what counts as a religion.

00:39:41.360 Of course, it's sacramental.

00:39:42.380 Exactly.

00:39:43.100 So wokeness certainly meets that test to a T. 0.95

00:39:46.220 And so actually much of what you see in corporate America,

00:39:48.300 even in the schools, et cetera,

00:39:49.380 the enforcement of the DEI agenda

00:39:50.540 is actually a civil rights violation,

00:39:52.400 not under a change law, under existing law today.

00:39:55.300 So I'll instruct the Department of Justice

00:39:57.740 to prioritize ridding ourselves of this national cancer

00:40:00.780 by applying who would have ever thought

00:40:02.740 our civil rights laws evenly.

00:40:04.760 By interpreting wokeism as a religion.

00:40:07.080 By acknowledging that wokeism is a religion

00:40:10.860 under the Supreme Court's test,

00:40:12.940 under the legal definition of a religion.

00:40:14.540 I've not won but two chapters of this in Woking.

00:40:16.500 One chapter is wokeness is like a religion.

00:40:18.440 Actually, the next chapter is actually wokeness

00:40:20.020 is literally a religion.

00:40:21.200 So the first was colloquial,

00:40:22.260 but the second we actually just legally meter it against,

00:40:24.940 you know, yeah, law school professor approved.

00:40:26.860 You know, I've had a bunch of people

00:40:27.780 who kicked the tires on this.

00:40:29.120 I think this is a, you know,

00:40:30.620 I co-developed it actually

00:40:31.580 with a former law professor of mine.

00:40:35.200 I think this is actionable today.

00:40:37.640 People ask, what can a president do

00:40:38.820 about the woke epidemic?

00:40:39.880 Well, a lot of it's just fundamentally illegal

00:40:41.340 under existing civil rights statutes.

00:40:43.500 And you know what?

00:40:44.080 People may say, oh, that's the free market.

00:40:46.420 Can't have it both ways.

00:40:47.260 Okay, if you want to get rid of the civil rights laws 0.65

00:40:48.620 and the protected classes altogether,

00:40:49.760 let's have that conversation.

00:40:50.820 But so long as we have it,

00:40:51.620 we got to apply those standards even-handedly.

00:40:53.660 And so when I think about the core issues

00:40:54.780 of national identity and culture,

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

00:41:03.740 is a lever that I'll have to use.

00:41:06.020 Well, speaking of enforcement, Vivek,

00:41:07.600 I would like to sit here all night,

00:41:09.520 maybe have a couple of drinks,

00:41:10.740 talk about all of this.

00:41:11.560 But the policies instituted by your campaign staff

00:41:15.360 will be enforced on me

00:41:16.600 and I will be defenestrated 0.90

00:41:17.740 if I keep you here one moment longer.

00:41:19.140 Let's go, let's roll.

00:41:20.000 Great to see you as always.

00:41:21.320 I appreciate it.

00:41:21.900 Thank you for having me.

00:41:22.260 We'll see you out on the campaign trail.

00:41:23.380 We'll see you.

00:41:23.660 Look forward to it.

00:41:26.200 Thank you.

00:41:33.240 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 18, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy： The Path To The Presidency with Michael Knowles

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