The Charlie Kirk Show - Vivek Ramaswamy Has Fresh Ideas and He’s Running for President
Aired: 2023-02-24
Duration: 36:37


=== America Is An Idea (10:14) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, a full hour with the presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is running for the presidency.
[00:00:06]  Do not underestimate him.
[00:00:08]  He is incredibly articulate, interesting.
[00:00:10]  I think you'll learn something, and I'd love your thoughts.
[00:00:12]  What do you think of him after you listen to this episode?
[00:00:14]  Email me freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:17]  Make sure you're subscribed to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast and thank you for supporting us.
[00:00:22]  As of the recording of this episode, we are the number one podcast on Apple News.
[00:00:27]  That is a conservative.
[00:00:29]  So thank you for that.
[00:00:30]  Thank you, Diane, for supporting us at charliekirk.com slash support from Arizona.
[00:00:34]  Donna from Alabama.
[00:00:36]  Thank you.
[00:00:37]  Kathleen from Florida, charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:00:40]  Molly from Illinois.
[00:00:42]  Michaela from Texas.
[00:00:43]  Mike from Arizona.
[00:00:45]  Grace from California.
[00:00:47]  Allie from Kentucky.
[00:00:49]  Chris from California.
[00:00:51]  William from Illinois.
[00:00:53]  Stephen from Pennsylvania.
[00:00:55]  And Andre from California, charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:01:00]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:01:01]  Here we go.
[00:01:02]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:04]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:06]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:09]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:13]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:14]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:15]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:23]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:32]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:35]  Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.
[00:01:44]  Everybody running for president, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you are welcome on this show.
[00:01:49]  We're Trump here, Trump 2024.
[00:01:52]  We've made that clear.
[00:01:53]  But anybody running for office, we want to have a discussion of what do you believe?
[00:01:58]  Why do you believe it?
[00:01:59]  Why are you running for office?
[00:02:00]  We will treat you with respect.
[00:02:01]  We'll give you uninterrupted airtime to make your case to our audience.
[00:02:07]  And someone running for office who I think is super interesting announcement is running on a campaign of ideas.
[00:02:14]  That's a unique concept.
[00:02:17]  He's actually done something in his life.
[00:02:19]  He has successfully started businesses.
[00:02:21]  According to public reports, he's made hundreds of millions of dollars.
[00:02:24]  God bless him.
[00:02:25]  That's the American dream.
[00:02:26]  He's running on an anti-woke agenda.
[00:02:30]  Certainly agree with that.
[00:02:32]  He's lived the American dream.
[00:02:34]  He's extraordinarily articulate, full of optimism and positivity.
[00:02:39]  And he joins us right now.
[00:02:40]  It's Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:02:41]  His website is vec2024.com.
[00:02:45]  Vivek, welcome to the program.
[00:02:47]  Good to be on, Charlie.
[00:02:48]  How are you doing?
[00:02:49]  I'm doing well.
[00:02:50]  You are running for the presidency.
[00:02:52]  Why?
[00:02:54]  I think we're in the middle of this national identity crisis, Charlie.
[00:02:58]  You and I have talked about it on this show before.
[00:03:00]  We're so hungry for a cause and purpose and meaning at a time in American history when faith and patriotism and hard work have disappeared.
[00:03:10]  That's what allows wokeism and transgenderism and climatism to fill the void.
[00:03:15]  But I think we conservatives can do better if we fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes this woke agenda to irrelevance.
[00:03:26]  Yes, most people my age, your age, really any age today in America, what does it mean to be American today?
[00:03:32]  You get a blank stare in response.
[00:03:34]  I have a vision on what the answer to that question should be, a policy agenda that backs it up.
[00:03:39]  And I am running for president to revive the ideals that actually set this nation into motion 250 years ago.
[00:03:47]  And with a firm belief that we can't take for granted, but a firm belief that I have that we actually can be one nation again.
[00:03:53]  Not by showing up in the middle and saying, hey, guys, can't we all compromise kumbaya?
[00:03:58]  But to the contrary, by embracing the extremism, the radicalism of the ideas that made America itself 250 years ago in the American Revolution.
[00:04:08]  So that's why I'm running.
[00:04:09]  What is that radicalism and that extremism?
[00:04:11]  Well, these are extreme ideas in most of human history, that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, as Martin Luther King said it, but on the content of your character and contributions, that you have free speech and open debate as our mechanism for settling political questions rather than centralized aristocracy and censorship.
[00:04:30]  How about this one?
[00:04:30]  The people we elect to run the government are the people who actually run the government.
[00:04:36]  That's not the case today, but that was the American way.
[00:04:39]  And you know what?
[00:04:40]  For most of human history, Charlie, in old world Europe and before, that wasn't the norm.
[00:04:44]  We were the weirdos.
[00:04:45]  Okay, we were the weird guys on this side of the pond in 1776 that set that experiment into motion.
[00:04:51]  Turns out it created the greatest nation in human history, known to mankind.
[00:04:55]  Today, we're taught to apologize for those ideals.
[00:04:58]  And I'm running for president, not just to revive those ideals, but with a pretty clearly defined policy agenda to turn that back into reality today.
[00:05:06]  And there's one more piece to it, Charlie, which is that I don't think we have the luxury of time on our side anymore for a lot of reasons.
[00:05:11]  But one of the reasons is the rise of communist China, where if we don't get this right now, we will be subservient to China 10 years from now.
[00:05:19]  It will require some sacrifice to do things like declaring independence from China.
[00:05:24]  I'm the first candidate who's on the record saying we need total decoupling, declaration of independence from China.
[00:05:30]  That is the true declaration of independence of this century.
[00:05:33]  But I'm also honest about the fact that that will involve some sacrifice, a sacrifice that makes a lot of establishment Republicans upset.
[00:05:40]  But that's what we're going to need to do.
[00:05:42]  But it is my belief that we can make that sacrifice if we know what we are sacrificing for.
[00:05:48]  That is this thing we call America.
[00:05:50]  That is this thing that calls this that we call the set of ideals that bind us together across our different shades of melanin, which is all we know how to celebrate today.
[00:05:59]  So it gives you a taste of how I look at this.
[00:06:01]  I think you're correctly diagnosing the problem.
[00:06:04]  We are in the midst of a national identity crisis.
[00:06:06]  When I ask college students the question I'm about to ask you, they will kind of stare into the distance in confusion.
[00:06:13]  They've never thought deeply about it.
[00:06:15]  So Vivek, let me ask you, what does it mean to be an American?
[00:06:20]  Yeah, what it means to be an American is you believe, first of all, in merit and the unapologetic pursuit of excellence.
[00:06:27]  The American dream isn't just about money.
[00:06:28]  It isn't just about green pieces of paper.
[00:06:30]  It is about the pursuit of excellence itself.
[00:06:33]  It means you believe that the people who get into this country ought to get in this country on the basis of merit.
[00:06:38]  It means the people who get ahead in this country get ahead based on their own hard work, their own commitment, their own dedication, not based on the genetic characteristics they inherited on the day they were born.
[00:06:48]  It means you have the right to express and speak your mind freely as long as your neighbor has the same right in return, that you don't have to choose between speaking your mind freely and putting food on the dinner table.
[00:06:59]  That we're the quintessential nation on earth that allows you to do both of those things at once.
[00:07:05]  That is what it means to be American.
[00:07:07]  And you know what else it means?
[00:07:08]  It means that you don't have to apologize for those ideals.
[00:07:11]  It means you can embrace the view that is grounded in truth, that these are the ideals that form the backbone of the best nation known to, most successful nation on this earth, known to mankind in human history, not having to apologize for it.
[00:07:27]  That too, American exceptionalism, is part of what it means to be American.
[00:07:30]  Why is America exceptional?
[00:07:33]  Yeah, America is exceptional.
[00:07:34]  I mean, we have a beautiful country.
[00:07:36]  There's a lot of beautiful, naturally beautiful places around the world.
[00:07:39]  The thing that made America beautiful was the idea, the set of ideals that set it into motion.
[00:07:45]  And at the top of that list was this idea we call sovereignty.
[00:07:49]  It was this radical idea that the people of this country, the citizens of a nation, could be trusted to sort out their problems, to sort out their differences.
[00:07:59]  Back in old world Europe, they had a division.
[00:08:02]  You had to decide those questions in the backs of palace walls.
[00:08:05]  Church leaders, labor leaders, business leaders had to get together behind closed doors and decide what was right for the rest of society at large because the people could not be trusted.
[00:08:12]  America was born in a different idea.
[00:08:14]  What we said was for better or worse.
[00:08:17]  And by the way, that's a crucial part of the bargain.
[00:08:19]  We got to admit that.
[00:08:19]  For better or for worse, in the short run, that is how we settle our questions on this side of the Atlantic.
[00:08:27]  And I think we live in this 1776 moment where actually the defining political divide as I see it today isn't actually even between Democrats and Republicans.
[00:08:35]  That mostly bores me because, especially on the Republican side, the party label has come to mean nothing.
[00:08:40]  It is a 1776 moment of whether or not you believe in self-governance or whether you believe in aristocracy, whether you believe in the existence of nations or whether you believe in the existence of global governance.
[00:08:53]  Fundamentally, whether or not you believe in America, whether you are pro-America or whether you're anti-American.
[00:08:58]  But there's an optimistic note in that, Charlie, which is this.
[00:09:01]  When you divide up the political boundaries that way, not by Republican and Democrat, but by pro-American and anti-American, and I do think it's important to say that as many times as we can, it is an anti-American agenda.
[00:09:12]  The numbers work in our favor.
[00:09:13]  Okay, it's not 50-50 anymore.
[00:09:15]  It's like 70-30.
[00:09:17]  It might be 80-20 in the other direction, which actually means that I think 2024 should be a landslide election.
[00:09:25]  I know that sounds like a ridiculous thing to say right now, but I believe deep in my bones that if we make this election about those basic rules of the road, okay, not whether corporate tax rates should be high or low or whatever.
[00:09:38]  Those are details.
[00:09:39]  Different people can disagree about that.
[00:09:40]  But in the basic rules of the road, do the people we elect to run the government actually run the government?
[00:09:45]  Whether or not they're the guy I voted for, and at least better be the guy that somebody voted for, rather than a permanent state that's an aristocracy that actually runs the show.
[00:09:52]  Whether or not we reject the demands of a global climate religion that shackles the United States while leaving nations like China untouched to say that, no, no, we're going to declare independence just like we did in 1776, whether we're Democrat or Republican or black or white.
[00:10:05]  If we make the election about that issue, this is a 1980-style or 1984-style landslide election.
[00:10:12]  You mark my words.
[00:10:13]  And I think that, you know what?

=== Preparing For Food Shortages (02:48) ===

[00:10:15]  2023 shouldn't even be about the question of the who.
[00:10:17]  Okay, we're getting to that too early.
[00:10:20]  It should be about the question of the what and the why.
[00:10:22]  What do we stand for as a conservative movement, as in my language, pro-American movement?
[00:10:27]  Why do we stand for it?
[00:10:29]  If we get that right in the next 10 months, then next year it's up to the voters to decide who's going to be the best standard bearer for that message.
[00:10:35]  I wouldn't be running for president if I didn't think that I was going to do that best job.
[00:10:39]  I think there's a lot of reasons that I believe that.
[00:10:41]  But that doesn't even matter.
[00:10:42]  We can get to that next year.
[00:10:44]  This year is about the what and the why.
[00:10:46]  And if we get that right, we finally revitalize the Republican Party.
[00:10:50]  That's a sideshow.
[00:10:51]  But most importantly, we revitalize this nation.
[00:10:54]  And that is why I'm running for president.
[00:10:56]  Incredibly gifted communicator.
[00:10:58]  You have to acknowledge that.
[00:10:59]  Vivek is going to be a force to be reckoned with.
[00:11:02]  He describes what a lot of people know at their core in a very articulate way.
[00:11:10]  Look, everybody, we're nine meals away from anarchy.
[00:11:14]  You are.
[00:11:14]  Balloons flying overhead, possible EMPs, UFOs, unidentified flying objects being shot out of the sky.
[00:11:21]  Do you have food for your family?
[00:11:24]  If things fall apart, I think there might be food shortages.
[00:11:27]  There might be electromagnetic pulses.
[00:11:29]  You better be prepared.
[00:11:30]  That is the Boy Scout motto.
[00:11:32]  Be prepared.
[00:11:33]  If you go to mypatriotsupply.com right now, you could take advantage of their special new offer.
[00:11:39]  You could stock up on emergency food so you have a fighting chance when things fall apart.
[00:11:44]  So, grab their three-month emergency food kit, and they'll throw in $200 worth of top-quality survival gear.
[00:11:51]  Head on over to mypatriotsupply.com to see all this amazing gear.
[00:11:56]  The gear you'll get, the variety is truly impressive.
[00:11:59]  But best of all, all these items will help you survive when the power grid goes down and you need to fend for yourself.
[00:12:04]  And the food is in the three-month emergency food kit.
[00:12:08]  It's totally delicious.
[00:12:09]  Your whole family will love it, and you'll be the hero who ordered it before it was too late.
[00:12:12]  Go to mypatriotsupply.com and get your $200 worth of top-quality survival gear with each three-month emergency food kit.
[00:12:19]  You order, go to mypatriotsupply.com.
[00:12:22]  That is mypatriotsupply.com.
[00:12:27]  So, Vivek, I'm going to push back just a little bit, and maybe you can clarify on the notion or the argument that America is an idea.
[00:12:36]  Do you believe it's more than an idea?
[00:12:38]  The reason being is if it was just okay, what else is it then other than an idea?
[00:12:43]  I said America isn't just a place, it is a vision of what that place can be.
[00:12:47]  And I think we need to revive that.
[00:12:48]  That's part of what we're missing.
[00:12:50]  I think the question you asked me is: what makes America itself?
[00:12:52]  I think part of what makes America great is the set of ideals.
[00:12:55]  However, you can't be a nation that lives in the clouds.
[00:12:57]  You are a nation grounded around a geographic border.
[00:13:01]  That too is part of what it means to have a nation.

=== Confronting White Guilt (11:10) ===

[00:13:03]  Actually, a lot of my policy agenda, Charlie, has been directed head-on at this issue.
[00:13:08]  I mean, you talk about the use of the military in this country, okay?
[00:13:12]  It's still, like you, I'm always open-minded and open to persuasion.
[00:13:16]  But I traveled to the state of New Hampshire yesterday.
[00:13:18]  I'm in Iowa today.
[00:13:19]  I am yet to get an objection from anyone to one of the things that I plan to do as president, which is make a proper use of the U.S. military to, who would have ever thought, protect our own turf and soil.
[00:13:31]  I want to use it to decimate the cartels.
[00:13:34]  The defense establishment doesn't like this for some reason.
[00:13:37]  They do like sending money to Ukraine by the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars.
[00:13:41]  For a tiny fraction of that, we can actually defend this place we call our land.
[00:13:46]  And I think that enthusiastically agree with that.
[00:13:48]  So, you would use the U.S. military as president of the United States, you would mobilize tanks and drones and troops and say, we're no longer going to be invaded 8,000 people a day.
[00:13:56]  We're going to do it.
[00:13:57]  Obviously, it's humanely impossible, but we're going to secure our turf from being invaded.
[00:14:02]  Yes, and I want to be very honest.
[00:14:04]  There will be, as safely as possible, for sure, there will be some casualties.
[00:14:08]  You just got to be honest with people that you don't take on an action like that without casualties.
[00:14:12]  But there are casualties today, 100,000 fentanyl-related deaths on our side of the border, 80% of which, probably more than 80% of which, but at least 80% of which is the product of crossings on the southern border, Swiss cheese of a southern border, if we can even call it that.
[00:14:27]  Now, I think that is a national security issue.
[00:14:29]  Republicans sometimes talk about turning them into domestic terrorist organizations and classifying them as not as domestic terrorists, that's Biden, but terrorist organizations for the purpose of freezing their assets.
[00:14:40]  That is too meek, okay?
[00:14:42]  You're not just freeze their financial assets.
[00:14:44]  If they're terrorists, we got to go bin Laden on.
[00:14:47]  We got to go solemani on them.
[00:14:48]  And I think we can do it.
[00:14:49]  Drone strikes, targeted airstrikes, tactical use of special forces.
[00:14:53]  This is the use case.
[00:14:54]  Now, it's got to be done well.
[00:14:55]  I think it's got to be done in one cycle of shock and awe.
[00:14:59]  If you do it too gradually, it allows one cycle of adaptation and then this becomes harder.
[00:15:04]  I don't want a long-drawn out conflict.
[00:15:06]  I think it can actually be a pretty easy solution delivered in the first six months of a presidency.
[00:15:12]  I certainly intend to follow through on that.
[00:15:14]  There's even an easier way to do it, which is right now, Oberdoor is in the pocket of the drug cartels.
[00:15:18]  I think that is pretty clear south of the border.
[00:15:20]  Okay, it's a failed narco state where the president itself is a puppet of a series of drug cartels.
[00:15:26]  They're their sugar daddy, all right?
[00:15:27]  Well, call them up, show up on the first day, be polite about it.
[00:15:30]  I know they're your sugar daddy.
[00:15:32]  There's a new daddy in town.
[00:15:33]  We're going to need you to do this problem for us.
[00:15:35]  We're going to help you.
[00:15:36]  If you're not going to do it yourself, we're coming in and we're doing it for you.
[00:15:40]  That's what the U.S. military is supposed to do: protect American interests on American soil, not fighting for somebody else's soil somewhere else where there's no actual clearly identifiable American interests.
[00:15:50]  And I just think foreign policy is all about prioritization.
[00:15:53]  For me, the top two priorities are declare independence from China, total decoupling.
[00:15:58]  I'm on the record.
[00:15:59]  I want to hear the other Republicans say it too.
[00:16:01]  Yes, that involves some short-term sacrifice, but that's what it's going to take to make sure that we have a nation still left 50 years from now.
[00:16:08]  And the second is this radical idea of actually protecting our border.
[00:16:12]  And you know what?
[00:16:13]  If there's one good use case for the U.S. military, it's not to fight a pointless war somewhere else, but actually to use it to protect our border and our soil, because that too is part of what it means to have a nation.
[00:16:23]  Vivek, why is this not widespread public opinion with Republicans?
[00:16:28]  They say we need to kind of get more funding.
[00:16:30]  No, you're saying, no, We want Marines, we want drones, we want tanks, we want missiles.
[00:16:35]  You have just used the W word.
[00:16:37]  You want to declare war on the Sinola cartel.
[00:16:39]  I totally agree.
[00:16:40]  Why is that considered radical?
[00:16:43]  So I cannot explain it to you, Charlie.
[00:16:45]  The defense establishment just believes you cannot say this in polite company.
[00:16:48]  I'm just giving free advice to the other candidates.
[00:16:50]  I traveled to New Hampshire today.
[00:16:51]  I'm in Iowa today.
[00:16:53]  I mean, the people who came into that room in Iowa, in Scott County, where I'm talking to right now, were converted before and after.
[00:16:58]  I got to tell you how many people told me they were like, I didn't, I was skeptical and I'm with you now.
[00:17:04]  The one policy they agree with me, probably top five among any other, is this one.
[00:17:08]  And I think the defensive establishment is uncomfortable with it.
[00:17:11]  I know some people will even have sort of conspiratorial theories saying that there's even capture within the U.S. government.
[00:17:15]  I'm evidence-based.
[00:17:16]  I haven't seen direct evidence of that, but it doesn't have to be hard capture.
[00:17:20]  It can just be soft capture.
[00:17:21]  It's not this hard conspiracy theory.
[00:17:23]  It's what I call emergent conspiracy, where somehow we have this mentality that the only thing you're supposed to use the U.S. military for is something that doesn't directly protect American soil, when in fact, that was the thing that was created to protect in the first place.
[00:17:34]  Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, all far lower priorities than whether or not Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California are being invaded every single day.
[00:17:47]  8,000 people a day.
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[00:18:28]  Vivek, I want to talk about your affirmative action stance, and then I do want to go through some of the recently surfaced objections, which I know you'll be a good sport to just kind of go through.
[00:18:37]  I actually think it's helpful for you to kind of clear them up.
[00:18:40]  But let's, I do want one of the things that just got me actually applauding, literally, in my living room when I heard it.
[00:18:46]  I was like, did he just say that on television when you were having your interview with Tucker Carlson and you said you're just going to repeal affirmative action via executive order?
[00:18:56]  As Tucker Carlson accurately responded, he said the entire federal government is built on affirmative action.
[00:19:03]  So are you running for the presidency with a promise and a pledge that you are going to eliminate all forms of affirmative action in the government?
[00:19:11]  Hard yes.
[00:19:12]  That is a pledge, and I will start on day one because the U.S. president can actually do it.
[00:19:18]  Not a lot of people know this, Charlie, but there's a Lyndon Johnson-era executive order that mandates that anyone that wants to do business with the federal government, and that's read very broadly.
[00:19:28]  It comprises 20% of the entire U.S. workforce has to adopt race-based quota systems.
[00:19:34]  That is one of the original sins that gives us this race-based woke religion.
[00:19:38]  And I know this, Steph.
[00:19:39]  I mean, I've been spending the last three years of my life intellectually studying this stuff, going deep.
[00:19:43]  Turns out, not a lot of Republicans want to talk about it.
[00:19:46]  No, it's worse than that.
[00:19:48]  No, they run for the hills, Vivek.
[00:19:50]  Are you kidding?
[00:19:50]  They run for the hills.
[00:19:51]  They run for the hills.
[00:19:52]  So I've pushed people on this.
[00:19:53]  And Charlie, again, it's like the Mexican drug cartel use of military.
[00:19:56]  I don't understand why Republicans hide from this stuff.
[00:20:00]  Every Republican president since Lyndon Johnson could have taken a pen and crossed it out and begin to rid ourselves of this national cancer that has unleashed hell on the American spirit through the actual systemic racism in America today.
[00:20:14]  You want to talk about systemic racism?
[00:20:16]  It is affirmative action in America as we know it.
[00:20:19]  I will tell you, you hold my feet to this fire.
[00:20:22]  January 2025, I'm in that office.
[00:20:24]  Day one, first thing I do, 11246, it's out.
[00:20:28]  And that's the beginning of eliminating race-based affirmative action in every sphere of our lives.
[00:20:34]  I was giving a speech here in Scott County today, okay, to a room that actually had a lot of different looking faces in it, different shades of melanin.
[00:20:40]  I could care less for how people look.
[00:20:42]  It was in the middle of the speech.
[00:20:43]  The whole room is standing up when I commit to making that commitment.
[00:20:46]  Again, free advice to the other GOP candidates.
[00:20:49]  I care about the agenda.
[00:20:50]  Make that commitment.
[00:20:51]  And if you're not, you better explain yourself as to why you're not willing to, because people deserve to be able to.
[00:20:55]  Yeah, I know.
[00:20:56]  I can't wait because, again, every candidate's welcome to my show.
[00:20:58]  I'm going to ask Nikki Haley if she comes on our show, like, hey, are you going to eliminate affirmative action day one by the stroke of a pen?
[00:21:04]  Be super curious to her answer.
[00:21:05]  I don't kick it with heels.
[00:21:06]  Take her heels and kick affirmative action with heels.
[00:21:09]  That's what I say.
[00:21:09]  Yeah, I mean, whatever you want to kick it with.
[00:21:11]  And I appreciate your candor, Vivek.
[00:21:12]  You're actually answering questions.
[00:21:13]  It's so weird.
[00:21:14]  I'm not used to that.
[00:21:15]  So, let me ask you, just as a follow-up here, and just to reinforce this, by the way, the idea of going after affirmative action is so unbelievably popular.
[00:21:25]  Every time it goes up on a ballot referendum, people reject racial preferences.
[00:21:29]  We don't like it.
[00:21:29]  It's not who we are.
[00:21:30]  It's not in our DNA.
[00:21:32]  It's this fringe, hyper-radical idea that was put by LBJ, and every Republican is afraid to do it.
[00:21:40]  Now, Vivek, this is interesting.
[00:21:41]  I think one of the reasons why you're so willing to talk about using the military to declare war on the cartels and go after affirmative action is you are not plagued with what I think is one of the biggest issues in American politics, which is white guilt, which is white demography.
[00:21:56]  You nailed it.
[00:21:57]  Tell me why.
[00:21:59]  So that's what I, I mean, I don't think of myself as the color of my skin or whatever, but in politics, you know, your age, your demographic, these things tend to matter.
[00:22:06]  And so, and so the reality is, I feel uninhibited to say the quiet part out loud.
[00:22:11]  And you know what?
[00:22:12]  Somebody could say it's easier for me to do than somebody else.
[00:22:14]  Maybe it is.
[00:22:15]  Maybe it isn't.
[00:22:16]  I don't really care.
[00:22:16]  I'm just sticking to truth here.
[00:22:18]  But in the commitments I'm making here, you're right.
[00:22:20]  I am a first-generation American.
[00:22:22]  My parents were immigrants to this country.
[00:22:24]  They came legally.
[00:22:25]  They raised actually two kids, both of whom started businesses, both of which went on to help thousands of Americans.
[00:22:31]  We don't apologize for that, but you know what?
[00:22:32]  That allows me to be unapologetic, hard lining.
[00:22:35]  You can't call me racist for saying it when I say that.
[00:22:37]  No, your last name's Ramaswamy.
[00:22:39]  Like them calling you racist.
[00:22:40]  That's kind of DOA.
[00:22:41]  Continue.
[00:22:43]  It's kind of laughable, right?
[00:22:45]  And so, you know, maybe it does make it easier for me to say I draw a hard line on affirmative action.
[00:22:50]  And it's also personal to me, Charlie.
[00:22:51]  I mean, this is not, I didn't poll test any of this stuff.
[00:22:54]  I have no idea how these policies poll.
[00:22:57]  I'm just telling you how I feel.
[00:22:58]  Achievement was actually my ticket to get ahead in America.
[00:23:01]  All right.
[00:23:02]  Just to tell you a little bit of the truth here.
[00:23:04]  I grew up in Southwest Ohio.
[00:23:06]  I was actually okay at sports and basketball and whatnot.
[00:23:09]  But other than that, I was a nerdy kid with funny-looking glasses, funny last name, dad who had an accent, who went to a mostly black public school through eighth grade and then went to a mostly white Catholic high school after that.
[00:23:22]  I was the odd man out.
[00:23:24]  All right.
[00:23:24]  Achievement was my ticket to get ahead.
[00:23:27]  My parents literally, my dad had this corny saying, but it actually held true.
[00:23:30]  If you're going to stand out, you might as well be outstanding.
[00:23:34]  All right.
[00:23:34]  So this is deeply personal to me.
[00:23:36]  And you know what?
[00:23:38]  The assault on American merit based on affirmative action, that is an assault on the American soul itself.
[00:23:43]  We're talking about what it means to be American.
[00:23:45]  This goes to the heart of what it means to be an American, that you get ahead based on your hard work and your commitment and your dedication, not on your genetics.
[00:23:54]  And so it's also not, the sad part is it's actually fueling more anti-black racism now because there's no better way to cause racism against a group than to take something away from a different group on the basis of the color of their skin.
[00:24:06]  That's exactly what affirmative action does.
[00:24:09]  And again, I'm going to say really clearly: the president can solve this problem.

=== Fighting The WEF Agenda (05:45) ===

[00:24:13]  We should not be here.
[00:24:15]  It doesn't require bipartisanship in Congress.
[00:24:17]  The president can do it.
[00:24:18]  The president with a stroke of a pen, we moved the embassy to Jerusalem, right?
[00:24:22]  We did a lot of things.
[00:24:23]  We pardoned people.
[00:24:24]  Trump did some awesome things.
[00:24:26]  This is something that is in need of addressing.
[00:24:28]  All right, Vivek, I'm going to go through just some of the kind of chattering class objections.
[00:24:32]  Okay, let me start with one that I'm going to personally need clear.
[00:24:35]  I think there's some really silly ones, but you said here that, and I want to make sure I get the quote, the most important step in fighting COVID-19 pandemic was the distribution of vaccines.
[00:24:45]  That's an unpopular opinion running in the Republican primary.
[00:24:49]  What is your position on the vaccine?
[00:24:51]  And what is my position on it today is a key question, Charlie.
[00:24:53]  And I want to say something about this.
[00:24:55]  I'm actually proud, I don't like to brag a lot, but I'm proud of being ahead of the curve on a lot of things over the last few years, from government tech censorship, which was initially rejected as a conspiracy theory when I proposed it, to fighting the World Economic Forum's agenda, stakeholder capitalism, ESG, you name it.
[00:25:10]  I've actually been ahead of the curve now on the climate religion.
[00:25:13]  So I'll take my credit there.
[00:25:15]  I don't like to boast a lot.
[00:25:16]  On this one, I was not number one on this issue.
[00:25:19]  I'm going to admit that.
[00:25:20]  I'm not God.
[00:25:21]  I'm a human being.
[00:25:22]  I follow facts as they emerge.
[00:25:24]  And on this one, I didn't foresee actually the reality as it unfolded.
[00:25:28]  I will tell you this, though, and it's up on my social media now, actually.
[00:25:31]  In 2021, I was on with Tucker Carlson when he asked me about, you know, what do you think about the distribution plan of vaccines based on race-based criteria, as the Biden administration was proposing?
[00:25:41]  I said at the time, this is a powder keg waiting to explode.
[00:25:44]  Imagine if something goes wrong, this would be like Tuskegee all over again.
[00:25:48]  I did say that in 2021.
[00:25:50]  Also, even before, when I was a biotech CEO in 2020, I said there was too much of an emphasis on vaccines relative to treatments for people who were in the hospital.
[00:25:59]  I also put my money where my mouth was by attempting to develop a treatment for people who were in the hospital.
[00:26:05]  And I don't think anybody objects to that if somebody's on a ventilator to try to save their life with a therapy.
[00:26:10]  We didn't emphasize that enough in this country.
[00:26:12]  So those are just true facts.
[00:26:14]  But it's not one of the areas where I was the most ahead of the curve.
[00:26:17]  I think that the facts have changed my mind.
[00:26:19]  Great.
[00:26:19]  So, what is your position?
[00:26:20]  Because you're going to get asked on the trail, right?
[00:26:21]  It's like a top three issue for Republican primary voters.
[00:26:24]  Not just the mandates, but the actual vaccine itself.
[00:26:27]  What is your stance as of today?
[00:26:29]  I think the government did not disclose information that they should have.
[00:26:32]  I think that that has been a form of deception on the American people.
[00:26:35]  It's one more reason why people haven't been able to trust the people in authority and in power.
[00:26:40]  And I think that a lot of us, from President Trump to DeSantis to me in this field, need to admit humility about that fact.
[00:26:46]  I, for my part, I appreciate that.
[00:26:48]  And I mean, I think it was an absolute catastrophe against humanity.
[00:26:52]  And we'll put that issue to rest.
[00:26:54]  You're going to get that question, though.
[00:26:55]  So be prepared.
[00:26:56]  All right.
[00:26:57]  Some of the more, I think, laughable ones against you, Vivek.
[00:27:00]  People are saying that, first, that you are a George Soros guy and part of the World Economic Forum.
[00:27:06]  Want to just nip this one in the bud?
[00:27:08]  I mean, this is hilarious, Charlie.
[00:27:11]  So let's talk about the World Economic Forum one first.
[00:27:15]  I'm just going to give anybody who's going to give this criticism a challenge.
[00:27:18]  Okay.
[00:27:18]  You find somebody in America who has been a more vocal opponent of the globalist agenda of the World Economic Forum and who has actually done something about it in the market than me.
[00:27:29]  I will wait.
[00:27:30]  Okay.
[00:27:31]  If you really pressed me for somebody who I could suggest making that list, Elon Musk would be on the list.
[00:27:36]  Guess what?
[00:27:37]  He shows up on that same website on the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders website that they posted my name on, or Peter Thiel or anyone else they post their pictures on.
[00:27:45]  You want to know why?
[00:27:46]  We know how this game works.
[00:27:48]  The World Economic Forum has a really bad habit of posting people's pictures on their young global leader sites who never consented to it.
[00:27:56]  In fact, they called me.
[00:27:57]  They contacted me.
[00:27:58]  I, as politely as I could, told them, hell no.
[00:28:01]  I stand for the exact opposite agenda.
[00:28:03]  Weeks later, months later, wake up to congratulatory texts from billionaires suggesting that I was a young global leader.
[00:28:10]  And I said, absolutely not.
[00:28:11]  I never agreed to it.
[00:28:12]  And they said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand, Vivek.
[00:28:14]  Here are the people you're going to meet at the World Economic Forum.
[00:28:17]  I chose not to go and I demanded that they actually take it down.
[00:28:20]  I went to them on social media.
[00:28:22]  Actually, the only way to get somebody sometimes is actually to embarrass them publicly, which I did, which eventually led them to take it down.
[00:28:28]  And you could probably find those tweets that eventually I had to put out.
[00:28:30]  Someone was on one of my Twitter threads.
[00:28:32]  They said, Hey, why are you on this?
[00:28:34]  I was like, I don't.
[00:28:35]  They told me they were going to take me off because I never consented to it.
[00:28:38]  Then they tagged them and finally the World Economic Forum got embarrassed.
[00:28:41]  The other one is they say you're a Soros fellow, but I don't know if this is, it's a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
[00:28:46]  Yeah, I mean, let me just, let me just, let me just sort of, this is like hilarious.
[00:28:50]  So I was 25 years old.
[00:28:52]  I was applying to law school.
[00:28:54]  I actually had applied to law school.
[00:28:55]  I got in.
[00:28:56]  There's a fellowship that's not George Soros, it's Paul Soros that funds people who are high-achieving to help pay for graduate school.
[00:29:03]  I won it and I took it.
[00:29:05]  You want to know why?
[00:29:05]  Because I'm smart.
[00:29:06]  Now, in both of these cases, all right, I just want to say something.
[00:29:09]  This is not a criticism of Donald Trump.
[00:29:11]  I think these would be stupid reasons to criticize Donald Trump, but it does say a lot about these sort of clickbait conservatives that are trying to, I don't know, make a buck for themselves in the process.
[00:29:20]  Okay.
[00:29:21]  That was a scholarship when I was 25 years old to pay for law school paid for by somebody who's related to George Soros.
[00:29:28]  Donald Trump took $160 million loan from George Soros to build a building.
[00:29:32]  I don't hold that against him because he knows what he's doing.
[00:29:34]  That's just business.
[00:29:35]  You want to talk about the World Economic Forum.
[00:29:37]  Trump, I think, spoke there.
[00:29:38]  You'd know better than I. In 2018, 2019, he's somebody who, you know, has been involved in various ways.
[00:29:44]  That's okay.
[00:29:44]  I don't hold that against him because if you're Elon Musk or me or Donald Trump or people who have been successful, that's just what you get invited to.
[00:29:51]  The fact that somebody invited you to something is a silly reason, but I think that's a fair response.
[00:29:55]  Clickbaits conservatives are hilarious.
[00:29:58]  I think it's a fair response.

=== Unapologetic Immigration Policy (06:37) ===

[00:29:59]  And I will defend, though, that some of the people that are asking these questions of Vivek are doing it from a position of, we've been betrayed so much.
[00:30:06]  Okay.
[00:30:07]  We've been betrayed by Paul Ryan.
[00:30:08]  We've been betrayed by Boehner.
[00:30:10]  We've been betrayed by McConnell.
[00:30:11]  And there is a sense of understandable hawkishness, paranoia.
[00:30:15]  Like, hey, we're not going to let this happen again.
[00:30:18]  You do this and that.
[00:30:18]  And then, look, you got to have prudence and you have to always be factual.
[00:30:21]  You cannot allow yourself to get into deception or lies, which is why I'm offering you an opportunity to clarify it.
[00:30:26]  But I also just want to defend, you know, some of the people that are asking these questions, albeit very shaky, it comes from a good-hearted place of like, hey, man, we don't want to get swindled again.
[00:30:39]  That's super fair, Charlie.
[00:30:40]  And you know what?
[00:30:40]  You're going to run for president.
[00:30:41]  You better be prepared to deal with that scrutiny.
[00:30:43]  And people should be skeptical.
[00:30:45]  That's what I would say.
[00:30:45]  I'm new on the scene.
[00:30:46]  You should be skeptical.
[00:30:47]  History teaches us to be.
[00:30:48]  It's a long process for a reason.
[00:30:50]  Let me build the trust with you.
[00:30:52]  And I think that on the other side of it, you'll realize that I'm for real.
[00:30:54]  We're fighting the same fight together.
[00:30:56]  Pick the best guy to do it.
[00:30:59]  So, Vivek, you are a son of immigrants.
[00:31:02]  What is your immigration proposal or policy?
[00:31:05]  Do we have too many people coming into America?
[00:31:07]  Do we have not enough people coming into America?
[00:31:09]  Not the illegal.
[00:31:11]  I'm talking about legal immigration, right?
[00:31:13]  So let's just put the border jumping aside.
[00:31:15]  We're obviously in harmony there.
[00:31:16]  What is your legal immigration plan?
[00:31:19]  Because the president has a ton of authority, doesn't need Congress.
[00:31:22]  So what's your plan?
[00:31:24]  I would say intentional immigration policies over accidental ones.
[00:31:29]  We should be unapologetic about who gets in.
[00:31:31]  Meritocratic immigration, a points-based system.
[00:31:35]  Points for both contributions you are likely to make to this country in areas where we need it, as well as your commitment and loyalty to this country.
[00:31:44]  So, I think that's actually really important, too.
[00:31:46]  You want to pledge allegiance to this country.
[00:31:48]  There's so many immigrants who actually do want to be part of this nation in some ways, shamefully, more than people who are many generations into this country who are so apathetic towards it.
[00:31:57]  If we're getting the right kind of immigrants, I'm all in favor of it.
[00:32:00]  So, if we're getting the wrong kind of immigrants, I'm not intentional rather than actual.
[00:32:04]  Just in the spirit of time, so currently there are 1.1 million green cards issued.
[00:32:09]  What do you think?
[00:32:10]  What are the RAISE Act proposed by Senator Tom Cotton wants to reduce that to about 400,000 green cards a year?
[00:32:16]  What would your number be?
[00:32:18]  So, I don't have a number right now, but I think that that's because focusing on the number is the wrong question first before we've actually decided on the criteria of who we want to let in.
[00:32:27]  So, once you decide on the criteria, here are the people who are actually going to contribute to America's industrial base, which we need to shore up to get economic independence from China.
[00:32:35]  Here are the people who are going to lead America to be more economically successful while also pledging allegiance to this country, including being willing to serve it, even militarily or otherwise, should the need eventually ever arise.
[00:32:44]  Great.
[00:32:45]  Let's see how many of those people actually line up.
[00:32:47]  And then, out of that falls the question of the number.
[00:32:49]  So, I'm not in this camp of believing that you set a number when you don't have even an idea of who you even want to allow to come in.
[00:32:55]  If that number is zero, then let it be zero.
[00:32:57]  If that number is over a million, let it be over a million.
[00:32:59]  But if it's the right type of people come into the country as Americans in the way that I described and are actually going to contribute to what this country needs, let's figure out that number.
[00:33:10]  I'd say let them in.
[00:33:11]  But the problem is, many, if not most of the people who are coming today, don't fit that stringent description.
[00:33:15]  Day one, what do you do?
[00:33:16]  What are you signing?
[00:33:17]  What are you advocating for?
[00:33:18]  What does day one, hour one, look like?
[00:33:21]  Okay, we already talked about a few of them.
[00:33:22]  End affirmative action right away.
[00:33:24]  I'm going to do that with the stroke of a pen.
[00:33:25]  Fire people in the federal government, shut down agencies.
[00:33:28]  I went on record in the last 24 hours, shutting down the Department of Education, shutting down a number of other parts of the national security apparatus, committing to actually replace them with something new.
[00:33:40]  Once managerial cancer has gotten so bad, you can't actually reform it.
[00:33:44]  You actually have to shut it down.
[00:33:45]  The other thing I would say is eight-year sunset clauses, where if I'm assuming the presidency and I can't be a federal employee for more than eight years, most federal bureaucrats should not be employees for more than eight years either.
[00:33:57]  Now, they will say that there's congressional provisions that override this.
[00:34:00]  I say no.
[00:34:01]  I believe in Article II of the Constitution, and those statutes and civil services protections are unconstitutional when measured against that.
[00:34:09]  Like Elon did at Twitter, I'm going to release the state action files from the federal government.
[00:34:14]  Anytime in the last five years that a government bureaucrat or a government official pressured a private company to do something that the government actor couldn't do directly, we got to expose that and put sunlight on it and eventually actually press charges on the back of it.
[00:34:29]  Twitter will just be the tip of the iceberg.
[00:34:31]  We're going to roll that log over, see what crawls out.
[00:34:34]  The other thing I'm doing on day one, it's one of these sacred cows.
[00:34:36]  Even if you're a Republican, you're not supposed to touch, is abandoning climate religion in America, the climate religion that shackles America while leaving China untouched.
[00:34:46]  We're going to unleash fossil fuels.
[00:34:47]  We're not going to apologize for that.
[00:34:49]  We're going to deregulate a lot of the unnecessary constraints applying to nuclear energy.
[00:34:53]  It's an American energy revival that rejects the demands of this globalist climate religion without apology.
[00:35:00]  I think as it pertains to social media in this country, think about the depression and anxiety epidemic across this country.
[00:35:05]  The federal government can tell you you can't smoke an addictive cigarette till the age of 18 or drink alcohol till the age of 21.
[00:35:11]  I don't think you should be able to at least use an addictive social media product like TikTok until the age of 15 or 16 either.
[00:35:17]  That's not a partisan proposal, but I think it's something that makes sense when you think about the next generation of Americans and what's actually holding them back.
[00:35:25]  And that's all I'm telling you.
[00:35:26]  And by the way, we talked about the Mexican drug cartel piece of this.
[00:35:29]  I think that's not a day one thing.
[00:35:30]  That's a first three to six months thing.
[00:35:32]  Get that right.
[00:35:33]  Use the military, use military force to solve that problem with shock and awe in one cycle.
[00:35:37]  The fentanyl problem is over.
[00:35:39]  Then we build the wall and we're in good shape.
[00:35:41]  And I'm just giving you, Charlie, even just scratching the surface.
[00:35:45]  That's anywhere between day one and month one on the Mexican drug cartel proposal, the first three to six months.
[00:35:51]  Just a taste of what my administration will look like.
[00:35:55]  I think that the piece of bureaucratic reform, though, is actually probably at the heart of it.
[00:35:59]  Because if you're the executive and you run the show, if someone's working for you and you can't fire them, that means they don't actually work for you.
[00:36:07]  It means you work for them.
[00:36:09]  And today, the president of the United States works for the bureaucracy, whether they're Republican or Democrat.
[00:36:13]  I'm reversing that relationship and making sure that the people who report to me can be fired.
[00:36:18]  Vivek 2024, check out the website.
[00:36:20]  Vivek, thanks so much.
[00:36:23]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:36:24]  Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:36:28]  Thank you so much for listening and God bless.
[00:36:33]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.