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March 16, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:00:56
GOP Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Shares His Vision for a Unified America | SYSTEM UPDATE #56

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- Good evening, everyone.
It's Wednesday, March 15th.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, American politics often seems like one continuous loop of elections and campaigns.
Some states have just completed the voting totals for the 2022 midterms, and we already have a spate of politicians who have formally announced or are strongly insinuating that they intend to run for president in 2024, and are even actively campaigning for an election that is still one year and eight months away.
This is not the normal state of affairs.
Other countries have tightly regimented election cycles where all explicit and formal campaigning is banned until a few months before the election.
Though how much difference that really makes in practice is in dispute where all the known candidates go right up to the line in campaigning for just as long as the American candidates do.
Though the US is somewhat unique in that we seem to be in a state of permanent campaign mode.
The dominance of punditry and horse race journalism, the incessant and unbelievably boring chatter about who is leading polls and who is and is not a viable candidate, often drown out seemingly by design the most substantive debates that we ought to be having.
While this is undoubtedly annoying, especially if your work requires paying attention to all of this, it can have a positive effect in stimulating meaningful political debates, providing one has candidates who are offering new, worthwhile substantive and thought through ideas that advance and elevate political worthwhile substantive and thought through ideas that advance and elevate political thought and encourage us to think and reason from first
That can have a cleansing effect by liberating us from dreary political slogans and familiar cliches and start to rethink how we view political debate.
But that requires having candidates willing to take risks by offering unconventional ideas accompanied by the capacity to defend them and answer questions about them in a direct and just normal human way.
Such is the case for the Ohio-born Vivek Ramaswamy, who is now a declared candidate for the Republican nomination for president.
Though only 37, Vivek has compiled a series of impressive private sector successes, particularly his 2014 founding of the biotech company Roivent Sciences, that has left him with a reported net worth in excess of half a billion dollars.
Since stepping out from that company, he has clearly made a concerted effort to enter and make his mark on political discourse in the United States, culminating in publication of his 2021 book, Woke Inc., a book I read before publication at his request and liked so much that I blurbed,
and that details how corporate power has been exploited by America's most powerful entities in corporate and that details how corporate power has been exploited by America's most powerful entities in corporate America, academia, and politics to impose what he calls the, quote, modern woke industrial complex on the country, all as a means of stifling real debate and
I've gotten to know Vivek a bit over the last couple of years, and there's no question that he is very smart, an original and independent thinker, but as the interviewer about to show you demonstrates, there are definitely some disagreements I have with him, some held quite passionately, but I really believe that our politics generally and the 2024 presidential but I really believe that our politics generally and the 2024 presidential debate in particular will be significantly improved by
And it was in that spirit that we asked him to come on to our show for what I hope and expect will be the first of many interviews with him and other candidates running in 2024 as well as that presidential campaign Approaches.
Here's the interview with Vivek.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Vivek, first of all, congratulations on this big announcement.
It's obviously an important milestone in someone's life to run for president.
I'm sure it's not an easy one, but I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.
That's good to talk again, Glenn.
How you doing?
Yeah, doing great.
So, there's obviously no shortage of other candidates in this Republican primary.
We have people who represent lots of different ideological divisions, which the Republican Party, I think, positively is confronting.
There's people with lots of different experiences, including some people who are from Washington, some who aren't.
You have obviously Trump and DeSantis and Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence and potentially Chris Christie and John Sununu and probably a bunch of others.
If you hadn't run, what would this race be lacking that only you can provide?
Yeah, so I think there's a couple things, Glenn, but I think I'm the only true outsider in this race, actually.
You get to be an outsider once, that's what Trump brought in 2015 and 2016.
And I think if you're gonna run the federal government, especially with a plan to gut, and I really mean gut the managerial bureaucracy, restore a system of governance in America where the people who we elect to run the government are the ones who actually run the government, rather than this cancerous federal bureaucracy, You need somebody who's actually willing to do this and not a product of the very system that gave us that managerial bureaucracy.
And in my case, look, I bring two different dimensions to this.
One of them I think you're more familiar with in the last few years.
I have been, you know, as something of a writer, written three books, a scholar, if I may say so, from of the Constitution.
Somebody who actually brings a quasi-academic perspective to deeply understanding the Constitution, but actually not as an academic, but as somebody who's been a chief executive, built and run multi-billion dollar enterprises, and who understands that, for example, if you tell me that somebody works for me but I can't fire them, they don't actually work for me, that means I work for them.
And bringing an understanding of the Constitution and an exercise of executive power that can actually run the executive branch effectively.
It's probably one of the most important things that I bring to this race that's different.
The other thing, Glenn, is I'm not running on somebody else's vision.
You get a lot of professional politicians that'll, you know, get prepped before an interview like this one with a binder with nine points in it about the point you're supposed to hit.
And there's moments in American history where maybe you need an implementer.
Somebody who takes a social security reform plan or a 999 tax plan or whatever and then implements someone else's vision.
I'm running on a vision to restore a missing national American identity.
I think our nation is in the middle of a national identity crisis.
It's one that I've diagnosed, been writing about, traveling the country speaking about for the last three years in the form of three books in the last 18 months and otherwise.
Here, I'm translating my own vision, and I think the difference is, unlike 1980, the threats to liberty in America today are not just in the form of big government.
It's a complicated threat, combining big government, big business, even cultural hegemony, that requires somebody who understands that in a first, personal way, in a bone-deep way.
And I think that too is part of what I bring to this field, and we're already seeing it, if I may say so myself.
Three weeks into this race, a lot of the ideas that we have ourselves advanced in this campaign are now already being picked up by the other candidates, which I'm flattered by, and I think that's important, and that's great, but I think we live in a moment where we can't just have somebody who's a follower of someone else's ideas.
We have to actually have a leader who's willing to actually have the conviction to take on the kinds of issues that I'm taking on.
That other Republicans even won't touch.
From ending affirmative action, I've been explicit on that, to abandoning this climate cult and the demands it makes on the United States, but not on other countries, using the military to take out the Mexican drug cartels, abolishing the Department of Education.
These are things that, at least when I started saying them, no other even Republican was willing to talk about.
And I think that reflects my own principled understanding of the problem, but also my ability to actually see that through.
So you alluded in that answer to the fact that when Trump ran in 2015, he ran as an outsider.
He also, don't know if he used these exact words about national identity, but certainly by promising to make America great again, was speaking to that kind of craving for a new national identity or national purpose.
Do you think that he tried and failed in both of those, namely kind of eliminating the Washington establishment, reinstituting this vision, or is it that your vision of what you mean by a national identity is meaningfully different than what he meant by that?
Well, I think there was a moment for recognizing a problem that no one else recognized.
And I think Trump did that.
Recognized the corruption of the media.
Recognized the actual administrative bureaucracy, what he and others called the deep state.
The ability to recognize grievances that had previously not been aired in America.
There was a time and place for that.
But I think the time and place right now is for actual solutions of what we're going to do to address those grievances.
And simply re-airing those grievances, well, then that gets old, okay?
What became a challenge to the system becomes the new system at a certain point.
And it takes a new outsider.
As I said before, you get to be an outsider once.
And I think that's a big part of what I'm bringing to the table here is, yes, I understand all of that in a deep way.
And I consider myself, actually, an America First conservative.
But to put America First, we need to rediscover what America is.
And actually have a vision for where we're going as a country.
And so that's a big part of what I'm uniquely bringing to the table.
And the other thing, Glenn, is I think we do face a choice.
I think Republicans face a choice.
I think Americans face a choice about whether we want to be on a path to a national divorce.
Or whether we want to be on a path to a national revival.
National divorce.
I'm not making these words up.
I mean, this is now part of the lexicon of both the left and the right.
I worry that there are candidates who will lead us to a national divorce in different ways.
First of all, we're not going to deliver national unity by showing up in the middle.
And saying, hey, can't we all hold hands and get along and compromise and sing kumbaya?
That ain't gonna work.
If there was ever a time when that was gonna work, that ship has long sailed.
I think our best shot at national unity is by embracing, unapologetically, the ideals that set America into motion.
From meritocracy, to free speech and open debate, to self-governance over aristocracy.
We can talk more about those ideals, but embrace those ideals, which are extreme ideas.
Those are Radical ideas for most of human history.
I think we unify this country by embracing the radicalism of those ideas.
And that's our best chance at national unity.
And so, you know, if I was to even take it a step further...
I think I'm running because I'm uniquely positioned as a candidate to actually deliver not only national unity, but a vision of what it means to be American for the next generation of Americans.
I am the first millennial candidate that's ever run on the Republican ticket for U.S.
President.
I don't believe in identity politics of any kind, including age-based identity politics.
But I do think that my unique set of experiences and the fact that I'm running on my unique vision for this country, not somebody else's, Right, so let me ask you about that vision.
So, I found it interesting in 2016 that when both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump ran for president, they essentially had a similar appeal, which is, I'm not only running against the establishment ideology of the other party, namely the party of which I'm not a member, but also of my own party.
Both of them said that, and Trump in particular was adamant that he opposed not just Bush-Cheney foreign policy, but even kind of the symbolists of the Reagan era and Reagan economics.
Not necessarily that it was wrong back then, but that it was kind of, it's our kind of archaic for the new challenges.
Some of the ideas that you just mentioned in your vision, like abolishing the Department of Education and being tough on immigration, have been very long-standing planks of Republican Party politics for decades.
Those are not new ideas, at least in their broadest sense.
So would you say that you are a candidate who is saying that you're running in part to challenge and undermine the Republican establishment and And if so, which specific parts of that establishment do you think need subverting or destroying?
So I'll answer.
There's actually two questions in there.
One is, let's just take the abolishing Department of Education.
Yeah, there's a difference between uttering the words and actually doing it.
The Department of Education still exists.
It still spends $80 billion a year in the United States.
It is still the lurking source of wokeism in local schools because they use that money as a sort of a set of handcuffs, really, that they tie around local schools to adopt these one-sided ideologies.
It tips the scales in favor of Four-year gender studies majors in California instead of people to go through, say, two-year vocational programs to be a welder or a carpenter or a builder.
And yet, why haven't Republicans done anything about it?
This is where my own, I would say, understanding of the Constitution and experience as a business builder come in, which is to say that You know what?
Article 2 of the Constitution says that if there's a law that says there's a civil service protection and I can't fire somebody, or there's a law that says that even if this is going to be waste, fraud, and abuse and I still have to spend it, that means that I don't actually run the executive branch of the government.
So I take a strong constitutional view, based in my deep-rooted constitutional conviction, That Article 2 allows me to do what every other Republican who's born of the system would say that, oh, well, you know, that's something you got to go to Congress for or whatever.
No, I reject that.
That's not the way Article 2 of the Constitution reads.
If you run the executive branch of the government, you run the executive branch of the government.
And that's a combination of my experience as a CEO and founder and business builder, but also somebody who has a scholarly understanding of the Constitution that I've written about You know, in countless other forums.
You know, and I'm a trained lawyer too, so I think that that's a unique combination that allows me to actually execute and see through what other Republicans lightly dance around.
And, you know, affirmative action...
Well, maybe that's been around for a long time, too, but there has not been, to my knowledge, Glenn, a U.S.
presidential candidate in history who has actually pledged to end affirmative action.
I've said I'm going to do it.
How do I know I'm going to do it?
Well, that's one of the few things a president can easily do, because it was created by executive order under Lyndon Johnson.
If it was created by executive order, it could be ended by executive order.
Now, I push the Trump people, including the Trump White House Policy Group.
Who could have actually ended this by executive order?
They said it was a political hill they didn't actually want to die on.
I don't have those inhibitions.
And so I think that is something that's going to allow me to, yes, some of the things I'm saying have been pledges for a long time.
Some of them are new.
But I think my constitutional conviction He's actually part of, in my experience as somebody who actually gets things done, is actually going to be something that allows me to see a lot of that through.
To your next question about am I taking aim at the Republican establishment, you can already see that I already am.
I mean, I called on Ronald McDaniel to release the criteria for the debates.
Who would have ever thought a radical idea, the idea that you actually release, publicly release the criteria for a primary debate, you know.
I don't think it's such a radical idea, but I think that elevating these ideas, I'm not unafraid to take on, be it a Republican establishment, a Democratic establishment, a cultural orthodoxy, a federal government, reform of the Federal Reserve.
I think I'm at furthest in front of this, in terms of the entire field, talking about restoring a Federal Reserve whose mission is to actually Who would have ever thought?
Make the dollar a unit of measurement, rather than playing this game of God, balancing unemployment and inflation, that the Federal Reserve has done a terrible job of, with a fat finger, over the last 20 years.
Actually, that gives us a lot of the banking crises, or risks of banking crises we're seeing, not to mention stagnation of GDP growth.
This is something that's not going to be done automatically.
There's going to be an administrative bureaucracy that bites back.
I've also said I want to lay off 90% of the employees in the Federal Reserve.
There's 20,000 of them today.
It should be more like 2,000 to get this narrower job done.
But I think that I think you have to have somebody who's unapologetic, not just in talking about this issue, not just in being the inverse of what Teddy Roosevelt would have worried about.
Someone who speaks loudly and carries a small stick.
But unlike even Teddy or unlike a lot of other Republicans since, I think we live in a moment where we need somebody who speaks loudly and carries a big stick.
And that's what I bring to the table.
So I do want to talk to you about your Article 2 theories, which probably is a phrase that will make a lot of people want to turn the channel in just a little bit because I actually began writing about politics in part because of Article 2 theories that were invoked under the Bush-Cheney administration that kind of came out of the Reagan administration and the war on terror in the context of your Mexico plan, which I want to get to in just a minute.
Before I do though, You kind of came on to the public scene as somebody who had a very successful career in the private sector in a very short period of time.
You created a company.
It was extremely successful.
You sold it for a lot of money.
And then your first, I think, kind of real appearance footprint into the public discourse was with your excellent book that I actually read.
I think I might have even blurbed it, called Woke Inc.
I think you did.
Yeah, I think I did.
Yeah, it was good.
And I'm glad I did because I hope people read it.
My question though is, as somebody who kind of first emerged in connection with this word, woke, that has a lot of culture war overtones, what I hear you saying is, you don't want a national divorce, you want to bring a lot of people together.
And yet at the same time, the culture war seems to be the thing that most divides Americans one against the other.
Instead of uniting the citizenry against centers of power when we're talking about trans issues or gay rights or abortion, we're not talking about what the Fed is doing and what Do you worry that an excess focus on things like woke ideology and the culture war will divide us and distract us from the more important things that actually affect people's lives?
Well, it's now been, you know, three years ago that I wrote, started writing Woke Inc.
or started on that journey, you know, and the moment has since passed.
At the time I published that book, most people didn't even know what the word woke was.
Now it's a word that I think is overused.
But I think that my foundation from having identified the problem to now where I am is actually moving towards a solution is exactly what it's going to take to unify the country.
I'm also somebody who defines the word in Neutral terms.
Before I actually take it down, I think it's, I'm a big fan of making sure you understand the arguments you're taking on.
Try it on like a set of clothes, and then you understand why it doesn't fit.
Being woke refers to nothing more than just being alert, awake, to invisible societal injustices, generally on the basis of genetically inherited characteristics like race, gender, and sexual orientation, and then a call on someone to take action on the basis of that invisible awakening, and To do so not just through conventional channels of government power, but also through private power if necessary.
That's what it means to be woke.
I think that it's important.
A lot of Republicans utter these words, but they're like billiard balls that are hit in whatever direction they're hit, that roll in whatever direction they're hit, instead of knowing why they're even heading in that direction.
So I think that's important, Glenn, and I actually think that that's part of where a lot of this division comes from, is we've forgotten the question of even the why.
And I think it's a big part of what I, you know, hope to bring to this with the solution-oriented mentality.
I think that the so-called culture war is a bit of an artifact.
I think that most people in this country agree on the basic rules of the road that I talked about in my opening video that I even talked about in the final chapter of Woking, that I spent my entire second book, Nation of Victims, also getting to the bottom of.
Basic values like meritocracy, the unapologetic pursuit of excellence, the rule of law, the idea that you get ahead in this country not in the color of your skin, as Martin Luther King said, but in the content of your character and your contributions.
The idea that the people we elect to run the government are the people who get to run the government, not people in the back of palace walls and in palace halls in all world Europe, Not people in the back of palace halls on the back of Park Avenue today.
I mean, that's what I've been talking about as it relates to the ESG movement.
I think most Americans agree on these ideals.
I think most Americans think their neighbors and their colleagues and their teammates and their classmates also believe these things to be true.
But they can't be sure anymore because they don't feel free to talk about it in the open.
And so one of the things we're doing in this campaign is we're breaking down those conversational barriers.
You see, I've always said this for the last three years.
The best measure of how we're doing as a country, especially in America, Is the gap between what people are willing to say in private and what people are willing to say in public.
When that gap is wide, we're not doing well.
When that gap is small, we're doing well.
Right now, that gap is as wide as I can remember, almost as wide as I can remember.
Probably the peak was a year and a half ago in our country's history.
I think we can rapidly close that gap and that's what this campaign is about.
It's not just a political campaign.
It's a cultural campaign to revive those basic American ideals and the path to getting there Happens through open dialogue.
And so that's a big part of what I'm bringing to this race in a unifying way.
Yes, as someone who, if I may say so, even though some will criticize this, led the way in understanding, you know, the woke cancer in America.
And I do think it's been a cancer in our national soul because it has divided us to lead us to rediscovering what actually binds us across our diverse attributes.
You and I have different shades of melanin.
We're of different sexual orientations.
Who cares?
Diversity does not matter unless there's something greater that binds us together across that diversity in America.
I think we've spent a decade and a half celebrating the diversity and differences without actually reminding ourselves, let alone celebrating the things that actually unify us.
That's actually what I'm bringing to the table.
Yeah, so I think it's a really important way to think about what might be dismissively called the culture war, is the idea of how Americans relate to one another, their ability to communicate across all kinds of lines.
And having nonetheless said that the culture war might distract us from what actually matters, since you are actually a candidate now, I do just want to kind of for the record and mostly to get a sense of what these first principles are that you referenced, ask you about three specific kind of culture war topics.
This is the only question I really have on the culture war and ask you what your ideal law would look like when it comes to, number one, same-sex marriage, number two, the right to have an abortion, and number three, the right of adults who identify as transgender to obtain surgeries, hormones, and other medical treatments for sex the right of adults who identify as transgender to obtain surgeries, Yeah, so last thank you for putting a fine point of emphasis on this because I think there's a big difference between adults and kids.
But my view is that if you're an adult, you're generally free to make whatever decisions you want to as it relates to your own body, as long as it's not hurting somebody else, and as long as it's not violating a basic norm like life.
I don't think suicide should be legal.
But within the realm of what you want to do as a trans person, that's not even close.
You're free to live however you want to live.
As long as you're not imposing on somebody else's ability to live their life in the same way.
That's the rules of the road for adults, which is very different on how I feel about kids.
Hopefully that addresses your last question.
Sure, absolutely, yep.
So on the abortion question, I'm unapologetically pro-life.
I think it's part of the influence.
I was persuaded of that point of view, actually, when I went to Catholic school through, you know, 9th through 12th grade.
But here's the other thing, Glenn.
I don't believe in just talking the talk on this.
I think part of walking the walk can actually bring a lot of other people along.
Where I don't think Republicans do enough in talking about the importance of ease of access to adoption, ease of access to even child care.
I think this is something where if you really want to walk the walk, you got to think about people's ability to see through and have a kid that isn't just going to be born into poverty or into a difficult life circumstance, but actually can help, let's say, a single mother have the wherewithal to be able to raise that kid.
I think that's a conversation we don't have enough on the right.
I think there's another conversation we don't have enough on the right where a lot of people would, I think, come along with the classical Republican point of view here if we honestly acknowledge that most people have an intuition.
I think they do.
That this is not just an issue about women's rights versus, you know, impinging on what a woman does with her body.
But the issue of there actually being a life there that has to be taken into account in this debate.
So Clarence Thomas actually did a good job in the Dobbs case of pressing on this from the bench, where he raised a question that's Get to the heart of the issue, where let's say there's a pregnant woman who's assaulted by somebody passing by in the street, but her fetus dies as part of that.
She's not totally harmed, but her fetus dies.
Should that person be held liable for the death of the fetus?
And almost everybody I know has an intuition, pro-life, pro-choice or not.
If you're not debating abortion, everyone's intuition is absolutely there's added punishment deserved there.
Well, why?
Why is that our intuition?
It's because we recognize that there's a life worthy of respect.
Now what can, where this comes up is I find that a lot of women, understandably perhaps, feel like there, you know, is an asymmetry between what men get to say on this issue and what women do.
So here's one of the things that I find provocative as an idea, Glenn, is also sharing the culture of responsibility more equally amongst men and women.
I mean, here's one way to do that, is actually to be able to give a woman the ability who Carries to term a baby that should not be sacrificed because I am pro-life and you believe, as we just said, that's a life worthy of respect.
Fine.
But you know what?
Now we have genetic tests, etc.
If that baby's taken to term, then the dad, the woman at her option, can actually make the dad take responsibility for raising him.
Right.
So that way you're eliminating the incentive for women to have an abortion, knowing that there's a man who may be held legally responsible.
Nonetheless, in your kind of ideal world, what is that?
And you can add to that as well, but I just want to be specific.
What does your ideal law look like in terms of what a woman's right would be?
Is there any cutoff in terms of gestation?
Yeah, I know you're a constitutional guy, Glenn, and I just wanted to close the loop on just addressing... Sure, sure.
It's not just the incentive, that's part of it.
It is also the fact that, you know what it does?
We societally share the responsibility, the burden.
I don't want to call it a burden, but the responsibility.
More evenly between men and women, which is, I think, something that conservatives can easily do to really walk the walk of being pro-life rather than just saying the words.
So that's a big part of the way I think, which I think hopefully moves the ball constructively forward on this otherwise classically fraught debate.
Now, as it relates to the constitutionality and the legality, I think Roe was a terrible constitutional decision.
I think substantive due process is made up jurisprudence.
I'm glad that it was overturned by Dobbs, but I've always said, as a constitutional matter, This should be a states' rights issue.
So I'm running for president.
I think one of the relevant questions that I get and will get, have already received, is would I then support a federal ban?
I'm going to be consistent on my constitutional position that I've always held.
This should be a states' rights issue.
That's what happens after Dobbs.
That's the way it was supposed to have been set into motion constitutionally before.
And I'll stand by that now, too, even though a lot of Republicans who for years said that are now going in a different direction.
And so I presume on same-sex marriage it would be the same issue, which is that's for the states to decide.
Do you nonetheless have a view on whether states, in kind of the spirit of these civic values you're invoking, should allow same-sex couples to legally marry?
I am pro-family, and I think that one of the things we've lost in America is family formation.
Glenn, you know what?
As best I know, tell me if I'm wrong.
You're in a same-sex marriage.
Correct.
And have kids and are raising a family.
Correct.
To me, that is pro-family as well.
And I think that, you know what, we live in this moment where we should applaud more family formation.
That's one of the foundations of a, I think, a well-grounded society.
I think we've lost faith, we've lost patriotism, we've lost hard work, we've lost family.
I think that nobody should be on the side of somebody not being able to actually have a stable family.
We should want more of that, not less.
That's where I am personally, but from a presidential and legal and constitutional perspective, I do think this belongs with the states.
Right.
Let's talk about the Silicon Valley Bank, the bailout of it, essentially, if you want to use that phrase, that word, bailout.
I do.
Maybe you don't, but you've become-- I do.
Yeah, I thought you would.
You've become one of the most vocal opponents of having the government swoop in and save any part of Silicon Valley Bank, including depositors, in excess of $250,000.
$150,000.
I want to ask you a little bit about that, but first, before I do, one of the arguments that's being made is that part of why this happened, part of why other regional banks may be in similar danger is because in 2018, parts of Dodd-Frank were rolled back to essentially exclude a lot of mid-sized banks like Silicon parts of Dodd-Frank were rolled back to essentially exclude a lot of mid-sized banks like Silicon Valley Bank, like Signature Bank, the one where Barney Frank is on the board and actually lobbied for his own bank to be excluded
Do you think that part of the problem here is insufficient regulatory oversight when it comes to banks on the part of the federal government?
I don't.
In fact, I think a lot of those regulations create complexity that create the room for gaming, including the very kind of gaming that we now see, where it creates added complexity where Silicon Valley Bank got to claim that it wasn't systemically important, only to be treated as systemically important when it was in their depositors' hour of need, Silicon Valley startups.
So I just think the more complex of a regulatory regime we have here, the more opportunity for game playing.
But here's what I do believe.
Is that you got to play by the rules that you set into motion, and those rules are, if we say the deposit maximum is $250,000 for everybody, then let it be $250,000.
If you want to raise it, let's have that debate.
But you can't do it retroactively, on the fly, shooting from the hip, which is exactly what happened in the case of Silicon Valley getting bailed out.
Silicon Valley Bank did not get bailed out because their shareholders were wiped out.
A lot of folks in Silicon Valley are too quick to point that out because they want to elide this distinction and conflate two things to confuse the public.
Who got bailed out?
A bunch of Silicon Valley tech companies.
That's who got bailed out.
They got bailed out because they created a You know, I would say a culture of fear in the last week.
They were almost rooting for a bank run, Glenn.
And they were doing everything in their power to create the psychological fear of one because that would have justified exactly what Janet Yellen came through and did for them on Sunday night, which is to say that even though you took risks that you should not have taken as a company, Roku or others putting hundreds of millions of dollars on deposit at Silicon Valley Bank.
And by the way, I know, I've received and seen termsheets from Silicon Valley Bank before.
How does it work?
There's special arrangements that they enter into with companies and founders that implicitly or sometimes explicitly require them to bank with Silicon Valley Bank.
Well, guess what?
You know what?
If you took that risk, You gotta pay the downside of it, because the taxpayers and the American people were not going to participate in the upside with you.
It's only fair that when that risk doesn't go well, you actually pay the downside.
And it's not nearly as catastrophic as they make it out to be, even for those startups.
Because these are venture-funded startups, right?
So, their business models today are the same as they were two weeks ago.
The business model hasn't changed.
At least it should, on a week-to-week basis.
But if that's the case, that means that business still works.
That means some other investor, or a venture investor, can put more money in.
Here's the rub.
That's not convenient for a founder, or a CEO, or even an existing venture investor, because that means you face dilution.
That means when that business becomes a giant, You own a little less of it, which means you make less money.
Well, guess what?
That's how capitalism works, is when you make a tough decision, there's accountability, and you take dilution when you have to bring in additional capital that you didn't previously budget for.
But they didn't want to do that, so what did they do?
They conveniently fearmongered the heck out of American culture over the entire weekend, influenced the media, and they got What they bargained for.
They got their bailout for those Silicon Valley tech startups.
And they have been trying to obfuscate that reality ever since.
That is the essence of what happened.
I think it's really important people see that cronyism for what it is.
I called it out back in 2008 when it was a Republican administration that did the same thing.
I'm calling it out now when it's a Democratic administration that's doing the same thing.
Good.
I'm glad you mentioned 2008 because I want to ask you about that.
And I want to just, as part of the question, just kind of push back a little bit on this idea that the government and its regulatory oversight scheme either doesn't help or shouldn't be part of it.
Even when you're talking about the FDIC insuring accounts up to $250,000, you're talking about a liability that the government is undertaking, i.e., the American taxpayer is undertaking.
I don't know.
What's that?
But I don't is the thing.
And in the aftermath of Dodd-Frank, we kind of accepted the idea that certain institutions really are too big to fail and that there's no way to allow them to fail absent catastrophic global economic collapse.
So once you accept that the government plays even some role in ensuring these, doesn't that mean that – what's that?
But I don't is the thing.
So if you want my sort of – You don't accept that too big to fail premise?
I don't – yeah.
And if that – yes, exactly.
That's right.
And if that's the case, we need to reform the system such that nobody is too big to fail.
So I think that's a big mistake that we've created, which is actually created, Glenn, by regulation, which then creates hurdles that once you achieve that hurdle, that then creates – Greater obstacles to competition that prevent another bank from being as big.
So I don't think we have to take the status quo as given, as some sort of shackle.
To the contrary, I believe we need actual competition.
This cronyism that, you're right, against the backdrop of, I wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed that ran in print yesterday that very practically laid out what I would have done had I been president, even in dealing with this crisis.
And I do believe in being a pragmatist.
But I'm running for president not to just be an implementer and a secretary.
The reason I'm running for president is not to be the secretary of a department, but actually to run a country where we can change that broken system.
Gets back to the very first conversation we had, coming in as an outsider with a fresh perspective, not a product of the system to take those assumptions for granted.
I think fundamental reform of the Federal Reserve is essential.
I've called for a 90% layoff, going from 20,000 to 2,000 employees, with a much more narrowly scoped out mission of actually Reinsuring the dollar is a stable unit of measurement and nothing more for the Federal Reserve to do.
That's one example, but I also think that we need to actually deregulate some of the very conditions that creates these four to five systemically important financial institutions.
What does that mean?
It means the government's there to backstop them.
That is not capitalism.
That is crony capitalism.
It is cronyism all the way down.
And so if people are making, it opens the door to people at Silicon Valley Bank then making the argument that we should then be included in the government protection racket, when in fact, nobody should be part of the government protection racket in the first place.
But the government should still insure deposits up to $250,000, but then say, we're going to let you maintain those deposits and have no role in overseeing how it is that you spend that money, even though we're on the hook for insuring them.
There should be a private insurance market.
There should be a private insurance market for this.
And just, this is a little technical, Glenn, but the way that works is the banks themselves pay in to that deposit fund.
So that FDIC $250,000 is from banks themselves buying in.
And then what they do is they advertise that to their customers.
So it's like their customers, they pass the cost to their customers.
So it's like the customers effectively buying insurance for themselves.
I think people should have an opportunity to buy insurance for themselves.
They could do it quite inexpensively because these are rare events for much higher deposit insurance numbers too.
But everybody should have some level of responsibility for knowing what they do and don't want, and they should pay for it accordingly.
The government should not be playing the role, this is the worst case scenario of all, of actually picking favorites after the fact.
So the intermediate scenario, Glenn, is I at least leave room for even people who disagree with me on that.
I respect the view that would say that, no, no, no, we need, you know, higher thresholds, that those should be codified in law.
Great, let's debate that in the open.
But the thing I cannot abide is Operating according to one set of rules and saying that's how the country works, and yet after the fact, on the fly, shooting from the hip, changing that fact in retrospect.
That is the big problem for me.
That's really what, I'd say, set me off in the last couple of days to really be uninhibited about calling out that corruption, both in Silicon Valley, where you have a bunch of people who claim that they're doing this out of a newfound interest for American workers that they discovered last Friday night.
Just arguing for their self-interest, but a government that actually dances to their tune, because that's their donor class.
Absolutely.
It's even a donor class for part of the Republican Party, which is why other Republicans haven't been as out in front out of this as I have been, and I saw it firsthand, because I lost donors, or prospective donors.
Big ones.
Okay, it's not easy when you're, you're climbing Mount Everest here, you want the people who, you know, called me over the weekend, said that, look, I would have supported you, but I can't, in light of this.
Well, I'm not going to change what I can say, okay?
Thankfully, I'm in a position where at least we're starting this.
I've already made an eight-figure commitment to this campaign already that I've put in.
But it's going to take an uprising to make up for it of $1 and $5 donors.
I'll take this as my opportunity, Glenn.
If people agree with what I'm saying or even part of what I'm saying, you know, if you want those ideas elevated on the debate stage, That's the way to do it, is actually to fill the void that we've created from all the Silicon Valley, you know, elite class that thinks they were the ones that should have supported me.
Well, take their place, even if it's with $5, go to vivek2024.com, v-i-v-e-k2024.com, make a dollar donation, make a $5 donation.
That's what's actually going to lift this new cultural movement to take us the distance.
I did think it was an interesting contrast that Ro Khanna, who identifies as a progressive, as a member of the left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, who represents Silicon Valley, was on Face the Nation, demanding U.S.
government intervention on behalf of his extremely wealthy donor base, without whom he can't get re-elected, while someone like yourself, who also needs that donor base, is willing to argue very vehemently against their interests, and as you say, probably lost a lot of very significant campaign donors as a result.
Let me switch a little bit to Ukraine and foreign policy.
Tucker Carlson performed what I thought was a valuable journalistic service this week.
He asked all Republican candidates, including yourself, what their views were on the US role in Ukraine.
You very emphatically said that you thought that this ongoing kind of giving Ukraine whatever it needs until the very end was a gigantic mistake.
Two of the reasons you cited was we need to instead be focused on Mexico, one of the plans you've already referred to at the cartels, which I'm going to ask you about in a second, and the other being China.
If we didn't have these pressing needs, as you see it, with both Mexico and China militarily, would you still be in favor of having the U.S.
withdraw from that conflict?
That's a good question.
So, I'm giving it to you as I see it now, right?
Foreign policy is not about, to me, it's not about abstract principles.
I am an unapologetic America First conservative.
In some ways, you know, call that nationalist or whatever you want.
I think that that is appropriate for America to behave that way, just as it is appropriate for Ukraine to put Ukraine's interests first, just as it is appropriate for Brazil to put Brazil's interests first.
I don't apologize for that.
I believe that that requires pragmatically taking into account all relevant factors.
So the way geopolitics works is it's a domino, right?
You press one place, something shows up in a different place.
I'm talking to you as the world as it exists today.
China is the number one existential threat to the United States over the long run that we need to protect against.
And the practical effect of what affects Americans on American soil today, it's the fentanyl crisis of what flows across that southern border.
Those ought to be the top two foreign policy priorities of the next president.
They will be my top two foreign policy priorities if I'm elected president.
Ukraine does not make the top five.
Does that mean that I'm a Putin sympathizer?
That I believe that Vladimir Putin should be able to annex Ukraine when he wants?
No!
I think that Putin is a dictator.
He's a bully.
But the way we should handle that in America is actually by being strong at home.
Part of what allowed Putin to do this is we didn't have energy independence in the United States.
So put yourself in Putin's shoes, what's he saying?
There's risks and benefits to annexing Ukraine.
But on the risk side, well, the risks are lower if I know the other side.
The West is still dependent on me for oil and gas 'cause they've shot themselves in the foot.
That's why I joke around sometimes, ESG stands for Export Soviet Gas, because that's the effect it's had on capital markets.
There's even some evidence that Russia is funding the NGOs, the non-governmental organizations in Europe and elsewhere, that are promoting the ESG agenda.
Big surprise.
So, anyway, the way I look at it is, I'm a pragmatist when it comes to foreign policy.
I think each nation should put its interests first.
That actually ensures for a safer planet.
But I also think in the United States' case, the main thing has got to be the main thing.
Focus on China.
And we're actually, in some ways, creating the worst case scenario of all, which is driving Putin into Xi Jinping's hands as Xi Jinping now provides deadly weapons to Russia as we speak and as we have this conversation.
So that's how I think about foreign policy.
Well, in terms of foreign policy, the centerpiece of U.S.
foreign policy in the post-World War II era has been NATO.
The original idea of NATO was to protect Western Europe against incursions from an empire that no longer exists, which is the Soviet Union.
We spend an enormous amount of money protecting the national security interests of countries that are becoming Wealthier than ours, whose citizens have a higher standard of living than ours.
Would you continue to support NATO and view NATO as the centerpiece of US foreign policy and financially support it to the extent the United States has been continuing to do so?
The United States should put up its fair share, but that means the European nations have to put up their fair share, too.
I think that actually Europe gets a lot more out of the protection from NATO than even the U.S.
gets today, and I think that President Trump, I'm going to give him credit, right?
I'm competing with him in this race, and we differ on a number of things.
We're also really similar on a number of things, too, and this is one of them.
I think he did a great job of exposing the way in which the other NATO countries were exploiting the United States, and I think that Everyone else has got to step up and do their fair share.
The United States can still lead the way when it comes to moral authority, but when it comes to chipping in, you know, it's got to be in proportion to the benefits that are actually derived.
Here's the other thing, though.
Back to my main point.
That empire, as you said, the U.S.S.R., does not really exist today, not close to in the same way.
But we never depended on the U.S.S.R., Glenn, I'm saying we from an American perspective, we never depended on the U.S.S.R.
for the shoes on our feet and the phones in our pockets.
Whereas today, we depend on Communist China for our very modern way of life itself.
That's a problem.
That is a real threat, because now, if that had been a Russian spy balloon flying over the United States, you don't know what we would have done.
We'd have shot it down in an instant, and then we'd have ratcheted up sanctions against Russia.
The reason we didn't do that with respect to the Chinese spy balloon is that we know we've got to be dancing delicately around China because we depend on them.
That is, I think, the defining issue that we need to address.
I've called for a declaration of independence from China.
I think that's the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson would sign if he were alive today.
It's the Declaration of Independence that I expect to sign as our next president, including to take that economic rug out from under China so we can defeat them economically so that we don't have to militarily.
That's what I think we need to focus on.
And what's, you know, the question was about NATO.
I think that you actually have to look at putting much more emphasis on an alliance of Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand.
I think that's actually going to be much more relevant for the United States in the Pacific theater than anything in the Atlantic theater.
And I think we've got to keep our eyes on the actual prize of American interest.
So I definitely want to, in the time we have left, talk about China.
But before I do, I want to ask you about your Mexico plan.
I think it's one of the things that distinguishes you from the other candidates, which was part of my first question.
It's, in my view, a plan that is both bold and radical, which I mean in a neutral way for the moment.
I mean, it's radical in the sense that it's not something you typically hear being proposed.
I've been talking about this before, this was a cool idea, and I'm glad it's a cool idea now, but I think it is a justified use of military force, legally justified under military norms and international law, to use our cartels, to annihilate, to use our military to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels.
And I think you make a call to Mexico, the President of Mexico in January 2025, say, you know what, you're in the cartels' pocket, they're your sugar daddy, there's a new daddy in town, we're gonna help you, We're gonna help you do this.
For a fraction, by the way, a tiny fraction of what we spent in Ukraine, we're gonna help you do this.
But if you don't do it, we're gonna come in and do it for you.
Go Bin Laden on them.
Go Soleimani on them.
We can actually do this.
The NSA has focused on the Middle East.
Actually, I've been talking to, you know, intelligence experts for the last number of months on this.
There's no real investment of U.S.
even intelligence operations in Mexico.
That needs to change because this is actually what's responsible for deaths on American soil.
100,000 fentanyl-related deaths.
A homelessness epidemic in this country driven by Chinese-manufactured fentanyl that they view as their weapon in a modern opium war.
We need to fix it.
And you know what?
If you can use the military to protect somebody else's border somewhere else, you better darn well be willing to use it to protect it here.
I don't just say build the wall.
Build the wall is not enough at this point.
You need to build the wall and actually secure it with the U.S.
military to protect our border and, if necessary, even use it to annihilate the cartels using drones, airstrikes, targeted special force operations.
And you know what?
The defense establishment, for whatever reason, doesn't love this.
It's uncouth to say it, but you know what?
I believe that we have a system in this country where the people we elect to run the government, including the U.S.
President, ought to be the people who actually run the government, not an unelected bureaucratic class.
It's a beautiful thing we have an elected Commander-in-Chief in this country, and I'm running to be a Commander-in-Chief that actually delivers on this.
It'll be something I do in the first six months.
And I think that the fact that I'm not copycatting somebody else says to you that I'm serious about this and we'll see this through.
Let me just ask you, the criticism of Vladimir Putin is that he sent his military into a sovereign country, Ukraine, without any foundation in law, international law, in terms of getting the UN to agree.
Be willing to, in fact, would you in fact send military force into Mexico through drones, putting boots on the ground, whatever is necessary to destroy the cartels, even if the Mexican government was opposed to it, even if the Mexican government had said that they were willing to fight the United States if their sovereignty were invaded that way, and even if the UN and the rest of the world were opposed?
So here's what I would say, Glenn, is under principles of international law, a sovereign government has responsibility to make sure that transnational actors based there do not actually inflict harm on other sovereign nations.
That was part of the moral authority and legal authority under international law that allowed us to go in and Flying to Pakistan and take out bin Laden because they were not at Pakistan was bluntly and expressly not doing that with respect to Al Qaeda.
They were actually providing even a form of protection.
I think that narrowly going in to take out Osama bin Laden was morally justified there.
For the same reasons, but then some.
Now we're not talking about just, you know, not just.
I mean, it was a serious thing in this country, obviously.
It was a big part of my upbringing and childhood.
It had a big impact on my life.
9-11.
There was a couple thousand people.
We're talking about 100,000 people per year dying in the United States as a consequence of this fentanyl epidemic.
Not to mention the homelessness crisis.
Not to mention the fact that that's just per year.
80% of which, at least, is responsible for crossing from the southern border.
Most of which is supply-side driven.
And actually China plays a role in this too.
China is actually providing cheap imports and inputs that have expanded the profit margins of those cartels.
Their cost structure comes down, the revenue stays the same.
That then becomes more profitable for them.
So here's the question for the Mexican government.
Are you willing to handle this yourself?
And my first approach Would be to work together with the Mexican government to support them, by the way, for a tiny fraction of what we spent in Ukraine.
Now, what's the difference here?
This actually relates to the American national interest directly, but for a tiny fraction of what we spent in Ukraine, have a call with the next Mexican president.
Be very clear.
Whoever that is sitting in that seat, you know, Obrador supposedly will not be in office as of January 2025.
Well, I'll pick up the phone and call whoever's in that seat and say, listen up.
We're gonna help you deal with the cartels.
Right now, it doesn't look great.
You're in their pocket.
Okay?
The cartels have already been clear about their relationship with the Mexican government.
They say it's either silver or lead.
What does that mean?
Money or bullets?
Well, for whatever reason, we have a quasi-failed narco state south of our border.
Can we actually help the sovereign government of Mexico do its job?
If they're unwilling to do it, then even under norms of international treaties, international law, custom, and even moral authority, we then have the ability to defend our own territory by actually going in and doing it, just like we did with bin Laden, just like we did with Soleimani, just like we did with al-Zawahiri, to be able to actually do this.
What is this?
What is the this that you're describing?
What does that military plan look like and how is it accomplished?
So I think some of this is important not to just telegraph explicitly in advance.
I do think it's important to identify that as a policy objective.
But broadly, I will say that the NSA has completely abdicated Mexico as a priority.
They're focused on the Middle East.
That's where their attention's been focused.
And you know what?
If the United States can take on the challenge of taking on ISIS in places like Syria and Iraq, which was aided by, in detail, NSA and other driven intelligence operations, it should be much easier and much more tractable geographically, proximity-wise, it should be much easier and much more tractable geographically, proximity-wise, linguistically, to be able to do that in Mexico as And I'm getting briefings on this.
And Glenn, you know what?
I'm setting the vision.
I'm setting the policy vision.
It's going to be executed by people who have expertise in actually doing this.
But I think the ability to do that in Mexico, I'm convinced, is much more achievable than it was taking on ISIS in places like Syria and Iraq.
And even taking Al-Qaeda on in the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan.
And I think that intelligence-first approach, NSA-driven, partnership with the Mexican government, but if they decline, this is the scenario we're talking about, to use a strong intelligence foundation with tactical operations that are as humane to civilians as we possibly can be, minimize civilian casualties, to be able to deal with casualties that we do have on our side of the border, which are over 100,000 deaths per year, owing to what those cartels are bringing into American soil today.
And so I think it's the use of the military both to secure our own border, it's not just building the wall, but using the military to close the gap of the Swiss cheese that represents the southern border of the United States today, and combine that with tactical operations to be able to deal with this problem much more effectively than we ever, you know, needed to take risk in dealing with Al Qaeda or ISIS or anyone else.
This should be a more tractable job and also one that has a palpable impact on the American national interest today.
Okay, so two quick questions.
One about that plan.
One of the reasons, in fact, the reason why cartels are sending fentanyl into the United States is because there's a gigantic demand for narcotics, for illegal narcotics in the United States.
People are addicted to drugs.
Drug abuse is incredibly high.
I don't know if it's at an all-time high, but it's certainly, by all mental health indices, among the highest that it's been.
If there weren't this demand, the cartels would have no market in which to sell these drugs.
What is your plan for, or what is your view of why there's so much of a demand for illegal narcotics among Americans, and what is your plan to address that?
I mean look, we're running a campaign for a revival of a missing national identity, including in a generation that's so hungry for purpose and meaning.
There's a mental health epidemic from depression to anxiety, all of which create the conditions for addiction.
So I'm not denying the existence of any of that.
Glenn, to the contrary, if you watch my opening campaign video, and maybe That's something you could put up at some point in this.
The three and a half minutes that we launched is just to give you a sense of the premise of this.
That's really what the whole ballgame is all about.
I'm not a big believer in blaming somebody else for problems that you ought to first solve by looking in the mirror yourself, whether that's you as an individual or you as a country.
So I'm not in the camp of just blaming this on somebody else, but you also got to look at the facts.
The fentanyl crisis is absolutely supply-driven, okay?
That demand problem has existed for a longer time than we've seen this fentanyl epidemic, which has really taken off, and that is supply-side driven when the cartel's profit margins expanded.
And they expanded in part because China views this as a way of undermining the United States, and they're right because they're doing it.
So China views this as a version of modern opium war.
Take the legs out from the United States in every way possible.
Actual fentanyl crossing the southern border, providing raw materials far more inexpensively.
There are actually books coming out next year laying out The fact that there are Chinese actual deputies, by the hundreds, in Mexico facilitating the actual manufacture of the fentanyl that they're sending across the southern border.
So there's an intentionality to this.
And they're not wrong, because when that profit margin expands, the cartels actually have a much more supply-side driven basis for driving that through the border into the United States.
Now, China's also doing it with digital fentanyl in the form of TikTok.
They're doing it with, you know, I would argue this is a more abstract analogy.
I would say financial fentanyl, even in the form of national debt.
So we're addicted to China.
We do have addiction problems.
One of our addiction problems in this country is we're addicted to China and what they provide.
And to China's advantage, those are intentional as a way of achieving their long run geopolitical objectives.
But as it relates to the fentanyl crisis, though I am not a denier of the underlying cultural issues we need to address in the United States and the demand-side problem, I think we would be having blinders over our eyes, just turning this into an academic exercise of a chicken-and-egg problem, ignoring the facts, hiding in plain sight that this is absolutely supply-side driven when it comes to fentanyl in particular.
And I just refuse, as a U.S.
president, as a citizen, right now even, to just passively watch that happen behind, you know, I'm sitting in central Ohio today, where I'm talking to you from, okay?
I just refuse to just watch hundreds of thousands of people die over the last couple of years as a consequence of an epidemic that's supply-driven, that's absolutely preventable, while we're going to great lengths to protect somebody else's border on the other side of the world to say that we can't protect our own.
No, I refuse to.
And I think that's something that enough Republicans haven't had the spine to say.
I'll also make a prediction, Glenn, is you're right.
That is a unique perspective that I'm bringing to this campaign.
By the time we're in midway through the debate season, I will bet you that the other Republican candidates are going to be parroting the same thing, because we've already seen it for some of the other ideas I've brought to the table.
And you know what?
That's a good thing for the country.
But again, we should want somebody in the White House next who's not just parroting someone else's ideas.
We don't need followers in the White House.
We need a leader.
And I think that's a big part of what I'm, you know, I recognize that this is controversial with the defense establishment.
I'm not saying that this is going to be easy or without issues.
It could even be fraught.
But you know what?
You know what is fraught and hiding us in plain sight?
Hiding in plain sight today is the fentanyl crisis in the United States.
And I refuse to make an academic discussion out of this in a way that stops us from solving the actual problem.
So last question, and the fact that this is my last question just signifies that we're going to have to have you back on for a lot more times because I do think you're bringing a lot of kind of fresh thinking.
You think from first principles.
I think that It helps the debate a lot, even if I don't agree with specific points.
Just on China, which you've referenced a lot, talked about a lot, but let me just ask you directly, you've spoken a lot about how you view China as our principal competitor, perhaps certainly as our adversary, perhaps as our enemy.
Do you view the next 20, 30, 40 years as inevitably entailing the kind of a Cold War that was incredibly expensive and cost huge numbers of lives all around the world, the kind we had with the Soviet Union after the Second World War, Or do you see China as a competitor with whom we can, in a healthy way, compete without having it to turn either into a Cold War or worse, a hot war?
I think avoiding a hot war has to be the top priority.
I think actually the approach that I'm bringing to the table does that.
I just want to say something, Glenn, before about the point you raised, which I think is really important.
You don't have to agree with 100% of what I say, or neither does anyone watching this program.
That's okay.
I think that if we think we can actually restore the kind of principles-driven discourse in the United States that we have long been missing, that is an important ingredient to our national revival.
That's even an important ingredient to the revival of the Republican Party, which is a party in search of an identity.
And so my pitch right now to you is...
Forget the who.
You can determine that next year.
This year should be about the what and the why.
Define the agenda and more open and precise and principled debate is going to get us there.
And that's why my next milestone is a prominent spot, not just a spot, but a prominent spot on the debate stage.
And you know, my ask, if everyone agrees with even the tenor or the principles, you don't have to agree with the specifics, but you agree with the importance of advancing these ideas, My only ask is, go to Vivek2024.com, give a dollar, give five dollars.
And explain that, that's because the number of people who donate to your campaign determines your ability to participate in the electoral discourse.
Yes, the Republican Party needs to be more transparent, but that's the one thing we know, is that the number of unique donors, no matter how small they are, actually determine placement on the debate stage.
So that being said, let's actually talk about China, which is one of the issues that I think the Republican Party needs clarity on and needs to debate too.
I think that we have a window, Glenn, and this gets back to my perspective that foreign policy, unlike a lot of the domestic cultural revival, which can be based on abstract first principles set into motion in 1776 that we need to revive, foreign policy also has to be deeply, pragmatically grounded.
And one of my pragmatically grounded views here, part of my sense of urgency to run for president and to deliver as president, Is that I think we have a unique opportunity right now.
Xi Jinping did what autocrats do.
He shot China and its economy and in some ways himself and even the CCP in the foot last year as part of his struggle to keep a chokehold on power.
That was his unprecedented third term.
That broke the chain of succession in China.
Took over that third term last October, but there's a lot of damage he left in its wake.
You know, China's COVID policies had about as much to do with COVID as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ, okay?
Or as much as our climate cult in the United States has to do with the climate, for that matter.
These are all gambits for greater power control, punishment, and influence.
But this leaves China in a weaker spot.
I think if we can pull the economic rug and dependency out from under the CCP...
We might actually see radical reform of the CCP in response.
Now it requires the West, and America in particular, to be willing to make a sacrifice.
To be willing to say that we're going to not be addicted to buying cheap stuff that businesses can't do business in China if the CCP continues to behave as a mercantilist actor, deputizing businesses to advance its geopolitical ends.
But if we're willing to make some of those steps, the easy stuff is abandoning climate cults in the United States that shackle the U.S.
without, you know, touching China.
But there's the hard stuff too.
if we're willing to make that sacrifice, then I think we're least likely to actually ever have to make that sacrifice because I think China actually has to budge because they themselves are in a vulnerable spot.
So that's how I think about the geopolitics of this.
Much more to say we could have an entire hour on that alone, but I think there's an opportunity here to get ahead of China economically.
economically, by breaking our codependent relationship, so that we never have to actually defeat them militarily.
And I think that can be a catalyst for radical reform of the Chinese government itself in a way that's not only good for America, but good for the world.
So I absolutely will make a prediction.
I think we're going to be hearing a lot more of you in terms of your ability to participate in Republican politics, to get into the debates.
I think that's a healthy thing.
I hope whoever agrees will do whatever is necessary to at least help you find that platform.
We have an incredibly closed system that's designed to prevent outsiders like you from being heard, and I think just on principle, whether you're on the left, the right, or anywhere else, we all have an interest in undermining that.
So thanks very much for coming on, having what I will regard as our initial conversation.
I look forward to other ones, and good luck on what has become the campaign trail for you.
Thank you, man.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Have a great night.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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