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Dec. 26, 2023 - Info Warrior - Jason Bermas
47:03
Vivek Ramaswamy Full Iowa Town Hall
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I want to, I'll tell you, many of you may be familiar with our family.
I want to tell you a word about our family and our story.
It's probably similar to that of many of you in this room.
He's going to run and play with this truck.
He earned it today. He's been good.
My parents came to this country 40 years ago with no money in search of opportunity.
In a single generation, I have gone on to found multiple multi-billion dollar companies.
I did it while marrying Apoorva, my wife, who is a throat surgeon at the cancer hospital at Ohio State.
That's where she is today, actually.
She's been seeing patients.
She'll be here as she is every Friday in Iowa through the weekend, only to go back to her full-time job with our son Arjim, who she'll bring then, raising those two boys.
Following our faith in God.
That is the American dream.
I am worried that that American dream isn't going to exist for Karthik and Arjun and their generation unless we all step up and do something about it.
Right now, we're in the middle of a national identity crisis right now.
We have lost our sense of who we are.
Faith. Patriotism.
Hard work.
Family. These things have disappeared.
And that leaves a black hole, a moral vacuum in our hearts.
And when you have a vacuum, a black hole that runs that deep, that is when the poison fills the void.
It almost actually doesn't matter what the poison is, exactly.
We obsess over that too much at times.
Wokeism. Transgenderism.
Climatism. Covidism.
Zelenskyism. We can talk about that one separately.
Depression. Anxiety, fentanyl, opioids, suicide.
It is not a coincidence that we see the rise of these poisons at the same time in our history.
These are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning in our country.
And I see a Republican Party that has I've grown lazy, actually.
I don't mean lazy in the get out the vote operation sense, though that too, that applies.
But I mean lazy in a deeper sense.
Lazy in defining what we actually stand for.
You can see the left, the left is very good at filling that vacuum.
Say what you will, they'll give you a vision.
May not be the right vision, I don't think it is.
But they'll give you a vision of race, gender, sexuality, climate, to fill that void.
And the Republican Party I see has now for years just been sitting around complaining about that vision but without offering a vision of our own.
What do we actually stand for?
Individual. Family.
Nation. God.
That beats race, gender, sexuality and climate if we have the courage to actually stand for something.
We can't just be running from something.
We gotta be running to something, to our vision of what it means to be an American today.
What does it mean to be an American?
What does it mean to be a citizen of this nation?
I say this as somebody who's lived the American dream.
One of the core things about being an American today, what is the heart of being American, if you ask me?
One of the things is we stand for merit in this country.
Merit. We use that word a lot.
What does it mean? We actually talked about this at the trucker event.
That was a deep policy about trucker policy.
It actually was the same thread.
What does merit mean?
It means that each of us has our own unique God-given gifts.
Every one of us.
And a true meritocracy is a country which...
We don't have the same God-given gifts, by the way.
I think it's really important to understand.
I wanted to play in the NBA. That didn't work out for me.
So, you know, you don't choose the gifts that God gives you.
But God gives each of us our unique gifts.
And a meritocracy is not one where everybody has the same capabilities and then gets to the same results.
Not necessarily. But it's one in which you are able to achieve the maximum of your God-given potential.
Without anybody else, any government, any system, or anybody else standing in your way.
And if there's one country on the face of God's green earth, one country, I would go so far as to say in human history, that allows you to achieve that maximum of your God-given potential, it is the United States of America.
The left will remind us, are we an imperfect nation?
Yes, we are. Have we ever been a perfect meritocracy?
No, we haven't. But we're founded on the pursuit of a more perfect union.
The pursuit of liberty, equality, and justice for all.
That's what makes America great.
That's what makes America itself.
So I come back and ask, what does it mean to be a citizen of this nation?
It means we believe in the ideals of 1776.
Ideals like merit and the pursuit of excellence.
That you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin.
But on the content of your character and your contributions.
That is why I've said that we will end affirmative action and racial quota systems in every area of American life.
It's been a cancer on our national soul and we are done with it because we stand for merit.
What does it mean to be American?
It means we stand for the rule of law.
And I say this, like many of you perhaps in this room, I say this as the kid.
Of legal immigrants to this country.
That means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law.
That is why I've said we will use our own military to secure our own borders in this country.
Southern border and northern border too.
That's what it means to stand for the rule of law in the United States of America.
That's what it means to be an American.
A radical idea that The people who we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government.
Not the three-letter agencies, the unelected bureaucrats who run the show today.
So you know what, if I can't work for you as your next president for more than eight years, which I think is a good thing.
Neither should any of those federal bureaucrats who are reporting it to me either.
Eight-year term limits for the bureaucracy instead of civil service protectors.
That's how you drain the swamp.
75% reduction in the number of federal bureaucrats by the end of my first term.
Rescind those unconstitutional federal regulations, impeding businesses small and large throughout this country so we can drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear energy in the United States.
Don't use our taxpayer money to pay people more money to stay at home instead of to go to work.
That's how you grow this economy.
Put people back to work. That's something we should embrace.
That's what it means to be American.
Don't start with...
Last year's budget as the baseline, which is based on the prior years, which is based on the prior years before that, all of which are corrupt, start with zero as the baseline and ask what's actually necessary.
That's how I ran my businesses.
That's how many CEOs run their businesses.
That's how we need to run the federal government of the United States of America.
These are not black ideas or white ideas.
These aren't even really Democrat ideas or Republican ideas.
They shouldn't be. It's deeper than that.
These are American ideals that we fought a revolution in 1776 to secure.
And I believe, deep in my heart, that those ideals still exist.
I'm running for president to revive them.
To the back of your coins, you can see every one of your coins.
For those of you who still carry coins.
It's etched into the back of them.
You can see what it says. It says, E pluribus unum.
It means, from many, one.
That's what we've lost in this country.
We've been taught to celebrate our diversity and our differences.
So much that we forgot all of the ways we are really the same as Americans, bound by that common set of ideals.
I'm running for president to revive them.
I believe they exist, but it's not that automatic.
Here's how we're going to do it.
It's going to be by all of us, not just me, all of us, every single one of us starting to speak the truth in the open again.
Say in public what you'll otherwise say in private.
Say it with a spine.
Say it with conviction.
Say it with respect.
But part of respect is that you respect your neighbor enough to tell him what you actually think.
You see, fear has been infectious in this country.
It's spread like an epidemic.
Fear of losing your job.
Fear of your kids getting a bad grade in school.
Fear of becoming an outcast in your own community.
That culture of fear has replaced our culture of free speech in America.
It doesn't have to stay that way.
When you are the only person in a room who believes what you do, you have an obligation now more than ever to stand up and say it.
And if you do, I have a commitment I can make back to you now.
Almost every time you will find that you weren't actually the only person in that room who believes what you did.
Fear has been infectious, but courage can be contagious too.
It just requires more of us willing to step up and actually show it.
That's what this country was founded on.
There's a reason I'm the only candidate in this race who could say certain things.
Many of the things I'm saying Ten years ago, if I came in here, you would probably be shooing me out of here, saying, this is too obvious.
Why are you saying this stuff? Today, they'd shoo me out for the opposite reason.
These things are controversial to say in public.
That God is real.
That there are two genders.
Yes, sir. That fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity.
That reverse racism is racism.
That an open border is not a border.
That parents determine the education of their children.
That the nuclear family isn't a bad word.
It is the best known form of governance known to mankind.
That capitalism isn't something we should apologize for.
It is the best system known to man to lift us up from poverty.
That there are three branches of government in the United States, not four.
And that the U.S. Constitution is the strongest and greatest guarantor of freedom in human history.
That is the truth. We fight for the truth.
We stand up for the truth.
That is what won us the American Revolution.
That is what reunited us after the Civil War.
That is what won us two World Wars and the Cold War.
That is what still gives hope to the free world.
And if we can revive that dream over group identity and victimhood and grievance, then nobody in the world, not a nation, not a corporation, not a virus, not China, is going to defeat us.
That is what American exceptionalism is all about.
And that is what we are going to revive to save this great country.
Thank you for coming out today, guys.
God bless you. God bless your families.
And may God bless our United States of America.
We're just getting warmed up.
We're going to practice what we preach a little bit.
We're not going to stop in this race until we get this job done.
I want to open this up.
I want to have a conversation.
Take the filters off.
If I'm going to sit across the table from Xi Jinping, and I will.
I better be willing to sit across the table from our own fellow citizens in this country.
And so, I don't know if we have a microphone.
We got a couple of them. Let's open this up.
Should I wait for the mic?
I kind of do.
I don't necessarily need a mic.
You come from a...
Here, I'll take it. Thank you.
I appreciate that. You come from a background in biotech, and basically right now we're at a point where United Therapeutics, for instance, has gotten the FDA approval on xenotransplantation.
How far is too far with transhumanism?
And then the head of that company is a person by the name of Martin Rothblatt.
Used to be Martin Rothblatt.
Also the most powerful transgender person on the planet.
They're the author of Virtually Human, Unzipped Genes, and From Transgender to Transhuman.
Now I see transgenderism as a pathway to transhumanism.
I'd love to get your take on that.
Yeah, I mean, this is, I gotta say, this is the first on the campaign trail.
I like this. I like going into new territory.
So, you're right, my background was developing medicines.
I oversaw the development of a number of medicines, five of which are FDA approved today.
The one I'm most proud of is life-saving therapy in kids, actually.
Twenty kids a year are born with a genetic disease where 100% of those kids die by the age of three.
I worked on a therapy, I had the honor of working on a therapy where a majority of those kids now live lives of the normal duration.
Another one for prostate cancer, another for endometriosis and uterine fibroids, women's health conditions that were ignored by much of big pharma.
So that was my background. But I'll actually take you back to the question about the chimera, which is part animal, part human.
My senior thesis in college, actually, in 2007, was about the ethics of creating human-animal chimeras.
And the core conclusion I came to is, and that was at the embryonic stage, whenever something assumes the qualities of humanity, that's when it creates fundamental ethical quandaries we don't necessarily want to cross.
And so I think sometimes what's happened is we're pushing the boundaries, not because that's necessary, but for the sake of pushing those boundaries.
And I don't think that that's pro-human.
And whether you're talking about this issue or whether you're talking about even very different issues, like the anti-fossil fuel agenda as it relates to the climate agenda, I think the question we should be asking isn't, are you measuring carbon dioxide emissions?
Are you measuring some quality, what percentage of human cells are not?
The question we should be asking is, what advances human prosperity?
What advances American prosperity as an American, but what advances human prosperity?
That's the question we should be asking, and I think that that's what's going to guide us going forward as well.
As it relates to the transgender point, I think these are, I know the word trans is in both, but I think they're basically two different subjects.
But since you brought about it, I think it's worth touching on.
I know that's a little controversial for me to say, but I'm going to share with you my view.
I think that transgenderism, especially in young people, it's a mental health disorder.
It's been treated that way for most of our national history, and I don't think it is compassionate to affirm that kid's confusion.
Usually when a young person is saying that, hey, my biological sex doesn't match my gender, what they're really saying is, I need some help.
I'm going through a difficult time.
Figure out, you're allowed to ask what's going wrong, but today, in today's culture, you're taught, no, you're transphobic if you ask that question.
I met two young women in this, I can't speak to the individual you mentioned, but I don't know what the circumstances were or gender conversion or anything else, but I met two young women in this race.
They're in their 20s now.
Both of them had double mastectomies.
Both their breasts cut off.
Another one of them had a hysterectomy when they were teenagers.
Now in their 20s, they regret it.
I think it's barbaric that we allowed that to happen.
That's not compassion.
That is cruelty to affirm a kid's confusion.
And so I think sometimes you have to speak the truth, not just when it's easy, but when it's hard.
There is such a thing as objective truth.
And I think the more we start wavering from our commitment to truth, the more lost we are in that wilderness.
So you see, I think, as many of you know, I'm Hindu, but I went to a Catholic high school.
I can tell you from, and I'm proud of my faith, and I'm happy to talk about that.
But I think that our shared foundational values actually overlap heavily with the Judeo-Christian values this nation was founded on.
But the thing I was going to bring up was actually a reference from the book of Exodus, where when the Israelites are lost in the desert, yet to find the promised land, that's when they say we want to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh.
So in some sense, that's what I see in America right now is we're lost in that wilderness, yet to find a promised land.
And when you have a hole the size of God in your heart, another scientist said this actually, Blaise Pascal, if you have a hole the size of God in your heart and God doesn't fill it, something else will instead.
You don't pledge allegiance to that flag.
You're going to quite literally pledge allegiance to a different flag instead.
That's where the trans flag came from.
It's out of a human need to believe in something bigger than ourselves.
And I think the right way we win is we dilute a lot of that to irrelevance by reviving the real thing.
Individual, family, nation, God.
And as the U.S. President, my job is to revive our national identity.
I believe that's half the job of the U.S. President.
Not just policy, but to stand for our national character.
And I think that dilutes a lot of these other temptations to irrelevance.
And so that's where I stand. Great question here, man.
I appreciate you being here. Go to the back.
I got a question about...
I got a question about elections, period.
How do you beat mail-in ballots?
Well, I think we need an electoral system we can trust and believe in.
And so I stand for a concept that should not be super controversial.
I think it's common sense.
Single-day voting on Election Day as a national holiday.
I think that can be unifying for this country.
With paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file and English as a sole language that appears in a ballot.
But how do you win now is the question.
Chicken and egg. But I want you to let you know where we're going.
Now, how do we win now? Here's the answer.
This can't be another 50.1 election.
It just can't. And for those who are, you know, in the Republican Party now, I think a lot of us fashion ourselves to be ahead of the curve in thinking about the games that may be played.
Well, let me put some pressure on that.
If you think they're going to let Donald Trump get anywhere near spitting distance of the White House, I think you're deluding yourself.
I mean, look at what's happening in Colorado.
I mean, case number one, case number four, number five.
Now it's happening in Colorado, trying to spread to California.
And that's just the beginning of the crescendo that's going to continue.
I think that much of our own base and our own party is diluted.
The system is not going to let, by hell or high water, I'll leave it at that.
I don't think that they're going to let this happen.
And so then you got to think ahead to who's going to be able to take the America First agenda to the next level.
And I think it's going to have to be somebody that can win this election in a landslide.
I'm the only candidate in this race that can deliver that.
We're bringing young people along in droves that have been left behind by the Republican Party for a long time.
Forty percent of our donors in this campaign, 150,000 some odd small dollar donors, Our first time ever donors to the GOP. That's 40% compared to 2% for other Republicans.
So you make me that nominee.
It's my job to deliver you back a landslide election.
That's how we do this. It's the only option.
And a landslide minus some shenanigans is still a decisive victory.
And then we go back and do the thing that I told you.
You lay the proper rails.
That's an honest question. I'll give you an honest answer.
That's where we land at. Thank you.
We'll go to the young man right up here in the front.
Hi, Vic. I'm a big fan of yours.
I have been for a while. Obviously, the numbers don't lie.
Trump is very far ahead of every Republican candidate.
But if he were to ask you to be part of his cabinet, would you accept?
Would you not accept? What would you continue to do?
Because I think you would make...
A phenomenal vice president.
I think you can make a phenomenal part of it.
Thank you. I take that as a compliment.
Honestly, you are the future.
My brother and I talk about it every night.
Every night we call each other.
He lives in, unfortunately, the communist state of Colorado.
We talk about every night how much we support you, how much we think that you are the future of the Republican Party.
Thank you, man. I take that in the best of ways.
I'll be frank with you.
People ask me, can you run in 2028?
If you do this, you're young. I'm 38.
I'm the youngest person ever to run for U.S. president as a Republican, actually.
Thank you. And I'd be the youngest president ever elected, if elected.
Now, I'll tell you a couple things.
I think it's going to take somebody with fresh legs.
Somebody from the next generation to lead the new generation forward.
I actually think we're going to win the Iowa caucus.
I mean, can you guys actually just by show of hands in this room?
We got a few hundred people here tonight.
Raise your hand if you have been polled in the Republican primary in the last several months.
Put your hand up, that's okay.
And I want the media to take a picture of this.
Can I also just get an honest show of hands?
Raise your hand if you're going to support me in the upcoming Iowa caucus.
Okay. So that's why we're going to deliver a shock to the system.
There is a shock coming on January 15th.
So numbers don't lie, but sometimes polls do, actually.
So I think because I'm a new candidate with a different base of support, I think we're going to win the Iowa caucus.
I'm going to ask for your guys' help in a moment to do that.
If I win the Iowa caucus, I'm your next president.
And actually in a lot of these rooms, we've been in pizza ranches.
I promise I had never heard of pizza ranch before I ran for U.S. president.
I've never been to a restaurant more in my life at this point than I've been to pizza ranch to travel to the state.
We do a lot of our events there.
We have a lot of people come in who, you know, hardcore Trumpers.
I, in my sense, was a hardcore supporter in 2020 as well.
Who came in saying, I want you to be Trump's vice president.
At the end, this happened three times in the last couple of weeks, saying, would you consider Trump as your vice president?
And my answer was, yes, I would.
I think it'd be a great role for him.
He's 80 years old, right, in the middle of that term.
And you know what? If I was 80 years old and I got, like, lawsuits left and right and people trying to come after me, slit my throat or whatever, Yeah, I'd be a better job.
I'd rather have somebody else do the real work.
So I think I'm going to be in the best position to lead this country from the front.
And so, you know, guys, two answers.
One would be, would I run in 2028?
You have my commitment that I will run in 2028 for re-election after winning the first term.
So with the two terms, you have my commitment on that.
And the other thing is, if this were about me, that'd be great.
I mean, it doesn't matter. I don't have to do this, period.
And we're doing this in many ways.
We talk about faith a lot in the campaign trail.
Talk about my faith. My parents taught me.
Instilled in us a belief that God works through us.
It's not being done by us.
It's being done through us.
We're put here for a purpose.
And we have a duty.
A moral duty to realize that purpose.
For those in this room, that is your dharma.
That's your duty. Well, it is my belief that Our duty to step up isn't according to my life plan.
It's what this country requires.
If the interest payments on our national debt become the largest line item in our federal budget, we're toast.
We're quicksand by then.
You know when that's happening? That doesn't track according to my life plan.
That's five years from now. If Karthik, my son, who's playing with his truck outside, presumably right now, but if he's in high school, Before we get this right, I don't think we have a country left.
So it isn't about my life plan or what works for what this great plan is.
And this is, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you, sir?
I'm 26. You're 26.
And how old are you guys? Nine.
That's good. I'm proud of you for patiently listening to this.
I'll tell you, I'll give advice to you.
One of the things I've learned in my career is...
Every time you make some sort of carefully crafted plan, if this works out, then maybe I do the other thing, and that works out, I do the other thing.
Your plans are stupid.
It's not your plan.
There's a higher plan. You do your part.
And that's the best you can do.
And so my belief is, it's my conviction, that I'm best positioned to lead this country now, from the front.
I believe that if you all do your part, Apoorva and I and our family, we're going to do ours.
And I don't think that we're working with a lot of time to actually accomplish that.
I also don't think they're going to let.
I mean, it's a delusion to think they're going to let Trump, the system, anywhere near that White House.
And so it's going to require, I think, somebody with fresh legs from the next generation who understands the law and the Constitution.
In some ways, yes, do I have sharp elbows?
I'm a businessman. I'll come in and break things when necessary.
You know, I did a little bit on the debate stage.
Sometimes that gets me in trouble.
And we're going back to Washington, D.C. We're willing to break things.
But it also takes somebody who understands the law and the Constitution.
And those two things don't go together.
You know, people think about that.
You have the nerdy law professor type, and I've been that, you know, in phases of my life.
But it also takes somebody who can execute and get those things done.
And those two things don't usually come in one package.
And so, as I said before, I believe God gives each of us our unique gifts.
But it's our duty to use those gifts in the way that does the That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
And my heart says we're going to be successful.
That choice doesn't belong to me.
It belongs to you. The people of this state starting in Iowa.
So you guys do your job on January 15th.
I'm going to do mine. Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
And we'll go right next to you after that.
Yeah, I know in the past you talked about how you've battled big insurance, big pharma, big asset management firms like Blackstone, BlackRock, and Vanguard from a business perspective.
But I was wondering that if elected, how you would tackle those firms having too big of a share in the market or having dominance in the market from a governance perspective and being able to regulate that?
Great question. So I think you've got to be careful not to make the same mistake of government overreach, but the way you do it is fix the crony capitalism.
And Big Pharma is the biggest lobbying organization arguably known to mankind.
Part of the reason we have the closure of psychiatric hospitals in this country, which has directly led to a wave of violent crime in this country, and as I understand even from talking to cops locally here on past trips that even communities like this aren't immune to, is the closure of psychiatric hospitals.
That was actually a product of big pharma lobbying.
Well, it's another example of special shields of liability from being sued for product liability, just that pharmaceutical companies have for certain kinds of products.
That's crony capitalism.
That's not capitalism. I mean, the money that BlackRock's managing is not just your 401k account.
A little bit close to home here in Iowa.
It's Iowa's own pension funds.
Then BlackRock's managing. That's not a market decision.
That's a government decision. Especially blue states like California and New York doing the same thing.
So I think the government should not be using private actors to do through the back door what government could not do through the front door and the lobbying and the corruption.
The market can then do a pretty good job of taking care of itself.
So if you worked in the government, you should not be able to lobby that government after you leave, at least for 10 years after.
I mean, it's not too much to ask.
I don't think congressmen or bureaucrats in D.C. should be allowed to trade individual stocks of the very companies they're setting the laws for.
I don't think you should be able to join the board of a company after doing sweetheart deals with that company while you're in the government.
So I think that these aren't left-wing or right-wing ideas.
They're basic anti-corruption measures.
The reason I'm the only person in this race who's able to stand for it is that politics is actually corrupt.
I mean, it's all the way down. I see this both parties, not just the Democratic Party, the Republican Party too.
But the right answer is we need somebody who can't be bought and paid for by that same system.
The one of the things I've learned, I'm a businessman, I'm new to this.
Thank you. You know it's going to be bad when you get into politics, right?
So I was expecting that. I was wrong, actually.
It was far worse than I expected.
It's been a very chastening year for me.
Every politician, basically, dances to the tune of their biggest donor.
It's like a fact. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Every politician dances to the tune of their biggest donor.
In my case, that biggest donor is me.
Because we've lived this American dream in this country.
And I'm grateful to this country for that.
We didn't inherit it. Now, in some ways, we did have a privilege.
People ask, did you grow up in privilege?
I used to say, no, we didn't grow up in money.
But actually, you know what? I take it back.
We did have the ultimate privilege of two parents in the house with a focus on education and a belief in God.
I think it'd be a good thing for more kids in this country to have access to that same privilege.
But that's what allows me now to not have to dance to the tune of the Pied Piper of the donor class in the Republican Party.
I don't report to them now.
I report to you, the people of this country.
And I think that's what it's going to take to transcend what is otherwise a broken and captured system.
Saying that doesn't make me very popular in the Republican Party establishment, but that's okay.
They're not my bosses.
It's the people of this country.
And I think with that kind of reform, then yes, you'll have more competition in the marketplace.
Entrepreneurs like myself, starting businesses to challenge Big Pharma or to challenge BlackRock, it becomes that much easier if the government itself isn't captured to keep those competitors out of the way.
Great question, young man. Proud of you.
We'll go right next to you, and then we'll come up here.
Every single year, hundreds of thousands of people die from overdose, suicide, obesity.
Meanwhile, I see my government spending billions, maybe even trillions of dollars overseas, thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe, fighting wars we aren't involved in.
How could you use money like that to save lives, friends and families of people in this room?
Sure, and what you just stated is a good example of America Last policy in action.
Cut benefits for veterans, many rumored turning to fentanyl and suicide, 40 per day.
Close to 40 veterans per day are committing suicide in the United States of America.
And we're cutting veterans benefits and cutting Social Security, talking about it certainly, while we're shipping $200 billion of our own money to Ukraine so some kleptocrat can buy a bigger house.
That's not right. That's not America.
And so here's what I believe.
We have this national debt problem.
How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?
I'm 20. What's that?
20. 20. So you have about $200,000 more debt on your shoulders than you actually signed up for in the form of our national debt.
Well, here's how we address that in a hurry.
Get the oil and gas out from underneath our ground.
Sell it. Buy down about six to eight trillion dollars of our national debt that way.
Seven trillion of that national debt was due to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that did not advance the American interest.
Corrupt politicians spent trillions, killed millions, made billions for themselves in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
To what end? The Taliban, for God's sake, is still in charge 20 years later.
Iraq is a more broken country than when we invaded.
So I refuse to make those same mistakes again on my watch.
I think there's a lot of people in both parties, frankly, stand to make money from both of those wars.
That's wrong. That ends on my watch.
And so, in some ways, my responsibility as a father is what sometimes gives me my moral clarity.
As a father, my moral duty is to my family.
I won't be shaken in that.
As your next president, my sole moral duty is to you, the Americans here in our own homeland, not some other country.
America First doesn't come with an asterisk.
And I think it takes a president who understands that and stays true to it.
That to me is moral clarity.
That opens up what I call a peace dividend.
Stay out of World War III. Well, not only is that good because you're not going to be in some trench with somebody else's gun over your shoulder fighting somebody else's war.
But that $200,000 of national debt on your shoulder quickly goes down by half under at least the plan that I've laid out for how we're going to climb our way out of it.
So proud of you for asking a question that applies to your generation.
It's my job to deliver for you.
Thank you, Matt. Thank you. Last question I'm being told about that gentleman right in that row.
We'll give you the final word, young man. We'll go here and then the last question.
During this time of inflationary period, especially, yeah, this is a room for a lot of entrepreneurs.
Yes. And I want to know, what is your plan for, you know, just right now with the current situation, especially large part of the American, you know, economy runs off a small business.
Totally. We're having a hard time finding liquidity.
You know, through the banks. And you know the current situation.
Oh, yeah. So what is your plan regarding all of that?
Absolutely. So let me just explain in a nutshell what the heck is going on in our economy.
You get a lot of mumbo-jumbo coming out of the White House and other government institutions.
Let's just make it a very simple bottom line.
Prices are going up.
Because prices are going up, they're trying to use monetary policy.
But there was fiscal reasons why prices went up.
They're trying to use monetary policy to bring it down.
That raises interest rates and mortgage rates, affects liquidity.
Yet wages have remained flat.
That's why people are bluntly pissed off, no matter what the White House might have to say about it.
So how do we address that?
The laws of supply and demand.
See, for me, this is second nature, and I think it's good to have a CEO in the White House.
The laws of supply and demand.
Increase the supply of fill in the blank, anything that matters.
Increase the supply of energy.
Drill for gas. Oil.
Get it out of the ground. Increase the supply of energy.
Brings down the cost of energy.
Brings down the cost of transport.
That brings down inflation. Inflation is down.
That grows the economy. And you don't have to raise interest rates to go against it.
That's bringing your liquidity back.
Increase the supply of fill in the blank.
Housing. There are land use restrictions that are limiting new home construction across this country.
They don't want small plots of land.
Many young people want a smaller plot of land to at least get a starter home.
Yet, that constrains the supply of all housing.
It's the laws of supply and demand. Constrict the supply.
Prices go up. Shrinks the economy.
Go the other direction. Take that off.
Increases supply. Brings prices down.
Grows the economy. Increases supply of, fill in the blank, food in this country.
Farming state like Iowa understands how those restrictions potentially pose risks to our food security.
Increase the supply of labor.
Raise your hand if you're a small business owner or a business owner of any kind in this room.
A number of you. Well, many of you know, one of the top obstacles to growing your business right now is filling open positions, increase the supply of labor.
How do you do that? Stop paying people more money to stay at home instead of go to work, using our taxpayer money to do it.
That increases the supply of labor, grows the economy as a result.
So this is second nature.
We know how to do this, but I think this is tied to a deeper philosophical issue, which is the loss of national pride, especially among young people in this country.
We've lost our sense of national pride, people in my age and younger.
Our generation really has lost our sense of patriotism, but ask yourself why?
We're told the American dream is alive and well.
I won't tell you that. It's not alive and well right now.
It's alive and hanging on for life support.
But it can be.
I think this is our last window to get this right.
And you know what? Young people tend to be more proud of a country when they have the ability to make more money in that country, actually.
So grow this economy.
That's actually going to be one of the ways we actually grease the wheels on reviving our missing national pride in this country.
60% of young Americans say they would sooner give up their right to vote than to give up their access to TikTok, actually.
I'm not making that up. That's a fact, actually.
It's where we are. But it does have to stay that way.
I mean, I think there's a number of ways we've got to do this.
I think every high school senior who graduates from high school should have to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass to become a voting citizen of this country.
I don't think that's too much to ask.
You've got to have skin in the game to play in the game.
But also, I think our job as leaders to make some basic policy changes that grow this economy.
That much I know how to get done.
You put me in that office, that much we're going to have, we're going to have 5% GDP growth by the end of my first term.
We revive this economy, we revive pride, we revive our sense of who we are.
You have my commitment on that.
Great question.
Last question will be on Monday.
We'll wrap it up.
I just want to thank you for coming to Bednorf, Iowa.
It's a beautiful community and I think because of that it's built off the back of Hardware
to America.
Thank you.
I go to school out of state, but come from a long John Deere lineage, and every time I come home, I see family farms closing.
How do we protect the individual farmer?
How do we continue to feed Americans from the individual standpoint and not sell out to the big farming organizations that are depriving the Americans of their God-given right to provide food and food?
That's the Jeffersonian vision for this country.
Thomas Jefferson was my favorite president for a lot of reasons, not just because he was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, which is impressive.
He invented the swivel chair while he was at it, but he was also an agrarian.
Believed that, you know what?
Food security actually has been a trooper in the United States for a long time.
Food security is part of national security.
So you look at the WOTUS regulations.
And if you're familiar with that issue, right?
The imposition of the EPA and a climate agenda on this country.
A lot of threats to the future of farming.
I'll tell you one that's happening right here in Iowa.
You want to talk about the property rights of farmers?
It's not quite this part of the state, but you may be familiar with this in other parts of the state.
Constructing a CO2 pipeline to capture carbon dioxide out of ethanol plants to bury that CO2 in the ground.
Many farmers don't want that in their backyards.
So they've said, thank you very much, but no thank you.
Now they're saying they'll use eminent domain to seize that land anyway.
When those pipelines have ruptured in places like Mississippi, sending good portions of a town to a hospital, that's a violation of property rights.
And so I think that if you have that full frontal assault on the rights of property rights, Of farmers today.
Imagine what they're going to do tomorrow.
So it's interesting you brought that up.
I'm glad you're wearing one of my truth hats.
That's good because I'm the only candidate in this race who's been able to touch that issue.
It actually matters to a lot of Iowa farmers in the northern and western parts of the state.
Why? Because the first time I talked about it, it was in March or April of this year, I got some phone calls from some of the most powerful people in the state effectively saying, shut up, sit down, do as you're told on this issue.
And I know the other candidates would get that same call, but we have to declare independence from that system and say we're actually going to stand for the interests of the people we're supposed to represent.
And so, yes, if you want somebody who's going to get in there and speak truth to power to the administrative state, that's a threat to farmers every bit as much to small business owners as it is to citizens across this country, then vote for somebody who's going to speak the truth to you.
That's the reality of what it's going to take.
And I want to ask you all for your help in this.
I'm not in this to go through this exercise as an academic exercise of making a point.
Our country doesn't have that much left.
We're skating on thin ice right now.
I think it requires a leader with Yes, somebody who's lived the American dream to know that it exists, to pass that on to the next generation.
Who's guided by gratitude, not just grievance.
Somebody who is guided by our love of the country and our sense of duty.
Somebody with fresh legs from that next generation to reach and lead that new generation of Americans.
And yes, somebody who understands the law and the Constitution but is unafraid to take on any obstacle that stands in the way.
I think that's what this moment calls for.
Because I'm asking for your help. The system isn't made for a guy like me to do this.
Believe me, much of the Republican establishment, the Super PAC puppet masters, they'd rather not have me in this race.
And the mega donors are deciding on other candidates.
But they don't get to decide.
It belongs to you, to us, the people of this country.
And so I'm asking for you.
Many of you are first-time caucus goers.
I know that. But I'm asking for a donation.
It's the most important donation you can give me.
It's not a donation of your money.
It's far more valuable than that.
It is a donation of your time.
30 minutes of your time on January 15th.
Get there early. You're anything like my family.
Maybe that would be one we really need to work on for us.
Get there early. January 15th.
We'll fill out this card. We'll tell you exactly where to go.
And for those of you who are math guys, I'm a little bit of a math guy.
You can see the impact that every vote in Iowa and this caucus has on selecting the president.
Every one of your votes there is like the equivalent of a million people showing up in terms of the impact it has on selecting the ultimate president because Iowa goes first.
So yes, show up on January 50th.
It's Martin Luther King Day. It's a holiday.
Show up early. 30 minutes of your time to save this country.
And I'm going to ask you for an even bigger donation than that.
Because this will be what makes the difference.
Every one of you knows 100 people who aren't in this room, who couldn't be here tonight.
That's a big ask. 100 people in the next month.
But every one of you, you tell 100 people who weren't in this room the same thing about what we talked about tonight.
Bring them to that Iowa caucus on January 15th, too.
And if you all do your part, I promise you, Aborva and I and our family, we're going to do ours.
To make sure, not in some fake politician way, but in a true way, make sure That our country's best days are actually still ahead of us.
We don't have to be this nation in decline.
We don't have to be at the end of the ancient Roman Empire, as we're taught to believe.
I think the truth is as a nation right now, we're really just a little Young, actually.
Going through our own version of adolescence.
Figuring out who we're going to be when we grow up.
And when you view it that way, at least for me, it makes sense again.
You go through your adolescence, you go through that identity crisis.
You lose your way a little bit.
You do some stupid things.
Okay, I did. Many of us probably did.
But we are stronger for it when we get to our adulthood on the other side.
So no, I don't think we have to be that nation in decline.
I think we still can be a nation in our ascent.
Maybe even the early stages of our descent.
Maybe we're not at base camp yet.
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