PBD - Patrick Bet-David - Vivek Ramaswamy Town Hall

Aug. 4, 2023 - PBD - Patrick Bet-David

01:33:08

Vivek Ramaswamy Town Hall | PBD Podcast

For the first time, the PBD Podcast will host a Town Hall for a presidential candidate. Vivek Ramaswamy will join Patrick Bet-David to answer a variety of Patrick's questions and your questions, to make the case for why he should be the next president of the United States. Donate to Vivek's campaign: https://bit.ly/459KC9c Subscribe to Vivek's YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/47mhn5c Follow Vivek on Instagram: https://bit.ly/47h01q9 Follow Vivek on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3Xb06pQ Get Vivek's latest book "Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For" https://bit.ly/3KrTTBv Get Your Tickets for The Vault 2023 NOW ⬇️⬇️ The BIGGEST EVENT in VT History! *TOM BRADY, MIKE TYSON & PATRICK BET-DAVID on one stage!* https://www.thevault2023.com/vault-conference-2023?el=YTPODHTEP Visit Our Website! https://valuetainment.com/ Subscribe to: Adam Sosnick - @vtsoscast Vincent Oshana - @ValuetainmentComedy Tom Ellsworth - @bizdocpodcast Want to get clear on your next 5 business moves? https://valuetainment.com/academy/ Join the channel to get exclusive access to perks: https://bit.ly/3Q9rSQL Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. 00:00 Intro 06:30 Vivek Opening Statement 12:15 WEF Lawsuit 16:26 Youngest President Ever 26:00 Big Pharma 34:08 U.S. Dependence on China 46:50 How Will Vivek Win Trump Supporters? 50:48 DeSantis vs Newsom Debate 54:37 Holding Intelligence Agencies Accountable 59:00 Draining The Swamp 1:09:03 Trump as Vivek' VP? 1:10:05 Abolish the Department of Education? 1:14:05 CIA & FBI 1:16:24 Is Vivek Anti-Establishment? 1:24:05 Lessons from the pandemic 1:26:36 Vevek's Religious Views 1:29:15 Final Thoughts

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	Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a very, very special event.
	Many are calling 2024 the most momentous election in a generation.
	It will dictate where the future of America is heading.
	Tonight, Valutainment is hosting our first town hall with a candidate that is surging in the polls like no one expected and is capturing the imagination of voters all across the country.
	That being said, ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome to the stage my friend and CEO of Valutainment, Patrick Bett David.
	How are you doing?
	How you feeling?
	You ready?
	I love to be there.
	It's a big night tonight.
	The challenge with Florida, if you don't live here, the traffic here from Miami up to Fort Lauderdale is similar to LA sometime, but we're glad to have the man in the house.
	I'm going to show you some data about what he's done since the last time we did podcasts together, which I believe was January 13th.
	He doesn't even know I want to be showing these numbers to you, but let me properly introduce to you tonight's guest.
	Our guest is a biopharmaceutical entrepreneur, Harvard grad, who earned his JD at Yale Law School while attending Harvard.
	He was an intern at Goldman Sachs.
	In 2014, he founded the pharmaceutical company, Reuben Sciences, a company created to purchase patents from larger pharmaceutical companies.
	Something we'll be talking about tonight for drugs that had not yet been successfully developed and bring them to the market.
	In 2022, he co-founded Stripe Asset Management, an investment firm that opposes ESG.
	Some of you are aware of ESG.
	You're not happy about ESG.
	He co-founded that company just to strictly fight against it.
	He's written three books, Woke Inc., Nations of Victim, Capitalist Punishment, Capitalist Punishment, and show these Twitter numbers.
	I can't wait for you to see the Twitter numbers.
	Mind-boggling when you see these Twitter numbers.
	According to every single poll, he went from no one knowing who he was a year ago.
	If I asked you a year ago, who is Vivek Ramaswani, you would say, I have no clue.
	The only people who knew who he was is his wife, his two kids, his loved ones, his co-workers, his family, his peers, his classmates, his acquaintances, and his competitors.
	Today, the world is following what he's been doing in politics, and it's exciting.
	He is one of the six Republican presidential candidates who's qualified for the first Republican primary debate by meeting the polling and donor threshold established by the Republican National Committee.
	And as of June 19th, he has raised $19.1 million.
	Daily Mail article said, the entrepreneur and political novice has caught up.
	We're in the state of Florida, so don't get upset because he is from Ohio.
	So just take it easy on him.
	To Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with both 2024 candidates tied for second after former President Donald Trump in GOP poll.
	Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome the one and only from Cincinnati, Ohio, Vivek Ramaswani.
	Excited to have you.
	You know, I want the audience to hear from you first, but before they do, I want to show something here because you're a data guys, businessman, you know, we like data, right?
	So I said, guys, January 13, when we did the podcast, how many Twitter followers did Vivek have?
	I don't know if you know how many you had.
	I don't.
	You were on 113,000.
	Rob, if we can pull this up, then I said, I want us to compare him versus all the other Republican candidates who's performed the best plus minus.
	You know, we like plus minus.
	Of course.
	By the number of followers and percentage-wise, here's what it looks like.
	Rob, if you want to pull it up.
	Here's what we found out, okay?
	Here's what we found out.
	At the bottom, this is very confusing when you look at this.
	Mike Pence, the former vice president, when he started January 13, when you were on the podcast, he had 5.83 million followers.
	He today is at 5.7.
	The only candidate whose followership went down 2.2%.
	So people said, don't run, go home, we don't want you.
	I'm just giving you data.
	Governor Christie went from 843 to 875, roughly a 4% increase.
	You got Tim Scott went from 709 to 760.
	That's a 7% increase.
	Nikki Haley went from 849 followers to 939, 10% increase.
	You got Governor DeSantis.
	We wanted to make sure we get both of his accounts.
	His governor account went up 15%.
	His personal account went up 31%.
	You got Tim Scott's personal account that he created went up 180%.
	But you went from 174,000 followers to 857,000, 392% of followership.
	And by the way, the reason why I'm showing this is because this doesn't happen accidentally.
	I see you all over the place sitting down talking to people, people who like you, people who don't like you, yet you're respectful, you're confident, you're poised.
	There's something America loves about you.
	Before we go through my questions, would you mind taking a minute or two, share with the audience what's on your mind?
	You're on the trail right now, so we're all curious to know what you're thinking about.
	Just take a couple minutes and share with the audience what you're thinking about.
	Well, first of all, it's good to be with you guys here tonight.
	And I tell you, you guys got here.
	Oh, I love you guys.
	I love the energy in this room tonight.
	So the last few days, I'm going to tell you a funny story.
	You bring it up on Twitter.
	I'll tell you something I saw on Twitter yesterday.
	So we were in Nashville, we were in Ohio, we were in Washington, D.C., New Hampshire.
	Now we're here within five days.
	There was this trend thing happening on Twitter where people are saying that there's actually a clone, actually.
	They're making it all these events.
	I wanted to prove, I know we had traffic today, but tonight proves there's no clone.
	So I'm dispelling that conspiracy theory.
	We actually just got here because of a little bit late traffic coming from Miami.
	I'm grateful for all your patience.
	I'll tell you a bit about me.
	My parents came to this country 40 years ago with literally no money.
	I've gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies.
	I did it while getting married, raising our two sons.
	That's the American dream.
	And the thing that is remarkable about this country is that my story, as successful as I've been, it's not an extraordinary story.
	It is a normal story in a country that is extraordinary.
	And the reason I'm in this race is that I genuinely worry that that American dream will not be available to my two sons and their generation unless we, all of us, do something about it.
	For a long time, I'm running as a Republican, but I do not talk about Republicans and Democrats.
	I find it boring.
	I'm an outsider to politics.
	I'm proud of that.
	I'm not a politician.
	I'm a businessman.
	But what I see as a deficit in the Republican Party is that for a long time we have been running from something.
	This is our moment to start running to something.
	To our vision of what it means to be an American.
	That's what I want to talk about tonight.
	To me, what does it mean to be an American?
	It means we believe in the ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago, the ideals of the American Revolution.
	And I think we have a choice in this election, in this GOP primary.
	And the way I think about the choice is this.
	There's other good people running.
	Many of them are my friends.
	And you know what?
	They may not have done as well on the social media follower count growth, but they're good people.
	But here's the real choice we face.
	Do you want incremental reform?
	In which case, somebody else is probably the better choice for you.
	Do you want reform?
	Or do you want revolution?
	I stand on the side of the American Revolution.
	I am not a super PAC puppet.
	I'm a patriot who speaks the truth, who believes that we the people, we can handle the truth.
	We don't need a government that lies to us.
	Sometimes the truths are hard, but we can handle the truth.
	That's the moment we're in.
	That's what this campaign is all about.
	Speaking the truth.
	That's what we're going to do tonight.
	And so to be honest with you, I would rather speak the truth at every step and lose some election than to play some political snakes and ladders, poll-tested slogans, figure out how to win.
	Now, I don't want to win that way.
	We will speak the truth.
	By the end of this election, if I'm doing my job, everybody in this country will know who I am and what I stand for.
	And if that's not what they want, then I'm not going to be the next president, and I'm fine with that.
	I'll be at peace with that.
	But so far, what we're seeing is that that does seem to be the winning political strategy, and we're going to stick to it.
	So that's what we're going to do tonight.
	We're going to have an open conversation.
	No filters.
	Nothing's been pre-screened.
	I certainly hope not.
	I want everybody taking off their filters.
	If you were to set it in private at home in the dinner table, say it in public tonight.
	And that's what I'm going to kick off my opening with and closing this off: is you want to know how well we're doing as a country?
	Here's your measure.
	It is the percentage of people who feel free to say what they actually think in public.
	All right, so if you're going to say it at home in the dinner table, take off the shackles, say it out in the open tonight.
	We might not agree on everything.
	That's okay.
	But we are going to agree that we're going to speak it out in the open.
	That is how we'll revive our country.
	Patrick shares that in common.
	That's why I'm here tonight.
	Let's have a conversation.
	Let's have some fun.
	Fantastic.
	So, by the way, just so everybody knows, he has no idea what questions I have here.
	The format's going to be in the follow-on way.
	Twitter, if you're watching this, on YouTube, if you're watching this, if you go on Twitter and post the question, you may have with hashtag VT Town Hall.
	Our team is watching the question.
	We're going to go to a couple questions on Twitter as well.
	Some of the guests will be asking you in a minute to go over there to the question.
	If I call your name, go to the mic over there, pose your question to the candidate, and we'll go from there.
	A few things.
	You know, first things first, I want to go through a couple things that is a bit of controversy when you're asking everybody, it's coming out.
	You know, you're being asked these questions recently.
	This one here on August 1st, Fox News reported that you settled a lawsuit with the World Economic Forum after they failed to remove your name from its 2021 list of young global leaders, even though you declined the nomination.
	Why did your name continue to appear on World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders list?
	And what are your ties to the organization, if any?
	Oh, so the ties to the organization are not.
	My only link was actually being the chief critic of their agenda.
	So everybody in this room might not even know what we're talking about.
	There's an organization called the World Economic Forum.
	They stand for a vision of the world called the Great Reset.
	What is the Great Reset?
	It's a different vision of how we're all supposed to live.
	It says that we have to dissolve the boundaries between the public sector and the private sector, between governments and companies, between nations, to be able to now work towards what they call the global common good.
	I'm against this.
	I am a citizen, not of some global citizen.
	I am a citizen of this nation, the United States of America.
	I'm proud of that.
	That is true.
	That means something to me.
	And on this side of the pond in 1776, we said that we the people determine how we sort out our differences, where every person's voice and vote counts equally.
	In the old world Europe, it was the other way.
	It had to be a small group of elites in the back of palace halls in Old England that decided what was right for the rest of society at large.
	In this country, we said no to that vision.
	We the people decide our own destiny as citizens of a nation.
	So that old world view, though, it started to rear its head again in recent years in the form of this World Economic Forum.
	They hold a meeting every year in Davos.
	Klaus Schwab is the person who leads it.
	It's basically a view that says the citizens cannot be trusted on questions like climate change or racial injustice.
	It has to be settled by a class of global elites, including large billionaires.
	It's part of why they decided to name a lot of young billionaires.
	Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, others have been named on their list.
	So a funny thing happens.
	I wrote my first book, Woke Inc.
	It was a criticism of this agenda.
	Every one of my books, especially capitalist punishment, has gone into detail exposing some of the corruption in this worldview.
	I went on to start a company, strive to push against the ESG agenda, that's the manifestation of the great reset in our capital markets.
	And then a curious thing happens.
	A guy who's affiliated with the World Economic Forum reaches out and says, hey, we're going to give you an award.
	You're going to be named on our list of young global leaders with all this long list of billionaires.
	And, you know, Ibram Kendi was going to be on that list.
	And this is a guy I've been very critical of.
	So I said, no, I don't think this is going to be a good fit for me.
	I disagree with you all.
	If you want to have a debate, I'll debate anybody.
	But I'm not a good fit for your list.
	I decline the award.
	A few months later, my name shows up on the list anyway.
	It's interesting.
	I get a bunch of text messages from people.
	Congratulations.
	So I'm a little confused.
	So I said, wait a minute.
	I told you guys not to add me to this list.
	They said, oh, sorry, sorry, we'll take it off.
	Years later, it keeps popping up a couple of years later.
	And so the people start asking, wait, why is your name on this list?
	So, you know what I did?
	I don't believe in standing by.
	And there are other good allies like Glenn Beck, Elon Musk, others who apparently who have also been opponents of their agenda who have been named.
	But I believe in taking action.
	I believe in accountability.
	So I sued them.
	I sued him in court.
	And I'll tell you a little bit later on a lawsuit that I filed just earlier this week against the Department of Justice.
	I don't believe in just being a passive bystander.
	I believe in accountability.
	So I sued him and we got everything that we demanded, including most importantly, a commitment that this organization would never again defang or try to undermine its opponents by ensnaring them on their own lists.
	So I'm happy to say that we're not going to let anybody else off the hook.
	If Klaus Schwab tried to put me on his list, he ended up on my list, and that's how we roll and build.
	As of today, I believe you're 37 years old.
	You're going to be 38 on Wednesday, I believe.
	You know better than I do.
	August 9th.
	August 9th, your birthday's coming up.
	So as a 38-year-old, if you become the president, I mean, that's the youngest president we'll ever have in the history of America.
	Currently, the president, Biden's 80, President Trump is 77.
	And what would it mean for your country?
	What do you think would mean to America for us to have a president that's 38?
	Maybe next year be 39 years old.
	Why do you think there's that enthusiasm to want to get somebody that age as a president?
	So here's what I will say.
	I'm the youngest person ever to run for U.S. president in a major party.
	Here's what I'll say is going on in the country.
	I think I understand my generation.
	I'm a millennial.
	People younger than me, Gen Z. What's going on?
	We are hungry for a cause.
	That's what's going on.
	We are starved for purpose and meaning and identity.
	At a time in our national history, a moment when the things that used to fill that void, faith, patriotism, hard work, family, these things have disappeared.
	And that leaves a black hole, a moral vacuum in its wake.
	And when you have a black hole that runs that deep, that is when the poison fills the void.
	It almost doesn't matter what the poison is, actually.
	And this is where conservatives, even myself at times in the last three years, we get too wrapped up in the symptoms.
	Wokeism, transgenderism, climatism, COVIDism, globalism.
	But it's not just politics or culture.
	Depression.
	Anxiety, fentanyl, suicide.
	You think it's an accident that we see the rise of these different poisons right at the same time in American history.
	It is not a coincidence, guys.
	It is a symptom of a deeper void of purpose and meaning.
	So, honestly, God Patrick, I do think people are hungry for a different generation of leadership.
	But to tell you the truth, there are people my age who, you know, maybe less with it than some people who are 80 or 90 years old who I know who are good for them, sharp as attacking with it.
	I don't think that's quite it.
	It's not just that we need a young person.
	I think what we need is we need to fill that vacuum by, as I said before, not just running from something, but running to something.
	The left will give us this vision of race, gender, sexuality, climate.
	And then the right will just criticize each of those things and say, okay, well, here's what's wrong with that, without offering a vision of our own.
	And so what I'm saying in this race is, I want us talking more about what we stand for.
	The value of each individual.
	The value of this thing we call the family.
	The nation.
	God, actually.
	There's a hole the size of God in your heart and God doesn't fill it.
	Something else will instead.
	The same can be said for belief in a nation.
	We're like a bunch of blind bats, actually.
	I didn't mean to get too philosophical tonight, but it's the visual that comes to mind for me.
	We human beings, we're like blind bats.
	We're lost in a cave.
	A bat can't see where it is.
	It sends out sonar signals that bounce back and says, this is where I am.
	Well, we human beings, we do the same thing.
	We send out a signal, it bounces off of my family, the two parents who brought me into this world.
	That's true, that's real.
	Bounces back, it says, This is where I am.
	Send out a signal, it bounces off of my belief in God, my conviction in this nation.
	These things are true.
	They bounce back, they say, This is where I am.
	I work hard, you're an entrepreneur, and I'm an entrepreneur.
	We work hard, we create something in the world that is real, that is true.
	I am proud of that, that is real, that comes back.
	It says, This is where I am.
	Well, what happens when those things each disappear?
	We send out these signals and then nothing comes back.
	We're lost in that wilderness.
	And so, I think that's what young people are hungry for.
	And we've told them for a long time: go to Ben and Jerry's and order a cup of ice cream with some social justice sprinkles on the side and make yourself feel good.
	And that works for a little bit.
	But you can't really satisfy a moral hunger with fast food.
	It works in the short run, but I think right now we're in a place where that effect is fading.
	I think people are hungry for the real thing, whatever that is.
	And so, I think that's actually what's resonating.
	It's not my age or anything else, but as a member of my generation, I get it.
	I was disaffected from politics for a long time.
	I didn't vote from most of my 20s.
	I voted back when I was 19 for the libertarian candidate.
	I wasn't inspired by the political candidates I saw.
	I was disaffected myself, so I get it.
	I understand that.
	But I think now is our moment to level up and say we're going to fill that void with an actual vision of what it means to be a citizen of this nation.
	And if we can do a good job, I'm doing my best in this race.
	If we can do a good job of offering a clear vision for young people, for all people across this country, I think we're going to see a domino effect.
	I think we're a hair trigger away from a national revival, even though it might be hard to see today.
	That's truly where I think we are.
	And I'm actually genuinely optimistic that we're not a nation in decline.
	I think we are still, as hard as it might be to believe, a nation in our ascent, actually.
	In the early stages of our ascent.
	Maybe, I'm not the only young one, maybe.
	Maybe our nation is itself a little young, actually, going through our own version of adolescence, figuring out who we're really going to be when we grow up.
	And then it makes sense.
	Because when you go through adolescence, you go through that identity crisis, you go through that self-doubt.
	That's where we are, but I think we're going to get to our adulthood on the other side of it.
	And I'm in this to play my small part to help lead us there.
	So that's kind of how I think about it.
	I appreciate that.
	So let's just say you're on stage, and you remember the moment with President Reagan when he's debating and he says, I do not want to make this debate about the lack of experience my opponent possesses, right?
	Okay, so let's just visualize.
	President Trump's already announced he's not going to do the first debate, right?
	He's just not going to do it.
	He's going to let everybody else know in him.
	He may.
	Matter of fact, you think he's going to show up?
	I have no idea.
	I'm cool either way.
	So let's just say he doesn't show up and he's saying everybody competes to be possibly my VP.
	That's kind of how you put it.
	But let's just see on stage with them, not the first one, second, third one.
	Say you're on stage and he looks at the camera and says, Listen, do you really think America is ready for a 38-year-old young guy, half my age, the amount of experience I've had, the people I've sat down with?
	This guy's great.
	He's phenomenal.
	He can play a role on my cabinet.
	He's going to say that.
	But you are way too young to be the president.
	Do you think America today prefers somebody in their mid to late 70s or somebody in their late 30s?
	I think the country is ready for a new generation of leadership.
	I've got fresh legs, right?
	I'm not.
	I'm ready.
	I'm excited for this.
	I mean, I hope my best days in life are still yet ahead of me.
	I mean, for me, November 2024, that's not the destination.
	That is the start line.
	The destination of the presidency is January 2033 when I leave office.
	My older son won't even be in high school yet.
	I think it might take somebody whose best days are still ahead of him.
	I hope they are.
	God willing.
	To see a country whose best days are ahead of itself as a nation.
	And that's how I genuinely see it.
	Do I have the level of experience that President Trump has on foreign policy or on leading the federal government?
	No, by definition, I've not been in government.
	But one of the things I might say is I actually think I am in some ways closer to Trump in 2015 than Trump today is to Trump in 2015, actually.
	You know, eight years from now, I might be tired, jaded, cynical, have a few extra pounds, feel a little gray thrown through my hair if I have any hair left.
	And, you know, we're human beings, right?
	You go into Drain the Swamp, the swamp drains part of you.
	And I bear no illusions that this is going to be some honky-dory job.
	No, this is going to take something out of me.
	It would out of every person who's been through it, and I get that.
	But I guess I'd rather have somebody going in that still has fresh legs, that's going to come out of it, not completely drained on the other side, but move to a new phase of my own life as this country moves to the next phase of its national life.
	And so, are the people ready for a young person?
	That's not for me to say.
	My job is to tell you who I am and what I stand for.
	That's your guys' job.
	What do you think?
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	So, question for you.
	You've been in pharma.
	You've been in that industry for a minute.
	You've done very well for yourself.
	You build a nine, I believe market cap right now is around $9 billion.
	You guys raised $2.2, $2.3 billion.
	It's not easy to build a company like that.
	Pharmaceuticals is becoming an issue.
	One of the things that I think about, Rob, if we can pull up those three different pharmaceuticals, I'm sure you're going to be familiar with.
	Current law provides brand pharmaceutical companies with 12 years of guaranteed market exclusivity, right, for biologics and 20 years for each patent.
	So when I show you this, if you look at the screen, if you can pull it up, what you'll notice is the moment the patent expires, this is statistical stats, the moment the patent expires, lower this a little bit, Rob, so we can show which pharma this is.
	This is, go a little lower so we can know which one it is.
	What is it?
	Cerical.
	Okay, Ceracle.
	Okay, so this is their patent expires in 2011.
	The moment the patent expires, you notice the price point drops dramatically all the way down to it being nothing, pennies on a dollar, right?
	But for many years, they make billions on top of billions of dollars.
	If you can go to the next one, we got a couple of these examples here.
	Go a little lower.
	This one as well.
	This expired.
	If you can go, there you go.
	What year is this one that expires, Rob?
	Is it 2014?
	Exactly.
	2014 that expires.
	You'll notice the price goes out.
	Let's go to the last one as well, if we can.
	And this last one is Lipitor.
	Prices, look how it is.
	All of a sudden, boom, 2011 expires, dramatically drops.
	In some cases, 90% prices drops, okay?
	Which means they can sell it a lot cheaper today than they are.
	However, this debate with patent law has been going back and forth for a long time.
	You're where it is.
	The big pharma wants to extend the patent so they can make a lot more money and be able to say, I dictate the price point.
	You can't do anything about it, Mr. Government, Mr. President.
	I'm going to sell it for whatever price I want.
	That's called free market.
	How do you, in a capitalistic society, still keep the incentive for these pharmaceutical companies to hire scientists to keep finding better solutions, better, you know, whatever medicine may be for cancer, all these things that they're looking for, yet at the same time, not be so expensive that's making America go bankrupt as well as American families go bankrupt.
	67% of bankruptcies today are due to medical bills.
	This is a real issue for a lot of people.
	Totally is.
	So I'll go beyond the political platitudes to give you a couple of interesting insights because this is an area I know well.
	Okay.
	Can we just put up the Seraquil one?
	Again, I want to tell you something about that case, which gets to the heart of what's actually wrong.
	So is the patent system a good thing?
	Yes, it is, actually.
	Patents, you know where patents are mentioned in our laws first?
	They're actually in the Constitution.
	Our founding fathers had the value of this.
	Thomas Jefferson, people got to remember this.
	He was 24 years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
	Think about that.
	Now, this is a guy at the age of 24 not only writes the Declaration of Independence, he felt like he needed a swivel chair.
	I kind of feel like I need a swivel chair here too.
	Well, he said, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to invent it.
	So he just invented the swivel chair.
	The swivel chair that we sit on today was invented by Thomas Jefferson at the age of 24 while he was writing the Declaration of Independence.
	So these guys valued creativity.
	I mean, something was in the water back then.
	We've got to figure out what that is and bring it back.
	And so they valued innovation.
	And he said that that's a property right.
	And I think that that's good.
	I think we've got to be careful not to say we want to reject something that's been part of our founding culture of the pursuit of excellence and innovation in this country.
	There's a couple problems with this is pharmaceutical companies have grown to be expert at playing games with this system.
	I could go on for hours about the games.
	I'll just tell you one funny game.
	It wasn't that funny, but it's kind of sad.
	Where pharma companies even started engineering deals with Native American tribes that they would enter a complex licensing agreement because the Native American tribe could not be sued by a generics company because it had sovereign immunity in U.S. courts.
	So that's the kind of game playing that we see.
	Now my temptation then is to blame the pharma companies.
	And believe me, I blame the pharma companies for a lot of things.
	My whole business was about standing up to pharma companies based on their bureaucratic behavior, but actually really blame the government.
	Because at the end of the day, you have profit-oriented actors in a free market capitalist system that are going to do whatever within the bounds of the law allows them to extract the most profit.
	The problem is the government that creates the opportunities for this game playing.
	How does that come up?
	Corruption.
	The pharmaceutical industry is the largest lobbying industry known to mankind.
	And so why did I ask you to put the Serrocool back up?
	This relates to real-world issues.
	I'm going to give you one real-world issue that you're not supposed to talk about right now.
	What I'm about to tell you is outside of what they call the Overton window, what you're able to talk about in public discourse.
	But it's the truth.
	Slogan of this campaign, truth.
	So I'm going to speak truth here.
	There has been a direct inverse correlation in the last decade and a half between, a couple of decades, between the rise in violent crime in this country and the loss of psychiatric institutions in this country.
	So the thing you're not supposed to say that I'm going to say, I think it was the first time in the campaign trail I'm saying it, but I'll tell you where I'm at.
	I think we're going to have to bring back psychiatric institutions in this country if we really care about getting to the root cause of much of the violent crime that's plaguing our cities.
	We shut them down for a long time ago because there were a lot of abuses.
	Should be careful about those abuses and learn from those lessons of the past.
	But we can't go in the other direction and pretend like there are people who are automatically going to snap themselves out of their schizophrenic states, badly deranged states that they're in.
	So, why did that happen?
	Anybody have a guess?
	Anyone have any idea why I asked him?
	We had no idea these things were going to come up, but why I asked him to put the Seriquel chart back up there?
	Seraquil's for bipolar disease, a drug for bipolar disease.
	Guess who lobbied the federal government in favor of the closure of psychiatric institutions?
	It's the pharmaceutical industry, actually.
	So, I think that we got to be really precise about what the essence of the problem is: is that when capitalism and democracy share the same bed, bad things happen.
	What I think we need is some social distancing between the two.
	Let the capitalists be capitalists, okay?
	And that's fine.
	I'm not an apologist for capitalism.
	In fact, I think we apologize too much for it.
	You should be able to get ahead through honest work, follow the law however you want to by providing products and services to people who need them.
	Insurance entrepreneur over here, biotech entrepreneur over here.
	I'm proud of that, and I won't apologize for it.
	Capitalism is the best system known to man to lift people up from poverty.
	Okay?
	We do not apologize for it.
	That's true.
	That's who we are.
	But where it goes off the reservation, so to speak, the Native American reservation example I gave earlier, is when they start lobbying the government and start getting the government to build barriers that stop other people from entering, from adopting public policies that we, the people, as citizens, did not want the government actually adopting.
	And that's where I think that we need to let the capitalists be the capitalists.
	In our capacity as citizens, we have a constitutional republic.
	Let's keep them apart for a little bit.
	And I think that's how we will get both the best version of capitalism and democracy by keeping them apart, not by sharing the same bed.
	That's where I'm at.
	Fantastic.
	I love that.
	By the way, Jonathan Kiran, if you can work your way up to the mic, I'll be coming to you here in a minute for a question.
	If you could, I'll come to you right after I ask this question here.
	So, China, okay?
	We learned, yes, you heard of it, right?
	It's like five miles away from here.
	China.
	We learned during COVID the level of dependence we have on China.
	Whatever it was, the chips, cars, used cars, prices were going higher than new cars.
	It was very interesting what happened during the pandemic, right, with China.
	America's dependent on China is an issue for voters.
	Many pundits have said India would be a more suitable replacement for providing American goods and manufacturing.
	How do you reduce America's dependence on China?
	And is any of your plan on reducing the dependence on China having to do with India?
	Are you asking this thing about my last name, Bramaswamy?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Yes.
	So in all honesty, I think India is part of the solution.
	Here's the first North Star principle.
	We cannot depend on our enemy for our modern way of life.
	It doesn't work.
	We never depended on the USSR for the shoes on our feet or the phones in our pockets.
	We just didn't.
	Now, if that were a Russian spy balloon flying over half the United States, you know what we would have done?
	We'd have shot it down in an instant and ratcheted up the sanctions against Russia.
	But because it was a Chinese spy balloon, we didn't do it.
	You want to know why?
	Because we're scared.
	Why are we scared?
	Because we depend on them for our modern way of life.
	This is dangerous for the long run of the United States.
	So how do we do it?
	I would love to tell you that I could snap my fingers, wave a magic wand, and we've onshored everything to the United States.
	I really would love that.
	There's actually chips facilities now coming to central Ohio where I live.
	This is a good thing for us.
	This is not going to happen overnight.
	Anybody who tells you it is, that's a false promise.
	And so, if we're serious about being able to declare economic independence from China, to reduce our reliance on a foreign adversary, then we're going to have to re-enter bilateral trade relationships with Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, Australia, you name it.
	I don't like multilateral agreements because they come with a lot of baggage and garbage about climate change in there that I could care less for.
	But in terms of actually negotiating bilateral deals that are good for the United States, yes, that's what we're going to need.
	I'm going to do that in my first six months in office.
	And then I'm going to sit across the table from Xi Jinping with a spine.
	And he will know that I mean it when I say, listen up, brother.
	We're going to have to have a tough conversation here.
	We're cutting the court.
	We're done.
	We're out.
	No more intellectual property theft, data theft, no more forced data transfers, no more turning companies like BlackRock into lobbying pawns for doing your bidding here in order to give them favors over there.
	That's not capitalism.
	That is mercantilism.
	We're out unless you radically reform.
	There's your choice.
	And you know what?
	We've got our other trade partners lined up.
	We're going to be just fine.
	It's going to be harder for you than it is for us because you shot yourself in the foot with the zero COVID policies that had about as much to do with COVID-19 as the global climate policies have to do with the climate, which is to say nothing at all.
	It was about your power, dominion, control, and punishment.
	Too bad for you.
	Your economy is now in a tough spot.
	You're facing deflation.
	So let's see you if you're actually going to continue to call our bluff because now we mean it.
	You know what he's going to do?
	He's going to have to fold.
	Because China is in a tougher spot than we are.
	They're facing a deflationary environment.
	You think inflation's bad?
	Well, hey, wait till you see what's going on over there.
	It's because he shot his own economy in the foot that's the Achilles heel of any autocrat, his hubris, that put China in a tough spot.
	So this is our moment.
	This is our moment to stand up with a spine, but it takes a leader who, A, is not a super PAC puppet.
	Okay, there's a lot of interest in the United States that would rather have us not pursue this policy.
	And then it also takes a leader who thinks on the time scale of history rather than on the time scale of tomorrow.
	And I think that's something we miss in this country.
	It is a disadvantage.
	We have elections every two years in Congress, every four years for the president.
	We need to think on the time scales of generations, right?
	I do not want my grandchildren, or God forbid my children, to be a bunch of Chinese serfs according to the plan, 500-year plan laid out in China.
	No, I don't want that.
	And I think if we want to be careful about marching towards that destiny, we've got to realize that every step today we take in that direction is indeed a step in that direction.
	And I'll leave a thought with you, which, you know, again, this isn't cable television stuff here, which is why we do forums like this, but you could say conspiracy theory.
	No, just logically play it forward.
	Here are some facts.
	We know that China is exporting from all places, I'm not making this up, Wuhan, not just the origin of the pandemic, but those raw synthetic materials to make fentanyl that they're sending to the Mexican drug cartels now for really cheap prices.
	That's expanded the profit margin of the drug cartels.
	That's what's causing them to push more fentanyl.
	If you have any doubt that this is intentional, then ask yourself why there are hundreds of Chinese chemists south of our own border in Mexico.
	It's a one-sided opium war, killing 200 Americans per day dying of fentanyl crossing our southern border.
	50 times the number of people who died on 9-11 are going to die this year from fentanyl crossing our southern border.
	And much of that isn't even just fentanyl, it's Percocet or other pills that young kids are getting on Snapchat.
	They don't even think they're taking fentanyl, but it's laced with fentanyl.
	So it's not an overdose, it's poisoning.
	So now bring that back to pharmaceuticals.
	Let's tie both of our last two questions together.
	If China's responsible for 70, 80% of our small molecule supply chain, and they're intentionally going to put it in illegal Percocet, lace it with a little bit of fentanyl, killing tens of thousands of Americans per year.
	Well, you just wait till the moment they do it with our legal pharmaceutical supply chain coming from over there as well.
	And that sounds about as ridiculous as a bioterrorism lab engineering a virus that did not exist in nature that goes on to cause a global pandemic, doesn't it?
	And so I think we've got to be prepared.
	We cannot wait till it happens.
	We have to see what is coming.
	That's the kind of leadership we need.
	Anyway.
	Let me ask you this on this topic.
	Two follow-up questions on this.
	You talk about, you know, when you sit down with G, you're going to tell Xi, here's what you do no matter what, or else, you know, or Putin, when I, you know, sit with Putin, here's what's going on.
	These are some heavyweight people to sit with where you have to be firm yet confident to deliver and make sure they know that you're being serious about your, you know, whatever declaration it is you're giving to them.
	Who are some of the most biggest heavyweights you've ever sat with that you've had to negotiate deals with?
	And, you know, in the business of coming up, can you name some names, some intimidating conversations you've had to build a $9 billion company that you built?
	Patrick Ben David scheduling this town hall.
	That was pretty big, heavy guy.
	Now, I mean, look, I mean, I've sat across the table from NBS.
	You know, I've been to the palace downstairs in Saudi Arabia.
	He's a guy my age.
	You know, I'm talking about too young.
	He's, I don't agree with a lot of what he's doing, but say what you will, he's a young guy who's taking the reins and taking the nation in a direction with a clear vision.
	You know, I've sat across the table from most, many of the wealthiest people in the world.
	These aren't guys who got to where they are by playing soft.
	And I didn't get to where I am by playing soft either.
	So I'm ready for the challenge.
	I think that these guys, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, like some of the older guys in both parties in our side of the pond, they're off the top of their game.
	I think their best days are behind them.
	You think so?
	I think so.
	Absolutely.
	I think so.
	I think there's some insecurities there.
	What makes you say that?
	Well, I mean, Putin is not well.
	I mean, Xi Jinping is now the different guy than he was.
	I mean, this is a guy who had, you know, people who rise.
	I mean, you don't get to that position without having some kind of chip on your shoulder, right?
	I don't know how much most Americans don't know a lot about his story.
	I was curious about it.
	You got to know the man you're going to face off with.
	So I was actually an exchange student in China.
	I've been watching this man's rise for a long time.
	His father was actually exploited by Mao Zedong.
	He was an official in the government.
	But what Mao Zedong did is he unleashed the cultural revolution of young people in China that went after the old guard and the Communist Party.
	So his dad was abused, and Xi Jinping was taken out with him.
	And there were instances where he's on a stage, had to wear an embarrassing tin hat and have kids throw things at him.
	I mean, this is some psychologically scarring stuff, some weird, weird happenings in a kid's upbringing.
	And then now you see the guy wearing the Mao Zedong suit, right?
	He's trying to imitate the guy who actually humiliated and in some ways medically harmed his father, put him through a psychologically torturous youth.
	There's some psychologically twisted stuff going on there, but there are also some deep-seated insecurities.
	His ego is his main enemy.
	He was willing to put himself in a weaker position in substance to just hold on to that unprecedented third term of power.
	Watch what happened with Hu Jintao in that meeting where he took over that unprecedented third term.
	He had Hu Jintao, literally, remember this video?
	Literally uncomfortably lifted out of his seat.
	And so, yeah, do I understand the people I'm facing off with?
	Yes, I do.
	Are they weak?
	Yes, they are.
	And I think the difference with me is, look, I'm an open book.
	I got nothing to hide.
	We started this campaign.
	What do we do?
	Everybody's always about playing the game, especially wealthy people running for president.
	How are you going to delay and game the tax returns?
	We just put them out in the first few weeks in the campaign.
	Open book, have at it.
	You know, they're causing headaches for me.
	You know, people ask the New York Times, ask this question or that question.
	Fine.
	We answered it.
	You got nothing to hide.
	And that's the approach I'm going to take to international relations where I'm going to be very honest with people.
	I'm going to abandon the lie that I think we've told in the U.S. at times, that we're somehow a moral arbiter of what happens in the world.
	What I'm going to say is the truth.
	My job as U.S. president is to advance the interests of the homeland, to actually take care of American citizens.
	I have a moral obligation to my fellow citizens to take care of them and their interests first.
	And so when I end the war in Ukraine and I'm negotiating with Putin a deal that pulls him out of his alliance with China, which in turn weakens China from being in a position going after Taiwan, say what you will.
	I don't trust Putin, he doesn't trust me, but we're going to know that we each trust each other to follow our self-interest.
	And we can have a clearer negotiation than if I'm saying that, oh, this is about the fight for democracy in some random nation that banned 11 opposition parties and consolidated state media into one arm when we don't care beans about somebody invading another country in Africa.
	No, it doesn't make sense.
	But if you say that, no, no, no, I'm in this to just advance American interests, then two parties can reach a deal that makes sense for both parties.
	And when I make a deal, Patrick, I'm in the habit of being on the winning side of that trade.
	And that's exactly what I'm going to do when I'm negotiating trade deals and negotiating peace settlements on behalf of the United States.
	Fair enough.
	Do you have a relationship with Modi by any chance?
	I think India is going to play a very important role.
	They showed the level of courage they have by banning 100 apps from China, something America wouldn't even do with TikTok.
	So is there any relationship you have with Modi?
	I don't know him yet.
	Okay.
	You know, I did go in, I happened to be addressing Congress the morning before he came for his joint session, so I stuck around.
	One of the people had me as their guest, and so I stuck around and heard his address.
	I've been impressed by him as a leader.
	At the same time, I think that India is going to have to step it up a little bit.
	They haven't really met the full level of military commitments that I'd like to see a little waffly on the trade relationship.
	And, you know, understandably, the U.S. has also been a little bit less reliable than necessary, so I want to shore that up.
	If you want to think about a conflict situation with Taiwan, what people forget is the Indian Ocean is where the Middle Eastern oil supplies run through to get to China.
	And so if India is actually a reliable partner, that is a further deterrent to Xi Jinping even going after Taiwan.
	And I think I have probably the clearest vision of anybody in this race in either party, Patrick, of how to deter China from going after Taiwan while avoiding war over that island.
	And I think it's going to be the most important thing the next president does from the standpoint of foreign policy.
	I will say whether you are the president, you're the candidate, or somebody else, is the fact that your background, who you are, what you've done, India is going to play a very important role.
	I think you're going to need to be a prominent voice and influence the next four, eight, twelve years.
	Against, that's my opinion.
	But that's why I wanted to ask you the question.
	Let's go to Jonathan there.
	So Jonathan is a Trump supporter.
	Jonathan, feel free to ask the question from Vivek Ramis Moni.
	Well, I'm a Vivek supporter.
	And I believe you're the best candidate for the nomination, although I think you have a huge uphill battle against Trump's die-hard supporters.
	I also like Trump's policies, but I thought you'll be better at uniting the people.
	How do you plan to win over the die-hard Trump supporters?
	Well, it starts by being helpful that I was one.
	And in many ways, I stand by it.
	But I'll tell you this: the America First agenda, and I think most of the die-hard Trump supporters are really die-hard America supporters.
	America First does not belong to one man.
	It does not belong to Trump.
	It doesn't belong to me.
	It belongs to you, the people of this country.
	So the question you have to ask is: this movement belongs to we, the people.
	Bigger than any of us.
	It's bigger than Trump.
	It's bigger than me.
	It's bigger than any one of us.
	I'm a George Washington America First Conservative, actually.
	And so here's the fact of the matter.
	That's why I'm in this race.
	I'm pursuing many of Trump's policies.
	I am.
	You know, there's some small things here and there we'll do differently, but by and large, same policies in many cases going further.
	Use the military on the southern border, not just the wall.
	Shut down the Department of Education, not just Betsy DeVos.
	But for whatever reason, right, Trump, I don't blame him for this.
	It's just a fact.
	About 30% of this country becomes psychiatrically deranged when he's in the White House.
	And I can't explain it to you, but it's just a fact.
	It's like a law of physics in American politics.
	And I'm not having that effect on people.
	Maybe it's the fact that I'm a first-generation American skinny kid with a funny last name and live the American dream.
	I'm grounded in principles, not vengeance.
	Whatever it is, that will allow me at once to go further with the same agenda than Trump did.
	Keep in mind, I pushed his people on why they didn't eliminate affirmative action, which they could have done with the stroke of a pen.
	It was created by an executive order.
	They said it was a political hill they didn't want to die on, and I understand that.
	But you have to play the political calculus if 30% of the country is automatically against you.
	But if you're bringing the entire country with you, right?
	I went to the south side of Chicago two months ago.
	I went to Kensington in the middle of Philadelphia last month.
	These are places Republican candidates don't go.
	And what are we finding?
	People agree with a lot of these policies, actually.
	These aren't Republican or Democrat policies.
	These are pro-American policies.
	And so I think we have a chance, and this is why I think I'm going to do better than anybody else in this race at this, to at once go further with the America First agenda than Trump did, but also unite the country in the process.
	And I know Donald Trump, I think he cares about national unity, actually.
	He's misunderstood.
	But if he was capable of delivering it, we'd be there already.
	And we're not.
	And I have a vision of how we will get there, not by compromising on our principles, but by being uncompromising about the 1776 ideals that set this nation into motion.
	And honest to God, right now, I couldn't have told you this in March.
	I'm confident we're going to be successful not only winning this primary, but winning this general election in a landslide, which could be the single most unifying catalyst for this country next November.
	Thank you, man.
	Thank you.
	I hope so, too.
	Amen.
	So how often do you and Trump speak?
	We are all on the campaign trail backstage at this event or that event.
	We're both in Iowa recently at the NRA, but probably the same as the other candidates as each other.
	Bumping each other every few weeks or every few months.
	So, by the way, if we can have Hannibal handy, work your way up over that.
	I'm going to go to a Twitter question here in a minute.
	But DeSantis and Newsom, okay, announcing that they're going to be doing a debate.
	It's something a lot of people want to see, but the interpretation of what that is is a couple different things that you'll look at.
	So for me, when you think about those two, if you have the champions of each side, the leading candidates of each side debating, you undermine that when you go above and beyond and say, hey, we're going to debate each other.
	It's not like they're choosing to debate each other on a non-election season.
	So if they were going to debate each other six months ago, go at it.
	Screw a TV, go have the conversational philosophies.
	It's no problem.
	America loves seeing that.
	But what do you think about them choosing to do this?
	And DeSantis said he would be more than willing to do it.
	And Newsom's called him out on Twitter before.
	Do you think they are undermining indirectly Biden and President Trump?
	Or do you think in their mind they're thinking neither Biden or Trump's going to be around?
	It's going to be them two at the end.
	I think it's none of the above.
	I mean, I'm proud of Ron.
	He's, you know, now willing to engage with people who disagree with him.
	At the start of the campaign, certainly said he wasn't going to talk to NBC News.
	And I understand why.
	I mean, NBC News isn't very fair to me either.
	But my philosophy is we talk to everybody.
	Agree, disagree, far left, far right, non-right, doesn't matter.
	I'm not running the league of political party.
	I'm running to lead a nation.
	And I've called on the other candidates in the Republican Party to do the same thing, frankly.
	I think that's going to make us as a country stronger.
	So I'm proud of Ron for, you know, I would say, evolving a little bit, being open to talk to people on the other side who disagree with him.
	I think Gavin Newsom's looking for attention because he's waiting in the wings to be the nominee once Biden isn't.
	I'll go on record saying this.
	I expect to be the nominee for our party.
	I do not believe that they will let Joe Biden run in that case.
	The contrast is going to be too stark in too many ways.
	It will dispel their narrative.
	And so either they're going to get him to step aside, or if he refuses to do it, that's when the documents case comes out against Biden.
	That's when the Hunter Biden ratchets up.
	That's what's going to happen, is the reality.
	It's not, the biggest myth in American politics is this idea that the people we elect to run the government are the ones who actually run the government.
	They're not.
	Biden is a puppet.
	And I think that this is why I tell my friends in the Republican Party: stop talking about Biden, guys.
	It is boring.
	It is irrelevant.
	This is a puppet.
	We have to offer a vision of our own and recognize that the real problem is the permanent state underneath him that uses him as a puppet, or else we've lost the plot.
	And so in that scenario, what we're going to see, and you've already seen a little bit of the jockeying for this, is it's going to be everybody and their mother that runs for that Democratic nomination.
	You're going to see Pritzker, you're going to see Gavin Newsome, you're going to see everybody, Pete Buttigic, you're going to see Kamala Harris, everybody's going to be, you know, Bernie Sanders gonna be back, Elizabeth Warren can't strip it off.
	It's going to be everybody.
	And then, you know, Michelle Obama probably didn't want to do it, but they'll drag her out and think she's going to be the next puppet they prop up.
	So that's what you're going to see.
	And so Gavin Newsom is just trying to jockey for his position because he is hungry for attention in our California government.
	You think, I mean, this is a wild question.
	You think any chance Hillary gets in there once she sees an opposite?
	You think she's going to get it?
	When Biden, once it becomes clear that they will not let Biden run, so they're thinking Trump's the nominee, they're going to keep puppet Biden up there.
	But once it becomes clear that I believe I'm going to be the nominee, it is going to be a free-for-all on the Democratic side.
	And you believe me, Hillary Clinton, she doesn't, you know, she's not going to get that many more bites at the apple.
	She is going to seize this bite at that apple.
	So that's absolutely going to happen.
	That should be entertaining.
	Okay, go for it.
	Question.
	I did think my name is Hannibal Handy.
	Hannibal, if you can get a little closer to the mic.
	After listening to many of your interviews and speeches, as well as reading your three books, I think we can agree that people on Wall Street in politics and inside intelligence agencies have blatantly broken the law.
	Removing them from positions of power, restructuring the executive branch and administrative state would be a significant step in the right direction.
	My question is: how are you going to convince voters that you will hold these criminals accountable for their actions if there's no accountability?
	The same people will continue to attack America from a different angle.
	I appreciate that, Hannibal.
	So I agree with you that I want to move forward as a country, but we cannot move forward until we have settled the open wounds of the past.
	Otherwise, they're just going to keep cropping up in dangerous and ugly ways.
	So I'll just give you some examples of how I'm going to sew those wounds over so that we can move forward as a country.
	Okay.
	So, first of all, we need to restore the idea of, I alluded to this at the beginning, government that tells the truth to its citizens.
	Who lied about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic?
	Who lied about what we knew about vaccines and the risks associated with myocarditis and the mandates and school lockdowns?
	Who understood the extent of pervasive government technology company relationships to be able to do through the back door what the government could not do through the front door?
	Who actually understood the systematic truth but suppression of a Hunter Biden corruption story on the eve of a presidential election?
	That you had your social media accounts locked if you dared even send in a direct message.
	Who wants to know the truth about January 6th?
	I'd like to know exactly how many federal agents were on site that day.
	I'm not going to say it's one conclusion or another.
	Just give me the facts.
	Who wants to know the truth about where I was earlier this week?
	The Nashville Shooters Manifesto.
	My view is tell us the truth.
	What I see in the government today, it's like the Jack Nicholson character in a few good men, right?
	He's like, you can't handle the truth.
	You need me on that wall.
	No, we don't need you on that wall.
	And yes, we can handle the truth.
	And the people who have systematically lied and broke the law while doing it, who used our money to do through the back door, fund taxpayer-funded research in Wuhan, China, for a form of research that was banned here in the United States, that's criminal.
	And that deserves full accountability.
	I'll tell you another issue which we're tussling about right now.
	It's going to be a tough one to sort through.
	Election integrity.
	Okay?
	Many on the left say raising this question is itself a threat to democracy.
	Here's my truths on this issue.
	Single day voting on election day.
	Make it a holiday.
	Voter IDs.
	Government issues IDs matched to the voter file.
	Paper ballots.
	Do that deal.
	I will do my part as the leader of the Republican Party and the leader of this country, but to the Republican Party to say we are done complaining about election integrity if we deliver those basics that are achievable, that should not be controversial.
	And so I am hopeful that what seems impossible today, think about the unbridgeable divides, we can do this.
	It's not complicated.
	It's simple, but it is hard in that it's not easy.
	Okay, and that's what it's going to take is it's not some clever plot that we have to construct.
	It just takes a leader with the spine to stand up and say, we will speak the truth.
	We will speak the truth when it is hard.
	I will issue an executive order on day one requiring the entire federal government, anybody who pressured a private actor, a company, or otherwise, to do something that the government could not do on its own.
	We're going to at least publish it so the public can see it.
	Roll that log over.
	Let's see what crawls out.
	Sunlight is the first step to actual accountability.
	And we need accountability in order to heal as a nation.
	Thank you for that question, Hannibal.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Let me follow up on that.
	To follow up on that, you know, for you to say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do this.
	So when they asked Trump, I think it was Maria Bartiroma that asked them a question saying, hey, you said you're going to drain the swamp, but you didn't do it.
	You hired Chris Ray.
	You hired this guy.
	You hired that guy.
	He says, well, looking back, I regret the hired here, but Chris Christie told me about this.
	I didn't really know the people there.
	I'm a real estate guy.
	I'm a New York guy.
	This is not something I know about.
	So what do you say to the Republican voter that's sitting there saying, Vivette, we love the way you're coming up.
	Listen, we love your messaging, your passion, your youth.
	But why would we re-elect a person that definitely has no experience in the White House?
	Who are you going to hire?
	Who are you going to fire?
	You don't know these guys.
	Who are you going to put in the office to say, well, I'm going to fire this guy and I'm going to bring this guy and I'm going to bring that guy.
	You don't have any experience with these guys in the swamp.
	So what do you say to those guys that don't trust who you're going to hire?
	They like you, but you can't fix everything.
	How do you address that?
	So look, I think I'm the best shot we got.
	And nobody's perfect, but I'm also going to build on the foundation laid by Trump.
	I actually think, let's be really clear, I think that there's a lot he didn't do that we would have wanted him to do, but I think he did more than any president in the 21st century.
	That's what I'm asking, though.
	That's not what I'm asking.
	So how are we going to actually bring the people in is the question.
	You.
	You don't have to start.
	Well, we're already starting, actually.
	How?
	So I'm starting now.
	I mean, we already published our list of federal judges, for example.
	The judges we'd appoint to the Supreme Court, the judges that will appoint to the appellate courts.
	What did I look at?
	So my view is the U.S. president already has the legal authority to fire large numbers of employees in the federal government.
	This tripped up Trump.
	This is the difference between me and Trump, actually, is I think the people around him didn't do him a service by spouting the traditional establishment orthodoxy, Tim.
	What did they say?
	He wanted to fire people.
	They said, no, you can't do it because there's these civil service protections that stop you as the president from firing employees.
	Well, I suggest read the law.
	Turns out that civil service protections only apply to firing individual civil servants.
	They do not apply to mass layoffs.
	And mass layoffs are absolutely what I am bringing to the federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.
	And so you've got to have, at once, a president who is an outsider, is a CEO, understands that if somebody works for you and you can't fire them, that means they don't work for you.
	It means you work for them because you're responsible for what they do without any authority to change it.
	Me and Trump both have that.
	But it's a separate piece of this, which is an outsider who also has a deep understanding of the Constitution.
	And Hannibal asked the question, I'm grateful he read my three books.
	So if other people want to, you can check out the same thing.
	I understand the laws and the Constitution of this country.
	Many passages from my book have been quoted in appellate court cases in the last three years about actually big tech censorship being suppressed, government action.
	And so that's the combination, Patrick, that will allow me to declare independence from the managerial swamp class.
	That's the advisors.
	And then on the practical side of this, we're already starting.
	We've got a project led by business leaders I've known for a long time already recruiting for positions, not just the cabinet level.
	Who's running the Office of Management and Budget?
	Who's running the Office of Personnel Management?
	Do you have specific names?
	We do.
	We have lists that we're working down and winnowing down, absolutely.
	And far earlier than Trump started.
	That's fine.
	So who are these people that are helping you process issues?
	I understand as a founder CEO, we both run a company, and there's a reason why we have a board.
	The board's kind of helping you with the blind spots that you have.
	So Trump chose Christie as an advisor, right?
	Christie wasn't a VP, but Chris Christie is the reason why we got Chris Ray, and we're dealing with what the DOJ is doing to Trump, you know, indictment, indictment, back to back to back.
	Trump hired that person, right?
	Who's in your ear to help you pick the right people in these different positions?
	It's not Chris Christie.
	So it's a group of people, some of whom are ex-government, many of whom, though, are really smart people who are not in government.
	And I have a strong bias towards that.
	I think it will take somebody who has a fresh perspective to actually understand who's going to be a bulldog in that role.
	Here's the mistake Trump made, right?
	You take those two positions I just mentioned, the Office of Management and Budget, that's like the CFO of the executive branch, and the Office of Personnel Management.
	It's like the head of HR in the executive branch.
	A lot of presidents make the mistake of putting in people in those roles who are mediators.
	They're almost like ambassadors for the administrative state back to the U.S. president.
	I don't want an ambassador for the administrative state.
	I don't want a mediator.
	I want a bulldog who is going in there with a fundamentally anti-government bias to see through my directive to fire large numbers of employees.
	and shut down agencies that shouldn't exist.
	Now, here's the twist in that.
	We will get sued when we do this, right?
	People who are fired are going to say, no, no, we're going to sue you.
	We're going to take you to court.
	This is good.
	Because the current Supreme Court, which I've studied, which I give Trump credit for, he gave us a great Supreme Court.
	The justices I filtered for also fit the same description.
	They agree with me on this six to three.
	So what do we do then?
	Then we win.
	Now we're driving real long-term change because the next president who comes after me won't have his hands tied in the same way.
	And so yes, I think it is a unique combination of somebody who is an outsider, who has been an entrepreneur or an executive or somebody who has led major businesses, created thousands of jobs, but also somebody who has a constitutional depth to be able to act with conviction without what the managerial class tells them.
	And that's what gives me a sense of obligation to do this task.
	Okay, so you know what's the great thing about business?
	When business people negotiate, we know what's at stake, right?
	You're going to get this much money, you're going to get this.
	I'm going to give up equity.
	You get to get an additional board seat.
	It's very black and white.
	We can do it.
	The government doesn't work that way.
	It's a lot of interesting people who look at you and they say, hey guys, this guy's just going to be here for four years.
	We'll replace him in no time.
	Everybody's just making him feel good.
	I'm making him feel like he's special in the president, but he ain't going to do nothing.
	He didn't run this country.
	We'll run this country.
	We'll get him out of here in no time.
	You got how they view you.
	You got it.
	They don't view you as anybody, right?
	You're a little puppet that comes along every day.
	Exactly.
	So how do you, you know, thinking from the mindset of optimism, oh, we got this.
	We got a lot of smart people.
	And, you know, these smart people are going to come and figure this thing out.
	And they're good at reading people.
	You know how hard it is to read dark people who have different motives?
	There are a lot of interesting people in politics that are not loving this country the way you love this country.
	They want their card, the card that gets them into all these different additional benefits that you may take away from them.
	You think they're going to gladly let you take that away from them?
	I don't.
	And so that's why, and this is where a reasonable person could disagree with me on this, but I have a firm conviction in this.
	That is why we're not coming with the chisel.
	We're coming with the chainsaw.
	Because there's no way we could ever manage to.
	That's a false hubris to think we could have that knowledge.
	We don't.
	75% headcount reduction by the end of the first term.
	50% of which has to be done by the first year.
	You don't move that.
	75%?
	Yes, one out of four will stay by the end of the first term.
	50% by the end of the first year.
	Chainsaw model.
	And that's what I said.
	There's good people in the Republican Party right now.
	I don't view them as competitors.
	I view them as colleagues, many of them, right?
	I'm going to need them in different roles.
	But they make the promise of reform.
	It is a false promise.
	They don't know it's a false promise.
	They don't think they're lying.
	But it's a false promise because reform is impossible.
	You cannot tame that beast.
	It is the Leviathan.
	You cannot tame that beast.
	You have to slay the beast.
	You have to shut it down.
	And so that's, again, the choice in this GOP primary is very simple.
	Do you want reform or do you want revolution?
	I stand on the side of revolution.
	I know that is scary to some people.
	It need not be, because you know what really is scary?
	The status quo.
	And we're not going to change the scary status quo unless we're willing to embrace the model of the Phoenix.
	Will there be some cost to this?
	Is it going to be all honky-dory at each step?
	No.
	But it is better than the alternative, which is the hollowed-out husk of a constitutional republic whose stagnation economically is destined to continue unless we take a quantum leap.
	And so, no, I do not believe in incremental reform.
	Okay, if that's what the people of this country want, I think quietly they do.
	I think it's scary at first, but it doesn't have to be scary.
	This is, here's the test you know to use.
	If George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Thomas Jefferson are walking down the streets of Washington, D.C. and see what's going on today, would they be proud or would they be appalled?
	I think they would be aghast at what they see in Washington, D.C. today.
	And the experiment they set into motion, that's actually what got us this far.
	So if that got us here 250 years into this ballgame, people say you're like ancient Rome.
	You're the fall of the Roman Empire.
	Well, you know what I say on the bright side of that?
	Rome lasted for 2,000 years, if you count the second half.
	So we're not even at the end of the first inning.
	And that's what it's going to take to drive actual change is a revival, a reincarnation of those ideals of 1776.
	They are dead.
	It's not, I don't even call myself conservative sometimes because in order to be a conservative, you have to conserve something.
	The thing that we are conserving is itself now long gone.
	We have to recreate that which actually set the whole thing into motion.
	So that's the way I look at it.
	Fantastic.
	Okay, can we have, please, Johnny Lee Reynoso, if you can go to the mic, please.
	Johnny Lee, if you can go to the mic.
	So that leads me to this crazy question here.
	Okay, and I don't know if anyone's asking this crazy question, so Brace for Impact.
	Ready?
	When asked on the Clay and Buck Sexton show, if Trump were nominee, would you consider being on the ticket with him?
	Okay?
	Would you be on the ticket with him?
	You answered, I will be helpful to the country in whatever way I can, but I would not be number two or member of an administration.
	I just don't think that's the right way for me to make the maximum positive impact on this country.
	You ready for the question?
	Sure.
	If you win nomination, would you consider having him as your VP?
	I would.
	Absolutely.
	And you know, I think that he and I probably share something in common.
	Neither of us do well in a number two position.
	I do expect him to be an advisor.
	But I want to learn from those experiences where the bodies are buried.
	I don't want to recreate the same wheel.
	I want to understand, get as much of a head start.
	And I do think he's a patriot who cares about this country every bit as much as I do.
	And I believe he will rise to that occasion and be helpful to me as an advisor to understand the experiences of the stuff he's saying, things he would have done differently.
	Great.
	I want to know that.
	I don't want to have to learn those lessons myself.
	And so that's the way I think about it.
	Has he picked the nickname for you yet?
	I think he's calling me Young Vivek.
	Young Vivek?
	I don't think that's a bad name, though.
	I'll take it.
	I don't think that's a bad name.
	Some people are nervous about a young president.
	Young Vivek.
	Young Vivek to me is an exciting one.
	But by the way, if you were a betting man or a woman, what are the chances you think Trump would agree to being a VP for anybody?
	We'll find out.
	We'll figure it out.
	Jonathan Lee Reynosa, tell us your question.
	Well, Mr. President, Vivek.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that, President.
	In my lifetime, I do not believe I've ever heard a presidential candidate mention their desire to abolish the Department of Education the way you have.
	While I agree that the educational system is broken, and it surely is, please explain how you plan on abolishing and overhauling the educational system when you become president, and especially how long into your presidency would you act on this plan?
	So, quickly, year one, because I think that your ability to get things done, they go down over your time in office.
	Again, learning from my predecessors here, this is why I'm going first, not with the legislative agendas, because that's designed to go slowly through Congress.
	The pinprick in Trump's momentum was when Congress was asked to repeal and replace Obamacare.
	Congress didn't want to do it, and then that deflated the momentum a little bit.
	So I'm not going to make that mistake.
	I'm going to start with what the chief executive of this country can do by running the executive branch.
	So shutting down the Department of Education comes early.
	I'll go quickly on educational reform.
	So much to say, but I'll give you the bullets here.
	Basic redux.
	Shut it down.
	That $80 billion goes to the states, to the people, to fund underfunded school choice programs.
	That allows any parent to decide where they actually want to send their kids to school.
	That's in many ways, I think, the civil rights issue of our time.
	Kids should not be trapped in the zip code that they're born into.
	Now, I'm for school choice on steroids.
	What do I mean by that?
	Well, it turns out that the schools that spend the most per student, those public schools, have the worst achieving results on a per-student basis.
	That's mind-boggling.
	So I think when a parent then decides they already have the money through school choice, through the voucher to move, if that school, as in New York City, the bad one's spending $40,000 per year per student, the good one is $20,000 or less, half the difference should travel with the kid, $10,000 that goes into that kid's account.
	Invest that according to normal returns, $10,000 per year.
	That's a quarter million dollar graduation gift for that kid when he graduates from high school.
	It's not even close, which is a better use of money.
	That or a teachers' union-laden bureaucracy, which, by the way, is the number one factor that shackles public schools that does not shackle private or charter schools, is those teachers' unions.
	Get rid of the teachers' unions, write the contracts in a way that prevents public teachers' unions from engaging in collective bargaining.
	Now we're talking transparency, choice.
	How do we get more transparency?
	If you're going to teach it in the classroom, put it on the internet.
	If you don't want to put it on the internet, you probably shouldn't be teaching it in the classroom.
	And then I think there's room for a civic revival in our education, too.
	And it is my view that, look, as a first-generation American, my parents were immigrants.
	This is somewhat personal to me.
	I think that every 18-year-old who graduates from high school should have to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass in order to become a naturalized citizen of this country.
	That's just a good thing for young people to know something about our country.
	And so that gives you a sense of how I think of radical educational reform for a system that's backed to being about the achievement of our students rather than employment opportunities for the managerial class.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate that.
	What do you do with CIA and FBI?
	Shut down the FBI.
	Hardcore answer.
	What do you do with CIA?
	And I'll tell you about FBI.
	It's not just a slogan to me.
	35,000 employees.
	20,000 of them are in back office functions.
	That's where the politicization comes from.
	They're going to have to go home and find honest work in the private sector, where there's a job shortage anyway.
	So maybe it'll be good for everybody.
	A job surplus, I should say.
	So the other piece of this is the 15,000 agents who are on the front lines, some of whom are doing good work, move them to greater areas of specialization, say in the U.S. Marshals, which has been busting up child sex trafficking rings, to the DEA, which has been much more effective fighting fentanyl and the spread of it in the U.S. than the FBI has.
	To the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in the U.S. Department of Treasury, complex white-collar theft cases.
	So that's what I was saying earlier when I say, do you want reform or revolution?
	It sounds scary at first, shut down the FBI.
	I think we will better protect citizens of this country from what the laws were supposed to protect those citizens from, but without the politicization and without the rot of that bureaucracy.
	I think on the CIA, I'm going to just be very honest with you guys.
	I'm going deep on the administrative state, on the areas where I've come out with exact, precise shutdown plans, from the FBI to the Department of Education to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to others.
	We've already been very transparent.
	We're working on the CIA.
	It's a complicated beast.
	And am I deeply skeptical of our national security establishment?
	Do I think we've been told the truth over the last 25 years, the last 100 years in this country?
	No, I do not.
	But I'm also going to be laser focused on actually getting this right.
	And anything that I tell you that we're going to do, we're going to do it.
	So on the FBI, we have a very clean plan.
	It's exactly what I'm going to tell you we're going to do.
	There are going to be dramatic changes to the CIA as well.
	It will not be a shutdown.
	I don't think that that's actually viable or will serve our national interests given where we are in our position, vis-a-vis China in particular.
	But there will be dramatic changes to make sure that American citizens don't suffer at the hands of a backdoor closet monarchy when we fought a revolution in 1776 to say the government is accountable to its people rather than the other way around.
	So major changes, details before the end of the primary to come, but that's what I've said on the FBI.
	Would you consider yourself an anti-establishment president?
	Of course.
	I mean, I'm like the definitional version of an anti-establishment.
	Who's the last anti-establishment president you think we had outside of Trump?
	It's been a long time.
	I mean, I'm tempted to say an element of Reagan was anti-establishment, but only an element, because I think he was, and I respect him, but he was prone to a sort of compromise that is a little bit of a, I respect Reagan, he's a hero, but slightly different than my orientation coming in as a true outsider in this.
	There was a streak that Eisenhower had towards the end of his presidency.
	I think it's what a part of him inside that disgusted him when he gave that farewell address on the military-industrial complex, absolutely.
	But I don't know that we will have had an anti-establishment president like the one that I intend to be for this country.
	And I think our moment uniquely calls for it too.
	Because I don't think there's been a moment in American history where we've had the merger of private power and state power to together do what neither could do on its own.
	I think that is a uniquely now 21st century phenomenon.
	And so I think that the times of the country select for the kind of leader that that moment calls for.
	You think there's a reason why we haven't had one for a while?
	You think that is intentional?
	You think they know how to eliminate guys like you to not be able to compete?
	I hope not.
	Well, by the way, if you're talking about shutting down 75%, I'm going to eliminate this, I'm going to eliminate that.
	The last guy that had that kind of a plan, you know what I'm saying?
	He didn't go so high.
	Not too long.
	He was a good guy.
	We joke around about this, but, you know, we, it was a serious conversation as a family in the stage that we're in to step into the arena that we're stepping into.
	This isn't, I mean, we stepped into the arena as an entrepreneur.
	This is a different arena.
	No question.
	And, you know, I mean, I'm a father of two sons.
	We think about these things very seriously.
	My obligation is to my two sons, but in a deeper sense of not just showering on them some inheritance, right?
	I don't think that does them any favors.
	We're putting ungodly sons into this campaign to lift this up.
	But in a certain sense, that is the inheritance we want to give them as a country.
	I want to be a president.
	I want you all to hold me to the standard where you can tell your kids and look them in the eye as I want to tell my two sons in good conscience that I want you to grow up and be like him, whoever that is in the White House.
	It's been a long time since I think we've had a president to whom at least I could say that to my two sons in good conscience.
	And that comes with some sacrifice.
	That was the tradition I was raised in.
	It's the tradition of this country, the Judeo-Christian values that this country was founded on.
	It's founded on the idea of sacrifice, of doing your duty at behest of sacrifice.
	And so we all have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves, how are we going to make the sacrifice we need to to create this country?
	I did not serve at the age of 22.
	Many of my friends did.
	I respect them for it.
	I went in to be a capitalist.
	And I think there are many ways to serve this country.
	And I don't apologize for that.
	I'm proud of it.
	But this is a phase of my life to say, how do we create that country that I grew up in, or even better, maybe even a country greater than the one that you and I grew up in.
	And I think, yes, does that involve some risk and some sacrifice?
	Yes.
	But you can make a sacrifice.
	You can take a risk if you know what you are sacrificing for.
	And that's this thing we call America.
	And that's what we've signed up for.
	And we're not going to stop until we see it through.
	Who was the toughest person to convince?
	Wife, parents?
	Who was the toughest person to say, honey, don't do this.
	What are you doing?
	We're very wealthy.
	We have young kids.
	Leave it alone.
	We have a good life.
	Why do you have to do this?
	Let the other 70, 80, 90-year-olds run, just leave it alone.
	Well, I mean, the truth is, I have a lot of people.
	We, you know, very blessed to live in a family and a circle of friends who love us very much.
	And so the truth is, there was only one person I had to actually convince, who was my wife, who was the easiest person to convince.
	And the rest of them were unconvinced and did not give me their permission even since the day I declared.
	So they're now along with us for the ride.
	But, you know, my wife, the first question she asked me was, are you sure we don't want to do this 20 years from now when it's a good question?
	You're only going to be 57, yeah.
	It is your question.
	Are we going to have more experience?
	And by the way, our kids are going to be out of the house and we'll be in a phase of our life where this might be more realistic from a family perspective to handle.
	And honest to God, my answer was, I thought that was a very fair thing for us to reflect on.
	I don't think we have 20 years left as a country, actually.
	Not if we stay on the track we're on right now.
	I don't think there's going to be something left to conserve, to save.
	It'll be something.
	We'll be going through the motions, right?
	We'll be still a bunch of, you know, two-legged higher mammals looking around the room.
	We got different genders.
	Two of them.
	Different shades of melanin.
	Okay, this is great.
	We're diverse.
	We'll be two-legged higher mammals with a bunch of different shades of melanin roaming some geographic space that we call a country, doing what our iPhones told us to do on a given day, going through the motions.
	But that's not really the United States of America.
	That's just the aimless passage of time.
	And I think there's more to life.
	There's more to this country than the aimless passage of time.
	And I think that we call it the American dream for a reason.
	You wake up from a dream, what happens?
	You forget what the dream was about.
	You remember what it felt like for a little bit.
	Pretty soon you forget that too.
	I think that's the zone we're in right now.
	So we forgot what that dream was about.
	We still remember what it felt like.
	That's a fragile thing.
	I don't think we're working with a lot of time here.
	And so I think that sense of urgency, Apurva, she joined me in agreeing with that and also believing that, you know what?
	20 years from now, I will be a little bit more tired.
	You know, I don't know that I'll be...
	I don't know about that.
	You seem like you're a fired up type of guy.
	I'm the fired-up type of guy.
	But, you know, we're ready for this now.
	And so I don't think we want to look back 20 years and regret and say that we missed our window to breathe the life back into this country.
	You are a formidable opponent, and it's great to see a guy like you come through the way you handle debate, sitting down with Don Lemon.
	Trying to piss you off, and you're like, Look, I simply disagree with you, but respectfully, we're on different pages.
	The way you manage yourself has been fantastic.
	And as a person that is as eloquent as you, your background, your ethnicity, your success in your life, family guy, all of that stuff, it's exciting to see guys like you coming up.
	For the entire political side, a lot of Republicans are happy to see guys like you coming up.
	You're going to inspire a lot of 22-year-olds right now, 18-year-olds right now, that are going to say, if this 37-year-old can do it, maybe I can in the next 15 years.
	So, I think we do need a guy like you competing.
	It's a very good thing to see.
	Anyways, I just want to applaud you for that.
	I think it's very important.
	So, two things: if we can have Heather Hall, Heather, you have a very good question.
	If you're here, work your way up there.
	It's a great question.
	But before I go to Heather, I'm going to go to Twitter.
	I think we've got nine more minutes left before we wrap this up.
	I don't know what Twitter is.
	I heard of something called Adventure.
	Yes, it's this guy bought it.
	He's struggling financially.
	So, if you want to help him out, there's this guy named Elon Musk who maybe needs it.
	We need to start a GoFundMe for Elon because he needs some finances help.
	Anyways, so Hope, Twitter.
	I had heard he was pro-vax, okay?
	And lockdowns, particularly in Iowa.
	This could be a rumor that people are talking about.
	I don't know anyone who lives there to ask, but I want to know what lessons he learned from the pandemic and would he do anything differently if he were to go back.
	I think one of the ones you can just address what she's saying, but more importantly, there's this conversation about another pandemic that's going to come up.
	How will you handle it if I'm going to be able to do it?
	Let's tell you what's relevant, right?
	Go for it.
	So, the first thing I'll say is: I've always been against vaccine mandates of any kind.
	This is actually very personal to my experience with the FDA.
	You think about the hypocrisy of this, nothing gets under my skin more than the FDA saying you can't even have the right to try a medicine that hasn't been through 10 years of testing.
	You don't have that choice because it's not even safe enough for you to be able to determine for yourself whether you take it.
	That same FDA gets in a vaccine through less than nine months that you have no choice but not to take.
	Think about that.
	You can't believe both of those things at the same time.
	So, I've always been dead set against mandates.
	I'm also an evangelist for right to try.
	That if you want, with your own information to make a personal medical decision for yourself and you want to try something, even if it's experimental, you should be able to.
	And even if something the government tells you is fully approved, you should never be mandated on you.
	Because if you have to mandate it, that means you don't believe in your own value proposition.
	So, I've always been against mandates, and that's did you take the vaccine yourself?
	But here's the thing I would do differently: I did take the vaccine based on the facts available.
	Did you take the boosters as well or no?
	I took two shots of the vaccine.
	Got it.
	And if I were to do it again, I would not do it.
	Because, based on the information we had at that time, look, I needed to travel, I needed to go places, right?
	We have places to be.
	You literally could not travel in this country.
	So, as a matter of convenience, I needed to get around, go to places, get on with my life.
	That's what we had to do in the circumstances we lived in.
	But even still, if I were to do it again, what we now know with the myocarditis risks and otherwise, I wouldn't have done it.
	And I just think it's important to be honest: there's other Republican candidates in this race, you know, literally, you know, who have said they won't tell you whether they took the second shot.
	Come on, if you're not going to tell you whether you took the second shot, you're not ready to sit across the table from Xi Jinping.
	But I'm honest about the fact that on the same fact today, I wouldn't have done it.
	Respect.
	Heather, please.
	Thank you for coming.
	I love that you're unabashedly proclaimed that one of your tenets is God is real.
	And as a Christian, my faith is first and foremost who I am.
	Being a Hindu, can you please share your faith about God and what you think of His Son, Jesus Christ?
	Thank you.
	So I appreciate that.
	So I'll share with you my faith and I'll share with you the relevance that I think it has to leading this country.
	So I'm a Hindu.
	There's many strains like there are Christianity, Catholicism, etc., as many strains of Hinduism too.
	I believe in one true God.
	I believe that that God resides in each of us.
	I think it is the same statement of spirit when we say in the Christian tradition, and I did go to Catholic schools and have read the Bible perhaps more closely than most Christians I know.
	It's the same message as when we say we are equal because we are made in the image of God.
	It's the same spirit to say that's where our equality comes from.
	It's not some secular value.
	We're equal in the eyes of each other because we're equal in the eyes of God.
	The tradition I was raised in, we say we're equal in the eyes of each other because God resides in each of us.
	That we each have a duty to one another.
	You want to think about that strand of sacrifice and duty that's foundational to Hinduism.
	I think it's the common strand between the Old Testament and the new.
	I mean, God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac for God.
	He didn't make him follow through with it.
	The New Testament, God comes back and says, I will sacrifice my son, Jesus Christ, for you, the people.
	And so that's a long way of saying that I'm not Christian.
	And just in my spirit of my answer to the last question, I will never pretend to be something I'm not.
	I'm always going to speak the truth about who I am and what I stand for.
	But I think it's deeply true that we share the same Judeo-Christian values that this nation was founded on.
	And this nation was absolutely founded on Judeo-Christian values.
	That's a fact.
	It is also a fact that I deeply share those values in common.
	And to be honest, does our church, does our family, when there isn't a Hindu temple available, will we go for our collection of self to a church if that's the next closest available opportunity for prayer?
	Yes, we will.
	And so in our tradition, we say Jesus Christ is a Son of God.
	I understand that's different than saying he is the Son of God.
	But we share the same value set in common.
	And I'm not running to be pastor-in-chief.
	I'm running to be commander-in-chief.
	It's a different role, right?
	And for that role, I think we share the same value set.
	Thank you.
	I'm very impressed with you because I think you act more like a Christian than most Christians.
	I agree.
	Thank you for saying that.
	We have the same values, and that's why.
	Thank you very much.
	Rebecca, we have come to the end of this.
	If you don't mind taking a couple minutes, any final thoughts you have right now?
	I know you have some obligations and commitments, things we need to do after this as well.
	What are your final thoughts right now going into it?
	The first debate hasn't happened yet.
	You're going to be on that stage with everybody.
	You know, some people are saying it's early.
	Some people are saying it's already been identified.
	You're now third place, potentially about to be second place.
	What do you think some things we need to know about in this season that we're in going into the first debate coming up?
	So I mean, the polls, this and that, this is short-term stuff.
	Let's think about the long run for our countries.
	I want to go back to what I said earlier, which is that I don't think we have to accept this bipartisan consensus that we are in an inevitable national decline.
	I really don't see it that way.
	I think there's a very good chance that we're still on our way up, on our way to that mountaintop.
	I don't even think we have to be at base camp yet, actually.
	Still, as Reagan said it, that shining city on a hill, where no matter who you are or where your parents came from or what your skin color is, that you get ahead in the United States of America based on your own hard work, your own commitment, your own dedication, and that you know what, you're free to speak your mind at every step of the way.
	That is the American dream.
	That is what we are running to.
	E pluribus unum means from many, one.
	That's what won us the American Revolution.
	That is what reunited us after the Civil War.
	That won us two world wars and the Cold War.
	That is still the dream that gives hope to the free world today.
	And if we can revive that dream over group identity and victimhood and grievance, then nobody's going to defeat us.
	Not a virus, not a corporation, not a country.
	And I will acknowledge this.
	It's not a fake optimism.
	It's grounded in truth.
	We're going through hard times.
	Hardship is not a choice.
	It happens to us.
	But victimhood is a choice.
	And we choose not to be victims.
	We choose to be victorious.
	That's what it means to be an American.
	That's what guides me.
	I think that was what will guide us.
	And together, with your guys' help, I'm going to need every one of your help, whoever's watching this.
	An outsider like me is not supposed to do this.
	Right?
	Go to my website.
	Donate a dollar if you have a dollar.
	Donate $6,000 if you have $6,000.
	Think you can't give too much more than that.
	But if it's not money, even more importantly, volunteer your time.
	Spread this message to your neighbors.
	People are far less willing to actually donate their time and effort.
	That's what we need more of in this country, not just to me, but to this country.
	But if you all do your part, I promise you I will do mine.
	And we will pass on a country to our children that is greater than the one that we grew up in.
	Thank you, Patrick.
	Thank you all for having me.
	Phenomenal model country.
	Absolutely.
	If we can.
	For the folks out there, it's very important what he said about going to his website.
	We're going to put the link below for you to go to his website.
	The link will be in the description and the chat.
	Rob, if we can put it there as well.
	But since he's on the road working, by the way, he's got a couple other meetings today.
	I thought it was appropriate for all of us to stand up.
	We got him a cake.
	We got him a nice balloon behind you to wish him a happy birthday.
	If everybody can stand up, come through.
	One, two, three.
	Happy birthday to you.
	Happy birthday to you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you to you.
	Happy birthday.
	Happy birthday to you.
	Brother.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	Once again, brother, thanks for coming out, man.
	This was amazing.
	Appreciate it.
	He's lifting me up.
	Thank you guys.
	God bless you families.
	Thank you.
	James, you guys can, for those of you that are on VIP, hang around.
	I think we're going to get a chance to do pictures afterwards.
	I will definitely be in the VIP room with you guys at the cigar lounge.
	Cannot wait to see you guys.
	Everybody else, you guys can mingle.
	I think some of the guys are going to walk around here to introduce themselves to you.

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