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Sept. 25, 2024 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy
45:07
Uncle Sam’s Welfare Trap EXPOSED: How Dismantling the Nanny State Solves Immigration | TRUTH Ep. #64
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So this week, I'd like to share with you my thoughts on a number of recent developments, especially as it relates to the presidential race.
I'm doing this in the middle of also releasing my new book, Truths, The Future of America First.
And I do appreciate everybody taking an opportunity to read through that book.
I think that if you liked what I said during the presidential campaign, there's a very good chance you're going to find this book incredibly interesting.
I think there's a good chance it's my most interesting and most important book that I've written so far.
But even if you disagree with a lot of what I said during the campaign, I tried to write this book in a way that reaches people who disagree with us as well, but try to bring them along with the best arguments for the other side.
And so with that being said, that book relates to exactly the themes we're going to discuss which relate to some of the themes even heading into this election.
But I'd like to start off by telling you where I see the current state of the race.
There's an interesting dynamic.
I'm not a horse race analyst, usually, but I can give you my perspective on what is happening in the dynamic of this election, both at the presidential level and the Senate level.
It's a reversal of the dynamic that we saw back in 2016. So back in 2016, there was this trend where people across the country were afraid to tell pollsters on the phone that they were going to vote for Donald Trump.
You saw that show up in a number of different ways.
One was even in certain online polls where people just filled it out online but without talking to a human being.
Donald Trump tended to perform a little bit better than he did in telephonic surveys when you had to tell another human being that I am voting for Donald Trump.
That appeared to be something that people were reluctant to do, even as other candidates, say for US Senate, were overperforming him as Republicans in those same states, which would have suggested this split-ticket voting dynamic that would have made you question exactly, are these polls really understating what Donald Trump's going to do?
And it turns out that's exactly what happened.
Donald Trump over-delivered those polls.
Different story now.
Eight years later in 2024, what we're actually seeing is pretty much in every single state where there's a major Senate race of a Republican versus a Democrat, Donald Trump is overperforming the U.S. Senate candidate, the Republican Senate candidate.
By staggering margins that I think we haven't seen possibly ever in American history.
We're seeing 10, 12 point overperformances, which means that a lot of people in each of those states, Ohio, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, you could look at Michigan, you could look at Pennsylvania, you're seeing the same trend where people are saying they're going to vote for Donald Trump, but vote for the Democrat for US Senate.
I have concerns on the substance of that in terms of a governing agenda.
Even if we elect Donald Trump as president, if we don't have control of the Senate, and I think it has to be decisive control, we're not going to really be able to fully implement that agenda.
So I think it's important we win those Senate races.
But I'm saying it now.
I don't usually do horse race analysis, but I wanted to make a brief observation here.
That's an interesting dynamic that says a few things.
I think this time around, it's also a sign that we can't be complacent It's a sign that actually Donald Trump may not actually have the chance for the over-performing the poll numbers like we did in 2016. The polls may be a better and more accurate indicator of where we're headed.
So that's a sign of making sure that every person who's able to vote actually turns out and actually votes.
Complacency I think is a big risk heading into this election.
But culturally speaking, to get out of the horse race stuff, culturally speaking, I also think it's an interesting sign.
It suggests that we have, I hope, turned something of a corner around the peak of the culture of fear that has held this country hostage over the last several years.
There has been a culture of fear, fear of losing your job or fear of your kids getting a bad grade in school, fear of becoming an outcast in your community if you say the wrong thing.
If you wear the wrong hat for the wrong presidential candidate.
I see the earliest signs.
I'm not saying we're anywhere near over that culture of fear.
Of course, it's still a problem in America.
We all know it.
But I think that we may see the peak of that behind us.
And this small little tidbit about the way in which Donald Trump and his relationship to Senate candidates and how they respectively perform versus one another in telephonic polling seems like an esoteric detail, but it's another one of these glimmers of hope that I have that we are turning the page slowly on a chapter of our national history that I do think was un-American at its core.
And I think that's a good thing for us to have.
We can't just be running from something.
We got to be running to something.
We're not running from the past.
We're running to the future.
And those glimmers of hope, I think, give me certainly a greater sense of encouragement and even purpose heading into not only this election as the destination, Maybe viewing this election as the starting line for a new chapter and new dawn in American history.
And I hopefully don't say that in some sort of corny, sappy kind of way, but I mean it certainly in a true way, and I hope you take it that way too.
Now let's get to some issues that are relevant heading into this election.
I talked a little bit about that control of the Senate.
Why is it important?
You have one good example of that even in the last week.
Seeing the failure, and it is a failure, of the SAVE Act in both houses.
So this is something that Donald Trump has supported.
Good friends of mine like Mike Lee.
Mike Lee has been a great senator who has pushed this diligently.
It's a basic intuitive measure that I think should unite Americans and shore up public trust in elections at a time when both sides have concerns about public trust in elections.
It says that if you're a non-citizen, you can't vote.
You have to have proof of citizenship in order to vote in a US election.
I don't think this should be controversial.
I think most countries around the world require it.
Even states like Puerto Rico have far more stringent election security measures than we have in US states.
Puerto Rico is not a state, but territories like Puerto Rico have more secure elections than we do in the other 50 states because of stronger election security measures.
There's no reason we can't adopt that in the rest of the 50 states as well.
That's what the SAVE Act was designed to accomplish, but it couldn't pass.
You could blame the Democrats.
But that would be belying the real issue, which is that many Republicans are reluctant to push this through or even support this in advance of this election as well, which says that we have a real risk here.
If you combine that with the polling, We have a real risk here, first of all, that Donald Trump will, the good part is, will potentially win the White House if the polling continues to go in the direction that it is.
The bad news is, he may not have the ability to fully translate that into a legislative agenda with the absence of a majority in the Senate.
And one of the things we learned from this debate about the SAVE Act, a basic measure that says non-citizens can't vote, and we established that as a bare minimum standard for federal elections.
That says that even a 50-50 or a 50.1 or a 51-49 majority in the Senate probably isn't really good enough to take on an aggressive agenda involving dismantling the fourth branch of government, involving securing elections in the United States, securing our border, like actually, in a real way, fixing our immigration system in a lasting way.
I think that's going to require more than a 51-49 type of majority in the Senate.
And I think it's going to require leaders more than just who have a little R after the name and claim to be Republican, but people actually stand for the constitutionalist principles the country was founded on and basic common sense principles, even when they're controversial, that most Americans agree on.
Personally, I think one of the more important things we could do in the country is to turn the page on this chapter of our history where there are concerns about the security and the integrity of elections in a way that's dividing the country.
My view is one of the ways to deal with this is, imagine a simple law.
I've talked about this for a lot of last year.
I'll say it again.
Single-day voting on Election Day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued voter ID to match the voter file.
And I personally would go one step further.
I would also say English is the sole language that appears on a ballot.
That's not controversial.
That's common sense.
And if we pass that through, I will pledge to do whatever I can to lead my side of the aisle, the Republican Party, and not even my side of the aisle, but Americans across the board, to move on from complaining about stolen elections.
Nobody wants to or should want to be complaining about stolen elections, but we have the ability to move past that if we pass a common sense measure of single-day voting on Election Day as a national holiday with paper ballots and government-issued ID to match the voter file.
That is literally what they already do in Puerto Rico.
It's possible in the United States.
If somebody wants to give me the best argument against requiring voter ID and even having a single day as election day as a national holiday that can unite us, and think about what that would do for our country, a single day where we all recognize our civic purpose and come together as Americans to exercise that civic duty, I'd wait for the best counterargument to that.
I haven't heard one yet.
And the fact that that is controversial, or even a far more watered-down measure, like the SAVE Act that isn't going to now pass Congress or the Senate, the fact that that's controversial actually sows further doubts, and understandably so, around what exactly it is they're trying to preserve about the way we're conducting elections right now.
That feeds the very concerns we have about election integrity.
So I had an idea, and I posted it this week on social media.
I've talked about it publicly in the press.
My view is In the interest of the country, even before we get to passing that statute, I think we have room for an even more modest win-win, which is to say that if we do get the SAVE Act through the election, Republicans, including Donald Trump, can just step up and say, you know what, if we pass the SAVE Act right now, in advance of this election, I know there are some smart voices who also have even tactical Administrative objections to that.
Registrations have already taken place, so the SAVE Act passing it now versus a year ago is going to have even a more blunted effect.
But it still would have some powerful effect on sending a signal that it is a crime, a federal crime, to vote in an election as a non-citizen for federal office.
Even that could have an effect on this election and public trust in this election.
If we pass the SAVE Act right now, I think both sides, Republicans and Democrats, ought to make a public pledge in conjunction with that to say that neither side is going to complain about a stolen election afterwards.
I know that involves some level of sacrifice for each side.
We're still not going to have perfect elections this time around if we pass the SAVE Act.
But it's at least going to be a step in the direction of what we know is at least a more secure election in the United States.
And the fact that we can't do that, the fact that that itself is controversial, does raise serious concerns in this country.
So my goal in this isn't to be some type of partisan hack that's looking for ways of engaging in conservative victimhood wallowing.
That's not the goal.
The goal is how do we move the country forward?
And I do think we have legitimate common sense approaches to secure public trust in elections by securing the elections and use that as a basis to say that we're also turning the page to move forward such that we're not arguing about the results of elections afterwards.
But the sad truth is we haven't gotten there.
Now, the SAVE Act, why pass it now?
They say, okay, illegal immigrants haven't voted in elections in the past.
There's a very simple and practical answer to that.
We've had the largest influx of illegal aliens into this country in US history.
By the way, I think it stands to reason if you've had the largest influx of illegal aliens into the country in U.S. history, then we ought to have the largest mass deportation in American history.
That's not racist or xenophobic.
It's what it means to stand for the rule of law.
But I do think this is one of the most pragmatic but also philosophical issues that looms over America at large in advance of this election in a way that we've never seen before, and that is this issue of immigration.
I went to Springfield last week.
We live-streamed it.
I hope many of you had a chance to see it.
Such an interesting experience.
I mean, Springfield is important to me just because actually, you know, people say, oh, MSNBC actually had a little bit the night before.
They say, Vivek Ramaswamy is descending on Springfield, like I'm some sort of just sort of, you know, somebody flying in for this opportunity to latch on to something that's happening in a town that I don't know the first thing about, but just using it to push some agenda or self promote or whatever it is.
is.
I mean, that was the veneer they were trying to cast.
Actually, the truth of the matter is Springfield's near and dear to my own heart.
I live less than an hour away.
I'm talking to you about a 50-minute drive from Springfield, a place where I spent a lot of time, not a little bit of time, but a lot of time growing up.
I had a lot of family there.
I still have family there.
And I grew up about an hour away from there as well.
So it's an important part of my youth.
Probably one of the best sub shops in the state of Ohio, if not in the country, is a place called Mike and Rosie's.
I've probably eaten there more times in my youth than most people grew up in Springfield.
So it was important to me to just go there because on the other hand, I've run for U.S. president.
I'm talking about these issues publicly.
They've shown up in my own backyard in the community that's next to me.
What kind of leader would I be if I didn't show up there?
That's why I said, you know what, it was important to me.
I just posted.
I was having dinner here in Columbus.
Took out my phone.
We were talking about Springfield with actually one of my cousins.
Who was in Columbus, my wife.
We were having dinner.
I said, you know what?
I should go to Springfield.
I just took out a poster on X. I'm going to Springfield on Thursday.
Didn't have a plan.
I don't have a campaign apparatus or anything behind me right now.
Just said, we're going to show up.
Details of event to follow.
It's going to be a casual get-together.
Turns out that, and a guy, by the way, then responded, volunteers.
He has an event center.
He talks to my team.
He says, hey, we can do it at my event center.
I say, great.
I know the part of town that it's in.
It only holds to several hundred people, but I said, okay, I think that'll be okay.
We might even have 50 people.
Come have a good open conversation in an intimate event.
It holds 250, 275 people.
Turns out that's filled.
Has an extra room nearby.
Tries to put up a TV last minute.
Has an overflow room.
Another 100 people.
We're up to fire code and then beyond.
And then you go outside.
There are hundreds of people lined up in this community.
It's not a big town.
Springfield even posts the mass influx of the Haitian migrants, of about 12,000 to 20,000 extra Haitian migrants that have been in that town now more recently.
You're talking about a town of 60,000 to 70,000 people.
You had about 2,000 people RSVP to that event in Springfield.
What does that tell you?
First is it says that everyday Americans are hungering to be heard, actually.
People just want to be heard.
People want to feel heard.
One of the things I learned from my trip to Springfield is, is there a lot that people are struggling with in that community?
Yes.
Are they driving housing costs up through demand?
Yes.
Are there some issues, even questions and concerns relating to zoning, where you have multiple families living in a home that was designed, per at least local zoning ordinances, like it or not, for a single family?
Yes, there's all kinds of issues.
Is that driving up housing costs?
Is it putting a strain on social services and supply?
Yes.
But one of my main takeaways from that trip to Springfield isn't that people are up in arms about the fact that my housing prices are going up or local primary care services are strained.
It's that my housing costs are going up and local primary care services are strained And nobody seems to actually care about it.
And it's that last part that stuck with me.
Yes, people want solutions to the underlying problems, but it's not just the technical solutions people hunger for.
People in this country, I think rightly, are concerned about the fact that nobody in charge seems to actually care genuinely about them here as human beings.
And so when I showed up there, it was interesting.
I mean, the event was well attended.
I didn't have...
I didn't have some sort of magic wand to wave and make those problems go away.
But by the end of the event, you can watch it on the live stream.
I mean, people are asking me events.
People are asking me questions that made me in some ways feel uncomfortable because I'm not some hero offering an actual tangible solution that night.
I'm hoping to drive solutions that we can offer in this country over the next number of months and years.
Yet people ask me, what are we going to do when you're gone?
What are we going to do without you here?
And it struck me that if that's the response we're getting from several hours of spending just an evening in Springfield, that's half the battle in this country is to show people that we actually stand for the Americans who already live here.
Now back to this question of immigration.
We've had that largest influx of illegals into this country in American history.
The situation in Springfield is obviously even a little bit more esoteric, a little bit more complex.
Where you have temporary protected status that was a basis for technically under the law, the law as of now, people enforce it, don't view those form of migrants who are in the country or in Springfield as illegal.
The deeper question is, though, what type of legal immigration system do we actually want to design?
This is something that, to be really honest, I think Republicans often deflect.
Here's how they deflect it.
We use the vehemence of our opposition to illegal immigration as a way to sidestep the conversation about what we do with legal immigration.
Unillegal immigration, you all know this if you've been listening to me or watching me during the campaign, My new book actually has a detailed chapter on this question.
It's entitled, An Open Border is Not a Border.
But that chapter actually breaks down these questions of both illegal and legal immigration with some new facts that are even different from what you might have heard from me and what you might have heard from others in the campaign trails.
But for those who haven't heard me before, on the question of illegal immigration, I favor not only completing the wall, but using our own military on our own southern border.
I cite the fact we've got 100,000 US troops, by the way, in Europe I don't want to get started so much on a side rant there, but I think that those troops would be far better utilized on our own border than being stationed in Europe.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, by the way, had famously said, that was at a time where we had far fewer US troops in Europe.
He said, if these troops are still here 10 years from now, that will have been evidence of the failure of NATO itself.
What do we have now?
100,000 US troops sitting in Europe.
But that's a foreign policy discussion we could save for another day.
A better use of those troops, our own National Guard, et cetera, on our own southern border, aquatic barriers in the Rio Grande, use of the Coast Guard in the Rio Grande, use of the Coast Guard to protect all four of our eastern, northern, southern, and western borders,
basic incentive changes like stopping the funding of sanctuary cities, basic incentive changes like stopping the funding of sanctuary cities, ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegals, and deporting those who are in this country illegally, starting with those who have committed crimes and those who are already held in detention, detaining anybody who does apply for asylum until their case is adjudicated.
This is how you solve the illegal immigration crisis in the country.
I've been one of the strongest and I would say most hawkish voices on ending illegal immigration.
It was a core premise of my presidential campaign and some of the policy solutions we offered as well.
I talk about that in the book as well, right?
Those are hard truths.
Okay, so I put that in the book, truths.
Fine.
We use that though, and I also touch on this in the book, Republicans artfully use the vehemence of their opposition to illegal immigration to sidestep this question about what the heck we do about legal immigration.
And if we're being honest, and I hit this in the prologue to the book itself, I want to open right with not just preaching to hard truths to the left, but truths to our own camp as well.
There is a rift within the conservative movement on where we stand on the question of legal immigration.
Do we want the kind of legal immigration that benefits the United States of America economically and even maybe even re-infuses a civic lifeblood into our country?
Or is the goal of our immigration policy a totally separate goal of protecting American workers from the effects of foreign wage competition?
Those are two very different questions between maybe the national protectionist wing and the national libertarian wing of the America First movement.
I'd like to get pragmatic.
And this is one of the things that, tying it back to my trip to Springfield, I had not only that town hall in the evening, but I also beforehand met with not only city officials at an hour meeting with the mayor, the city manager, and city officials for a full hour before the town hall.
I met with a number of business leaders before the town hall at a separate restaurant.
But the first meeting that I took was actually with a group of Haitian community leaders.
We sat down in a room for an hour, a little over an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and had a heart-to-heart conversation.
One of the things that came out of that conversation, I think, was some of the most, I hope, practical legal immigration policies that we can apply, or at least the principles for legal immigration.
So one of the things I shared with them, and this wasn't, believe me, this was not comfortable to do in a room.
It was not that different than this table I'm sitting at right now for Haitian community leaders from Springfield and the environment we're in, sitting across the table from me.
Understandably, maybe a little bit skeptical or dubious of my presence there, but open-minded nonetheless, and I give them credit for coming to the meeting.
And they were interested in an honest conversation.
It took a while to warm up, took a while for each of us to share our backgrounds, maybe find initial pieties towards common ground.
But I didn't want this to just be a kumbaya conversation.
I wanted to air and surface some real deep-seated differences of opinion because my view is we get to truth and we get to peace by talking about them in the open.
They shared their stories.
One of them had a really compelling story that I wish more people actually had heard.
He didn't come to the town hall, but had he, I think it would have been a great opportunity for people to hear his story, which is he's a guy, he's a Haitian immigrant in Springfield who was a doctor in Haiti.
He apparently went to school for eight years, just like you would here, college for four years and then four years in medical school, trained to be a physician, was successful treating patients at a hospital there.
Relatively speaking in Haiti, that puts him in the professional class.
And yet he was the subject of multiple kidnapping plots and attempts with local gangs, not some sort of Michael Corleone-style organized crime mob.
In Haiti, if you're part of a gang, it's a guy with a gun who gets a band behind him of people to follow house to house.
But he becomes a target.
And this is what happens if you're successful in that country.
You become an actual target for things like kidnappings, for burglaries.
They want to take you.
They kidnap you at gunpoint.
They use ransoms to be able to make their own money, to feed their own gangs, to put you back.
Eventually, his only path was out of the country.
He ended up coming to the United States, leaving his family, including his kids.
I couldn't imagine doing that.
Back in another country in Haiti, who he doesn't see for year-long or multi-year-long periods at a time.
And the only thing that we have left now for him is, the question is, how does he get a job to support that family?
That's his top question on his mind.
He ends up not being able to sit for the USMLE exam, which is what you actually certify for board certification in medicine here.
Not because he wouldn't pass it, he says, and I believe him from talking to him that he would pass that with flying colors, but that he wasn't even eligible enough as a matter of occupational licensing requirements to sit for the exam.
He couldn't be allowed to take the exam because the US doesn't recognize medical schools in Haiti.
So he ends up putting himself through nursing school, paying out of pocket to be a nurse in Springfield at a time when primary care resources are indeed strained in Springfield.
And he shared all of this to say that, okay, well, I'm working hard here.
Similar stories for the other Haitian community leaders who I met in that room.
They all spoke English.
They all spoke it well.
So what I shared with them, and as I said, this is a little bit uncomfortable, but I believe in speaking hard truths, okay?
What I said to them, and I believe it's true, is that their stories are compelling, but may not be representative, are not representative, of a lot of others who came into the United States via temporary protective status either.
And I think it's a reasonable immigration policy for legal immigration.
I don't want to be one of the Republicans that ducks this issue.
I want to take it head on.
I think it is a reasonable immigration policy for the United States to adopt, to say that if you are known to be or likely to be a recipient of government assistance, financial government assistance of any kind, upon coming into this country, then you shouldn't get into this country.
I think it's even further reasonable for us to say that If you're not fluent in English, you should not get into this country.
I think it is further reasonable still to say if you don't know the basics about U.S. history and the U.S. Constitution and our system of governance, you don't get into this country.
Let's just pause there.
If we adopt the totality of those measures, securing the southern border, move our own military to the southern border, 100,000 troops stationed in Europe, no.
How about a fraction of that, if not all of that, stationed at our own southern border, using our National Guard, using aquatic barriers in the Rio Grande, ending funding for sanctuary cities, ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegals who, pursuant to Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, doesn't apply to them.
Take those measures.
Deport the people who have entered this country illegally.
In a contained scenario.
People aren't just allowed to roam free.
People are held until their asylum claims are adjudicated.
Those basic measures enter the illegal entry across our southern border.
But combine that with a legal immigration policy that has a few basic principles.
You've got to know the language of the United States, which is English today.
Like it or not, that's the truth.
That you have to know some basics of the history of the United States and our constitutional system of self-governance.
And perhaps most practically of all, You have enough economic proof, economic background or educational background of proof that you will not be a customer, a user, a client of the ever-growing US nanny state, the welfare and entitlement state, welfare, Medicaid, and so on for at least 10 years after you've entered the United States.
And if it's after 10 years, chances are you're not ever going to be either.
That, I think, is a reasonable basis for coming to the country.
Now, that would make a lot of people uncomfortable for me to say, if you're going to be on government assistance, you should not be able to enter the country.
If you are going to not be able to stand on your own two feet without government assistance, you shouldn't enter the country.
If you don't speak English and you're not actually able to know something about U.S. history, you shouldn't be able to enter the country under all but some exceptional circumstances that we can talk about.
That is a reasonable framework for an immigration policy that we can adopt in this country.
People may say that's really controversial, but I'll tell you what happened in that room of Haitians sitting right across the table from me like we are right now.
They paused.
They were thoughtful.
And I said, these are accomplished people, several of them who I met in my own right, in that community in Springfield.
They thought about it.
They didn't immediately say I agree, but they said that that is reasonable.
That's a reasonable policy, because we talked about it.
How could the United States say, okay, we're going to let you into our country, but also be customers of our own welfare state, which itself is unsustainable on its own terms?
I think it's a reasonable policy.
And I think it smokes out what we in the conservative movement aren't actually confronting head-on ourselves, which is that nanny state right here at home.
Mark my words on this.
If we dismantle the American nanny state, most of our problems, even our immigration problem, goes right there away with it.
It just melts away because the incentive to suckle up the teat of Uncle Sam, Uncle Sucker, you could call him now, is gone.
And that's what I see as the constraint, shackling, intellectually shackling the modern conservative movement, is that you have strident voices.
And in some ways, we have fallen into this trap of competing on the stridency of what we have to say, rather than actually focusing on whether or not the content of what we're saying is actually bold enough to save the country.
So everybody, I mean, who in the Republican Party is for illegal immigration in the country?
It's a silly thing.
Nobody's arguing here to argue the other side of that.
But what Republicans do is to substitute for the debate on the hard thing will be increasingly strident in how opposed we are to illegal immigration at the southern border versus, I think, actually taking a measured approach, talking in style of how we approach that issue with compassion, understanding that many of the people who cross that southern border They're not bad human beings.
If many of us were in their shoes under those circumstances in Guatemala or Nicaragua or whatever, parents of kids who want a better life, maybe we'd be doing the same thing too.
But that doesn't mean that we soften our position on what we do about it.
That's actually one of my top lessons over the last year.
It's easy to be pugnacious on style and then compromise on actual policy.
I view it the other way around.
I think it's far more effective for us, and I'm aiming and striving to do this myself going forward, to actually be Respectful of those who disagree with us on style so that we can actually be uncompromising on substance.
You see, that's a choice for the future of America first.
I mean, is the goal to be pugnacious, to go viral on social media, to show up with cable news bookings at night, and to be really strident in the way you say something when push comes to shove, when it comes to actually passing laws or taking executive action, that you go soft and compromise?
Or is actually the better way to do this actually engage with, maybe persuade in a respectful way?
And courteous to our fellow Americans who may deeply disagree with us, but to be uncompromising on principle and policy.
I think that's actually going to be a far more successful strategy, both for standing for the principles we actually care about in our America First and pro-American movement, but also to, dare I say, unite the country in the process.
So on this question of legal immigration, that's what I tried to do with the group of Haitians who we met with in Springfield, is to offer a...
It's not a rated PG policy.
It's not something that is soft around the edges.
If you're going to be a customer of the welfare state, if you're going to depend on government assistance, you shouldn't be allowed in the country.
If you can't speak the language, you shouldn't be allowed in the country.
If you don't know the basics about the country and our constitution and our history, you shouldn't be allowed in the country.
That's a reasonable framework that would solve 70, 80, maybe 90% of our mass immigration problem into the United States.
And yet, the irony is the most strident voices against the migration crisis in the country aren't really willing to tackle the nanny state.
This is the fork in the road for the future of the conservative movement, for the future of America First.
Do we want to preserve the nanny state or not?
Do we want to replace the left-wing nanny state with a new right-wing nanny state?
I say hell no to that vision actually.
I say we want to go in and dismantle that nanny state.
The nanny state presents itself in three forms.
You have the entitlement state.
That's the welfare state.
Work requirements, I think, are the clearest bridge to eventually dismantling and getting rid of that.
You have the regulatory state.
That's a manifestation of the nanny state that says that you don't know enough about what's right for you, that we can't trust you to self-govern or even elect representatives to make the laws.
They have to be done by backroom bureaucrats and three-letter agencies.
That's the administrative state.
I've talked about that extensively elsewhere.
I talk about that extensively in the book as well, by the way.
And then there's the third form of the nanny state, which is the foreign entitlement state, the nanny state through the foreign aid industrial complex as well.
That is the nanny state in America.
And I think that we deserve and we require a conservative movement that is strong enough in its spine to say that we are actually going to take on and not just incrementally massage, but to go in and dismantle that nanny state.
And that's what's missing today.
I think there's a strand of the America First movement with less of a libertarian bent, as I have, but more of a protectionist bent, that says the right job of government is to replace that left-wing regulatory state with a right-wing regulatory state, the left-wing nanny state with right-wing industrial policy or whatever.
No.
That misses the point because the same shoe can fit the other foot in the future.
And you know, what's the principal basis of deciding?
Who gets to decide which is the right kind of government nanny state or interventionist policy versus not?
The right answer is to get in there and in three words, shut it down.
Shut down the regulatory state, shut down the entitlement state, shut down the foreign nanny state and the foreign aid industrial complex.
That's how we save a nation.
That's how we save a country.
And right now, we don't really have the level of clarity I'd like for us to have in the conservative movement.
But if we do, and I do think there's an opportunity for the second Trump term to be the first step, indecisive step in this direction to saving the country.
And that's why I'm doing everything I can to make sure we get there.
Now, there is this issue of tariffs, both in the election as well as a debate within the Republican Party, as well as, and this is a topic I hit in my book a little bit as well.
What are we to make of Donald Trump's position on tariffs if you're approaching this with a more libertarian-leaning mindset?
Here's my view.
So actually, there's a distinction between Donald Trump and the protectionist direction of certain segments, at least, of the new right.
Donald Trump is actually very much a pragmatist on this, and that's what people need to understand.
This idea, if you get too philosophical about just looking at this from the clouds without looking at the pragmatic details, you miss what's actually happening.
What Donald Trump has said is, and this is something that I actually think is very reasonable, I favor it, is that if another country is applying tariffs on our goods, then we have to apply that same standard to them.
That's different than saying that in a vacuum we have to suddenly raise tariffs when nobody else is.
That's about saying that we have to be competing on an even playing field.
So we can't sit in this blithe neoliberal mythology that just says that, okay, we're going to pretend like the rest of the world, And their behaviors don't matter for us, but we're going to pretend that we still live in a Friedmanite, Hayek, Vivek-style idealized free market when that free market doesn't exist.
If other countries are applying those tariffs to the United States of America, we got to be in a position to apply the same in return.
That's a different position from saying that we need to adopt a strictly protectionist position for U.S. manufacturers ahead of other countries doing the same.
So one of the things you saw in Trump's first term, and people need to understand this as a take-home message, is many of those tariff threats that he made, we didn't actually even have to follow through on many of them because the other countries immediately came to the negotiating table afterwards.
It was an effective tactic even with respect to other issues, other issues like illegal mass migration into the country, leverage for actually Mexico's cooperation with us.
For the Remain in Mexico policy, which is one of the most successful policies even on halting the effects of mass illegal migration into the country.
That I think is a sensible approach of using leverage to accomplish objectives to make sure we're competing on a level playing field.
I think that is a...
Even if understandable impulse, I think a more self-harming direction for American workers and manufacturers, above all, to actually go in the long run.
So I think it's important to draw that distinction of using the ability for an even playing field as a lever to ensure that we have an even playing field, Versus a willy-nilly protectionist direction.
There's a distinction.
And I don't think that it is fair to those who try to characterize Donald Trump in that purely protectionist camp.
That's not exactly what he's doing.
He's a businessman.
He's pragmatic.
And I think that that's, I think, a far more understandable and rational approach than I think some on the right may otherwise want to take it in the future.
Let's get serious, though, about the number one area where we do need to worry about our economic dependence.
It is our economic dependence on China for our core elements of national security.
And national security doesn't just mean military national security.
It means the security of the United States would be disrupted if we no longer had access to certain forms of supply.
Our pharmaceutical supply chain, but also our military industrial base, our semiconductors powering our own military equipment, and much of our military equipment It comes from China.
Now, that doesn't make a ton of sense if you think about it.
Why the heck are we stockpiling all of this military equipment if it's not to at least be prepared, God forbid, for a conflict scenario in the future that none of us want to see?
But even Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, you could take a careful reading of that, Agrees that we should not and no country should depend on its adversary to provide its own national defense.
It just logically doesn't make sense.
Yet that's exactly where we are in the United States today.
That's why we have military contractors, I believe it was the CEO of Raytheon, who some number of months ago said that we need to make nice with China because, frankly, we depend on them for our defense.
Well, maybe we shouldn't depend on them for our defense.
It's a separate question.
None of us want war or conflict.
But we should not depend on our most likely adversary for our own national self-defense.
So this actually relates to some of this debate about the future direction of the America first and protectionist versus more liberty-leaning approach to the American right.
If we're really serious about declaring economic independence from China in those areas critical for our national security, you could think about our military industrial base, our pharmaceutical supply chain, and so on.
Of course, we want to onshore a lot of that production to the United States, but it also means Realistically, expanding, not contracting our relationships with countries like Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines, other countries, you could talk about Vietnam, other countries around the world to fill that void.
Now, that is intention with your top goal is to protect American manufacturers from the effects of foreign product competition in the United States, then you actually would want to lessen or cut off trade ties with those other countries.
But there's no free launch on this.
That delays the timeline that it would take for us to actually declare economic independence from China if we're relying solely on on-shoring versus near-shoring to allies.
And it's worth seeing this with clarity, because in both cases, both camps here reject the blithe neoliberalism of the past.
The blithe neoliberalism of the past Believe that somehow we were going to spread democracy to China by sending Big Macs and Happy Meals, okay?
That somehow we're going to use capitalism as a vector to spread American norms and democracy to places like China.
That hasn't worked out.
In fact, that has been turned on its head in countless ways.
China actually used that system in some ways to get us to be more like them rather than the other way around.
They often use this to accomplish geopolitical goals they otherwise couldn't have accomplished by telling US companies, effectively, you criticize the CCP, you don't access the Chinese market.
But if you're critical of the United States, we roll out the red carpet.
If you're trying to apply a scope three emissions cap to a Chinese energy company, close your door on the way out, they might say.
But if you're applying climate change limitations on US production or US coal production or US emissions, great, they'll roll out the red carpet for you because that evens out for them The dynamic between the US and China over the long run.
So China in many ways exploited that system of internationalism, the system of democratic capitalism, the idea of we indulging this myth that we would use capitalism as a vector-spread democracy.
China turned that on its head to their own advantage.
And I think that much of the modern America first right agrees that that was a foolish mistake.
The goal isn't just to The goal isn't to dunk on the people who made the mistakes in the past.
The goal is to learn from the mistakes of the past to actually turn the page to a smarter, more rational future.
But even in that rejection of historic neoliberalism, there is this question about, okay, then how serious are we about declaring economic independence from China in those areas critical to U.S. national security?
How serious are we about that?
Where does that rank on the list of priorities versus the competing priority of protecting American manufacturers from the effects of foreign wage competition?
Those are intention.
And I don't think that our movement is weaker for us recognizing that.
I think a movement that recognizes internal debate of accomplishing a shared goal is actually stronger for airing those debates and disagreements as well.
So if your top goal is to protect American manufacturers from the effects of foreign wage competition, then you want to cut off trade with everybody.
Mexico, Japan, South Korea, India, Philippines, doesn't matter.
You want less competition.
But that necessarily means You are committing to a longer timeline to declare economic independence from China, because onshore in the United States would take that much longer as the exclusive means to do it.
But if your goal is, I think the top priority right now is we can't, as a security matter, and this is what I happen to believe, can't depend on China for those critical areas for our own national security and our own infrastructure, then yes, the first best approach is to onshore as much as we can to the United States.
But it also means that we have to be ambitious about, at least as quickly as possible, even as an intermediate step, nearshoring as much as we can to those allies.
I don't see us having that level of nuanced debate yet on the American right.
I want to see that change.
I think our movement will be stronger for it.
It's easy to dunk on the left.
It's a lot harder to take a long, hard look in the mirror ourselves and ask ourselves who we are and what we actually stand for.
And that too is the core thesis of this book, is that we're only going to be able to truly save our country if we actually have our own vision for what this country actually is and what are we running to.
That's my call to action for conservative movement.
You've heard it from me before, but that's also one of the things that motivated me not only to write this book, but to write this book when I did.
As I said, my fourth book in four years, I've written several books, and some of them are more niche than others.
My last book, Capitalist Punishment, was super niche, intended to be for a Almost esoteric audience interested in certain issues in financial markets.
But this book is meant for every American who hopefully is able to read it, every voter in this country, every citizen of this country who is hungry for a national revival.
How are we going to get there?
It's going to be through free speech and open debate.
Yes, with and amongst the left, but also on the American right as well.
The path to truth runs through free speech and open debate.
The path to peace runs through free speech and open debate, and that's what I hope to spawn.
And, you know, if you're able to not only read this book, but more importantly, if I may give you an assignment to also use some of the arguments raised in this book with your friends and fellow debates, both on the American right and with your friends on the left, that will have been a success.
And I think that's the stuff of how we actually save a country.
The other thing is between now and the election, we've got about 40, a little bit over 40 days left.
The best advice I could give a lot of Republicans out there, up and down ballot, is show up in the places you're not supposed to traditionally show up, or that people would predict that you wouldn't show up as a Republican.
College campuses are a great place to do it.
You know the funny thing about swing states?
I'm surprised nobody's really taken notice of this yet.
Every one of the swing states has great college football teams.
That's a vibrant time on campus.
I'm an Ohio State fan.
Obviously, I live here in Columbus, Ohio.
Ohio is arguably not even a swing state at the presidential level.
But Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, these are states with strong college football traditions right now, strong college football programs.
It's a great time this fall between now and the election to show up.
And so for my part, I'm going to be doing that in the next few weeks, going to other campuses, engaging in and holding to the standard, hopefully respectful dialogue.
You know, it's easy to find college students.
You can defeat them in a debate or dunk on them or dunk on the left.
We're fellow citizens at the end of it.
That's not the point, is to defeat the other side.
Certainly when it comes to the next generation, I draw a distinction.
The goal isn't to defeat them.
The goal is actually to maybe offer an alternative and really see what that alternative path looks like.
And as I go to these campuses and I advise other Republicans to do the same, Lay out the winning arguments, but give them the space to come along for that final inch themselves.
I think we'll be much more likely to do it.
The problem is if you put somebody in a box, they have to stay in that box.
And I think what we want to do is give people a path out of that box.
It's going to be one of the ways that I think we succeed, not just in this election, but as I said earlier, this election, it's not the destination, it's the starting line.
That's one of the ways that we get to that start line.
And I'm going to be doing more of that in the next few weeks.
We'll try to livestream as much of that for you all to see as possible.
But I'm also encouraging other Republicans to do the same thing.
Most underexploited tactic.
Show up in places where people who actually disagree with you, college campuses included, and you'll be surprised how hungry people are for that open conversation and how much they'll reward you for it.
We saw that in Springfield.
We saw that at the University of Pittsburgh last week.
And I'm hopeful we're going to see that as I travel these campuses heading into the election in these swing states especially.
We're going to have some fun with it.
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