(Fox News) Entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy signaled he’s inching towards a presidential run, hoping that his vision for the country would separate himself from what will likely be a crowded GOP primary field.
Ramaswamy, who told Fox News Digital in an interview that he’ll make his decision whether to run for president before the end of February, says his vision is about restoring the “national identity in America,” decrying the “vacuum” in younger generations who fill the void with “the poison of wokeism, and climatism, and transgenderism, and COVIDism for that matter.”
“Yes, I’ve accomplished things but so has everyone else who would be running in this race too. I think I am running on a vision that I believe I can articulate what it means to be an American in 2023,” Ramaswamy said.
The 37-year-old Ohio native warned the “real threat” to liberty in the year 2023 is the “merger of state power and corporate power” while knocking Republicans who “want to go back to 1980” and tout “Reaganite solutions.”
“The thing that distinguished Reagan is he did what he needed to do in his era. He stood up to the orthodoxies of his party and led a national revival at a time when America was in the middle of its last national identity crisis in the late 1970s. I think we’re in a late 1970s moment now,” Ramaswamy said. “I think 2024 could be a landslide election if we actually make it about those basic American ideals of merit, free speech, open debate.”
Vivek Ramaswamy told Fox News Digital his decision of whether he will run for president in 2024 will be made before the end of February. ( Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Top Priorities
Ramaswamy is calling for a “total decoupling” from Communist China, who argued is “worse” of a threat to America today than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War since China makes the “shoes on our feet and the phones in our pockets.”
He acknowledged though that taking off the economic Band-Aid from the CCP is “not going to be easy,” admitting “it will require some sacrifice of short-term conveniences” but stressed the ends would justify the means.
As the son of Indian migrants who legally came through America’s “front door,” Ramaswamy is a strong supporter of merit-based immigration and would not grant leniency for those who broke the law when entering the country.
Other top priorities of his include “restoring free speech,” which would involve making political expression a civil right and banning Big Tech censorship that is executed at the behest of the government, as well as “dismantling” affirmative action and the “new climate religion,” something he calls a “cancer on the American soul.”
An issue that the “Woke, Inc.” author has long sounded the alarm on but that is unfamiliar to the broader public is ESG, which stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, a corporate movement he says is ultimately doing harm to consumers and business owners by prioritizing social justice and the green agenda. If he hits the campaign trail, he said he’ll have to explain to voters how “their own money is being used against them” with the implementation of various woke policies.
“I think there’s two things you don’t mess with of an American. You don’t mess with my kids and you don’t mess with my money,” the multi-millionaire investor told Fox News Digital.
In 2022, Ramaswamy took matters into his own hands by founding the asset management firm Strive, which aims to be an alternative to what he calls the “woke” investment giant BlackRock, a major force in the ESG movement.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a frequent guest on Fox News, says one of his top priorities if he were to become president would be the “total decoupling” of China. (Fox News)
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Foreign Policy
Ramaswamy told Fox News Digital there are two “top” foreign policy priorities the next president should take on.
The first is the economic “decoupling” of China, urging for Churchill-style action against the CCP while “protecting Taiwan vigorously.”
The second is the ongoing fentanyl epidemic coming from the southern border, pointing at the unholy alliance between China as the supplier and its distributors within the Mexican drug cartels, who he considers “terrorists” based on the death toll and the impact on homelessness in the U.S. He said building the wall is part of the solution but “it’s not enough.”
What should be done? “Unapologetically decimate the cartels.”
“Go Mohammed Atta, bin Laden-style, Soleimani-style airstrikes, special forces, you name it. We’re taking them out,” Ramaswamy said. “I think it’s got to be a shock and awe strategy so that they don’t have a cycle of adaptation. Again, not something you’re supposed to say in polite company.”
When it comes to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Ramaswamy warned that the conflict “cannot be a permanent money-suck for the United States” while refraining from offering details as to what he would do differently as president, insisting his foreign policy “north star” would be prioritizing “actual threats” to the country like China and the drug cartels.
