GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy aims to spark 'cultural movement,' separate himself from 2024 field
During an interview with Fox News Digital, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy attempts to separate himself from what will likely be a growing 2024 field.
Entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy is making waves this week, becoming the third prominent Republican presidential hopeful to enter the 2024 race and calling his campaign a "cultural movement."
Just days before his official launch, Ramaswamy spoke with Fox News Digital for a wide-ranging interview where he strongly suggested the theme of his candidacy would be restoring the "national identity in America" and how various culture wars that have erupted in recent years are burying what "ties us together as Americans."
Ramaswamy said if he threw his hat in the ring, it means he believed he was the person who can "articulate and revive that common thread."
"It's not about me, it's not about Ron DeSantis, it's not about Donald Trump, it's not about any one individual," Ramaswamay said. "It is about reviving a national identity that we miss… one of the things I would want to do is to shape the race and recast it to be about that vision, to be about that question, to be about these ideas, and make sure that every candidate actually had to offer their vision rather than just boasting about their prior accomplishments and using their biography as a pedestal. We've all accomplished things, ok? Let's get over it. The question is, who actually has a vision to do something for the country that matches what the people of this country demand? That's what the primaries should be about."
The "Woke, Inc." author repeatedly stated he wasn't interested in going after other Republicans in the race, offering the mantra that he wouldn't be running "against" his opponents but rather running "for" the country.
That said, he did offer subtle criticisms towards his would-be top rivals in the GOP primary.
Entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy is hoping to separate himself from Republicans who have or have yet to jump into the GOP race including former President Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. (Getty Images)
During the interview, Ramaswamy was asked how he'd confront former President Trump, who he referred to a "friend" and said he respected what Trump was able to accomplish during the 2016 election, which inspired his own presidential ambitions. At the same time, however, Ramaswamy said the country cannot be "looking in the rearview mirror."
"He spoke to problems as an outsider, not as an insider politician… that spotted problems that no other politician was talking about or even able to talk about and addressed some of those issues. But the question is, where do we go from here," Ramaswamy said. "And I do think that he got the country to a certain point, but ‘Make America Great Again,’ ‘MAGA,’ ‘America First,’ these are big ideas. These are ideas that are so big that none of us- not me, not Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump has a monopoly on those ideas. These ideas are bigger than any individual. In my own view is that in order to put America first, you have to first rediscover what America is."
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"I think there was a time and place for recognizing problems that no one spoke to. It's part of why I was also a believer and am a believer in the Make America Great Again movement. But I think the question again is where do we go from here? It's not from looking in the rearview mirror. It's looking ahead to the future with a revival of those shared commitments that we most of us, 80% of this country shares. And I still believe those ideals are alive and well if we can have leaders who actually embrace them," he continued.
"Woke, Inc." author Vivek Ramaswamy officially launched his 2024 presidential bid on Tuesday. ( Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
If elected, Ramaswamy said he'd pursue the "radical idea" of demolishing the "federal bureaucracy" and make sure the people who were elected to run the county "actually run the country," taking a more overt shot at the former president.
"Even when Donald Trump was president, ask yourself who was running the show when it came to COVID policy? Anthony Fauci," Ramaswamy said. "James Comey, today it's Merrick Garland under Joe Biden. And I just think that decimating that managerial class is something that I think we need to go further on than we ever have. And I don't think the people who are already in government are necessarily going to be the ones who are best positioned to do it, because if they were, we wouldn't have the problem in the first place."
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On the subject of his approach to the legacy media, which he called a "joke," Ramaswamy insisted "I'd still talk to them" on the campaign trail. He was asked about the tactics embraced by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had essentially completely iced out the hostile press during his 2022 reelection bid, limiting its access at campaign events and rejecting interviews with liberal outlets.
"I'm not scared of talking to anybody. And you know what? I think if you're going to run for president, if you want to be the person that represents this country across the table from Xi Jinping, you better darn well be prepared to sit across the table from a New Yorker reporter or whatever," Ramasway said. "If you don't have a thick skin to deal with that, then, you know, you probably aren't the right person to be taking on Xi Jinping or the drug cartels, either."
GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy believes he is the only candidate who can restore America's "national identity." ( Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The 37-year-old Ohio native was asked whether he agreed with the message being made by former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who officially launched her presidential campaign last week, that there should be a "new generation" of leadership in the White House. While he calls it an "interesting point," he suggested Haley was engaging in identity politics, something that Republicans normally rejected.
"Look at Pete Buttigieg, okay? He's a new generation of leaders. What is he doing? Screwing up the infrastructure of this country on a day-to-day basis from the flights and the software that governs how flights take off in this country to trains that are derailing here in my home state of Ohio. So I'm just not a believer in these identity politics - put people into boxes, categories, you know, ok- woman of color, man of color, man of non-color, who cares?" Ramaswamy said.
"What really matters is what's your vision?" he added. "Do you actually have an agenda that you stand for? Young, old, first generation immigrant, Brown skin, White skin, male, female, who you're attracted to, I don't care. I don't think most people in this country actually care in the end, either. They're just using that as a substitute for the fact that if there's no real actual vision or policy at the end of the debate, then you'll talk about the boring stuff."
There has been a growing discussion over where the national divide really is. Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for example, said during her GOP rebuttal to President Biden's State of the Union address that the divide is not between left versus right, something Ramaswamy agreed with. However, he didn't necessarily side with Huckabee Sanders that the divide is between "normal and crazy" as she put it.
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"It is between pro-American and anti-American," Ramaswamy said. "I think there is an anti-American current in this country- apologizing for success, self-hatred, self-loathing, that is what the woke infection is all about. I don't think that's a 50/50 split. I think that's like 20% of the country that's disproportionately magnified by a corrupt media, via social media algorithms, via the managerial class in much of corporate America and even in the government. But in terms of actual citizens of this country, it's a relative minority."
"I think most people in this country actually believe in the basic rules of the road - getting ahead based on content of character and contribution rather than color of skin, speaking freely, electing the people to run the government," he added. "I think most people believe these ideals to be true. I think most people actually think their neighbors and their colleagues and their classmates also believe these ideals to be true but they can't be sure anymore because you're not allowed to talk about it in the open. I say if we're able to start talking openly again in this country, good things are going to happen. That's actually what matters."