Tech sector and health care entrepreneur, author, and conservative commentator, Vivek Ramaswamy, who has become a culture wars crusader, declared his candidacy for president Tuesday on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight.
“We are in the middle of this national identity crisis, Tucker, where we have celebrated our differences for so long that we forgot all the ways we are really just the same as Americans, bound by a common set of ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago,” said Ramaswamy.
“That’s why I am proud to say tonight that I am running for United States president to revive those ideals in this country,” he continued.
“I think we need to put ‘merit’ back into ‘America’ in every spirit of our lives,” Ramaswamy continued. He said he would end affirmative action in “every sphere of American life.”
Ramaswamy, who is 37 years old, is the author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” has been on a self-described “listening tour” in recent weeks that took him earlier in the month to New Hampshire, which is second in the voting in the GOP presidential nominating calendar.
Ramaswamy was named “the CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.” in a magazine profile by New Yorker magazine last year. He will return to New Hampshire Wednesday, with several stops in Manchester and Rochester.
“This isn’t just a political campaign; this is a cultural movement to create a new dream for the next generation of Americans,” said Ramaswamy in a campaign video he released as he announced his candidacy.
Ramaswamy said his campaign would be “about the unapologetic pursuit of excellence in our country. It means you believe in merit; that you get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character and your contributions.”
“I grew up in Ohio in the ‘90s as a skinny kid with nerdy glasses and a funny last name,” said Ramaswamy; “My parents taught me that if you’re going to stand out, then you might as well be outstanding. The achievement was my ticket to get ahead. I went on to found multibillion-dollar companies. And it did it while getting married, raising a family, and following my faith in God,” he continued.
During an earlier interview, Ramaswamy said he wants to answer “the question of what it means to be American in the year 2023.”
“I’m 37 years old. When you ask people my age and younger what it means to be American today, you get a blank stare,” Ramaswamy said.
“I have a vision of what the answer to that question ought to be,” said Ramaswamy. “I care about advancing that vision.”
The new candidate said his vision is about renewing the “national identity in America” while denouncing the “vacuum” in younger generations who fill the vacuum with “the poison of wokeism and climatism and transgenderism, and Covidism for that matter.”
Ramaswamy calls for “total decoupling” from China
Ramaswamy has called for a “total decoupling” from Communist China, which he maintains has become a more significant threat to America now than the Soviet Union was amid the Cold War. He said the danger is more substantial because China makes the “shoes on our feet and the phones in our pockets.”
Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged that ripping off the economic Band-Aid from China is “not going to be easy.” He admitted that “it will require some sacrifice of short-term conveniences” but said that, in the end, it would be justified.
Ramaswamy is the son of Indian migrants who came legally through the U.S.’s “front door.” He is an ardent supporter of merit-based immigration and has said he wouldn’t grant leniency to those who broke the law when they entered the country.
Some of the top priorities for Ramaswamy include “dismantling” affirmative action, “restoring free speech,” which ban Big Tech censorship that is carried out under the direction of the government, and making political expression a civil right, and the “new climate religion,” which he has called a “cancer on the American soul.”
Candidate Ramaswamy joins a Republican field that will likely expand in the upcoming weeks and months.
Former President Donald Trump announced his third straight White House campaign in mid-November. Last week, former governor of South Carolina and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley declared she was entering the GOP field of candidates. She joined Trump as the only prominent Republican to announce a run for the White House in the 2024 election.
While responding to Ramaswamy’s announcement, Jaime Harrison, Democratic National Committee chair, argued, “one thing is clear: The race for the MAGA base is getting messier and more crowded by the day.”
Harrison claimed that “over the next few months, Republicans are guaranteed to take exceedingly extreme positions on everything from banning abortion to cutting Social Security and Medicare, and we look forward to continuing to ensure every American knows just how extreme the MAGA agenda is.”
