Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who announced his candidacy for president Tuesday during an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, has revealed what actions he intends to take on day one if elected president.
On Twitter Tuesday evening, just hours after becoming the third Republican in the 2024 race alongside former President Donald Trump and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Ramaswamy said he would end Affirmative Action on the first day of a potential administration.
“As U.S. President, I will end federally mandated affirmative action – full stop,” he tweeted.
In the post, he criticized other Republican presidents who failed to take such actions during their own presidencies: “I will repeal Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 which mandates race-based quotas. Every Republican since Johnson had the opportunity to do it. I’ll do it on Day 1 without apology.”
Vivek Ramaswamy spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, US, on Friday, Aug. 5, 2022. (Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The comment is a subtle swipe at Trump, who served one term in the White House from Jan. 2017 to 2021.
His agenda would also include dismantling climate change, putting an 8-year limit on federal bureaucrats, eliminating “worthless” federal agencies, becoming totally independent of China, protecting political expression as a civil right, and combating and “annihilating” drug cartels.
Ramaswamy’s early campaign has included talks of addressing a “national identity crisis” that includes “faith, patriotism, and hard work” being replaced by gender ideology, a focus on climate change, and “COVID-ism.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee’s Annual Meeting on January 28, 2023, in Salem, New Hampshire. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
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“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,” Ramaswamy told the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
He added: “That’s why I am proud to say tonight that I am running for United States president to revive those ideals in this country.”
Ramaswamy, a political commentator and author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” said America’s celebration of diversity has resulted in fragmenting the country and its residents having “forgot all the ways we’re really the same as Americans.”
“I think we need to put ‘merit’ back into ‘America’ in every spirit of our lives,” Ramaswamy continued in the interview.
Josh Kopelman, Austin McChord, Vivek Ramaswamy, John Collison and Steve Bertoni at the Forbes Under 30 Summit at Pennsylvania Convention Center on October 5, 2015, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Lisa Lake/Getty Images)
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At 37 years old, Ramaswamy is the youngest of the three current Republicans in the 2024 primary. Trump, 76, announced his bid last year shortly after the midterm elections, and Haley, 51, declared her candidacy earlier in the month.
He is also younger than other potential Republican candidates, which include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is 44 years old, former Vice President Mike Pence, 63, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 59, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, 57.
“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 during a previous interview with Fox News.
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)
“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,” he added. “I think 2024 could be a landslide election if we actually make it about those basic American ideals of merit, free speech, open debate.”
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
