America First, or World War 3? with Vivek Ramaswamy

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Get involved with Turning Point USA at TPUSA.com. Buckle up everybody, here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House folks. I want to thank Charlie, he's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love for this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Join us now is Vivek Ramaswamy, running for President of the United States.

Vivek, welcome. Foreign policy is in the news. There are some not so covered angles of what's happening globally right now. You've been mentioning them. Including Venezuela, Cuba, China, and Azerbaijan.

Tell us about it. The North America, the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Armenian Christians have lived for a long time since 1994 has been internationally recognized as a boundary. Driving them out, Charlie, this isn't sometime in the distant past.

This is last month, in the month of September, where you don't hear a peep about it. And the reason I think is clear, I mean, there are certain groups, you know, that are politically popular, certain ones that aren't. Right now, Christians aren't a popular group.

So that's a region, certainly with the media, it's not an area that they decide to pay attention to, even as they'll talk endlessly about Ukraine, which happens to be a nation that, who would have guessed, is also persecuting Christians. And so I tend to focus on areas where others aren't focused. I tend to hate saying things when others are already saying them. Yes, I, you know, I wrote Woke Inc. at a time when no one was talking about those issues.

Now every Republican candidate wants to have a pissing contest over who's more anti woke, and that's fine. I share my convictions, but I don't like to repeat what others are repeating. When it comes to foreign policy, it's the same way for me is that let's talk about what nobody else is talking about. Now, I also have different views on how to deal with brewing conflict in the Middle East, how to bring the Ukraine war to a close. My views, there's no point to just saying what everybody else is saying.

Let's talk about actual dimensions that get us to truth. So let's play cut eight. You made some news at the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Let's play cut eight. I would love nothing more than for the IDF to put the heads of the top 100 Hamas leaders on stakes and line them up on the Israel Gaza border as a sign that October 7, 2023 will never happen again. And then to use all of those saved resources to build the border defenses of the future. But that is Israel's decision to make, not ours. That is what David Ben-Gurion would tell Israel to do. That is what George Washington would tell the United States to do.

Elaborate more of a big Ramaswamy. Yep. So I am all in for Israel pursuing an Israel first agenda and the U.S. job as an ally is to make sure that Israel has a diplomatic Iron Dome protecting them from the U.N. or anybody else, stopping them from doing what they need to do, defend their own country. Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East.

It is also not our 51st state. And my view is that it's the U.S. job to, yes, keep our preexisting commitments. I will always stand by our commitments, the three plus billion dollars per year in aid that we send to Israel. But I do not want to get involved, U.S., the U.S. involved militarily in this war either.

My ultimatum to Iran would be you stay out, we stay out. The IDF can get its job done. And yes, I'm rooting for Israel's success. What Hamas did to Israel was subhuman.

It was medieval. Israel is our friend and ally in the Middle East and we support them as a friend and ally diplomatically and intelligence sharing and otherwise. But I don't want to get us, the United States of America, if I'm the president, that's where my moral obligation is, into another prolonged no-win war in the Middle East. And Charlie, what I see in the GOP today is it's Dick Cheney 2.0 all over again, trying to take this party over again. And it's, in many ways, it's Dick Cheney 2.0 and the Republican Party that's even worse than some of the Democrats. So forget the partisan filters. They took us, and it's people my age that went and died, thousands of them, in Iraq and Afghanistan, to what end? It's the Taliban still in charge 20 years later, for God's sake, a hostile anti-American regime in Iraq, $7 trillion of our $33 trillion national debt today to be borne by the next generation due to those two wars alone.

So no, that's not going to happen on my watch. And I think that's the actual choice in this GOP primary. Do you want to go the way of the past? Do you want Dick Cheney 2.0 escalating, in this case, potentially to World War III because we got Russia-Ukraine going on at the same time, while Russia and China are in military alliance with one another? Do you want World War III, do you want to be taken there by people like the Nikki Haley's of the world, who will make money doing it, the bombs explode, their bank account grows?

Do you want to go that direction of the past, or do you want to go the direction of the future, which I think is America first that is far bigger than just the Republican Party and excludes much of the Republican Party in it, too, which is why I could care less for the Republican versus Democrat debate on this issue? Yeah, the consensus in the Republican primary, absent Donald Trump, is invade the world, invite the world. And Nikki Haley is clamoring to get us into another war with Iran. You have been morally clear with the Russian-Ukrainian war.

And so, Vivek, you've been more and more vindicated with that as we continue onward. It is a tragedy and honestly, a slaughter of the Ukrainian people. I don't know if you saw the recent Time magazine piece, Vivek.

It's sad and depressing and really heavy, what is happening in Ukraine, all preventable. Talk about the contrast between your vision for America first foreign policy and the other people running for the presidency, absent Donald Trump, that want more money, more arms, in fact, even Mike Pence before he dropped out, he visited Ukraine, a meat grinder, basically for nothing. Yeah, so I think there's two America first candidates in this race and we can talk about distinctions there. But the real deep divide in the GOP is Donald Trump and myself are America first candidates.

Everybody else is a neocon looking for Dick Cheney 2.0. And it's a it's a world view that's different. So I'm not just going to criticize it.

One world view is that it's America's job to be a hegemon and part of being a hegemon means that you have to make moral judgments elsewhere and use the U.S. military to enforce those moral judgments. That's a neutral description. That's what they would say. That's a view I disagree with. My view is different. I give you an analogy. I'm a father.

I have two sons. My moral obligation as a father is to my family, period. My moral obligation as the next president is exclusively to the citizens of this country, period.

That's it. Not some other country, not some other nation, not some nebulous global citizenship. It is to this nation, the citizens here in our homeland, the United States of America.

And so my view is I look at every conflict differently through that prism. The Ukraine conflict doesn't advance that interest. It's not advancing any U.S. interest. It's driving Russia further into China's arms.

I don't think we should be sending more money to Ukraine. I think it is a kleptocracy. The irony now is it's not even helping the objectives that we said it was helping. Some mid-level Ukrainian bureaucrats able to buy a bigger house because we sent money over there. That's what we're now seeing is it's a total kleptocracy. We knew it beforehand.

Now we know it on our own dime. And then the irony is even for the good versus evil crowd in Ukraine. And I think that's different in the Hamas versus Israel conflict.

I think there was a right side and a wrong side of this. On the Ukraine version of this, just because Putin is bad doesn't mean that Ukraine is good, some paragon of democracy. It's not. It's a country that's banned 11 opposition parties. The leader celebrates Nazis in his own ranks, goes after Christians in his own country, says he won't hold elections this year unless the U.S. forks over more money, consolidates all media into one state TV media arm. Anybody ever ask the question of why Russia had such an easy time in eastern Ukraine but not other parts of Ukraine?

Because the parts of eastern Ukraine that they occupy in the Donbas are Russian-speaking regions that haven't been represented in the Ukrainian parliament for nearly 10 years. So there was no counter resistance. So these are hard facts in the Russia Ukraine case that make that one easy. In the Israel case, what Hamas did to Israel absolutely, I do think, is an example of good versus evil, evil versus good. Hamas's attack on Israel was subhuman. And I think we should diplomatically absolutely stand with Israel and intelligence sharing and keep our prior preexisting commitments. But through an America First lens, I think it's wrong if you're going to call that an attack on America, as other politicians have. If you don't know what an attack on America is, you have no business being in the leadership of America because when those kind of people lead America, that's exactly when you are going to get an attack on America.

We need to use that as a reminder to protect our own homeland because if that can happen in Israel, that can happen here in the United States too, especially when you have leaders who are asleep at the switch that are in charge focused on other conflicts except for our own homeland here at home. So that's the way I look at it. It is a deep divide in the GOP today.

It is the defining divide. Everything else, you know, everybody agrees that guys shouldn't be competing with women in sports competitions. Great. Got that. I'm on board for that too. I was early in talking about those issues. Fine.

We got that. Let's talk about where we actually disagree. And I do think it's on the vision for America's role in the use of American resources and lives in the world. And I think we have a deep divide and we need to sort it out. OK, Vivek, I got to play a piece of tape.

One of my favorite guys out there, Patrick Bette David, is going viral. He's trying to get down to the heart of the matter here. Play cut 46. I'm sure your marketing team points out how they're trying to troll you in the marketplace.

OK, I'm sure they're doing that. Can you bring this one clip? I know you were on what do you call it? What was it? Bill Maher and Bill Maher talked about the boots.

I've seen you walk with these boots. Go and play this clip. This on TikTok went viral. It doesn't have a million views. It doesn't have, you know, 10 million views. This thing's got 1.2 million likes. And some people are wondering.

What are they? I don't even know. I haven't seen that. They have not shown this to you. OK, what they're trying to say with this is that in your boots you have heels. No, no, no, no.

Those are just standard off the rack. Lou Casey. How tall are you, Governor? How tall? Five eleven.

Five eleven. OK, why don't you wear tennis shoes and dress shoes? That is Ron DeSantis and Patrick Bette David. Vivek, have you noticed something recently?

Well, I mean, I I wasn't going to break this up myself, but I did get a kick out of it when I saw that video. I I did notice that that Ron had certainly different shoes when I saw him at the debate stage than than I'm accustomed to seeing normally. So I will just say it stood out to me, but I chose not to comment on it. It's not typically my style. Focus on the issues is where I go.

But yeah, I think that I thought I thought he grew a little bit since when I since I'd seen him a couple of years ago. But I leave each person to make their own sartorial choices to themselves. I have a lot of criticisms and differences on policy, but that wasn't one of the places where I was going to hit him. A late bloomer. So, Vivek, talk about the race.

How are you feeling? The field is narrowing. You know, the message you have been very precise on America first type mantras and policies. There's a debate coming up with NBC and I know you're going to handle it, but it drives me nuts that the RNC is is doing something with NBC. Why wouldn't they have a debate?

I don't know with Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly. So I want you to comment on that, Vivek, because you'll be fine. You'll you'll joust great with Kristen Welker and Lester Holt and Hugh Hewitt, who's a great friend. I'm glad he's involved. So I exempt Hugh from that.

Hugh's amazing. But the NBC is a complete waste of time. Vivek, how's the race going and your thoughts on the enemy NBC News moderating a debate? I think it's good.

It's thinning out. I think it's a good thing that Mike Pence is out. Frankly, if you want the old version of the neocon worldview, there's plenty of choices in this race.

Pence was there. Scott Christie Haley could go straight down the list. I don't think people need four or five or six of those choices.

One is plenty. One of those choices in the race is probably playing a representative. And so I think that Mike Pence did a good thing for the country by getting the heck out of the race.

And I think that others could probably do well to follow his lead. My view on the debate is, look, they've been pretty lame so far in the way they've been done. And, you know, I hope a thinned field allows me to really ask the questions that nobody else is asking, right? If the moderators aren't going to do it, I'm going to get there, do the job myself of smoking out where this deep ideological divide is on whether we want to send our sons and daughters to fight other people's wars and rack up national debt doing it or not.

And I hope it's not some sort of virtue signaling fest. We're all just competing on who's actually saying the easy thing we all agree on in a more indignant way. No, I think that the other candidates deserve to be held to account. I want to talk about corruption in politics.

That's something that we don't talk about enough. And the Republican Party, I think, frankly, is not that much better than the opposition here. I think the Republican Party has gotten in the way of actually having open debates. You know, when I was called to a spar with Chris Christie, I said I would do it. If I want to spar with RFK or a different candidate, I'm happy to do it.

But the Republican Party has gotten in the way in saying that the rules don't really apply to allowing for inter-candidate debates. I just don't think that's productive. And frankly, I'm going to check out how this one goes and then I'll make decisions about future debates after that, whether it's useful. I think Tucker will be an awesome moderator. Yeah, I guess it's a great idea. I mean, again, I think you and Tucker, well, Tucker should do one of the debates. Actually, you're not.

You're very kind, but generations. Yeah. What I told you to me, what I told the RNC is, listen, guys, instead of this NBC thing, OK, turning point action, they don't want to work with us, obviously, but they can't stand us. But I said, listen, you know, we come in, we have Bannon or Bonjino wall. Be good to, you know, whatever. You could have different flavors. You could have Shapiro, who's who's great, but more neoconservative than I am on foreign policy stuff.

But that's fine. And but why don't you have I just I don't understand. You have a Republican primary. Why don't you have leading media figures?

Glenn Beck, any one of these people. Right. And you have a series of these forums or debates. Why are I don't care what Lester Holt has to say. Final thoughts for vague. So, look, I actually think that you raise a pretty interesting point where we should have multiple perspectives across the conservative movement, challenging Canada.

That's the point. And I do think that I do think that the real issue that I have with it narrowly is the last debate from the Reagan library into the way that was hosted versus the next one. The candidates aren't really being challenged on the one wedge that matters, which comes down to foreign policy. Do you believe in these foreign wars and World War Three or not? So you basically have a pro war establishment. Of course, even the conservatives doing this and it's wrong.

Neoliberalism. You're doing great. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for listening, everybody. Email us as always. Freedom at Charlie Kirk. Dot com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to Charlie Kirk. Dot com.