We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to
the premium version of our website as well. I am joined today for a
special edition of The Federalist Radio Hour with Christopher Bedford of the Common Sense Society.
We are about to interview the vike Ramaswami presidential candidate. Chris. Thank
you so much for joining the program. Happy to be here, of course,
and for your help and setting up this interview. Oh it's a blast,
a pleasure. Yeah, and you know, we have a lot of
questions for the vake Ramaswamy. We've also had Marion Williamson on the program.
I think you know, once you start interviewing presidential candidates, it becomes from
the perspective of journalists and media you hear from all the campaigns. Basically,
it's sort of like a Pandora's box. And you know a lot of candidates,
Vivak is one of them who's sort of saturated in media and conservative media
in the podcast sphere. But I think actually, Chris, based on the
questions we have prepared for this, we're hoping to take, you know,
a sort of different perspective to the interview and get his thoughts on some things
that you know, might not be completely news of the day, but are
absolutely news of the year, things like artificial intelligence, things like the rise
of India. So hopefully that comes through in the conversation. Yeah, you
know, I usually don't like to interview politicians or ambassadors or other people who
just have to watch every single thing they thing they say and are generally and
authentic. I remember back in the day going to interview the Irish Ambassador for
a video Betty Johnson and I were making for Saint Patrick's take, and he
wanted to ask this Kyle all these questions, thinking he was going to be
fun. Now, the Irish Ambassador is not an appointment, that's a career
person. So I was like, here's what he's going to tell you he
does for Saint Patrick's day, Ireland's a vibrant tech corridor, and it was
exactly what he said, and I was like, why are we here,
Let's pet it's going to talk to interesting people. But that's actually why I
wanted to talk to Vivic because he's interested. He's saying things on the debate
stage which stand out. You know, common sense society is, we're all
over the country, all over the world. Uh, and there's we've noticed
that there's a lot of differences in or when you get when you when you
leave the United States, that these things are not monolithic. And we've got
folks in Scotland, folks in England, and guess what, they don't always
agree on things. It would be easy for an American to be like,
oh, they're basically the same or not. So that's just some of the
questions I wanted to ask. You know, there's the American people might look
at this and say, there's two Indian people running for president and the GOP.
That's interesting, But yeah, they come from very different backgrounds, different
their parents have different religions, different heritages, different things that inform those backgrounds,
and people don't really want to ask about that. And I'm interested in
talking about that, just like you'd ask a Catholic candidate during the troubles what
they think about what's going on in Ireland. Now. And also, just
like you said, Ai, you know he's not a career politician. Not
some career politicians of extremely interesting thoughts on AI. But I'm really interesting,
you know what it is. If they really know what it is exactly,
they've seen terminator, that's not kind of like a good primer. But I'm
interested in his thoughts on technology, and so I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Yeah, no, I think that's important. And again that's the same
reason why I was so interested to have Mary Anne on the show some months
ago, because he's not a standard politician, not a standard politician. And
that's the thing about podcasts, by the way, that you bring candles.
If you're going to come on the podcast, I need you to be game
for doing a podcast. This is not for talking points. You have to
expand and you have to be ready to talk more elaborate. It's not cable
news. If I ask you about Ukraine, you better not respond about the
woke military. I want to talk about you cis. We're here to talk
about that and respond about that. But you have to be okay when you
get interrupted, Yeah, exactly, and then be down for it. And
I think it'll be good all right, well, stay tuned. We'll be
back with vig Ramis Swami right after this. Sir, thank you so much
for joining us. We really appreciate you coming on the show. Great to
be on. How you doing, We're good. I wanted to start out
because there's a debate this week, and one thing I think Chris and I
both agreed on throughout these campaigns is that desantiss Ron DeSantis's approach to Donald Trump
has been strange and yours has always seemed to make a lot more sense from
a purely strategic and tactical standpoint. I imagine you believe what you're saying as
it pertains to the former president. But I wanted to ask this is maybe
a strange hypothetical, but as somebody who's taken the approach to Donald Trump that
has resonated much more with Trump supporters than I think what Ron DeSantis, Governor
DeSantis has done, do you think that's been something that's blocked his path to
connecting with voters, that has maybe created stagnancy as it pertains to his ability
to relate to voters. Just that you know, if you're attacking Donald Trump
from you know, some of the same positions that the left is attacking Donald
Trump. Is that a have you found as you're out there talking to people
in Iowa and South Carolina, that's a real block to be able to connect
with those people. Look, I think that there's a lot of factors there,
and I'm not a political analyst. I'm a candidate who's offering my vision
for the country. But I do feel like if you are constrained, I
think there's something else going on, which is that much of the donor class
in the Republican Party and the establishment and the money that funds it is fundamentally
hostile to Donald Trump. And so as a candidate, to sort of please
your provider of mother's milk, right, if that's the mother's milk of politics
is green pieces of paper funding super PACs and otherwise, and they want you
to be bashing Trump, you have no choice but to do it. So
I look at it a little bit less as like a decision that your question
presumes that was on the Santis is to make, whereas I don't think it
was his decision to make. I think it was the decision of the people
who fund him, and you know, he who pays the piper calls the
shop, and in Ron DeSantis's case, that's a bunch of mega donors that
have funded the super PACs that are running this campaign. And you've seen the
impact of these donors on maybe Desantus's foreign policy shifts, coming out of Strong
initially skeptical of Ukraine and then pushing back on that pretty quickly. But are
these donors, I assume they're learning communication with you, these operatives, and
then lead up to this debate where you're all supposed to go out and fight
each other again, has there been a behind the scenes, behind the scenes
effort by some of these donors and operatives to try and get you to consolidate
either behind Haley, behind you, or behind the Santas, or to try
to form some kind of their their dream anti Trump pack like Pete and Amy
against Bernie in twenty twenty. Well, what I would say is they know
that I'm not controllable because I'm not dependent on that mother's milk. Now,
the flip side of this is this has required my family and I just spend
tens of millions of dollars of our hard earned money we will have by the
end of this campaign. We've already spent tens of millions of dollars, and
I think that that's the sacrifice that we make, not to be somebody else's
circus monkey. But you know, in many cases, I know these megadnor
groups back in my prior life, I was courted to be parts of many
of them. I was briefly a donor in politics before I got disillusioned by
that and believed that it was a broken system and a broken game, and
eventually that was one of the many paths that led to my candidacy. But
the fact of the matter is I've made it crystal clear that I am not
really a pawn that's available to be played on the chess board. And so
with that clarity, that's just cut off donor funds. I mean, rot
Ron McDaniel after the last debates, that I won't get a scent of funding
from the RNC is what she reportedly said. Well, you know, it
almost proves my point about the corruption of the institutions, even like the RNC,
individuals like are treating it like it's their money for you know, punishing
a candidate who's about the failure record of the RNC. But that's almost proving
my point that that's why I'm the only candidate is able to say it,
and so it's a little bit circular. But I do think that there is
a active effort amongst the donor establishment. You could see in the closed door
meetings they're hosting where the invite representatives from the Kaylee and DeSantis and when Tim
Scott was in the Tim Scott camp to try to consolidate support. And I
would say overthrowing Trump, that's the way they look at it, down to
the words they would use. Overthrowing Trump, I think is the top objective
of much of that old school GOP donor establishment, And you know, I
think that that's not really the right way to look at a race where we
should be asking who's the best candidate to lead this country forward. I'm in
this race because I believe that's me and I think there's two America First candidates
in this race, that's Donald Trump and myself. One comes from a prior
generation with experience, another one comes with fresh legs and an energy to reach
the next generation, and that's me. And think we're going to be successful.
But that's the way I'm looking at this. There's been a stunning lack
of interest in this cycle in artificial intellig intelligence, you know, just across
the board. Obviously such an important issue, and it's one that you're more
familiar with than some of the other candidates. And I just wanted to ask
what you make of Sam Altman's leadership of open AI, because the Biden administration
has sort of staked out one highly regulatory position, and then on the other
hand you have Mark Andresen, you have Sam Altman, people are sort of
newly I shouldn't say new, but are newly embracing this kind of techno optimism
in a boulder and more clear cut way, who are very opposed to regulation,
although there are also you can make a great argument a lot of conservatives
that have seen what's happened with big tech and say there has to be some
regulation. So as we're looking at just the last couple of weeks and all
of the chaos over at open AI, arguably the most powerful company in all
of AI, what do you make of everything that's transpired since the ouster of
Sam Altman and then the return of Sam Altman. Yeah, so I think
that it is stunning in some ways that a topic that I actually hear a
lot from on voters. It's amazing. Even in grassroots and rural areas of
Iowa, you're going to get I get questions on AI much more so.
And by the way, certain other topics too, central bank, digital currencies,
the future of decentralized money, and otherwise that do relate to our future.
AI is an important part of the future as well, that we don't
hear in any of the Republican debates or otherwise so far, and so that
is a big that is a big reality. That being said, here's my
view on the future of AI policy. I think the techno optimists, I
think, in some ways make a mistake of trying to believe that we can
solve normative problems with technical solutions. And I think many of the problems that
our country faces today are absolutely questions of values, a divide on what is
the values that unite this country versus not that no amount of technology is going
to affect And I think it's a techno optimism ends up being a convenient,
self aggrandizing argument to advance your own ends. All that being said, I
also don't believe we should adopt any bands that China is not also willing to
adopt. We saw how that worked out for gain a function research, it
ricochet's back, and in some ways we would be worst off if China were
advancing in AI development while we banned it in the US. I think the
right framework is strict liability for companies, at least as a first step.
This is an easy next step to take, which is to say that if
you're a chemicals company, you can't dump your chemicals in somebody else's river,
or you are liable for that. That's how it already works. We should
say the same thing when it comes to dumping effectively in somebody else's river with
the product of an algorithm or a protocol that you develop. Companies need to
know xanty right now that they're going to be held liable for the adverse consequences
of that, and that forces companies to internalize the risks now in contrast to
what they're doing, which are setting up for an arms race where they can
externalize the risks and the costs to everybody else around them. Yeah, that
seems like the danger here is the acceleration required to compete with China and the
AI race could push the end of states past the point of no return.
Questions about the ethics of autonomous AI vehicles with no human input, for example,
in the military. I mean, and then even with talking about liability
here, which I think would be pretty crucial to this new legal regime.
Who is the liable party the person who's operating the vehicle that they're in the
vehicle at the time, Is it the company that made it? Is that
the programmer who did it? Is it? How does that get sorted out
in a way that still allows Jeni States to compete with a country like China
that doesn't have put the same put the same way on human life or human
liberty. I just wants to compete and just wants to push forward the ethics
be damned. Well, look, I think that one of the great ethical
questions that comes up with the future of AI has nothing to do with the
AI, but has to do with human beings responsiveness to the AI. I'll
give you a funny analogy. Is I'm a tennis fan, okay, And
actually my first job when I was a high schooler was as a ball boy
at tennis tournaments, and then I eventually one season got an upgrade to be
a line judge, a human line judge making line calls those line calls are
not made by human beings anymore. They're made by AI. But in the
first generation of AI that was developed to do this, what you saw was
you could just see it with your eyes was an obviously bad call. You
could see it on a video replay. And yet something interesting happened. The
players who used to argue incessantly with the line judges just stopped arguing with the
call because it was the AI. Right. So you sort of go to
try going to chat GPT on a given day and type in how do you
address climate change or how do you address racial injustice? See what it spits
out, and I think that that's going to be something that really looks a
lot more like converting degrees Celsius to degrees Fahrenheim as a technical question, when
in fact it's a values question. And so that I think is the ultimate
risk of AI is not when it comes to the ethical issues, are the
response of human beings to the AI rather than the other way around. And
this gets, you know, maybe a little bit philosophical and abstract, but
one of the best antidotes to the effect of AI and the risks of AI
in that way isn't any policy but is the revival of faith in our country
actually, And you know, you believe you have a whole the size of
God in your heart. The expression goes God doesn't feel it, something else
will fill it instead. And that's what Blaze Pascal said years ago. And
he's a scientist. And I think that you going to bend the need of
something. And I do think that that vacuum in our hearts right now,
vacuum of purpose and meaning and identity, that's that's the moment we live in
right now in the United States of America. The rise of AI against that
backdrop is I think far more concerning than against the backdrop of a society that
does have its grounded identity and sense of purpose and meaning. Those are two
different circumstances. And so I don't know if any of what I just said
it makes remote sense to you all or not, but you know, that's
kind of how I think about it. No, absolutely, And I mean
I think there's a real need for that on the right sort of a moral
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One of the things that's so interesting about your candidacy is that you do shows
like this where you're transparent about some shifts in your own thinking. And you've
talked a lot and with a lot of honesty about some of those shifts,
And I guess I'm wondering what it's been like on the campaign trail to you
know, one of the criticisms you've gotten in the debates is being maybe what
people would describe as performative or over the top or theatrical or something like that.
How do you get people, you know, as somebody who's kind of
had a somewhat of a journey into Republican politics, how do you get people
to fundamentally who are so sick of the political establishment, who are so distrustful
of all of our major institutions, including the business world that you've come from,
in the political world that you're occupying now, how do you get people
to trust you given all of that. Well, look, I think that
doing that via thirty minute segments with a buzzer at the end is not the
right modality, I've probably done more possible. We don't have a buzz anything.
No, I know exactly exactly one. No, I wasn't referring to
you. I'm talking about the debate, of course, but standard cable television
isn't much better. But I have probably in more podcasts than all presidential candidates
in US history combined. And so that's a way of reaching people through with
a different format. I've written three books, and they're not usual candidate books,
but you know, three hundred million Americans aren't reading them, and it
provides at least a lens into my thinking and who I am. And so
my general approach is, I think the more strategic you are about how to
try to build trust, the less likely you are to do it. And
so my view is, we are going to speak the unvarnished truths, hard
truths that other candidates are unwilling to speak about, let alone even touch.
Do that consistently without apology, and people will accuse you of everything along the
way, being performative, being disingenuous, you know, on the on the
five percent of questions, I tell people, yeah, I wrote my first
book working several years ago, and I highly recommend reading it, and I
agree with ninety five percent of what's in there, and that's the truth,
because I'm a human being that is honest and publicly shares where I'm at.
And five percent of the things that I thought five years ago have evolved as
a consequence of thinking about them more deeply, and my hope is that people
reward that honesty over time. It's a long sale cycle, but I do
think that by the time voting begins in Iowa and I'm spending an immense amount
of time on the ground, the best format of all is meeting people in
a room without social media algorithms or TV screens in between distorting what you say.
That's where we're building trust and so are you. I'll do as much
of that as possible. So polls I think are way off. Okay,
I know that, Yeah, the Iowa polls are way off because many of
the people who are pulled they're all just traditional, historical caucus goers. Many
of the people were bringing in absolutely are not and they're supporters who are absolutely
pro American and share our values but haven't shown up in a caucus in recent
years. Some of them are young, a lot of them are Young.
A lot of them, you know, may have supported candidates like Ron Paul
or others in the past, and others have supported Trump in a general election
but didn't participate in the party apparatus driven caucus process. And so I think
we're on track to deliver a major surprise at the iocaucus, actually, and
so I'm very confident of that much. And then that's going to think change
the dynamics of this race once we do. You know, one of the
dangers of going on all these podcasts and talking as much as Canada has to
talk or we get to to talk here, is and sometimes you say things
that you regret. So I want to ask you about a quote from a
twenty twenty Rockefeller Capital Management podcast where you talked about whether or not the American
people could tolerate a national system in which certain people on the basis of a
biomarker are segregated, and the idea you said that you leaned toward the idea
that if we could identify anybodies for COVID and people during lockdowns, maybe that
ten or twenty percent of the population would be allowed to go back to business.
For those who didn't have it wouldn't and that being better than the status
quo. It seems different from where you're coming now. So I'm wondering if
it is actually in line with where you're coming now, or if you're thinking
from what it's very different from where I am now. But you got to
know when that was right. If somebody's talking about that today, they're crazy
and should come nowhere near the White House. But in April twenty twenty,
April twenty twenty, when we were in the second month of the pandemic,
every single state, this entire country was absolutely locked down. And so I
was a CEO back then, and I'm asked about what's a reasonable way to
reopen this economy, and I said, one of the things that immediately kind
of makes sense to do is if you have natural immunity, which the government
narrative was rejecting at the time and otherwise, but if you have natural immunity,
at least let those people back because they don't deserve to be locked down
at a moment where the entire country is locked down. Of course, the
lockdowns were disastrous. I was against it at the time, and we definitely
know that now. But now three years later, after everybody. It's the
easy thing to say, is like, we're against lockdown, when every Republican
governor in this country had locked down their states. I mean even Florida for
that matter, was lockdown in April of twenty twenty. For me to say
that, actually, here's just a reasonable quick thing to do is get people
with natural immunity back, that was not a crazy thing to say. People
were saying a lot more cringeworthy things in April twenty twenty, definitely a panic,
like it was a problem to the panic. And so the fact is
people were back then were against even if you had natural immunity, which the
government narrative has rejected for a long time, that you should be able to
get at least get out of the lockdowns. That made sense against the backdrop
of lockdowns. I, like other Republicans, I never locked down the state,
right. I was just providing paths for reasonably getting back to normal life
as quickly as possible, and so versus one hundred percent lockdown, versus at
least letting people in natural immunity back. I don't think in April twenty twenty
that was an unreasonable thing to say, And so I'm not going to apologize
for saying that, but that's obviously not where any thinking person is today.
The lockdowns themselves are disastrous. It should have never happened. It's just that
I was in a position, as a private citizen at that time to be
able to do much of anything about it. I traveled the country for the
Federalists before I came over to Common Sense Society in early May, and it
was wild to see the experiments going on, because everyone seems to feel like
wherever they were, that the whole country was going through exactly what they were
going through, and that I found it was wildly different. I go from
Washington, d C. Where everything is shut down, included in the airport.
I land in Chicago where you can't open a bar, but the airport
bars were wide open. You go to I landed in Santa Cruz and the
beaches were taped off and the businesses were shut down. We drove out of
a Nevada eight dinner out. By the time we got to South Dakota,
people were giving us hugs and everything was normal. But everyone seemed to think
everyone else was going We're all in this together. But if you actually drove
across the country, there was no lines, the natural monuments were empty.
It was kind of cool. But the second thing is you saw how disparate
the reactions were, even sometimes from county to county. Mm hm. And
I think that that's a learned seat of learnings. I mean, I think
that the counties that were absolutely held open, or the countries that were open
the schools that we didn't lock down, are the areas where we didn't lock
down schools. They were on the right side of this. And if we
don't learn from the past, we're doing for even worse in the future.
I think there's something deeper going on, though, is even if what you
see across those different parts of the country and those communities goes back to this
we're talking about the AI discussion, this hunger for purpose and meaning, and
there's a reason why people bent the need to the COVID religion. It's the
same reason that their same types are bending the need of the new climate religion
that has now filled the same vacuum. And so I think that again,
if you don't bend the need of the real thing or pledge allegiance to the
real flag, you're going to pledge allegiance to something. And there are these
new cults from covidism to climatism, wokeism, trans genderism. I think there
are all symptoms of this deeper need for purpose and meaning. But anyway to
answer your question from earlier, you know, politics is a dirty sport and
it's one thing I've learned through this process, but it's not going to stop
me from continually sharing my convictions. Actually, quickly on that climate point,
you've called climate change a hoax, and you actually just mentioned this that maybe
part of the reason that people are pledging fidelity to a hoax or you know,
gluing themselves to interpasses for a hoax, is because it relates back to
that sense of purpose. But if it is a hoax, there are so
many people involved in it. Do you think that goes back to you know,
pro green money. As you just talked about, politics is a dirty
business. So is business just as dirty as politics. Is it about China?
Why is this sort of vast infrastructure built up around something maybe it's about
economic control, personal control. Why is this vast infrastruction acture built up around
something that is, as you say, not well fleshed out by data.
Well, I've said for a long time that the climate change agenda is absolutely
a hoax. And the reason I call it a hoax is one of the
many reasons is it doesn't have anything to do with the climate. This has
to do with and if you listen to their careful advocates of it, what
we might call global equity. That's what you know. Many of the activists
even site when talking about the climate, what does that mean? It means
letting China catch up to the United States, and so China, I think
is laughing at every step of the way. Is we apply emissions caps and
constraints in the US that China is itself not willing to adopt. So we're
shifting carbon emissions from the US to China in the name of fighting global climate
change. The people who are most strongly opposed to carbon emissions in the US
are also those who are most strongly opposed to nuclear energy, which is the
greatest form of carbon free energy production known to man. This doesn't make sense
unless you see what's actually going on, which is, for example, that
nuclear energy might be too good addressing their made up crisis. Because this has
nothing to do with the climate and everything to do with shackling the West and
the US, in particular from unbridled economic growth. And so it's about letting
China catch up at the US. China's using multilateral institutions like the UN to
do it. They're laughing at every step of the way. And then you
have vested financial interests who are playing both sides in China versus the US.
Take the likes of Black Rock, which is using the money of everyday citizens
here to tell companies like Chevron and Exxon that they can't pursue certain amounts of
drilling projects. Yet they're not applying those same constraints even as a large shareholder
of Petro China at the exact same time on the other side of the world.
And the reason why is China would say close the door on your way
out and get the heck out of here if you're applying an emissions cap to
Chinese companies, but if you're applying those same constraints to US companies at the
same time, they will roll out in the red carpet. And so this
is China using quote unquote capitalism, and I put air quotes around it because
it's not real capitalism, it's mercantilism. But using this bastardized form of capitalism
as a way to undermine the US from within, and the smoke screen of
the climate is just the excuse of the trojan horse to do it. Yeah,
And since we're abroad here, India's a rising power that the next president
is going to have to deal with. And I think, for the first
time I can think of there are two candidates running for the GOP nation nomination
who both have parents from India. But India is not a singular place.
It's not monolithic at all, and both you and Haley are from different backgrounds
Brahm and Hindu. She's seek Do you see that this inform Do you think
this informs a different perspective on how your administration might deal with India or how
you look at the rise of India from Haley or from politicians who don't have
any family and relational background to these countries. I don't, I mean,
frankly, I don't think it does. What probably informs my journey as being
a first generation kit of immigrants and the fact that I've lived the American dream
with parents that came to this country with no money and through merit and hard
work and dedication have gone on to live an American dream and found multi billion
dollar companies in ways that my parents never imagine. That's what gives me,
I think, a deeper sense of gratitude to this country, and so that
experience definitely does inform the way I'll lead. I happen to believe that better
relations with India is important as part of our way of declaring economic independence from
China and securing ourselves with some of the risks of China. But I don't
think that my being Indian American informs that view. Now, if somebody is
going to be able to improve our relationship with India to where it needs to
be, it better, darn will be somebody with the name of a Kwa
MASLAMI I suppose, But I think that I'm doing that. My capacity is
not a hyphenated American, but as an American. Well, how about the
miss the potential problems with India that could mirror some of the problems that came
with our alignment initial alignment with China through things like wto et cetera. To
Christmas point, India's obviously arising power is hugely important in geopolitics and in economics
around the world, and for our country, especially for example, some companies
that because of the sort of de alignment or gradual de alignment, incremental delignment,
potential de alignment we're experiencing with China, are picking up and moving their
operations to India, which is a country that we frankly don't see eye to
eye with on everything. Sort of from a kissingery and perspective, that's quite
all right, But do you fear that American businesses will replicate some mistakes that
were made with China businesses, politicians and that mercantilist sense, does driving people
towards India risk making some of those same mistakes. I think the risk exists
absolutely, and I think that we need to be conscious of those risks by
making sure that has to play by the same set of rules that we do
when it comes to state owned enterprises or subsidies or otherwise. But I think
that the dangerous status quo is unacceptable. Well, we are now dependent on
an adversary in communist China for our entire modern way of life, from the
shoes on our feet to the phones in our pockets to ninety five percent of
the over the counter pharmaceuticals that you get at the pharmacy to even our own
military relying on equipment coming from China. That's unacceptable. And so the first
best solution that I stand by, and I think I have offered probably the
clearest plan for how to achieve is onshore much of that production, as much
of it as we can to the United States of America. But I am
so serious about declaring economic independence from China that we will have to supplement that
with improved relationships with the likes of South Korea and Japan and Australia and India
as well. But that's the second best alternative to bring as much as we
can to the US, and we better don well make sure none of those
countries exploit us. And that's why I favor bilateral trade relationships at the US
negotiat. It's rather than these multilateral agreements that have been saddled with a lot
of anti American garbage, including by the way, the climate change agenda to
tie to what we talked about earlier. And these same people who push these
far that these are military capacities abroad, also fancy themselves kind of the conscience
of the world on foreign policy. They're quick to lecture you on Israel and
Ukraine. You're the only Republican candidate major canaon in this cycle. At always
pushed back on both of the narratives in Washington, d C. On defense
with those countries. But I noticed that there are tens of thousands of people
getting killed in Sudan and no one in Washington d C. Blinks. I
wonder if you're seeing, is there a link between US overseas sanctimonium when it's
profitable. Why is the difference here with all these people who stand on stage
and lecture you on their morality of their foreign policy. Well, lecturing crowd
has nothing to say, for example, even about what Ozerbaijan is doing one
hundred and twenty thousand Armenian Christians that just in September were displaced from Nagono Karabakh,
with actually the US subsidizing Azerbaijan's efforts to do it. Not a peep
from either major political party. And the reason it has nothing to do with
good versus evil or in Sudan or anywhere else. It has to do with
really which you know. I mean to take Ozerbaijan Armenia example. Azerbaijan is
a really well organized lobby in the United States, and so Ozerbaijan's lobby was
more successful than Armenia. That's what it comes down to. And so my
view is that just as as a father, my moral obligation is to my
family. As the US president, my sole moral duty is to the people
of this country, not any other one. Now that's not isolationist. I
think that that requires engaging in multiple different situations in different ways. But there's
only one filter that I'll use for that engagement, and that is what advances
the interests of American citizens here at home. That's the going to lead this
country. And I think that the country deserves a president that actually prioritizes its
own citizens. That's how other countries are led. There's no reason that the
United States should operate in a disadvantage. You know, it's been interesting to
watch Republicans and Republican voters sort of discover exactly how radical the left is when
it comes to things like sex and gender. And I don't know if you
follow the story of Ion Hersili is conversion to Christianity, as she's written about
it, but kind of fascinating. She cites Dominion by Tom Holland and this
idea that a lot of our sort of ethics in the United States and in
the West are fundamentally derived from the philosophy of Christ. They are sort of
thoroughly Christian, and people who bulk at Christianity and religion are ultimately still demanding
the world follow Christian ethics or ethics that can't be divorced from their Christian heritage.
Do you sort of share that perspective? How important is that worldview?
Is that foundation to your own worldview and to the way that you approach politics.
It's foundational. I think it's true that this nation was founded on those
judayo of Christian principles. I think I might even state it more broadly,
maybe in a way that Thomas Jefferson may have, the guy who happened to
sign the Declaration of Independence, who was a Deist extually not a traditional Christian
himself, but shared those same values as I do myself. I mean,
I'm Hindu. I'd be the first Hindu president of the United States. But
what are my beliefs. I believe there's one true God. I believe we
put us here for a purpose, that we have a duty to realize that
purpose. That were equal because God resides in each of us. I was
raised in a faith based household, faith focused household where my parents instilled in
me a strong set of Certainly they raised us in very traditional values, you
know, through my teenage years. Like many people probably left that, but
maybe you've come back to it as an adult with a greater conviction. But
they raised just in a household that believe that family is the foundation. Marriage
is sacred. Abstinence before marriage is the way to go. Divorce is not
just some option that you prefer and select when things don't go well. The
good things in life involve a sacrifice. That there's more to life than just
this life on earth, but an eternal life ahead. That there's more to
life than the aameless passage of time, you know. And it's funny because
when I went to say next high school, Saints Abra in Cincinnati. You
know, it's Catholic high school with a very rigorous religious education in the Bible,
and I read the Ten Commandments for the first time. There's one true
God, don't take his name in vain, observe the Sabbath, respect your
parents, don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat, don't commit adultery,
don't Covet. That's when it hit me for the first time. These values
don't belong to Hindus, they don't belong to Christians, they belong to God.
But they absolutely are the values that this nation was founded on. And
I think that when we lose that moral fabric, you know, as John
Adams famously said, our constitution was made for a moral people, I do
think that that's a real deficit in our country. And so, you know,
will I stand for those values affirmatively without apologizing for them, Absolutely,
And I think those where conservatives have become lazy just criticizing the left narrative of
race, gender, sexuality, and climate without offering our own vision individual family,
nation. Job that beats race, gender, sexuality, and climate if
we have the courage to actually stand for something, and I think it's been
a long time since we've got a leader who does. Some of that is
through policy, at least reversing government policies that are hostile to religious liberty or
to family formation or otherwise. But some of this is also just through the
revival of national character. And that's I think half the job of the US
president isn't just policy, but it is the revival of character in our country
through the example we set in the way we lead this nation. And I
take that pretty seriously as an important part of my job as the youngest person
ever to run for US president as a Republican, it is my job and
responsibility to make faith and family and hard work and patriotism cool again for young
Americans. And I think I can do that in a way that frankly,
nobody else in this race can. We already are, and that's the way
I'm going to lead this country. The Vike Ramaswami is running for president of
the United States. His website is Vivike twenty twenty four dot com. Sir,
thank you so much for joining the show. I appreciate you guys having
it. Thank you all right. Well, that was presidential candidate the Vake
Ramaswami. Once again, I'm joined by Christopher Bedford of the Common Sense Society.
Chris, some really interesting stuff there. I wanted to open the interview
with that question about the DeSantis campaign because it's been weighing on my mind for
like months now. I was somebody who was very actually pretty excited about the
DeSantis campaign, and I honestly think that his approach to Trump may be the
one thing. I mean, I don't think anybody really was going to beat
Donald Trump. But if he did have a chance of beating Donald Trump,
I think that may have been if he had taken the AVC approach to Trump.
He may be really competitive in different states right now. He may be
really competitive in national polling right now as opposed to being done by two digits.
So I think the vik had an interesting answer to that he did,
And another model he could have followed is the Galvin Narsom model for Joe Biden.
That's something that would have still had him very high even though he wouldn't
be running in polls. And so that was an interesting thing to kind of
look back on. And you know, I was very excited for Rona Santas's
run. I didn't think that he should skip his moment. I thought it
was important to go right now. But what Revic said is what I've heard
from the start. Now, remember when this whole campaign began. One of
the things that made the Senus different from like Nikki Haley a lot of other
people. Just one of the things was that he was very skeptical of the
war in Ukraine and the US effort yes, that lasted a single interview as
far as I can tell. And I said, what's changed here? What's
changed here to friends of mine who are in the now, and the response
was donors, donor flip out, donor freakout over that sort of thing,
And well, he's I still think he's trying to ride both sides of that
fence. It's not he's much more, I think, willing to buck the
establishment, the neo conservative establishment of the Republican Party, than any Republican candidate.
That is completely true. I agree with that, other than Trump was
in twenty sixteen or in twenty twelve in that primary. It's still different,
but it's it's disappointing because he was someone that didn't seem to be interested in
political ambivalence. And from what I both of us have sort of poked and
prodded into that world to figure out what's going on, and it actually,
to me does seem like the vag Ramaswami's answer is correct that there was a
lack of flexibility in that sort of campaign donor driven, consultant driven ecosystem,
and which thanks for someone like Governor the Santis is he blew up open the
window on what things Republicans are able to talk about. In the first place,
he is the leader on the ground for our Republicans are able to go
after corporate power and say hell no to big major industries in their states.
What are you going to do? What are you going to do about it?
The way they left us? All the time, We're going to fight
for our constituents. But by the time he is running for president, the
Overton window had shifted enough that well, he's still the only one of the
only ones who's proven to actually be willing to do it. Lots of Republicans
talk. The other Republicans on the debate stage are willing to talk tough.
I don't think they'd actually do it like Governor de Santis has done, but
they're willing to say it. So that kind of closes some of his lanes.
And being a sitting governor who's not self funded and he's not a billionaire,
he's a veteran civil servant, he doesn't have the ability to just tell
those donors to get lost, and those donors have a big impact. So
those places where Vivek is able to go outside of the Overton window and push
it on Ukraine policy, on Israel policy on big corporate tax policy, wherever
he wants to push it, he's got more freedom. And unfortunately, well
to Santis trailblaze that everyone's caught up. Just the DC consultant world, I
think really infected that campaign, and we're seeing more reporting to the extent that
people in that world are understanding it to be true as well. Now,
any other candidates, Chris, we should say, we are willing to talk
to you on the podcast. We're willing to try to make it work.
But it's sorry Sean and Moley, but we have to know that you're gonna
be gained for a podcast because I'm not doing talking points on the show.
That's not fun for listeners and it's a waste of everybody's time because they do
that on cable news basically every day. Were there any other actually you had
that great idea for the question about the differences in background between the families of
Nikki Haley and the viag Ramaswami as it pertains to India, which is a
hugely important geopolitical and economic force right now, anything stand out to you from
that exchange. No, I didn't expect. I didn't expect any of it
person really running for presidential politics to dive down into the sectarian differences between different
religions in India, which have since the British withdrawal from India have oftentimes gotten
very violent and been dangerous. But I did think it was interesting that he
talked about what the shift from China is going to take and that part of
that shift from China is going to be close to work with India and South
Korean others. And you know, if we'd had more time, I would
have liked to go back and ask him more because India is a rising in
power economically, but all the jobs that are disappearing in America due to AI
or where India's filled the gap, I think AI is going to have a
devastating impact on India's economy because I mean, whether it's in design or website
building or accounting, those are things that are getting replaced. So I wish
we had a little more time to talk about that, but happy we got
to touch on it at all, and in the limited time we have on
the campaign. Traip Yeah, no, you know, we went for thirty
minutes, which is a pretty good get with a presidential candidate because they always
have a crazy, scheduling, busy, busy, busy. Yes, they
you know, a little traveling, little talking, little meaning, all that
good stuff. The last question I think was especially interesting in the spirit of
the Common Sense Society to actually kind of, you know, go to the
greatest depths that any candidate possesses, and you know, sort of plumb the
depths of their political philosophy. You know, we could have man. After
the interview wrapped, Chris, you and I were both talking about how many
follow up questions we had just to that question in and of itself. I'm
glad we got, you know, the question in I'm glad we got to
hear it from him, you know, and I was curious to see it.
I'm doubtful that his answers on religion are going to fly with a lot
of the socially conservative question voters. I would have loved to get into his
position on marriage. I would have loved to get into whether he thinks everything
he just said relates to his position on Israel. That there were a lot
of places to go with that. No, maybe we can talk to him
again later. There you go. Well, Christopher Bedford of the Common Sense
Society, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you all right.
I'm Emily Joshinsky, culture editor here at The Federalist. We'll be back soon
with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the friend