Vivek Ramaswamy on Fox News' Hannity on 8.16.23
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00:00 primary shows Vivek Ramaswamy is now surging. Take a look at these numbers he has. Now Donald
00:05 Trump's still up by a significant amount, 53 percent. Governor DeSantis is in second place,
00:10 16. And Vivek Ramaswamy for the first time with double digits, 11 percent. And by the way,
00:18 you know, pretty healthy growth. Anyway, joining us now is Vivek Ramaswamy. But before that,
00:22 let's take a look at him and a confrontation he had. It's gone kind of viral in exchange with
00:29 a voter. I believe this was in Iowa. Take a look. I don't have a negative view of same-sex couples,
00:40 but I do have a negative view of a tyranny of the minor. I believe that we live in a country where
00:46 free adults should be free to dress how they want, behave how they want. That's fine.
00:50 But you don't oppress, you don't become oppressive by foisting that on others.
00:55 And that especially includes kids, because kids aren't the same as adults.
00:58 And so I think adults are free to make whatever choices they want. I respect that you may have
01:01 a different opinion, and that's OK. Part of what makes our country great is that you and I can
01:05 be civil and have this conversation. Now, it hasn't all been work, but
01:10 Vivek also found some time to have a little bit of fun in the campaign trail,
01:16 rapping a little bit of Eminem. Let's see how he does.
01:18 Open this mouth, but the words won't come out. He's joking. How everybody's joking.
01:24 Now the clocks run out. Time's up. Oh, wow. Snap back to reality. Oh,
01:29 anyway, Vivek Ramaswamy joins us right now. Sir, how are you?
01:41 It's certainly a better job than I could do, so I'm not going to be critical,
01:45 but I wouldn't quit your day job on the rapping thing. You know, I thought you said something
01:51 very nice. I thought you said something very key in that exchange with that voter,
01:56 that adults consenting adults, Americans believe in freedom. That's none of our business. I agree
02:02 with you on that issue. The question is, and where the controversy comes in, is people on the left,
02:09 they want to indoctrinate our children. They feel that their values are superiors
02:13 to parental values. And I say, excuse me, teach them reading, writing, math, science, history
02:19 and computers. And then keep your personal views to yourself and let parents instill the values
02:27 they cherish and believe in. Is that a fair summation of where you stand?
02:31 Absolutely spot on, Sean. And the reality is kids aren't the same as adults.
02:38 So if gender dysphoria is such a condition of suffering, then why on earth are we going out
02:44 of our way to create even more of it by spreading this ideology through young kids in our schools?
02:50 What's really happened, Sean, is we have a tyranny of the minority in this country.
02:55 We used to protect against the tyranny of the majority. And so that's where the
02:58 LGBT rights movement came from is protect their rights. Well, my view is if you're an adult,
03:03 live how you want. But what we have in this country is a new tyranny of a fringe minority.
03:08 And I refuse to say that that somehow changes the language we use, changes how women compete
03:13 in sports, changes which bathrooms people use and let alone change the way we indoctrinate
03:18 our children. No, I stand against that kind of tyranny and I will do it with civility.
03:23 I will do it with respect for every human being. That was a self-described pansexual
03:27 who confronted me with what she thought were some difficult questions. She and I disagreed.
03:31 And so it's not that I look down on her as a human being, but I refuse to abide by this new tyranny
03:37 of this cult. And that's what I stand for. Let me ask you. I know the issue of your
03:42 of your voting record has come up quite a bit lately. Election records in Ohio's Franklin
03:48 County, where you live, show that you registered to vote in November 2021, not as a Republican,
03:54 but as unaffiliated. You did say you voted for the libertarian presidential candidate in '04
04:00 and didn't vote in the presidential election again until 2020 when you voted for Donald Trump.
04:06 Why? I mean, why did you have a lack of interest? Well, the truth is, Sean, I have.
04:11 Well, the truth is, for most of my 20s, like so many people in their 20s, I understand where
04:16 they're coming from. Young people are disaffected from professional politicians. George Bush,
04:21 John Kerry didn't inspire me. John McCain, Barack Obama didn't inspire me. Mitt Romney,
04:26 Barack Obama did not inspire me. So like so many young people, I was badly disaffected
04:32 from professional politicians. I think Donald Trump was the single greatest president we've had
04:37 in my lifetime, the single greatest president in the 21st century. And so when he delivered,
04:42 I voted for him in 2020. Why did you not? Why did you not vote for him in 2016? Did you not
04:47 see the potential? Because I didn't believe it. Exactly. I was skeptical. I was a jaded person
04:54 in my 20s. And like so many people in their 20s, Sean, I get it. I'm not a professional politician.
04:59 You could tell from the Eminem rap or otherwise. We are reaching young people in this campaign
05:04 in droves, Sean. Many of my supporters are young. We're bringing them to our party and our movement
05:10 for the first time. And a part of the reason why is I understand it. I get it. I'm a millennial.
05:16 I got my first job in 2007, right on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis in New York City.
05:23 So I understand why many millennials are jaded. The 2008 bailouts that came under a Republican
05:29 administration, which was just crony capitalism. To me, I don't care much about the distinctions
05:34 between traditional Republicans or traditional Democrats. The truth is, in many ways, I could
05:38 care less for either of them. I stand for the America first movement, putting the interests
05:43 of this nation first. That means putting all Americans first, even those in Hawaii,
05:48 even those on the south side of Chicago where I visited or Kensington in the inner city of
05:53 Philadelphia, where traditional Republican candidates don't go. I think that putting
05:57 America first means putting all Americans first. And yes, I'm using the Republican Party as a
06:03 vehicle to advance that agenda, not as a professional politician, but as a successful
06:07 businessman and outsider. And yes, somebody who is a member of that different generation.
06:13 Let me ask you one last question, and it might be a point of disagreement between us. In one
06:18 of your books, you talked about the inheritance tax rate being as high as 59 percent. And you
06:23 supporting that saying passing wealth from parents to children breeds inequality and
06:28 hereditary aristocracy. This this is all money people have already paid taxes on.
06:35 Why would you let the government basically take another bite of the apple and steal more money?
06:40 You know how this game works, Sean. That's an opposition research photograph of the book.
06:45 Lift out, put it on Twitter. The reality is the context I was going through in that book was a
06:50 thought experiment saying, let's bring the income tax down to a flat tax as low as possible. And in
06:56 that context, that's how high the inheritance tax would have to be to make up for it. To be clear,
07:01 I didn't write candidate books. I wrote it thoughtful. I wrote three thoughtful books,
07:05 and I was honest in doing thought experiments in those books. But the opposition research is now,
07:09 as you know, well, and you do not go to a lot of lies, but you do not support that.
07:14 Do you support any inheritance tax? I absolutely do not support that. I I absolutely reject that.
07:19 That's it. That's a question. So just to be clear, you support a low tax, no death tax, no death tax
07:26 at all. No change to the status quo. That's what I support on the death. Well, the status quo is
07:32 down. Taxes to a low 40 percent. You support 40 percent or you support nothing.
07:37 I support a 12 percent flat tax across the board of every kind,
07:42 including from inheritance to income to capital gains to call you a lower one. So you can.
07:47 On every measure across the board, income to estate, 12 and a half percent across the board.
07:54 All right, Vivek Ramaswamy, thank you. Appreciate you being with us. Coming up next,
07:58 Biden celebrating his one year anniversary of that so-called wonderful Bidenomics inflation