Democrat presidential primary candidate Marianne Williamson told Newsmax on Monday that she's running for president in 2024 because she believes America needs "an economic U-turn."
"We need a new beginning," Williamson said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren." "When my career began, somebody going through something really terrible … that was the exception, not the rule. We're living in a time where people living with serious anxiety, lives sort of falling apart, almost seems more like the rule than the exception. So I asked myself, 'What's the difference?'
"You know what the difference is?" she asked. "Among other things, but a big factor in those days, when my career started, we still had a thriving middle class. I've come to realize that you cannot overestimate the factor, the role, of chronic economic anxiety that the majority of Americans live with. This is in the richest country in the world, so we need fundamental economic reform. We don't just need a little tweaking."
The solution, according to Williamson, is "universal healthcare," "free college tuition and tech school," "free childcare," and "paid family leave."
"Everything that I'm talking about here ... they are simply that which is granted to the citizens of every other advanced democracy," she said. "Everything I'm talking about is a financial stimulant. The things that we spend our money on now are financial depressants, except to the very few who are rewarded by them."
When asked how she would solve the border crisis, Williamson said the first thing she would do is "have a real talk with the American people."
"I think that we need to go back to our own first principles, which includes the Declaration of Independence," she said. "All men are created equal. And if you look at the history of the United States, including any of us, unless we are descended from enslaved people or indigenous people on this planet, all of us came from immigrants at some point."
"The demonization of the immigrant has made us vulnerable to terrible lies," she continued. "The truth of the matter is when we talk about the crisis at the border, the worst crisis at the border is the humanitarian crisis, not being experienced by us, but by all of these people who are trying to escape situations so horrible the average American cannot even imagine."
When pressed on what concrete actions she would take as president, Williamson said she "would not diminish the asylum principle … [or] the asylum laws."
"America needs to look in the mirror," she said. "We have to look at how much American foreign policy in Latin America, over decades now, has contributed to the destabilization, has contributed to the lack of democracy, has contributed to the lack of the economic stability, which now makes life so horrible for so many."
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