Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told Newsmax Wednesday that his campaign is hitting the ground running with "specific policy solutions."
"I think we are already leading this field with specific policy solutions," Ramaswamy said during an appearance on Newsmax's "National Report." "Executive order 11246. It mandates that anybody who does business with the federal government, which includes over 20% of the U.S. workforce employed by those companies, has to adopt these race-based quotas. That is wrong.
"That created not only race-based affirmative action, but racism in every direction in this country."
"I'm the only Republican candidate, that I'm aware of, in history to expressly pledge to actually cross that out and end affirmative action in this country," he continued. "I've made other proposals, from abandoning climate religion to using the military to decimate the cartel south of Mexico and solve the fentanyl problem to shutting down government agencies, from the Department of Education to the FBI."
Ramaswamy said that other Republicans are "careful to dance around these issues" and are reluctant to raise them in public, even if they agree with him.
The biotech entrepreneur also said that he believes America is going through a "national identity crisis."
"If you ask most people in this country, What does it even mean to be an American today? you just get that blank stare in response — and I think that's a problem," he said. "But I have a vision for what it actually does mean to be an American.
"Those are the ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago. From merit to free speech to self-governance over aristocracy — basic ideas that I genuinely believe an overwhelming majority of Americans agree on, and I'm running for president to revive them, not just for us, but for the next generation."
When asked how he could beat former President Donald Trump, Ramaswamy said, "It's not by ignoring his base and trying to piece something else.
"To the contrary: I think Trump's base is an important part of my base and vice versa. I think the way that we win this is by showing that we are really the ones taking the America First agenda to the next level. As I often say, to put America first, we need to rediscover what America is."
"I give him credit for everything he did, but now, to take that to the next level, we need a new outsider, and I don't think that you get to be an outsider again," he continued. "You get to be an outsider once."
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