How Trump Will Make America Greater ft. Vivek Ramaswamy
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Okay, everybody, we have a real special treat. Someone who I am just really enjoying to get to know better and better, a great American patriot, and really honestly a gift to our movement, Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek, welcome to the studio. It's good to be here in person. And I got producer Andrew here as my security blanket. Great to have you, Vivek. And Vivek, you understand this. Your wife is a very accomplished throat surgeon, so you know what?

Losing the voice thing is no joke. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know I went through this in Pennsylvania when we were there together. That's right. You and I – and I can empathize because it happened to me during the campaign as well. I was talking too darn much. But, yeah, she's got some tricks up her sleeve. I think I even shared a couple with you when we were in Pennsylvania. This was all because of – Oh, is that right? Good. It's kind of helpful, isn't it? Very. I used it. Throat coat stuff. Very. All natural.

I told her I need to get the best advice for a man who needs to be heard. She said, who is it? Charlie Kirk. So she gave me the good stuff. So Vivek, you have a really important book out, and I want to emphasize that because we're all doing so many things. It's Truths by Vivek Ramaswamy. You guys should all check it out right now. Available where all books are sold. But first, I just want to kind of get your temperature, your impression of where we're at with this election. You gave a barn burner speech yesterday in Vegas at our event. That was a great event. Thank you. Thanks for putting it together. It was actually...

It's actually good to see even President Trump over the course of the day. So let's just track even the last few days. So I was in Oakland. We were actually doing part of the campus tour, which you guys have done a great job with. A lot of the Chaldean community comes out. A lot of Muslims in Michigan came out to that event. Oakland, Michigan, for the record. Oakland, Michigan. Yeah, Oakland, Michigan. Exactly. Oakland University in Michigan. And then I stopped back in Ohio. Then we did the event here in Arizona, in Phoenix yesterday, in Las Vegas yesterday. A lot of Filipino Americans, big Asian American theme last night.

So I think what you're seeing is a lot of people just saying that I don't care what I've been force fed for a long time. I'm going to do what's actually been better for my family, better for my life. And also it's not just that, hey, I want to vote for the better economy and the sealed border. All that stuff matters. But there's an added element which I sense, and I'm sensing it with the young people on the campuses, but I was even sensing it with the boomer crowd last night. Some sense of liberation of just saying that, you know what, this is my way of sticking it to the system.

And I think that that could turn what would be a victory into like something of a victory we haven't seen in our lifetimes, in our adult lifetimes. I don't think we're going to have seen a victory like the one that we have coming if we continue to execute. If we don't drop the ball to one yard line, which we can play a piece of tape here. I think it was actually against the Bengals. Oh, OK. Terrible, terrible. But no, but I want to I'm seeing this to the bake where I think that everyday Americans that aren't completely left wing, they've developed antibodies to the media.

where the attacks of the media doesn't attach anymore. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. And I like the use of the word antibodies. Natural immunity. Not only are they immune, because antibodies attack. They're ready to fight back, actually. Oh, that's interesting. You see that in the crowd a little bit last night. He was talking to this Filipino-American grandmother.

She said she's gone Democrat in the past. It's almost like this is my moment of liberation where, yes, I love what's good for the country, but it was also a little bit of a liberation energy last night, too. And I just want to make sure everyone is clear about this, that the tone of the country is screaming and begging for rejection of the left. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We see it everywhere. And that is kind of the subtext of this election, which is exactly what Kamala didn't want to have.

Oh, exactly. I mean, I don't know. I don't know that Kamala had fully formed wishes or not. I don't think I don't really think she is like a free agent as a human being. I think she is somebody who is manipulated and played like a pawn on a chessboard. But certainly her handlers, that's what they didn't want out of her. Now, I think they made a mistake in choosing her because she made it a lot harder for them to achieve that objective versus someone like Kelly, even from Arizona, I think could have ended up in retrospect being a more

compelling candidate for the Democrats if they weren't so beholden to their philosophy of identity politics. But nonetheless, the worst case scenario for them is that this election is a referendum on the worst of left wing woke progressive excess. That's exactly what it's become. I think the border crisis is an extension of the woke crisis, by the way. But all of that, I think, is what's on the table. And that's part of why I think we have a chance if we don't drop the ball in the one yard line, as you said.

to deliver probably the most decisive win of our lifetime. And I think that could be the single most unifying event this country has seen in the 21st century. Vivek is not doing hopium. We're not saying it's going to happen. The cockiness will not be tolerated. When I get cocky emails, I block you. When I get doomsday emails, I block you. I don't put up with it. Yeah. Okay.

But this is where I'm afraid we could be if we got a little too cocky. This is against your beloved Bengals. They recover the ball here. The Bengals throw what would be a pick six, and the Ravens fumble the ball on the one-yard line. Play cut 129. Rarity.

And Reed, the rookie. Reed weaving through traffic. Remains on his feet. Here's Reed. Across the 20. Across the 10. Looses the football. Into the end zone. Who's got it? Loose football. Reed started showboating a bit with the ball extended. And a pileup. It's going to be a touchback. How about that?

Now, just to be an equal opportunity offender here, because we know we have to win Philadelphia. Yeah. We went in Pennsylvania. By the way, looking at this is like a flashback to my childhood. This is Donovan McNabb throwing to, I think, Deshaun Jackson, and Terrell Owens is looking on. Unbelievable, yeah. So let's play cut 128. This is what our movement could be. Play cut 128. Very tough third down receiver.

McNabb loading up deep for Deshaun Jackson. He holds it in. Oh, wow. Did he get over the goal line? Did he get over the goal line? Yes, he did. Touchdown. Whoa. 61 yards. We got to make sure he broke the plane on that, guys. And the Cowboys, I think, might challenge.

Oh, it is very close. Dallas is challenged that the runner lost control of the football prior to going into the end zone. The evidence would lead me to believe that he did not break the plane before getting rid of the ball. And who knows what's going on inside that helmet. Not liking the look of that. And I think it's good. You're doing a service for us. I do think complacency ends up being an option. But I also think that I'm just a believer in it. It's the whole theme of my book. I believe in truth.

I'm not going to – I don't want to fake scare people. I don't want to fake optimize – make people optimistic either. But the truth of where we stand is that we are within striking distance of the most decisive win of our lifetime. We're going to have to execute to get there. You guys are doing a great job laying the pipes and plumbing and work that, frankly, our party has not been great at doing for a very long time. But with that execution all the way, sprinting through the tape at the finish –

I think November 6th could actually be the start line for making, as I said last night, four years from now, I don't want to say make America great again. I just want to say make America greater. And I think we're about there for a four-year period where we're done with the need to revive the past. But the four years ahead, I think, is what we're required to do it. So, yeah, none of that stuff we just saw, I would tell you that. So let's zero in on your book here. Sure. And it's a terrific book, and I love it. Thank you. In fact, I just...

I love lists because God loves lists. And that's actually your first truth. And we can spend as much or as little time on this as you'd like. What is the first truth in your book? First truth in the book is the same as I started with in my list of the 10 principles of truth in my campaign, which is God is real.

And I think that that's a why is that important right now? And then we can get into the content of it, which is pretty interesting considering that I come from a nontraditional faith against the backdrop of the Christian backdrop of the U.S.,

But I think the reason I put that number one is that I think we suffer a crisis of faith right now. I think secular atheism has become the new religion of the country and for the worse. I think it's deeply linked to the spread of depression and anxiety and a mental health epidemic that's spread across this country and especially our generation like wildfire.

And people are hungry to talk about God in the open again. And I had a funny event, actually. I was doing a lot of campaigning in Ohio. I mean, that's not a swing state because we've got to get stuff done in Ohio, too. Bernie Moreno is important. Bernie Moreno, we've got to get him across the finish line. And we've got this issue one thing, which I don't want to derail us on, but I've been very focused on that in my home state as well, which we've got to defeat and vote no on. But I was at an event where a guy tells me, he says, I'm a Democrat my whole life. I've been an atheist my whole life. And I read this chapter of your book.

and I am now a believer. And I said, wow, I did not intend to actually, with one chapter of this book, you know, convert, you know, bring an atheist along. But one of the things I do in that chapter is to make some of the best arguments for the existence of God while airing some of the strongest secular atheist arguments that are out there as well. A few facts that people may not know, Charlie, is when the Big Bang Theory came out, first of all, it was actually a Catholic who was a scientist and physicist who unearthed it, but the Catholic Church was thrilled because this actually suggests

that there is actually a divine creator. That's right. Time, place, and matter actually had a beginning, therefore a beginner. Exactly. So this idea that the Big Bang Theory or modern science somehow proves the existence of God, it's actually for most of our human history has been viewed actually in reverse with respect to things like the Big Bang Theory. And even communist China under Mao, which was actually hostile to religion and Christianity as well, actually viewed this as a threat to their worldview. Right.

I also, in the book, expose a little bit of, even in greater depth than I have. So this is the fourth book I've written. I tried to write one of these a year. Woke Inc. was my first one. In each of these books, I talk about my own faith, but I went into greater depth on that in this book as well. Let's talk about that. The book is Truths, and people can get it anywhere, right? Yeah, absolutely. Or is there a website you want to push them to? Yeah, wherever they want to get it, honestly. I'm in this to spread the message of the book, but I would be grateful if as many people read it and especially shared it with their kids as possible, too.

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So you go into your faith in the book and your personal journey there. Please tell us about it. Yeah. So one of the things I discuss in the book is many people understand Hinduism to be some kind of polytheistic religion. Actually, the truth is the way I describe myself is I'm an ethical monotheist. I believe there's one true God. Yeah. I mean, it's deeply intertwined with the Judeo-Christian values that undergird this country. And I think that's a very important thing.

And the reason that, you know, I didn't have necessarily the Ten Commandments as the Ten Truths, but the reason I model it, and I'm a big fan of lists as well, is I do think that we as human beings need to take that divine order and make it very practical in the way we live our lives. I read the Ten Commandments for the first time when I went to St. X High School in Cincinnati, where I went to high school.

But it didn't feel like I was reading them for the first time because that was the same value set that I was raised in, the same worldview that this country, I think, was built on, the same view that our founders had of God. That's the view that I share as well, that there's one true God and he puts us here for a purpose and it's our duty to realize that purpose. And I think it helps me a little bit reach people who are at least secular atheists with at least reinstilling a belief in God, like that man in Ohio, who

Even though my belief system and at least my value system, I should say, theology may be a little different, but the value system is deeply aligned with the Christian worldview.

I think that if I'd called myself a Christian, I don't think I would have been able to bring that guy along to at least faith in the idea of God. But the idea that I'm able to do this as somebody who's looking at this from a different perspective, I hope puts me in a position to open more hearts and minds in this country to the idea of God and also to living a moral life grounded in the idea that these ideals aren't just secular inventions but are divinely inspired.

And so that's something that I talk about in the book as well. Let's comment on one of those elements, which is a society's need to believe in God. Can you comment on how America has become more secular and how we have lost our rootedness almost completely?

As if we're cut flowers, if you will. Yeah, sure. It's like the first of the Ten Commandments got it right for a reason. And my own worldview and the religion I was raised in sees it the same way. There's one true God. But when you stop believing in the real thing, you start believing in false gods instead. You could take the biblical analogies of God.

The golden calf. Well, it didn't take very long for them to build the false idol. You could take even Blaise Pascal, who's a famous scientist. He famously said about 400 years ago, if there's a hole the size of God in your heart and God does not fill it, something else will instead. That's exactly what's going on in our country.

climate change movement, which is also the second, actually, it's the second chapter of this book. It falls after the God chapter for a reason. That is a religion in this country. It is a substitute for a belief in true God. You're going to find a different substitute for that and all the rituals to go along with it. You don't wear a hair shirt, fine. You're going to wear a hair shirt in the form of limiting your use of fossil fuels or flog yourself. And it's funny, almost every religious tradition has one of these types of sacrificial ritualistic actions. That's what the modern climate religion's about.

There's a chapter in this book about entitled boringly, there are two genders. I expose some of the best arguments for the so-called trans view of the world. But that too is a religion because it rests on all kinds of contradictory suppositions.

But from the climate movement to the trans movement to the woke movement to you could think about even why is it that we pledge allegiance to other countries? Why are more people pledging allegiance to the flag of Ukraine than that of the United States of America? When you stop believing in something, be it God or in this case, you can even talk about believing in your own nation. You start pledging allegiance to new idols, praying to new idols, pledging allegiance to new flags instead. And that's exactly what's going on in our country right now.

Well, Vivek, you inspired something. I don't know if you saw this story, but I mean, the research, go ahead and throw up 133. This is a crazy story. You know, we're in the midst of a heated election season, so I don't know if it's getting the attention it deserves.

But this U.S. study on puberty blockers, they are not releasing it because they basically found that puberty blockers don't help the mental health of children. In fact, they might hurt it. And they're not releasing the findings because of politics. Oh, it's the same thing. So you could draw an analogy between these two vastly disparate subjects, right? You could see the same thing happening with respect to climate science, which actually Steve Koonin's book, for example, exposes this.

I talk about this here as well. It's the same pattern where it's not science if there's selective disclosure of what conclusions you arrive at. Of course. It's actually just an agenda disguised as science. I think that that's one of the threads through this entire book. I start with God is real, but you look at every one of the other topics I address in this book. Reverse racism is racism. The climate change agenda is a hoax. And that is, yes, I stand by that. That's the title of chapter two. I want to spend time on that. Yeah. We could talk about the trend. There are two genders chapter, but

One of the common threads through the first half of this book is when you stop believing in the real thing, you start believing in false versions of it instead. And the second half of the book is the same thing as it relates to national identity. And one of the chapters is nationalism is not a bad word. And the civic revival and that civic deficit I think is an important part of what we're missing in the country as well. And so there's a lot of different subjects the book explores. But in some ways the thesis is if we revive faith and if we revive patriotism and belief in our own civic self –

then actually a lot of our other problems are automatically going to melt away because they're just symptoms of that deeper crisis of meaning. We could spend infinite time on that topic. Let's talk about the climate change one, if we can. You have a very eloquent and precise take on the climate change agenda. And in fact, we've done now three campus events, two during the day, one in the evening. Every single one, climate change has come up. Absolutely. First, comment on the climate change

Sure. So what I try to do in this chapter of the book certainly is to start with hard facts and to separate the questions we're asking. So Wittgenstein formerly said that most major philosophical problems are just problems of language. I think the same thing is true of the climate discussion is this question of is climate change real? There's so much packed into that versus dissecting the actual questions underlying it. The first is our global surface temperatures going up.

The answer to that question, I review the data as dispassionately as I can. The answer to that question actually ends up being yes, slightly. Global surface temperatures in general are going up. I highlight some intellectual dishonesties where we had a five-year streak in the early 2000 teens where nobody said anything about it when they actually went down. But if you look over the course of the last 60, 70 years, it is an upward trend in global surface temperatures. Fine.

Now, the second question is, are we sure that's as big as we say? Well, actually, a lot of those temperature measurements are taken in areas of cities where you actually have ground heating, which is not the kind of climate change that would worry you anyway. But the real question to ask is, A, is it a consequence of man-made behavior? That becomes less clear. Is

Is it now a consequence of man-made behavior, specifically the release of carbon dioxide? Then it becomes even less clear. But what I do in most of that chapter is ask the question that nobody's asking is, even if global surface temperatures are going up and even if man-made causes and even if carbon dioxide is one of them, though the evidence for that is less than you might think, are we sure that that is a bad thing for humanity? And it turns out if you look at the evidence and the effects that it has on human life,

There are actually surprisingly positive effects for flourishing of human beings on planet Earth as a consequence of global surface temperatures going up by a little bit. Here's a basic one. Bjorn Lomborg has been great on this issue, pointing out the facts. Eight times as many people die of cold temperatures rather than warm ones. And yet we're sitting here worrying about a microscopic right now increase in global surface temperatures.

The right answer to all temperature-related deaths is more plentiful and abundant access to fossil fuels, the very thing that climate fanatics are telling us not to do. And the Earth is more covered by green surface area, plant life, today than it was 100 years ago because carbon dioxide is plant food and they tend to grow in slightly warmer temperatures. These are hard, indisputable facts.

I'll give Alex Epstein credit for this one, too. The climate disaster related death rate is down by 98 percent over the last century. Think about that. Why is that down? The climate disaster related death rate? It's because fossil fuels have actually powered increased improvements in technology.

I don't want to bring red herrings into this, but I think they're all connected. Even when we think about being pro-life, right? You and I, we share, all three of us at this table, deep pro-life commitments. Well, it's not an accident that a culture and a country that abandons its value on life in all of its forms, including in the womb and in unborn life,

also completely disregards the impact on actual life. Look at actual effects on mortality. That isn't part of the climate change discussion at all, because actually what we're seeing is a decline in mortality, not only because of greater use of fossil fuels, but in part, and this will make a lot of people mad, but it's a fact, in part because of slight increases in global surface temperatures. What is the ultimate objective aim and goal of the climate change agenda?

The ultimate aim is to make the United States of America the third world nation that the rest of the world is not abiding by. So they want the rest of the world to catch up. You want to know one word? Equity. This isn't about anything other than equity. Greta Thunberg herself brings this up. It's about climate justice. They want the rest of the world to catch up with the United States while we flog ourselves and China laughs at every step of the way. That's what the agenda is about. You've rarely ever find...

There are Marxists who are not crazy about the climate change thing, but you almost never find a climate change zealot that isn't a Marxist. That's exactly right. And here's the thing with the new Marxism, right? And I'm always careful about trying to overuse these words.

The old Marxism used to be about economic equality, right? So the idea that you were the proletariat, you need economic equality with the bourgeoisie. What happened with the new forms of Marxism is they completely abandoned the economic vision and the foundation of it to say instead it's based on race or gender or sexuality. And now using climate change as a vector to force that equality, it's almost like the old school OG Marxists felt like they got a little left behind. And so that's a funny evolution that I talk about in this book as well.

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So Vivek, the climate change agenda, why is it that the younger you tend to be, the more you care about the climate change issue? And you said something very profound at UNC Chapel Hill. You do not think it ranks on the top 100 issues facing America. That's right. And the reason it doesn't rank in the top 100 issues facing America is I would focus on issues that are unambiguously negative for us unless we fix them.

It is not yet clear to me, it is far from clear to me, that anything relating to global surface temperatures going up is even bad for us. What is actually going on is young people are lost. It's not just true of young people, Charlie. It's true of people of every generation. But especially young people are hungry for purpose and meaning and identity right now. We want to belong to something bigger than ourselves, yet we can't even answer what it means to be an American. Individual, family, nation, and God beat race, gender, sexuality, and climate together.

But in some ways, we as a conservative movement, while we've been really good at

identifying the hypocrisies on the other side, we haven't yet been as good as I think we need to be in articulating our own alternative vision. And I think that's how we actually defeat the poison in the end is by melting it to irrelevance, dilute it to irrelevance. So the book starts with God is real. If we see a revival of faith in this country, I have no doubt in my mind, climate fanaticism automatically goes away right there with it. So Vivek, there's an interesting, I should put the, there's a image we can throw up here. New

In a first among Christians, young men are more religious than young women. And so I want to ask you about why do you think – and Charlie has made some great points that we have so many – and you saw it firsthand. We have so many young women that are coming along to this stuff. Yeah.

But we I mean, it's undeniable that young men are seeming seemingly getting this early. Yeah. And I think the women are going to catch up. I think they are actually. But but but this is what is behind this. And do you address it in your book? Why is the American first movement resonating with these young men? Why is God, religion, purpose, all this stuff hitting them first?

Look, I think young men have been told to shut up, sit down, do as you're told for a really long time, to apologize for who we are, apologize for masculinity. And I say this not only as a, you know, not young anymore, but relatively young man myself. I'm a father of two sons. I think about this a lot in terms of what country and what world we're raising those two boys into.

And I think that right now, in a certain sense, I mean, what is what is think about Christ teachings? Think about most world religions are the same way to welcome you. If you've been rejected. No, no, no, no. Here's your actual purpose. Don't let somebody else define you. And a lot of young men, I think, as a consequence of being told that their masculinity is toxic, that they have to apologize or hide who they are, or that we have to somehow pretend that everything is exactly biologically the same between men and women, which, by the way, is one of the foundations of the trans movement. Anyway, all these things are linked.

I think are now looking for alternatives. And so that's part of, I think it's a good trend. And I do think that we're now seeing that trickle over a little bit to younger women as well. So I don't think it's going to stay with young men. I totally agree. But I think young men are starting that pendulum swinging back, which is going to be good for our culture.

And you know what? It's funny we're able to say this because any normal media, if you're talking about the difference between men and women, if you're not saying something negative about the men, it's not going to get their time. Here, I think it's actually a good trend started by young men that I think is going to have a positive impact on all young people, and I'm proud of that. Do you have a thought there? I would say that the trend I've seen is that if you're going to talk about genders at all, you have to sort of –

of go over the top and be so complimentary about how empowered women are. You have to so overdo it on one side and then either you say, well, men are important too. It's kind of a throwaway thought or men obviously have toxic masculinity and they've been part of the problem. And here's my view on this is just I'm interested in moving forward as a country foremost. And so I think you're totally right about that. But here's a way we can just peaceably move forward is, OK, well, they would say there was historical inequality and whatever else. OK, now we did the counter revolt thing. OK, so now we're done. Like we did it.

And how's that working out for you? It hasn't worked out so great, but we already did it. If you needed to check that box, that box is checked. Now let's just move forward past the self-flogging culture. If all this empowerment for young women, why does every single poll, research study, indicate that they are more anxiety-riddled, they're taking more antidepressants, they're more nervous, they're more unsure? Because women are not better off in a world in which men are also taught to hide who they are. Or to degrade men. To degrade them and to teach them to be more insecure. Everyone is worse off.

But this article, First Among Christians, I love this, that young men are actually leading the pendulum swing. I want to bring everybody along and not necessarily – I'm not rooting for that gender divide to persist. What I'm rooting for is actually just a bleeding edge to close that in a different direction for all young people. I agree. Everybody, go vote right now. Send us your early voting success story, freedom at charliekirk.com. That is freedom at charliekirk.com. Let me just read a couple right here.

Charlie just took my daughter with me and my granddaughter as well. We vote as a family. I make sure that I'll vote. Guys, I cannot emphasize this enough. The parent, son, parent, kid, like we're going to go vote and just come with me. That can multiply our movement by 20%. Totally. That's like a 20% peak where it's like, okay, just go bring your – by the way, we have at least like 10,000 success stories like that right now. Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Go vote and bring a family member.

What is the next truth you have in the book? Yeah, so one of them, to get to the second half of the book, is nationalism isn't a bad word. And that comes right after the alarming truth, or what should be boring to most people, there are three branches of government, not four. Now, the fact that you have to say this, somebody who's taken a fifth-grade civics class should be able to tell you that. They'll say, of course, Vivek. Of course that's true. Well, it turns out, I think that's probably the most important chapter of the book. Actually, I'll probably pause on that, is

The people we elect to run the government, they're not the ones who run the government. And this book comes out this year, has come out this year now. It's an important time for that chapter to hit home because the Supreme Court has completely changed the game. I mean, we're here looking at

Our main man here, Clarence Thomas, right here. I feel like if he was in the room with us. Chevron doctrine, right? Absolutely. So we're talking about overturning the Chevron doctrine. Can you educate our audience on that? It's kind of wonky. It's a really big freaking deal. Like it goes to the stuff that we fought the American Revolution for. And I know that that sounds crazy to say for a seemingly dry subject. The American Revolution was fought to say that we the people create a government that's accountable to us.

Turns out that's not the government we live in today, where most rules, most enforcement actions are taken by bureaucrats who were never elected to their positions and historically have been viewed as unfireable even by the people we actually do elect, millions of federal bureaucrats and three-letter agencies. That was worsened by a doctrine, and a little-known fact is even Scalia was, I think, one of his poorest dissenters.

decisions in favor of this doctrine at the time, the Chevron Doctrine, where they said that federal courts defer to the administrative agency's interpretations of the law that Congress passes, which ultimately puts them in the driver's seat. That was overturned this year in a case called Loper-Bright. That's a big freaking deal. And so this chapter looks at that post-Loper world.

It's not just Loper. There was also a big case two years ago called West Virginia versus EPA. That was a seismic. Right. So this one basically said that if this is if anything has a major economic impact or policy impact, thousands of dollars per person in the country, that's the threshold they set.

If that's the kind of impact it has and the agency is writing a rule, that rule is unconstitutional because it had to go through the process of democratically elected lawmakers. So just the combination of those two cases alone – and then there's a third one I got to mention, which is SEC versus Jarkesee. Yep.

That one said that, you know, what happens to these agencies is they have they write the rules, they enforce the rules, but they also have these judges that sit within their agencies that decide the cases. Sometimes usually 99 percent of the cases go in favor of the agency. Big surprise. That completely violates the separation of powers. The Supreme Court shot that down this year as well.

And agencies like the SEC and the EPA have a horrendous track record over the last several years in the Supreme Court and in the federal courts losing their cases. So think about this. If the top law enforcement agencies are failing to actually follow the law themselves, that breeds a distrust of the rule of law in our country. But the good news is the game has now changed because of the Supreme Court. So this book exposes what that post-Chevron, post-Loper, post-West Virginia versus EPA world looks like.

And it turns out if you combine that with the second Trump term where we're – and I have to include this – include that with a second Trump term not just to say that Trump got elected but like actually the values that got Trump elected get translated into action, which I'm keen on.

Then this is actually the stuff of reviving 1776 principles in America, 1789 principles, the Constitutional Convention. We actually turned that back into reality. And that's bottom up through litigation, where you have a lot of people who are unfairly persecuted by the regulatory state able to now go to federal courts for actual respite and rescue. But also President Trump. And, you know, I have my views on how we ought to do this. Top down, being able to say,

The executive branch has way overreached in its power. The administrative state technically sits under the executive branch. And so we're going to curb that. We're going to rescind all these regulations. We could fire millions of bureaucrats to go along with it. Personally, that's the mass deportation that I think is at the top of the list is the mass deportation of millions of unelected bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C., to the rest of the country in the private sector where they could probably do better work anyway.

And I think that we are, to your point, go vote now. We're within striking distance of making that true, both bottom up and top down. And certainly when I think about a second Trump term, that's the thing I'm most passionate about is gutting that administrative state. I'm a little I think there's two visions of America first here. I talk about this in the book, too. There's two strands of America first. The book is Truths, the Future of America First.

There's a strand of America First that says, you know, good people, people we respect, who I love, or colleagues, who might say that we need to use some of these regulatory agencies to advance a pro-worker, pro-American agenda. And I understand the temptation to do it, but I come down on the other side of this. I think the right answer is just to get in there and shut it down, shut it down fast, shut it down bigly, in a big way. And if you end up cutting some muscle, fine. You can always add that back, but don't take the risk of not cutting enough fat.

I think that makes our movement stronger when we're able to have that kind of debate. And I expose a little bit of that daylight, even within the America First movement in this book as well. Everyone, I want to tell you to vote no on Amendment 3. On November 5th, Florida residents will vote on Prop 3, which is to legalize marijuana. Look, Amendment 3 does not have time, place, or manner restrictions. It goes too far. This means if it passes, recreational marijuana would be allowed everywhere. 11 million registered voters in Florida and an estimated...

36% intend to vote no on Prop 3. So why are we against this? What does marijuana have to do with the minds of young people? Do you know it could reduce IQ points in young adults by an average of 8 to 10 points? This is about corporate greed. It's not about the voters. It's about making them wealthier. Now, here's the call to action, everybody. Vote no on

So let's emphasize the administrative state.

What is a one, two, three step move Trump can do like day one? You've done some research on this. Oh, yeah. There's a lot more authority the president has than people realize. Of course, because the executive branch sits under the U.S. president. So most of the New York Times pages will say President Trump's going to rule by fiat rule like a dictator because he wants to constrain the power of these agencies. It's the other way around. The Supreme Court has said these agencies do not have the power to be writing these rules. And so President Trump can exhibit humility.

for the executive branch to say, we never had the power to promulgate this nonsense anyway. So what are the steps? Here are the steps.

Put a constitutionally trained lawyer in every one of these agencies and say, which regulations failed the Supreme Court standards in the Chevron case and in the in the West Virginia University EPA case? That would be most federal regulations. Roll that up into one executive order and say those are null and void. On day one, we're not enforcing any of those. And we put them into the process for rescinding those regulations. Next step. Well, if you have 75 percent fewer regulations, that gives you what's called a rational basis for a mass headcount reduction.

So I use these words carefully because I love where you're going with this. Oh, yeah. I use these words carefully because historically what they would say is the civil service rules protect the bureaucrats from being fired. I talk about this in detail in the book. Those civil service rules do not apply to mass firings, especially if they're done with an organizational logic.

So if the organizational logic is the Supreme Court's told us these regulations are already unconstitutional, 75 percent of them are done by an executive order. Say we're not enforcing them and we're rescinding them. Well, then what the heck are these four million people doing sitting around here either? I'm not discriminating based on your political ideology or certainly your race or your gender. No, it's just a mass firing across the board, rationally tied to the number of regulations that you rescinded as well.

I think that could get done early. I think that could get done fast. I think it's going to take a combination of both having an understanding of how to massively streamline an organization, but to combine that with a little bit of the constitutional law here. So it takes a special sauce to, I think, get this done right. But personally, that's what I'm most passionate about. Get in there, get started quickly. Will there be some legal challenges? Absolutely. But the Supreme Court is on our side on this. They've already demonstrated that. This is the stuff of how you save a country.

And I think that if we go the other direction of saying that, hey, we got to replace some of these people at the FCC or pick your favorite agency, EPA, FTC, CFPB, and maybe get them to do some good stuff, Department of Education. No.

We have failed if we take that road. I think we see that temptation sometimes arise in our movement. I say forget about that. Get in there. Break it. Burn it. Burn the ashes. And save a country. If there's duplication right between certain cabinet agencies, you can just eliminate them. Oh, you can shut them down. It's what I call deleting. The delete function. It's the President Reorganization Act.

or something? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Presidential Reorganization Act of 1977. We talk about that in the book as well. There's certain provisions of that act that are unexpired which say that if it promotes efficiency of operations and government, promotes economy, a couple of different factors, the president already has the authority granted by Congress under that statute to shut down and reorganize that. So we could merge Department of Education

Department of Energy just you know or what would that look like? You could shut down the Department of Education move a couple of the workforce training functions to the Department of Labor and then the loan collections that are outstanding move it to Treasury that's what that looks like we go straight down the list. So just to be clear that Trump could if he were to win on day one just shut down the Department of Education. Yes absolutely. And without without Congress? Yes.

That is going to be a legally contested view. I think the Supreme Court's on our side of this. I think that if it falls into the categories, I believe it does, in promoting the efficiency of operations and government, promotes economy, and also actually eliminates redundant agencies through those redundancies, that's absolutely on the table. Where are there other redundancies that are obvious? You can talk about this a lot in the national security state. Now, this gets into territory that we probably are— DHS has a lot of this, too. Yeah, well, you could take them. It shouldn't even exist, DHS. I mean, George W. Bush, thanks.

Well, I mean, it's not just one. I mean, the redundancies across the board. That's probably best discussed after the election, given where we stand right now. But I do think that there are redundancies rife everywhere in the federal law enforcement and national security establishment. Can I ask a clarifying question? So Charlie has gone viral recently for saying you're not electing just a president. You're electing the 5000 people that he's going to appoint to positions of power. Yeah.

How do you put that idea together with the power that they would flex, that they would use, combined with the fact that we are –

sort of admitting that we want ultimately these agencies to have a limited power. So let's do the math on this. There's 4 million federal bureaucrats. A 75% headcount reduction means 3 million of them are out. That's still a million in. 5,000 is still a lot less than a million. So I'm not saying that there's no federal employees, right? But the key people you want are the people who are actually going to translate your agenda enacted by the people of this country into

into action. And you could make the argument that you're actually firing people that are ultimately going to try and sabotage your vision anyways. I mean, that's not what you're saying. That's not the argument you're making. I think that's important. But we saw this in the first Trump term. It's definitely true. You saw it in the first Trump term where these ideas would, or the policy agendas would get pushed down and they would fall apart somewhere along the way. Right. So there's two different, I appreciate you brought that up, Andrew. There's two different visions here. One is we have a bureaucracy populated by individuals who are the enemy. That's one view. And I'm sympathetic to that.

My view is slightly different. The bureaucracy is the enemy. And I think that that's going to have slightly different actions, even within America first year about what you would take. In my view, the bureaucracy is the enemy in the first place. And I think that we could go fast, go early. I think you've got to go early or else this system, it's like a beast. It finds a way to entrench itself and fight back. But but for now, I'll leave it at that in terms of what I think needs to happen. What's the next truth?

Yeah, so the next truth is we got to nationalism isn't a bad word. It's the N word that people are afraid to say. But I do think that actually there's a positive nationalism is the case that I make for. And here we here's also one of these areas where I think we can have probably room for debate, even in our own America First Movement. And that's part of what I second half of the book. First half of the book is about preaching truth to the left. The second half of the book is about.

opening up the conversations that I think make our own movement stronger. So I lay out the differences between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism. And historically, nationalism is associated with ethno-nationalism. And I'm not even starting from a standpoint that's inherently bad in every country. But in the American context, civic nationalism is the case that I make in this book. Oh, is Joe Biden speaking from Arizona? Biden visiting tribal lands to apologize.

for 150 years of boarding school abuse. They're always apologizing. Are you making that up or is this? No, no. That's MSNBC. Read the crime. Oh, I was looking at the CNN one. For government's role in abuse. It's always apologizing. That's literally what it says on MSNBC. Biden visiting tribal lands to apologize for 150 years of boarding school abuse. That seems like all we're doing is apologizing for who we are. I think it's probably why we're sick and tired of it. It goes to the young men's story too. 100%.

Is that the most important issue happening in the country? It's a wild way to spend your waning days as president. They are waning, yeah. So Vivek, we only have five minutes. Any other truths here you definitely want to hit that we haven't had a chance to talk about? Yeah, look, the nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. I make the case for that in this chapter. I know that's not going to be controversial with conservative audiences, but...

What is the actual opposite view on the table is that there are co-equal, equally good ways to live one's life. And I think that that is a pervasive view.

that you could raise kids in equally good family structures as long as you check certain boxes. And I make a pretty firm case in this that no, no, the nuclear family structure is unambiguously the superior way to do it. That doesn't mean that your opportunity in this country to get ahead as a kid is shot if you're in a single parent household or a different type of family structure. But I make the affirmative case for the nuclear family structure from a personal vantage point as well. Now,

Then I talk a little bit – I close the book out with a reflection on the U.S. Constitution, and the final chapter is called The U.S. Constitution is the Greatest Guarantor of Freedom in Human History.

But I don't just make the case from the standpoint of the constitutional principles. But one of the things I think we don't talk about enough in our movement is the culture that produced that constitution in the first place. And what I call for in this book, certainly closing the book out with, is a revival of the constitutional culture, not just the founding principles, which I'm all in favor of. Talk about that enough. But the culture of the guys who were pioneers, explorers, the unafraid, the people who wouldn't

look kindly upon a U.S. president apologizing for who we are at every step, but to say that we're not going to apologize for our exceptionalism. Biden making formal apology to Native Americans for government's role in abusive Indian boarding school system. I'm sure there's some truth to this. I'm sure there is. I know all about it. My mom is an archaeologist. Is this legit? Is it exaggerated? Yeah, there were some abuses, but at the same time—

And I think they've tried – the real abuse was when they basically said to Native Americans, your culture, you've got to assimilate, you've got to sort of cast off, stop learning your language, whether it be Navajo or whatever. I'm not sure. Paiute is some of the tribes that we knew, but –

But the question is not whether the thing he's talking about is true or not, because there are millions of true things you could choose to talk about. But when your filter is always the filter of what causes you to apologize for who we are as Americans, that actually ends up creating a falsehood. Even if it's not about the Native Americans here, the falsehood is somehow that we're flawed and permanently damned nation and we're not. So this book, Truths, it's doing very, very well. And people are talking about it.

And so Vivek, what is a truth that is not in the book that since publication you wish you would have added or you think is very important? So there's a chapter that ended up just for space and for a lot of reasons having to sort of condense, which is my chapter in the book called Facts Are Not Conspiracies. Yeah, I just saw that on a page. And I go through – I had to pick which ones I wanted to go deep on.

The spiciest example, let's just say that I go deep on, is actually the details and some of the underbelly of the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot or the alleged Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot and what was actually going on in many of the people who were acquitted at trial on the basis of government-led entrapment.

And I think that we get to the doorstep in that chapter of the book of what is really an ugly underbelly of a lasting decades long relationship between particularly federal law enforcement and supposedly the bad guys who they're going after. And I think we don't talk about that enough in our country. And probably I didn't talk about it enough in this book itself.

But it didn't feel like now was exactly the time and place to do it, though I probably do more of that in this book than anybody else has done in a book written in the last decade. And so I didn't have to – I couldn't write a book called Truths without at least touching on that set of issues, and I used the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot.

Oh, man, that's a great one to talk about. And you have cases, right? I mean, it's part of the public record in cases. So you could stick to the hard facts without having to extrapolate or speculate. There's nothing that I think anybody who is even inclined to say that I'm extrapolating or stretching facts is going to be able to point to something in that chapter and say that, oh, I was sort of –

But I started with the hard factual record there to at least open people's eyes to ask questions in other situations where they may have been taught to keep it to themselves. Vivek Ramaswamy, the book is True is the Future of America First. I could say Vivek is spending a lot of his time, his money, his treasure and energy to get Trump elected. You're doing a lot of work right now. Doing everything I can, Matt. He really is. And he's moving the dial. By the way, you know that video of us just at Pittsburgh between all the clips has like 130 million views.

I love that we're doing this tour. I hope we have a few more stops left. I think we have a couple. Yeah, we have some next week. Vivek, thank you so much. Thank you, Vivek. Thank you, guys. Great to have you. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening, and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.