Biography of US President-elect published will President Vivek Ramaswamy become US President part 2
Biography of US President-elect published will President Vivek Ramaswamy become US President part 2
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00:00Publish the biography of the U.S. President-elect, President Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:07Part 2
00:10Biography of U.S. President-elect published Will President Vivek Ramaswamy become U.S.
00:15President?
00:16We continue to tell a stage of the life of the Publish the biography of the U.S. President-elect,
00:22President Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:24Ramaswamy said that he voted for Michael Badnarek, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee
00:29in 2004, but did not vote in the presidential elections in 2008, 2012, or 2016.
00:37He described himself as apolitical during this period.
00:41He supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
00:45In November 2021, Ramaswamy registered to vote in Franklin County, Ohio, as unaffiliated,
00:51but described himself as a Republican.
00:54Ramaswamy has made political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans.
00:59In 2016, he donated $2,700 to the campaign of Dena Grayson, a Florida Democrat running
01:06for Congress.
01:08From 2020 to 2023, he donated $30,000 to the Ohio Republican Party.
01:14Ramaswamy considered running in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Ohio.
01:20On February 21, 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination
01:26for President of the United States in 2024 on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
01:31He publicly released 20 years of his individual income tax returns and called upon his rivals
01:36in the primary to do the same.
01:39His fortune had made up the vast majority of his campaign's fundraising.
01:43From February to July 2023, Ramaswamy loaned his campaign more than $15 million.
01:50His campaign ended the second quarter of 2023 with about $9 million in cash on hand.
01:56His fundraising lagged far behind Trump's and Ron DeSantis's, but ahead of most of the
02:01other Republican primary candidates.
02:04During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Ramaswamy sought to appeal to
02:09evangelical Christian right and Christian nationalist voters, an important part of
02:13the Republican base, some of whom are reluctant or unwilling to support a non-Christian presidential
02:18candidate such as Ramaswamy, who is Hindu.
02:22In campaign stops and interviews, Ramaswamy had criticized secularism, saying that the
02:26U.S. was founded on Christian values or Judeo-Christian values, that he shares those values, and that
02:33he believes in one God.
02:35While campaigning, Ramaswamy called himself an unapologetic American nationalist.
02:41He often attacked DeSantis but avoided directly criticizing Trump.
02:45In May 2023, Ramaswamy's campaign admitted that he had paid an editor to alter his Wikipedia
02:51biography before announcing his candidacy but denied that the payment for edits was
02:55politically motivated.
02:57The edits to the Wikipedia biography removed references to Ramaswamy's postgraduate fellowship
03:02from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, as well as his involvement
03:06with the Ohio COVID-19 response team.
03:10Paul and Daisy Soros are the elder brother and sister-in-law, respectively, of businessman
03:14and social activist George Soros, who has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories
03:19among American conservatives and rightists.
03:23Ramaswamy's campaign denied attempting to scrub his Wikipedia page and argued the edits
03:27were revisions of factual distortions.
03:30After the 2024 Iowa caucuses, Ramaswamy ended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.
03:36Although they were running against each other for the 2024 Republican nomination, Ramaswamy
03:41vocally supported Trump.
03:44After Trump was indicted on federal criminal charges in 2023, Ramaswamy immediately rallied
03:49behind him.
03:51He promised to pardon Trump if elected president.
03:55He has also promised to pardon Julian Assange, Ross Ulbricht, and Edward Snowden.
04:00He suggested that he might consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a possible running mate.
04:07Ramaswamy opposed affirmative action and vowed to rescind Executive Order 11246.
04:13He argued that American-style capitalism provides an antidote to India's caste system.
04:18He asserted that critical race theory has indoctrinated students in public schools.
04:24Ramaswamy opposed abortion, terming it murder.
04:27He supported state-level six-week abortion bans, with exceptions for rape, incest, and
04:32danger to the woman's life, but opposes a federal ban.
04:37Ramaswamy called the LGBTQ movement a cult.
04:40He said through a spokesman that he believes same-sex marriage is settled precedent but
04:44supported broad restrictions on the rights of transgender Americans and used anti-trans
04:49rhetoric.
04:51Ramaswamy pledged, if elected, to rule by executive fiat to a degree unprecedented among
04:55modern U.S. presidents.
04:58He pledged to fire 75 percent of federal employees, dismantle civil service protections, making
05:03federal employment at will, and abolish at least five federal agencies, including the
05:09Education Department, FBI, ATF, IRS, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and USDA's Food and
05:15Nutrition Service.
05:17He called the Food and Drug Administration corrupt and vowed to expose and ultimately
05:21gut the FDA.
05:23He asserted that the president has the unilateral power to abolish agencies by executive order,
05:28although executive agencies and departments are created by statute, and under the Constitution,
05:33Congress has the power of the purse.
05:36He called for an eight-year term for all government employees and pledged to revoke Executive
05:40Order 10988, an order issued by President John F. Kennedy that gives federal employees
05:45the right to collectively bargain.
05:48He proposed to repeal the federal law that requires presidents to spend all the money
05:52Congress appropriates.
05:55Ramaswamy favored raising the standard voting age to 25, which would require repealing the
06:0026th Amendment to the Constitution.
06:04This proposal would have disenfranchised a portion of the U.S. electorate.
06:09Nearly 9 percent of voters in the 2020 general election were under 25.
06:14Ramaswamy also said he would have liked to end birthright citizenship.
06:19He said he would have allow citizens between 18 and 24 to vote only if they are enlisted
06:23in the military, work as first responders, or pass the civics test required for naturalization.
06:30He supported making Election Day a federal holiday, while eliminating Juneteenth which
06:34he called useless and redundant as a federal holiday.
06:37Ramaswamy pledged to use our military to annihilate the Mexican drug cartels.
06:43He favored federal legalization of marijuana.
06:46He took no public position on the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
06:51In a thought experiment he expressed support for an inheritance tax and called for ending
06:56the Federal Reserve's dual mandate, but during his presidential campaign he expressed
07:01opposition to an inheritance tax.
07:04In Republican primary debates and campaign appearances, Ramaswamy often repeated and
07:08promoted an array of right-wing conspiracy theories and falsehoods.
07:13In the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, he condemned the attack but
07:18argued that social media bans on Trump violate the First Amendment.
07:23Later, while running for president, Ramaswamy repeatedly claimed that the Jan. 6 attack
07:28was an inside job, a claim supported by no evidence and refuted by numerous investigations.
07:34He also asserted that big tech stole the 2020 election and that the Great Replacement conspiracy
07:39theory was the Democratic Party's platform.
07:42Invoking Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, he asked whether federal agents were on the planes
07:47that hit the Twin Towers during the Sept. 11 attacks.
07:52When asked about some of his past remarks, Ramaswamy frequently denied making the comments
07:56or claimed to have been misquoted, even when those denials were belied by recordings, transcripts,
08:01or extracts from his writing.
08:04Ramaswamy said he would not have used U.S. military force against Iran.
08:09In November 2023, he condemned Azerbaijan's military operation against the Armenian population
08:14of Nagorno-Karabakh and said that the U.S. should block all its military aid to Azerbaijan.
08:21Ramaswamy said he favored some major concessions to Russia, including freezing those current
08:24lines of control in a Korean War-style armistice agreement to end the Russo-Ukrainian war.
08:30He favored ending U.S. military aid to Ukraine, excluding Ukraine from NATO, and allowing
08:35Russia to remain in occupied regions of Ukraine in exchange for an agreement that Russia end
08:39its alliance with China.
08:42He expressed support for Taiwanese independence and floated the idea of putting a gun in every
08:46Taiwanese household to deter an invasion by China, but said the U.S. should not militarily
08:51defend Taiwan from Chinese attack after the U.S. has achieved semiconductor independence,
08:56which he pledged to achieve by 2028.
08:59After Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Ramaswamy supported Israel's right to defend
09:05itself and to make its own decisions while suggesting that the U.S. should provide a
09:09diplomatic iron dome for Israel.
09:12Regarding the U.S. aid to Israel, he said that it should be contingent upon Israel's
09:16plans for defeating Hamas and its actions in Gaza.
09:20Although he said he was not a climate denier, Ramaswamy said in a Republican primary debate
09:25that the climate change agenda is a hoax.
09:28And asserted, falsely, that more people are dying from climate policies than actual climate
09:32change.
09:34At other times, he said that he accepted that burning fossil fuels causes climate change.
09:40But called global climate change not entirely bad.
09:44Said that people should be proud to live a high-carbon lifestyle.
09:48And said that the U.S. should drill, frack, burn coal.
09:52He criticized what he calls the climate cult.
09:55And said that as president, he would abandon the anti-carbon framework as it exists and
09:59halt any mandate to measure carbon dioxide.
10:03In 2022, he urged Chevron to increase oil production and criticized its support for
10:08a carbon tax.
10:10Ramaswamy's company holds a 0.02% stake in Chevron.
10:15Ramaswamy opposed subsidies for electric vehicles.
10:19In his arguments, Ramaswamy used incorrect statistical claims about the history of carbon
10:24dioxide in the atmosphere.
10:26His critics said that when he cited the upsides of climate change in fossil fuels, such as
10:30reduced coal-related deaths, cheap energy, and faster plant growth, he ignored larger
10:35downsides, such as increases in other weather-related disasters, deaths, and plant damage, and ignored
10:40that there are now less polluting sources of cheap energy.
10:43Ramaswamy's wife, Apoorva Tiwari Ramaswamy, is a laryngologist and surgeon.
10:50They met at Yale when he was studying law and she was studying medicine.
10:54They married in 2015 and have two sons.
10:59Ramaswamy has a younger brother, Shankar, who worked for him at Axavant and later co-founded
11:03Kriya Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company.
11:08Ramaswamy is a monotheistic Hindu.
11:10According to relatives, he is fluent in Tamil and understands but does not speak Malayalam.
11:16He is a vegetarian and wrote in 2020, I believe it is wrong to kill sentient animals for culinary
11:21pleasure.
11:23According to his parents, he has tried to develop a good understanding of both Eastern
11:27and Western culture and traditions.
11:30In 2023, Ramaswamy's campaign adviser said his net worth was more than $1 billion, Forbes
11:36estimated it at more than $950 million.
11:40He lived in Manhattan as of 2016.
11:44As of 2021, he owned a house in Butler County, Ohio, but in 2023, the only real estate he
11:49reported owning was a house in Columbus, Ohio, in Franklin County.
11:54A 2023 Politico profile of Ramaswamy mentions him living in a $2 million estate in the Columbus
12:00suburb of Upper Arlington.
12:02I stop at this point today.
12:05Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, and keep exploring the world's incredible
12:11stories.