Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy asked Iowa voters for their support at the state fair this weekend, pitching himself as the next wave of the “Make America Great Again Movement.”
A large crowd gathered to hear the Ohio-based entrepreneur’s pitch to be the Republican party’s nominee for the 2024 election at the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox Saturday afternoon.
Ramaswamy called for deep cuts to government agencies — including eliminating the FBI in its entirety — reform to the Department of Education, a nationwide bolstering of capitalism and for the country to burn more coal.
“I don’t believe in incremental reform, I believe in revolution,” Ramaswamy said. “I stand for revolution. We will shut down the FBI. That’s how you drain the source of the actual problem.”
Ramaswamy currently trails Trump and fellow presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis, according to nationwide polls, but leads all other Republican candidates for president.
He along with many other candidates at the fair said he’d pardon former President Donald Trump of the more than 30 charges he currently faces related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and the 2020 election.
However, when asked if he’d be willing to serve as Trump’s running mate, Ramaswamy said neither candidate would be a good No. 2.
“I expect that he will be my advisor and I expect that he’ll accept that job,” Ramaswamy said. “MAGA, America first is bigger than one man. It does not belong to me, it does not belong to Trump — it belongs to us.”
