Vivek Ramaswamy visited Oakland University with Turning Point USA on their You’re Being Brainwashed Tour, where he accepted open-mic student questions. Many OU students challenged the newcomer to national politics.
Before the Q&A, Ramaswamy spoke on his background as a child of immigrants, a student at Harvard and the founder of multiple multi-billion-dollar businesses. He also emphasized the importance of a conservative movement, criticized the DEI ideology within the Democratic Party, called for the deportation of illegal immigrants and criticized current American society.
When students filed in line for their chance to ask Ramaswamy a question, event volunteers reorganized the line so that those with the more challenging and disagreeable questions were moved to the front. Here are some of the questions presented by students.
Editor’s Note: For the sake of clarity, some answers have been paraphrased.
Q: Do you believe people convicted of domestic violence and sexual assault should lose their right to purchase weapons?
A: “If you’ve been convicted of murder or a violent crime, I think it is reasonable to put you in a different category than somebody who has not, with respect to the background of whether or not you own a weapon,” Ramaswamy said.
Q: Why is Israel our greatest ally?
A: Ramaswamy stressed that he differed from other, more old-fashioned Republicans because he favored an America-first international policy. Ramaswamy does not believe in Isolationism because he sees the benefits of having allies in the Middle East, specifically highlighting the region’s oil.
Q: You often speak about God. You are Hindu, a polytheistic religion. What God are you referring to?
A: Ramaswamy called himself an ethical monotheist and stated his belief that his faith is consistent and in line with the founding of the U.S.
“The new religions of climate ideology, of gender ideology, racial ideology. These have become new religions, really alternative calls and in some ways, we haven’t done a good enough job of actually standing for the actual Christian values the country was founded on,” Ramaswamy said.
Q: Compared to [Trump’s] 2016 campaign, we’re no longer America first but Israel first. How exactly does the Trump campaign plan to address these concerns?
A: Ramaswamy stated that Trump and himself are anti-war with Iran and that Trump is a logical negotiator. Ramaswamy also took this as an opportunity to criticize American intervention in the Middle East in recent decades.
Q: Where do you believe this cultural Marxism, divisiveness and subversion has come from in our country?
A: “I do think that there is a global agenda to advance, a one-sided vision that rejects individualism. It says that … you’re riding the tectonic plates of your group identity, your race, your gender, your sexuality,” Ramaswamy said.
Ramaswamy also called for a return to traditional alternative loyalties that don’t involve group identities. These are the individual, family, nation and God.
Q: What do you have to say to the individuals who claim to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church, yet continue to support Kamala’s anti-Christian rhetoric along with her abortion and LGBTQ policies?
A: “You can’t actually vote for somebody who advances the opposite of the agenda that you stand for,” Ramaswamy said.
Q: How do you stop the censorship?
A: Ramaswamy stated his belief that private technology companies should be allowed to decide who they want to publish, but the problem was government involvement in this process.
Q: Do you think there is a way to change young voters from being single-issue [abortion] voters?
A: Ramaswamy stated that the topic of abortion shouldn’t weigh into the national election because it is being decided at the state level. Ramaswamy also proposed policies that would make it economically easier for parents to raise young kids to win over Gen-Z voters.
Q: How do you think we should go after the pharmaceutical industry?
A: Ramaswamy spoke about a law that allows pharmaceutical companies to have legal amnesty when it comes to being liable for harmful vaccines.
“We should repeal that law … I think that would actually fix the problem,” Ramaswamy said.
Q: Do you think our state governments around the country have done enough to secure our elections since 2020?
A: “I think that our side is far more attuned to these risks than we’ve ever been … the awareness of the issue of election integrity itself has been a victory,” Ramaswamy said.
Q: What is your plan for keeping our data safe?
A: “I think that going after individual companies with legislation is never the right answer … instead, identify what TikTok is doing that we don’t want them to do, and make it a general law that every company has to abide by,” Ramaswamy said.
