Transcripts For CNNW CNN 20240701

affiliated groups as well as business groups, farm associations, parent groups, young professional organizations, religious groups and conservative advocacy organizations. guests of mr. ramaswamy and grand view university are here tonight but they won't ask questions. we have asked everyone here to be respectful to each other and mr. ramaswamy so the voters in the room and at home have a chance to hear from the candidate. please, welcome vivek ramaswamy. [ applause ] i want to get right to the audience and bring simone from cli clive, iowa. she served on the board of a christian school. she's undecided. >> thank you. first of all, welcome to iowa. merry christmas from iowa. >> thank you. >> thank you for really adding some important conversations to the campaign. some local commentators refer to you as maybe the younger trump, not a politician, which would place you running in the same lane as president trump for getting votes. other than being younger, how would you differentiate yourself from president trump? >> look, i appreciate that question. i get it frequently these days on the campaign trail. it's not just being younger. i think we are reaching a new generation of voters in this country. we have been to most of the college campuses across this state. i don't think that's something the republican party has done a great job of. there's a reason why these revolutions, these revivals are often led by the next generation. thomas jefferson was 33 years owed old when he wrote the declaration of independence. i'm an old man compared to him. it's going to take a president who comes from the outside, a businessman. i believe it will take an outsider to come take on the federal bureaucracy, to shut down agencies that need to be shut down, to implement that 75% head count reduction i want to see in the federal bureaucracy. it is also going to take a president who has a deep first personal understanding of the law and the constitution. those two things don't usually go together. i have hired many people in my career over the many companyiesi started -- those two skills -- that's what gives me my sense of purpose in this race. i think i'm the only person in the race who brings both of those attributes, an understanding and commitment to the constitution, but combine that with being an outsider who can get things done. i think that's going to take the combination that actually takes to revive this economy and revive our constitutional republic. >> her question was about how you would be different from donald trump. how specifically would you differentiate yourself from trump? >> i think some are policy areas. take the iowa carbon capture pipeline. it doesn't affect many in the national audience but it affects many in this room. you are familiar with this issue. they are using eminent domain to build a carbon capture pipeline. i'm the only candidate who has taken a stand being against those policies. we can go into other specific examples. it comes down to a commitment to the constitution. a deep understanding of the constitution. swearing an oath to the constitution and keeping it and combining that with being an outsider. yes, reaching and inspiring the next generation of americans. i think i'm the best person in this race to do those things. >> let's bring in jacquelin. she's a health care i.t. manager. she's a republican who says she's undecided. >> thank you. welcome. >> thank you. >> i'm going to switch it up. with the number of illegals -- illegal aliens crossing the border daily and being bussed to cities across the united states, how do you plan to secure our border and remove illegals from the u.s.? >> that second part is the harder part. let me start with the first part. these are basic things. the country that put a man on the moon can get this done. it's a question of political will. one thing i said is we will use our own military to secure our own border. we can use it to secure somebody else's board. let's use it to secure our southern border and our northern border, too. our northern border has seen more illegal crossings this past year than the last 12 years combined. that's where this front is going. i visited both in the last several months. if we're able to do that, use our military, complete the border wall, stop federal aid to any central american country until they have secured their own borders for every country between venezuela and mexico, then i want to implement the best border policies of all, which is ending the illegal incentives to be here. end birth right citizenship for the kids of illegal migrants to whom the 14th amendment does not apply. end federal funding to sanctuary cities using our own taxpayer money to pay effectively for breaking the rule of law. then there's the hard question. i don't want to leave you hanging. many people still this. this is the hard one. i do believe that anybody who is in this country illegally needs to be returned to their country of origin, not because they are all bad. many of them are good people. many of them, if we're honest, if we were in their shoes -- there's a president of the united states who has been giving them a wink and a nod to come over if we were in a tough stop we would have done the same thing. had i we are founded on the rule of law. as a father of two sons in the white house, i can't look them in the eye and tell them they have to follow the rules when our own government isn't following its own rules. then there's the question of how. this was the part many republicans skip. there's 6,000 or so i.c.e. agents. there's a provision in the law -- we don't need new laws. it's an existing law. it allows you to actually serve an i.c.e. agent to allow local law enforcement to serve warrants. that's a million law enforcement officers. we can get that done. again, all it takes is a president with a spine. if i swear an oath to the constitution, i intend to keep it. that's how i'm going to lead this country. i think that's how we solve not only the border crisis but the abandonment of the rule of law in this country. that's how i expect to lead. >> you said you would end birth right citizenship. >> for kids of illegal migrants. >> there are millions of such people, children, some of them adults. would you retroactively strip them? >> i'm glad you asked that. prospectively. january 20, 2025 forward. there's a concept in the law known as a reliance interest. we will not retroactively date that. from january 20, 2025 going forward, if i'm the president, if you are born in this country as the kid of an illegal immigrant, you will not enjoy birth right citizenship. that's what the 14th amendment says. it says it only applies subject to the jurisdiction thereof. that's in the opening section of the 14th amendment when it talks to birth right citizenship. in the same way -- i want people to understand this. some people call this a controversial view. the kid of a mexican diplomat who is here legally and he is born in the united states, that person doesn't enjoy birth right citizenship. nobody contests that. if the kid of a mexican diplomat here legally does not enjoy birth right citizenship, neither does the kid of an immigrant here illegally. one case agrees with me. the current supreme court agrees. we need a president with a spine. i go back to the first question, understands the constitution. i better have read it. >> you suggested the courts would have to weigh in on this. would you agree? >> i expect it will go to the supreme court and they will agree with me on this. >> let's turn now to mike. he is an insurance company ceo from west des moines and a trustee here at grand view. he is a republican who says he is deciding between you and florida governor ron desantis. >> what makes you think that putin would be responsive to your ukraine solution? >> before you jump in, i just want to ask you to remind the audience here what the solution is that he is referring to. >> that's fair. thank you for coming prepared. i appreciate. i proposed a reasonable end to the ukraine war. i don't think it's advancing our interests. we're spending $200 billion of our taxpayer money that would be better used to defend our border. even worse, i believe it's increasing the risk of world war iii. it's driving russia further into china's hands. i proposed a reasonable deal that would allow ukraine to come out with sovereignty intact. yes, with some territorial concessions of the russian speaking regions in eastern ukraine and a hard commitment nato will not admit ukraine to nato only if putin exits its n military alliance with china. do i trust vladimir putin? of course not. he is a dictator? absolutely. we will trust him to follow his self interest just as he will trust us to follow ours. i will go into this. nixon did this in 1972. he pulled mao out of the ussr. that was an alliance back then. did we trust mao? of course we didn't. there were kinks in the armor then. there are kinks in the armor now. when putin and xi met, putin sends weapons to india and vietnam. that's sending a signal to china. china wants to complete a railroad in northeast china to the ocean. russia is not letting them. there are kinks in the armor. it's going to take a visionary leader who will say, we will use the ukraine war as an opportunity to say to russia, we will reopen some economic relations with russia as nixon did. but we will require no more joint military exercises, no more military sales between russia and china. weaken that alliance. reduce the risk of world war iii. i want you to understand, i'm the only presidential candidate talking about that russia/china alliance. that is the single greatest threat we face to the united states of america today. i do think it's going to take a leader coming from the outside of the existing foreign policy establishment. i will remind you, the one that got us into the wars in iraq and afghanistan, where thousands of our sons and daughters went to die, adding $7 trillion to our national debt, with taliban still in control and iraq still a broken country. if that isn't a sign we need fresh blood in our foreign policy establishment, i don't know what it is. >> staying on the ukraine topic. you want to suspend support for ukraine in this war and get the united states out of that. >> as part of this deal that i laid out. >> if putin doesn't take you up on that deal, would you allow putin to use force to take all of ukraine if he wanted to? >> we will do -- i think the deal we will do now is going to allow ukraine to come out with its sovereignty intact which is not the path ukraine is on. >> if putin doesn't take you up on deal, would you -- >> i'm convinced on my ability to negotiate. >> if he decided to march into kyiv, take all of ukraine, would you as president of the united states allow that to happen? >> i think that's a fictitious scenario. part of the reason putin has been able to seize eastern ukraine is they have not had the same level of resistance. what i would say -- >> he tried to do it. >> he failed. >> he failed do it because the united states backed ukraine. >> he failed for a deeper reason. this gets into details in the ukraine war. i think we should go there. the eastern regions of ukraine -- these are russian-speaking regions. most of the people who live there don't even view themselves really as part of ukraine. they have not been represented in the ukrainian parliament for the better part of the last decade, almost the entire last decade. there was no counterinsurgency or resistance. there's a lot of scenarios we can't map out. russia is in a military alliance with china. i will require that russia weaken or exit its military alliance with china. we also have to stand by a few things that commitments we made that nato should not actually admit ukraine. we made that commitment. gorbachev made it. it was made by james baker in 1990. we haven't kept that. i think that level of diplomacy avoids us using -- look at the alternative. we talk about sending $61 billion to ukraine. it's unclear to me or anybody else what the next $100 million is going to do that the first 100 didn't. i don't think throwing bad money after bad is the solution. diplomacy is the solution. it's going to take somebody who is committed to advancing u.s. interests to get this done. my foreign policy is avoid world war iii, declare independence from china, and focus on securing our own homeland. >> i want to get back to our audience member. we have a question now from nicole. she's from des moines and is a college admissions counselor. she's registered as a democrat but now intends to switch parties and is planning to participate in the republican caucuses and register as a republican. she's undecided on which candidate to support. nicole? >> thank you. welcome. i'm going to throw it back to the united states and talk a little bit about how you feel about the growing differential between the top 1% and middle class in the united states. >> great question. i don't feel great about it. a lot of this is the product of the federal reserve. seems like a technical subject. people don't like to talk about it. this is fundamental. the federal reserve has the late '90s has taken on the role of playing god. raining money from on high. we have been skiing on artificial snow. it's flowed through the top 1%. a friend of mine has a funny expression. if you are a nurse, you go home with extra latex gloves. a teacher goes home with extra pencils. a banker, a few extra dollars. that's the way it worked through the federal reserve system. trickle down economics i believe does work when it's driven by gains in the real economy. it doesn't work when it's created by artificial paper wealth generated by fed reserve policies. i put the fed back in its place. the reason real wage growth has not gone up for the bottom 99% adjusted for inflation, the reason why is the federal deserve treated it as though it's a leading indicator of inflation and try to tamp it down. you get what you pay for. my view is i will put the fed back in its place. a single mandate for the u.s. fed. what is that? dollar stability. peg the dollar to commodities. that ties the hands of our government. that's a good thing. we had our gdp growth in the country before we left the gold standard. that's telling. when the dollar is stable, that's how you actually help the bottom 99% in the country. that's how you see real wage growth. i want people to understand, you hear tales, methodology about the economy. make it simple. what's going on? prices are going up. interest rates, including mortgage rates to buy your home, are going up. wages have remained flat. i'm not going to be the person who comes in here and tells you -- some people say, am i too pessimistic? i'm a realist. i will not tell you the american dream is alive and well. it's not. it's alive and hanging on for life support. i believe it can be. i do think it's going to take now more than ever a ceo in the white house, somebody with fresh legs, somebody i believe from the next generation to look at this differently. apply basic economic common sense. that starts with reform of the federal reserve. thank you for that question. welcome to the republican side. >> let me ask, mr. ramaswamy, two years ago you floated the idea to dramatically increase the inheritance tax up to 59%. you said then, we shouldn't allow people to become billionaires just by having rich parents. would you push for that as president? >> that's not part of my policy platform as president. one thing people should know is that i'm not a standard candidate. i have written three books. they are not candidate books. i brought up thomas jefferson. he was one of the few truly intellectual presidents we had. i like to explore ideas. an english teacher t er taught you don't understand what you think unless you can offer the best statement of an alternative view. my view is this, what we need is a 12% flat tax across the board. ordinary income, capital gain, corporate, flatten it out. here is how we get money back. end the crony deductions, the deductions in the loopholes and rebates that corporations, special interests have lobbied in. it's $700 billion a year, the tax compliance costs, the out of pocket costs, not counting the time you spend preparing your taxes. >> you are very wealthy. you have made a lot of money. do you want your wealth -- do you believe it should pass down to your children? >> that's an important question, actually. i want to speak on behalf of my wife and i. she wanted to be here. she's not here because she was treating cancer survivors at ohio state's hospital. that's where she's kept her full-time job while we go through this. in many cases, our health care system or our sick care system is so broken she doesn't get paid for many of the procedures she does to improve patients' lives. that works for us because we are in the position that we are in. i tell you this, we spend immense amounts of our family's fortune on this campaign. we didn't inherit our wealth. that's the inheritance we care about giving our kids. it's not about green mpieces of paper. it's the country that allowed us to live the american dream. my parents came to this country 40 years ago with no money. yes, in a single generation, i have found multiple multimillion dollar companies. raised our two sons. following our faith in god. that's the american dream. that's the inheritance we care to give our kids. speaking honestly, i stand by it. i've gone to college. i went to harvard. my dad was working at ge. he faced layoffs. we had a middle class upbringing with ups and downs along the way. i went to school with kids of billionaires. i will tell you something. it's interesting. they weren't -- many of them weren't happier for it. to the contrary, i was actually able to follow my hunger and my passion and my ambition maybe more freely than many of my other fellow peers. i'm grateful to others who may not have access to basic education. there are those that don't have access to having their own ability to live the american dream because they are incumbered by the inheritance. i want to give them the country that allows them to live the american dream through mathis. >> i want to go back to the audience. we have here riley. he is a law student at drake university and a clerk in the marion county attorney's office. he is a republican who is currently undecided. >> thank you. on the debate stage you have somewhat of abandoned the tact and diplomacy that i would look for in a president. i'm all for keeping it real and dogging the establishment. but there's a gravitas that i look for in those that represent the country. how do you see the balance between keeping it -- being authentic and maintaining that presidential demeanor? >> i appreciate the question. it's very candid. this is what i love about iowa. i get tougher questions from you than the media. it's why we are here. i appreciate that. here is the standard i use for holding myself to or any president to. i want us to be able to look our kids in the eye and tell them that i want you to grow up and be like him. it's been a long time since we held our presidents to that standard. that's a high standard. i think about that in judging the way i comport myself. am i going to tell me kids to be a bully? no. but if somebody hits you or bullies you, hit back harder. you have to be -- as we say in our family, you have to be strong enough to protect your kindness. if you watch the debates, i don't engage in four letter words. others have called me dumb, scum and worse that i will not repeat. i didn't go after them. if they come after me, i'm not going to be a president -- whether it's xi or putin or anybody, that i will roll over. if you hit us, we hit back ten times harder. it's not for the sake of being a bully. it's protecting our inner kindness. it's important we have a president that has both of those attr attributes. i've done more podcasts probably than most presidential candidates in history combined. mostly because podcasts are new. i will admit that. i will tell you, that's the different setting. my faith teaches me, there's a time and place for everything. there's a time and place for fortitude and justice and mercy. i think it's going to take all of those attributes, every last ounce of each of those, to stand for this country, to reunite this country and revive who we are. you don't want a wilting flower in the white house. you also want somebody who understands what we are fighting for. that's the standard i want you to hold us to. we will aspire to hold ourselves to. i think sometimes being a parent is what gives me my moral clarity. i hope through the rest of the campaign -- we are just getting warmed up. i hope to earn your trust that i do have what it takes to tell you the truth. i'm not going to hide the truth. if you want someone who will speak truth to power, vote for somebody who will speak the truth to you. do it unvarnished without sugarcoating. also somebody who as you i believe want can stand for ideals that make our founding fathers proud and would make our children proud as well. >> speaking of those debates, let me ask you about something you said at the debate last week. you used the phrase, inside job, to describe what happened on january 6. the next day, a capitol rioter highlighted his comments at his sentencing. he is going to prison for 11 years. he threatened members of congress. he brought a hatchet, knives, pepper spray, tactical gear to the u.s. capitol. are you concerned a convict ed felon like that is promoting your comments? >> here is my concern. i want to tell you where i'm at. if you had told me -- it's close to three years ago that january 6, 2021 happened. if you told me back when i was a biotech ceo, not in this world. i was consuming passive media but focused on developing medicines. if you told me january 6 was an inside job, the subject of government entrapment, i would have told you that was crazy. fringe conspiracy nonsense. i can tell you having gone somewhat deep in this, it's not. the reality is this. we do have a government -- we have technology that has lied to us systematically over the last several years about the origin of covid-19, about the hunter biden laptop we were told was false by 51 cia experts before we now know it was true. go down the list, trump/russia disinformation hoax. now we come to january 6 the reality is we know that there were federal law enforcement agents in the field. we don't know how many. let me finish. >> i'm going to go ahead and interrupt you. >> the establishment doesn't approve of the message. >> you are saying there were federal agents -- >> this is important. >> you are saying there were federal agents. there's no evidence there were federal agents in the crowd. >> why when pressed on the number, they didn't say there were none. >> you are saying you have not seen any evidence -- >> we have seen multiple informants suggesting there were. we know people were fbi informants -- >> is there any evidence -- let me clarify my question. >> i know it's uncomfortable. we have to do the truth. >> i want to make sure you understand. >> i understand this deeply. i told you, i was -- >> where is the evidence that the government had a plot -- >> listen to this -- >> an inside job. to promote violence on january 6. >> i'm not going to let you put words in my mouth. i will tell you -- >> where is the evidence the government was involved in planning or executing january 6? >> i will give you hard facts. if i may -- i know it's uncomfortable. we will go through this. push back on that. >> waiting for the evidence. >> do this fairly. why did they suppress footage of now what's released, 200 hours of shooting rubber bullets into the crowd, tear gas into the crowd. you didn't see that before. you saw what the response was. now you see footage coming out of actually rolling out the red carpet for capitol police allowing people in right through the front door. >> the vast majority of the footage -- >> that should have been released before. >> it shows police officers being overrun by violent ri rioters. >> i'm going to give you hard facts. here is what entrapment is. >> you can't cherry pick examples and -- >> to the contrary. >> you cannot cherry pick examples and say that's what happened on january 6. >> there were 200 hours. cherry picking was the government, not me. release the whole thing. let me finish one thing. this is super important -- >> when you -- when we are talking -- >> i want to be clear. it's the same issue and the same fbi. three people who were in an alleged plot to kidnap gretchen whitmer because it was entrapment. government agents put them up to do something. they gave them credit cards with spending limits up to $5,000. plan something they weren't otherwise willing to plan. so much so -- i want people to know this, especially cnn viewers to know this. one of the jurors went to those defendants and apologized afterwards. gave him a hug. apologized, seeing what the government had put a poor guy up to who had to go to some mexican restaurant across the street to get hot water. these people were exploited with credit kartd cards, up to $5,00 agents putting them up to a kidnapping plot that wasn't true. many of those people -- >> mr. ramaswamy, look, i don't -- mr. ramaswamy, i don't want to have to -- >> it's wrong. >> i don't want have to interrupt. but i don't want you to mislead the audience here. >> i'm not. they have been mislead by mainstream media. >> 14 people were charged in that plot. a majority were convicted. >> i said three were acquitted on entrapment. was i wrong about that? >> what folks need to understand -- >> three people were acquitted. >> nine were -- >> the three put up should have never got to that stage. >> back tounacceptable. >> nine people were convicted. let me get back to the audience. let's bring in joe from des moines. he is a republican who supports whoever wins the nm nomination. >> i love seeing you get fired up. >> i see you are a basketball player. i have been playing tennis with drake tennis players. >> some of my boys play there. biggest question about your legitimacy has been your age. as a 22-year-old college kid, i love the idea of having younger candidates in office. how that is this been a challenge for you? >> it's been a big challenge. most caucus goers are three, four times your age. be real about that. i want people like you to come out to the caucus. we're going to college campuses for that reason. one of the things i want people to understand what i see when i go to college campuses, i think many republicans candidates are scared of facing off with your generation. some of them hit me for being on tiktok because it reaches you. i think we should reach out to young voters. what i see isn't a base against our values. i see people in your generation and our generation that are lost. hungry for direction. the left will prey on that vacuum. with race, gender, sexuality, climate. i'm not going to blame them. i'm going to blame the republican party. we have gotten lazy criticizing that without offering our vision. individual, family, nation, god. i said the g word. that beats race, gender, sexuality and climate if we have the courage to actually stand for something. i believe that your generation -- i believe that we are at a tipping point. i talk about thomas jefferson. he invented the swivel chair. think about that founding spirit. we are the pioneers. we are the explorers, unafraid, people who nobody and no government dares to stop. that's who we are as americans. our pursuit of excellence, that's what makes us american. i think it's going to take something in your generation, somebody whose best days are ahead, to see a country whose best days are still ahead of itself. i hope that's the case for me. i don't take every day for granted. every day we wake up is a new blessing. i will leave it at that. i don't take tomorrow for granted. i hope my best days are still ahead of me. i think as a leader, i reject this narrative that we have to be that nation in decline, that we have to be ancient rome. what's your name again? joe, i think our nation like you is actually a little young. going through our own version of adolescence. figuring out who we are going to be when we grow up. when you view it that way, it makes sense. to me it does. you go through that identity crisis. lose your way a little bit. i don't know about you, but i did some stupid things. we are stronger for it when we get to our adulthood on the other side. i don't think we have to be that nation in decline. tell the people in your class the same thing. we can still be a nation in our ascent. maybe we try something different. somebody with fresh legs. somebody maybe the age that our founding fathers were when they signed the declaration. we live in a 1776 moment. give that a try. >> we have much more ahead. we will be right back with more from presidential candidate vivek ramaswamy. loving this pay bump in our allowance. wonder where mom and dad got the extra money? maybe they won the lottery? maybe they inherited a fortune? maybe buried treasure? 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[ applause ] welcome back to iowa and cnn's town hall with republican presidential candidate vivek ramaswamy. let's turn to genjenny. she is a republican who is currently undecided. >> thank you. thanks for being here and thanks for coming to iowa so much. we appreciate your visits. freedom of religion is a part of our constitution. obviously, a huge part of our country. what do you say to those who say that you cannot be our president because your religion is not what our founding fathers based our country on? >> i respectfully disagree. i would rather speak the truth and lose an election than to win by playing some political snake and ladders. if i wanted to go for that, i could fake convert. i'm not going to do that. i'm going to tell you about my faith. i'm hindu. i went to christian schools. i have been on the board of st. x except to run for president. i can tell you we share the same value set in common. i will tell you about my faith. my faith teaches me god puts us here for a purpose. we have a moral duty to realize that purpose. god works through us in different ways. we are still equal. god resides in each of us. i had what you would call not a traditional upbringing, but probably a very traditional upbringing. my parents taught me, family is the foundation. marriage is sacred. divorce isn't some option you prefer off a menu when things don't go your way. abstinence before marriage is the way to go. adultery is wrong. good things in life volume a -- in love involve a sacrifice. you turn on the television, go to the movie theater, your local dei training or what they teach in school, that could seem unfamiliar. i don't think it's unfamiliar to most of us. i think those are the same values i learned at st. x. the ten commandments, one true god. don't take his name in vain. observe the sabbath, respect your parents, don't kill, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, don't commit adultery, don't covet. that's when it hit me. we share the same value set in common. another core teaching in my faith. we don't choose who god works through. god chooses who god works through. the old testament, to the book of isaiah. i don't know if you are familiar with that. god chose cyrus, a gentile all the way in persia to lead the people back to the promised land. god put us here for a purpose. my faith is what leads me on this journey to run for president. my gratitude to this country is what leads me. even when we think about the founding fathers, i'm a fan of history. i talked about thomas jefferson. we will stick to him. he was a diest. the left wants to rewrite the history and tell you he was an evil man and slave owner. i will reject that. he was a diest. he made the jefferson bible. you know how he did it? he didn't believe in the new testament. he took a blade by hand and glued it together. that made the jefferson bible, which we have today. john adams wrote letters to thomas jefferson, became a hindu scholar. it's important to see our founds founders three dimensionally, not the way they have been rewritten post 1990. would i by the best president to spread christianity? i would not. i would be not the best choice for that. i don't think that that's the job of the u.s. president. will i stand for the values that this nation was founded on, that i was raised in, even in the hindu faith? you are darn right i will. i think it's my responsibility to make faith and patriotism and family and hard work cool in this country. i think they are cool. that's my job as your next president. back to the first amendment, we will stand for religious liberty in a way neither republicans or democrats have. that's what the first amendment says. practice your faith, every pastor gets do his job without the government getting in their way. that's what i'm going to keep as president. [ applause ] >> let me ask you about a little bit of news. the supreme court announced that it would hear a case this term that could restrict action says nationwide to a widely used abortion drug. you oppose abortion. do you believe that the court should limit the distribution of this drug nationwide? >> i think this is a question -- it's the job of the supreme court to judge the law. this is a case about administrative law. this is less about the abortion question and it's more about, did the fda exceed the scope of its statutory authority when it approved mifepristone on the emergency basis? it's reserved for life saving therapies that need to be brought to market quickly. this is a symptom of what's going on in the administrative state. the people who we elect to run the government, they are not the ones who run the government. it's the bureaucrats in the three letter agencies pulling the strings. the most important supreme court case of our lifetime came out last term. it's west virginia versus epa. if congress did not expressly give an agency the right to write a regulation, then that's unconstitutional. it's my opinion -- i'm sure the supreme court will come down where i am. the fda exceeded its statutory authority in using an emergency app approval for something that doesn't fit an emergency approval. i hope that's where they come down. if the people disagree with that, we have a mechanism for that. the democratic process. the do it through the front door of congress. there's one thing i will do as the next president, shut down that fourth branch of government, rescind the unconstitutional federal regulations that congress never passed. yes, lay off 75% of the federal employee count. >> i want to get to the question, but before we do that, so everyone is clear, you do believe that the supreme court should ban mifepristone? >> i believe the supreme court should put the fda back in its place. >> as it relates to this -- >> they should rule on the law. >> as it relates to this particular drug, do you believe that will ultimately result in mifepristone being banned nationwide? >> i believe it will result in mifepristone being taken off the market until they go through the process process. the fda should follow the law if the rest of us do, too. >> i don't want to go to our audience again. we have claire waiting to ask a question. she's a professor at drake university who teaches in the college of business and education. she's a republican from west des moines who is undecided. >> thank you. thank you for spending time with our students at drake. as a professor, it's super important we get that opportunity. thank you for spending time with them. as president, what strategies would you implement to promote diversity and inclusion in leadership roles in public and private sectors? how . >> i will be honest. i will share a quote. if you care about somebody, you tell them the truth or what you believe. if you care about yourself, tell them what you want to hear. i will tell you what you don't want to eat. i think the agenda has been abused. we have -- many of our universities sacrificed. in the name of inclusion, we have created a new culture of excl exclusion. certain points of view aren't welcome. in a university setting, what do i care about? diversity of viewpoint. this is important, actually. diversity of viewpoint is part of what this country was built on. the best way to foster diversity of viewpoint is to screen candidates for the diversity of their views. many look at the board members of many universities, go through their partisan affiliation. it's not 80/20. it's 90/10 in the other direction. that's completely at odds with the representation of this country. do i value diversity of viewpoint? absolutely. do i think we're doing a good job of that? no. it's not an accident. in the name of diversity, we have actually created a new culture of conformity. i think it's possible to have a group of ten people who look similar to one another who have different views. i think it's possible to have a group of ten people who look different from one another or look the same but have different views or look different and have the same views. i think the best way to screen candidates is to actually ask them about the diversity of their experiences. the use of racial and gender quota systems have created a new form of racism in the united states that otherwise would not have existed. it is sad to me. i hired not because i was thinking about it consciously, plenty of black women in different positions of authority in this campaign or other companies or whatever. i can tell you, it saddens me when people look at somebody who i hired on the basis of merit and say they got that job because of their race or gender. that doesn't do anybody a favor. i think if we restore true meritocracy, chances are we will have different genders, but not the goal. let it be a byproduct of selecting for people who are the best person for the job and in a university setting, diverse viewpoints as well. [ applause ] >> that's a good place to pause. we will be right back with more from presidential candidate vivek ramaswamy. [ applause ] welcome back. we're with presidential candidate vivek ramaswamy. let's go straight to the audience. we have ronda here, a retired french professor from west des moines, a republican who is undecided in this primary. >> good evening. thank you for being here. what is the most important or interesting thing you have learned about iowans during your travel through the state? >> i learned a lot. i think iowans, i think one thing i share in common with iowans is a level of candor, actually. everybody told me about iowa nice. what i have actually found is iowa candor. and i appreciate that because that's the true form of nice. this is the tenth event we're doing today, actually. so we have done ten events like this across the state. i feel like people appreciate that. it's called the full grassley. we're doing that 99 times two in this year period. and it doesn't feel like work to me, actually. feels like we're having open conversations. i feel they don't appreciate pre-candid speeches. if i'm going to do that, i keep it two to five minutes. i find they appreciate and relish open conversation and candor. that's what surprised me most. the other thing, we ran the des moines turkey trot. we were here on thanksgiving, and as that was running somebody wished me good luck and said, you know how to spell luck, right? she says, you spell it w-o-r-k. i said, you know, that sounds like something my parents taught me when i was little. they value people that work hard because many of you do work hard. cultural farmers, building business across the state. that's something we would do well to make a national value in this country again, embrace hard work, give us back our central purpose. that's how we revive this country. >> well, a big thank you to our audience and thank you to mr. vivek ramaswamy. thank you to our hosts here e a granville university. kaitlyn collins is up next. good evening. i'm kate line collins here in new york. you have been watching a live cnn town hall in iowa 33 days before the iowa caucuses in what was a closing message for the republican candidate to voters. part of that message was pushing a conspiracy theory about january 6th. vivek ramaswamy says that january 6th was an inside job. that's a claim that he first made at a debate recently. it was not. that is according to the fbi director who is a lifelong republican, who was appointed by former president donald trump. he testified as much before congress. there are also hours of testimony, dozens of criminal indictments that say as much. for more on what mr. vivek ramaswamy said, i want to bring in tom foreman. tom, obviously it is not a surprise that he was talking about january 6th. but it was part of the most animated part of his town hall and of his message that he was pushing to voters. what did he say? and what are the facts about what he said? >> this is a message, kaitlyn, that he has pushed before. and he always gets very energetic about it, and the crowd, to some degree, always responds. listen to what he said. >> if you had told me that january 6th was in any way an inside job, the subject of government entrapment, i would have told you that was crazy talk. fringe conspiracy theory nonsense. i could tell you now, having gone somewhat deep in this, it's not. >> so what he went on to after this was to say things like they rolled out the red carpet, the capitol police, to let the people come inside, that there were federal agents in the crowd instigating the violence. he nibbled around this in many appearances, did it again tonight, that they were involved in this and there was suppression of evidence of how this was an inside job. make no doubt about it, there is no evidence that what he is saying is true. to the contrary, the fbi director christopher wray has said it is completely wrong there were any agents in the crowd trying to instigate this. when you look through the video, there is no evidence of police rolling out the red carpet. there is evidence at times of police standing by while people walk passed them, which seems to be a measure of the fact that the people were leaving or the police were so overwhelmed that it was at the point that there was nothing else to do. most importantly, though, look at what the courts have done as they have looked at this. as of last july, 30 months into it, about 350 department of justice, 350 defendants have been charged with assault and resisting or impeding officers or employees, including many attacks on the officers in question here. there have been many convictions. there have been many people sentenced. there has been no evidence in this of what he claims of an inside job, even though he makes that claim time and again. kaitlyn? >> yeah. it wasn't long ago that the man convicted of crushing that m metropolitan police department. those officers were in hours' long battles with rioters that day. >> and many have admitted this. they have come forward and said, yes, this is what happens. i went there and i did this. so he's even saying to the people who were convicted and admitted it, he's saying, no, you're wrong. that can't be true. >> one thing he always turned to when he's talking about january 6th and he's pushed as abbie was pushing him for the facts on what he was saying there is to the michigan governor and the attempted kidnapping of her, what are the facts of what he said there and is it true? what are the facts there? >> it is true three people were acquitted in that case. he tried to see, there it is, same justice department, same people out there. they were acquitted because they were entrapping these people. these three guys walked. what he doesn't mention is that nine people were convicted in that case as well. when it comes to these conspiracy theories, he's going through the greatest hits, and they are false, period. >> yeah. and abby did a good job pointing that out. tom foreman, thank you for that fact check. joining me now scott jennings and anna navorro. 33 days to go before the iowa caucuses, which is the critical kick start to this race. is elevating a january 6th conspiracy theory the way to win over those voters? >> no, i don't think so. i don't think his campaign is in very good shape truthfully. i think he's playing for the future, whether that's a donald trump surrogate in the near term, whether that's as a future presidential candidate in 2028, i mean, he is a young man. so, no, i -- i don't -- i don't think this is the way to -- i mean, but this was the most decaffeinated we've seen vivek ramaswamy. i mean, he has been a very hyper candidate through all the debates and other. but the most animated he got tonight was on january the 6th and pushing this -- this

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