by The biotech company’s multi-millionaire founder and investor, Vivek Ramaswamy, said on Tuesday he was entering the 2024 Republican presidential race.
The 37-year-old entrepreneur and author officially entered the Republican presidential race with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. He also posted a video on social media announcing his candidacy for the White House.
He said: “We are in the midst of a national identity crisis. Faith, patriotism and hard work disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like Covidism, climatetism and gender ideology.”
“We hunger to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, but we can’t even answer the question of what it means to be an American.”
He continued, “Today, the waking left attacks that vacuum and tells Americans that your race, gender, and sexual orientation govern who you are, what you can achieve, and what you can think.”
Mr. Ramaswamy is the author of “Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam”. He co-founded Strive Asset Management, which launched last year with the backing of billionaire investor Peter Thiel and urges companies to focus on excellence over politics.
He said Fox News: “I’m all for putting America first, but to put America first, we have to first rediscover what America is. And to me, those are the ground rules of the road that get this nation moving from meritocracy to free speech to self-rule over aristocracy.”
In an interview with New York TimesRamaswamy, who was born and raised in southwestern Ohio, said what sets him apart from other Republicans running or likely to run is “a vision of national identity that dilutes these other agendas to irrelevance.”
“In the coming months, Republicans are sure to take extremely extreme positions on everything from banning abortion to cutting Social Security and Medicare,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement following Ramaswamy’s announcement.
“We look forward to continuing to make sure all Americans know just how extreme the MAGA agenda is.”
Mr. Ramaswamy holds degrees in biology from Harvard University and in law from Yale. According to his personal website, he founded Roivant Sciences in 2014 and led biotech IPOs in 2015 and 2016, as well as helping to start other health and technology companies.
