After Ramaswamy walked into the room, Vic Hellberg led the crowd in a prayer and turned the microphone over to the candidate.

Ramaswamy stressed that he wanted to have an open conversation with the crowd and to allow them to ask whatever questions they desired. Those are things he said are lacking in the country.

“If you want to know the best measure of the health of our country is, how well our constitutional republic and democratic process is doing, it isn’t the number of ballots cast in November, actually,” he said. “That’s just the final act in the process. It’s the percentage of people who feel free to say what they actually think in public. Right now we’re doing poorly, but we can do better.”

The only way to do that, he added, is to allow everyone to talk openly. Ramaswamy said he was concerned the process will not exist for upcoming generations unless citizens do something about it. He said he wants free speech to be appreciated and to allow everyone to say what they want.

“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” he said. “We are hungry for a cause. We are starved for purpose and meaning and identity. At a time in our national history when things used to fill that hunger — faith, patriotism, hard work, family — these things have disappeared and that leaves a moral vacuum, a black hole in our hearts. When you have a black hole that runs that deep, that is when the poison fills the void.”

Ramaswamy said it is time for conservatives to step up and fill that void with an American national identity instead of running away from it. He said now is the time for them to run toward something — a vision of what it means to be an American. To Ramaswamy, that means believing in American Revolution ideals, such as meritocracy and the pursuit of excellence, which created the country.

“The idea you get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions,” he said. “That is why I have said I will end race-based affirmative action in every area of American life. It has been a cancer on our national soul.”

Believing in the rule of law is also an important value of being an American, he said. That means coming to the country legally. Ramaswamy said it also means reducing the federal government by 75 percent through implementing eight-year term limits for Congress, and eliminating departments such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Education. He said none of those values are Democrat or Republican, but fundamentally American.

“That is the true choice we face in this primary,” Ramaswamy said. “The choice is this — do you want incremental reform or do you want revolution? I stand on the side of the American Revolution, of a revival of those 1776 ideals, that vision that sells we the people create the government that is accountable to us – not the other way around.”

David Tracy asks Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican Presidential candidate, about his stance on religion with a Hindu background but Judeo-Christian ideals. The candidate opened the room to any questions after this campaign speech on Thursday.

Requiring the government to reveal the truth is something Ramaswamy’s campaign is centered around. In fact, the phrase “Truth. Vote Vivek” was printed on campaign posters, flags, baseball caps and more throughout the room and outside the restaurant. Ramaswamy told the crowd when he leaves the office after two four-year terms, he wants his farewell speech to include values such as pride of the citizens in the country, parents determining education of their children and the fact there is only three branches of the government.

“That is the truth,” he said. “We fight for the truth. We stand up for the truth.”

After his opening speech, Ramaswamy accepted questions from the audience, which ranged from his stances on the war in Ukraine to the southern border, from education to the Jeffrey Epstein flight log.

Regarding Ukraine, Ramaswamy said he was concerned about the open southern border of the United States, and would rather have the military focus on that. This year, he said 50 times the people who died on Sept. 11, 2001 would die of fentanyl crossing the border. Ramaswamy added there is also a crisis of armed cartel members and traffickers crossing the border.

“That is our basis for saying we have a legal, moral and ethical obligation to use our military to seal the holes in the Swiss cheese of our southern border,” he said. “The wall is not enough. Stop creating the incentives for border crossings. This is a solvable problem. It just requires a commander in chief with a spine, the fortitude to actually see this through.”

More than 100 people listen to a campaign speech from Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican Presidential candidate. The campaign stop was held at Legends American Grill on Thursday.

The Ukraine war does not advance American interests, he said. Ramaswamy would make a deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to freeze American support to Ukraine and prevent their entry to NATO in exchange for Russia withdrawing from the China alliance and removing nuclear weapons located close to Poland.

“We have to pull [Putin] out of Xi Jinping’s hand because our top enemy is communist China,” he said.

About education of the children in the country, Ramaswamy said a system needs to be in place which focuses on student achievement rather than bureaucracy employment opportunities. That can be done through shutting down the federal Department of Education and putting that money in the hands of the parents to send their children where they want. He said every graduating senior should be able to pass a civics test that immigrants have to pass to obtain citizenship.

“This is how we revive not just education, but the lifeblood of this country,” Ramaswamy said. “We’re the pioneers, the explorers of this country.”

He said he would make the Epstein list public to restore trust in the country, and also staying with the “Truth” focus of his campaign.

“We’ve got to see it,” he said. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I trust the people of this country to say they will confront the truth. Once the government starts entrusting us, just maybe we will start trusting the institutions again.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.