T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, left, looks on as his wife, Dr. Apoorva Ramaswamy, right, introduces him during a campaign event at Smokin’ G’s restaurant in Marshalltown on Wednesday afternoon.

Vivek Ramaswamy has branded himself an outsider and an underdog from the beginning of his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but the pharmaceutical entrepreneur turned candidate continues to push forward and rapidly circle the Hawkeye State in the lead-up to the first in the nation Iowa Caucus on Jan. 15.

Just two weeks after his most recent Marshalltown stop at the Pizza Ranch, Ramaswamy held a rally at Smokin’ G’s with about 25 people in attendance — a few of whom were already to committed to voting for him at the Caucus and many of whom were still undecided — on Wednesday afternoon. Former Illinois Congressional candidate Esther Joy King warmed up the audience with strong words of support for Ramaswamy and urged those in attendance to ask “hard questions” to help them make a decision on caucusing for him. She also touted his goal of shutting down several three-letter federal agencies including the FBI, DOE, ATF and CDC and predicted that Ramaswamy would “shock the world” at the caucus.

“It’s up to us right here in this room. We absolutely 100 percent can save this country,” King said.

The candidate’s wife, Dr. Apoorva Ramaswamy, took center stage next, telling the audience her husband had been solving problems for as long as they’ve known each other and would continue to do so in the White House. She recounted his journey as a businessman who started his own biotech company and his defiance of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives as evidence that he would be the kind of commander-in-chief who could restore American pride.

“I want our children to grow up and be proud to call themselves American, and I don’t see a company being able to do that. To do that, we need a president who can restore our faith in our government, someone who can make us proud to be American,” Apoorva Ramaswamy said. “And ladies and gentlemen, I know this man. He is the one who can do it.”

With introductions taken care of, the candidate launched into his stump speech on why he jumped into the race — the “Red Wave” that never came in 2022 — and took members of his own party to task for growing “lazy” in defining what they stand for and who they are. He called for an end to racial and gender quota systems, calling them “a cancer” on American life, using the military to secure the country’s borders and end illegal immigration, dismantling the “shadow government” of the administrative state by shutting down the aforementioned agencies, moving to a zero-based budgeting system and imposing term limits not just for politicians but for federal employees in Washington, D.C.

“They duped Donald Trump on this, and I want you to understand that. He had the right intentions. He rolled over that log. We saw what crawled out. Well guess what? They told him you can’t fire those civil service employees because they have civil service protections. Read the law,” he said. “Those civil service protections only apply to individual employee firings. They do not apply to mass firings. Mass firings are absolutely what I’m bringing to the D.C. bureaucracy. That’s what it’s gonna take, somebody who has both the brawn and the muscle to break things… but it’s also going to take an outsider who knows and understands the law and the Constitution in this country and understands it deeply.”

He went on to describe the current climate as “a 1776 moment” and lamented that diversity and differences have been celebrated at the expense of the ideals that he feels should unite Americans.

“That is what won us the American Revolution. That is what reunited us after the Civil War. That is what won us two world wars and the Cold War. That is what still gives hope to the free world, and if we can revive that dream over group identity and victimhood and grievance and bureaucracy, then nobody in the world — not a nation, not a corporation, not a virus, not China — is gonna defeat us,” Ramaswamy said. “That is what American Exceptionalism is all about, and that is what we’re gonna revive to save this great country.”

After taking an initial compliment from an audience member who commended him for “marrying up,” the candidate fielded the first of several questions of the event, this one about what would replace the federal agencies he plans to shutter. He said he would return the money that currently funds the Department of Education to parents who can then choose where they send their kids to school with the job training dollars being shifted to the Department of Labor (DOL), breaking up teachers unions and requiring students to pass the citizenship test before they are allowed to vote.

The FBI, which Ramaswamy referred to as “the Failed Bureau of Investigation,” is comprised of about 20,000 “back office bureaucrats” who would be immediately fired and forced to find work in the private sector during his presidency, and the remaining 15,000 frontline officers would be transferred to other agencies like the U.S. Marshal service, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the financial crimes enforcement unit of the U.S. Treasury. He then criticized other candidates for proposing less drastic measures like firing current FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“Firing Christopher Wray doesn’t do a darn thing. You get James Comey 2.0. You have an eight-headed hydra, you cut off one of the heads, it grows right back. So you have to gut it at its core,” Ramaswamy said. “So if you want incremental reform, I’m not your candidate. If you wanna revive the ideals of the American Revolution, nobody’s gonna get that done in the way that I will for this country. That’s what it’s gonna take right now, I believe, to save this country. We don’t live in ordinary times. I think we live in a time where if we don’t get this right in the next few years before our sons are in high school, I don’t think we have a country left.”

In response to a question on immigration, he reiterated his call to use the military as a means of securing the country’s borders, finishing the southern border wall, cutting off aid to Central American countries until they secure their own borders, ending birthright citizenship and returning those who have entered the U.S. illegally to their country of origin.

Another attendee was highly complimentary of Ramaswamy for taking a strong stance against carbon capture pipelines — and more specifically, the use of eminent domain on private property. He called the climate change agenda a “hoax” and wondered why other GOP presidential candidates, who he described as “bought and paid for,” wouldn’t come out against the CO2 pipelines.

He added that after he initially took the aforementioned position, he received calls from powerful people in Iowa “excoriating” him and felt he had been lied to over whether or not eminent domain would actually be used to secure easements. To a round of applause, Ramaswamy then said he was proud to be endorsed by controversial former U.S. Rep. Steve King, who has become something of an anti-carbon pipeline activist since losing his primary to current Rep. Randy Feenstra back in 2020.

“The mainstream media lost their minds, labeling him as whatever, racist or xenophobe. It’s all wrong. It’s all made up anyway. They tarred him in the same way that they’re lying to you about everything else they’ve lied about for the last 10 years, but he’s one of the rare Republicans who’s able to stand for truth on this issue,” Ramaswamy said.

He noted that another GOP presidential hopeful, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who Ramaswamy characterized as a “good person,” had come out in favor of the use of eminent domain and speculated that it was simply a case of his donors speaking through him.

“It’s a bastardization of our system. These people have been turned into pawns, and it’s sad. I don’t even blame the politicians anymore. These people are just puppets that have been deputized, and so, I don’t know, for my part, I’d rather speak the truth and lose this election than win by playing some fake snakes and ladders.”

As he wound down the event before heading off to Council Bluffs, Ramaswamy took a question from a police officer and said he would do more to protect law enforcement from lawsuits and prosecution while raising pay for military members and local police, even proposing repealing their income taxes. He also blamed pharmaceutical companies for pushing to close down mental health facilities and prescribe more of their antipsychotic drugs and causing a spike in violent crime.

Marshall County Pachyderm Herd Program Director Shari Coughenour encouraged local party members to get involved and caucus, even if Ramaswamy is not their preferred candidate, to help remove Joe Biden from office next January. The final question of the day was about how we would bring the country together if elected, and Ramaswamy returned to his aspiration of reviving the national character — citing Ronald Reagan as the last American president to do so.

“We’re not gonna do it by compromising on our principles. Some people think you unite the country by showing up in the middle and compromising. No, we’re gonna unite this country by being uncompromising about the principles that unite all of us as Americans,” he said. “To put America first, and I’m an America first conservative, we need a president who leads us to rediscover what America is. What is this country? What are the ideals that unite us? They’re enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and I think we deserve a president who stands for those ideals without compromising them. That’s how we’re gonna unite this country.”

In his own estimation, Ramaswamy and Trump are the only two true “America first” candidates in the race, but he did not believe the former president would be allowed to get “anywhere near the White House” again due to the forces working against him.

“We’re falling into a trap that they’ve laid for us. They’re selling us the rope today that they will use to hang us tomorrow. We cannot afford to fall for that trick. The America first agenda cannot end with Donald Trump,” Ramaswamy said. “It didn’t start with Donald Trump. It started in 1776 with George Washington. We owe it to our founding fathers to make sure we have another 250 years and then some left in our country’s future. We love (Trump) because, you know what, he got this fight started, but it is our job to finish it and that’s why I’m in this race. You’ve got the future of America first standing right here in front of you… If we want to win this war, vote for the commander-in-chief, the general who is not yet wounded in that war. That is why I’m in this race, and Apoorva and I, we will not stop until we get this job done.”