Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has his own money, but not necessarily the kind that can carry a full-fledged presidential campaign, so he tells Newsmax he wants to build a grassroots campaign to fill the "vacuum at the heart of the American soul."
"As somebody who's lived the full arc of the American dream, I don't apologize for it," Ramaswamy told Saturday's "America Right Now." "What do I care about most? I care about this country, so money will not be an obstacle in this race. My machinery will not be an obstacle.
"We have a growing and talented team, but the heart of what lifts this is the message and I hope my ability to deliver that message and get the job done. That means it's going to take actually a bottom-up effort."
Ramaswamy says he does not need wealthy donor donations at his campaign website, but support from the ground up by everyday Americans that support his anti-woke message.
"We want this to be a grassroots bottom-up campaign and not large dollar donations, but actually small dollar donations so that this can actually be an uprising of everyday Americans who restore the heart and soul of this country," he told host Tom Basile.
"And I say this year is not about the who; it's about the what and the why. Let's define the agenda and I really think we can do this together."
The author of "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam" warns Americans of national identity crisis causing a "vacuum at the heart of the American soul" and he hopes his campaign "dilutes this woke cancer to irrelevance."
"I've accomplished a lot in my business career, but I'm not running on my biography," he told Basile. "I'm running on a vision for our nation, and it is not someone else's vision. It is a vision that I have spent the last several years developing myself."
Ramaswamy's message is one he said Republicans are "being a little too shy to say these things out loud."
"I'm also pledging to dismantle the climate religion that shackles the United States while leaving China untouched," he continued. "And, by the way, one of my biggest issues is declaring independence from China, because, unlike 1980, where we never relied on the Soviet Union for our modern way of life today we rely on communist China for the shoes in our feet and the phones in our pockets.
"We will never defeat an enemy that we depend on for our modern way of life, and I've laid out a clear policy agenda for how I believe we can decouple and declare independence from our long run enemy and that is Communist China."
In a video released Tuesday night, Ramaswamy, 37, formally launched his longshot bid.
In The Wall Street Journal editorial published at the same time, he pledged to repeal civil service protections for federal workers if he wins, as well as work to eliminate affirmative action, including directing the Justice Department to prosecute "illegal race-based preferences."
Born in Ohio, Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, founded a biotechnology company before becoming the partner of a hedge fund.
Ramaswamy enters what is expected to be a crowded Republican field that already includes former President Donald Trump and his former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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