Washington: Tech entrepreneur and Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy has announced his 2024 presidential bid with a promise to "put merit back" and end dependence on China, becoming the second community member to enter the Republican Party's presidential primary after Nikki Haley.
Ramaswamy, 37, whose parents migrated to the United States from Kerala and worked at a General Electric plant in Ohio, has made the announcement during a live interview.
He said "We are in the middle of this national identity crisis, Tucker, where we have celebrated our differences for so long that we forgot all the ways we are really just the same as Americans bound by a common set of ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago."
He calls "wokeism" a national threat "That's why I am proud to say tonight that I am running for United States president to revive those ideals in this country," Ramaswamy announced.
"I think we need to put 'merit' back into 'America' in every spirit of our lives," he said, adding that he will end affirmative action in "every sphere of American life." A second-generation Indian American, Ramaswamy founded Roivant Sciences in 2014 and led the largest biotech IPOs of 2015 and 2016, it has many successful clinical trials in multiple disease areas that led to FDA-approved products, according to his bio.
"I'm all for putting America first, but in order to put America first, we have to first rediscover what America is. And to me, those are these basic rules of the road that set this nation into motion from meritocracy to free speech, to self-governance over aristocracy.”