Former 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that a successful second term of President-elect Dobald Trump will be the retribution of the Republican Party.
Partial transcript as follows:
JONATHAN KARL: So, you were there. I saw you there on election night. I know you were there in the aftermath. You spent time with the now President-elect Donald Trump. What’s your sense? How is he approaching this transition?
RAMASWAMY: I think he cares about uniting the country. I think that is Donald Trump’s number one focus. And I do think we have to get back to a place, after this election, after that decisive victory, which I do think was a gift to the country, get back to a place where ordinary Americans who might have voted differently amongst their family members or their colleagues or their neighbors, to be able to get together at the dinner table and say, we’re still Americans at the end of this. That’s very much Donald Trump’s head space.
He’s also learned a lot from that first term. And I think he’s going into this second term, even to take to new heights some of the things he wasn’t able to accomplish in the first term, which I think is going to be a good thing.
KARL: I want to come back to that unity theme, but first I’ve heard you say that this is a new Republican Party. So, in brief, how is this different from the old Republican Party? What’s the key differential?
RAMASWAMY: Well, it’s a party that’s now a multiethnic, working class coalition. You saw black voters, Hispanic voters, young voters. That was a big one. A much younger composition of the Republican primary base coming together on basic principles that really weren’t as beholden to older Republican orthodoxies, but principles like free speech, anti-censorship, meritocracies, staying out of World War III. These are some of the common threats that brings together what is a pretty diverse and broad tent coalition to restore those basic constitutional principles.
KARL: Yes.
RAMASWAMY: Here’s a big one, and Donald Trump’s talked for a long time about the deep state, but this idea of restoring self-governance is big in this new coalition. The idea that the people we elect to run the government, they haven’t been the ones actually running the government for a very long time. Donald Trump is going to be the president of the United States in the real sense of that word. Capital “p” president. Where he is actually making the decisions with the democratic will of the people behind him, not the un-elected bureaucratic class underneath him.
And I think that’s something that unites a common threat of even former Democrats to independents, to libertarians, to, of course, traditional Republicans as well. I think that that’s a common thread that unites us.
KARL: Well, let me – let me ask you about the unity, and I think you’ve referred to this as a resurgence of national unity.
RAMASWAMY: Yes.
KARL: I’m hearing that from some people around the former president, but I’m hearing a very different message from others around the former president. For example, Mike Davis, who had been mentioned by Donald Trump Jr. as a possible candidate for attorney general in a new Trump administration, has been calling for all-out revenge against Trump’s opponents. I want to give you just a couple of examples, and believe me there are many, but a couple of examples of what he has said on X. He says, “Trump’s opponents attempted to bankrupt him for non-fraud, imprison him for non-crimes, and take him off the ballot and take off his head. Now they want unity? F them. Let’s unify them in prison.” And one more, a short one, “Here’s my current mood. I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall, legally, politically, and financially, of course.”
Now, Davis has said he’s not going into the new administration, but this is a – he was a clerk for Justice Gorsuch. And again, Donald Trump Jr. said this is the kind of guy that could be attorney general.
RAMASWAMY: Well, look, the fact of the matter is you haven’t heard that from Donald Trump. And you could airlift any quote from a number of people on the left who weren’t very happy with the election result either but who aren’t going into the Harris-Biden administration in their trailing days either.
What you’re hearing from Donald Trump is he is going to be a president for all Americans. He is a guy who in that first term, he — you know, he had crowds chanting “lock her up” for Hillary Clinton. He didn’t prosecute her. I think Donald Trump is focused on what makes people’s lives better.
And actually, my message to Democrats out there, even those who didn’t vote for Donald Trump, is to give him a chance to actually make your life better and I think a lot of people across the country even who have bought into I think some false narratives about Donald Trump are going to be pleasantly surprised as to finding more money in their paycheck, prices coming down in the country, a secure border — those are things most Americans actually care about.
And I think it’s time to turn the page on a lot of these histrionics or Hitler comparisons or airlifting some quote of some person who Donald Trump —
KARL: I mean, this is somebody who’s been — been pretty a staunch defender of Trump, pretty close to the team and —
RAMASWAMY: And by your acknowledgement, someone who’s not coming into the administration.
KARL: Okay. So all the talk of retribution, is that gone now?
And by the way, I’ve heard you say that he didn’t prosecute Hillary Clinton. I mean, I’ve talked to Bill Barr about this, he wanted the Justice Department to prosecute, you know, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and they kind of pulled him back.
But your sense is that that retribution talk is done?
RAMASWAMY: I’m going to tell you what Donald Trump has said on this time and again, success will be our retribution. Success will be our vengeance. That’s a direct line from Donald Trump. It’s a beautiful sentiment.
And I do think that success is unifying. Nothing’s going to unite this country more than economic growth. Nothing is going to unite this country more than people feeling like their wages are rising at a faster pace than prices which hasn’t been the case for the last few years.
And here’s a big one that I know a lot of Democrats should support and do support as well is restoring stability and peace on the global stage. I mean, the reality is the United States of America is at our best when the chief diplomat of the United States is the democratically elected U.S. president. That’s not the case right now. It hasn’t been for years. That changes on January 20th, bringing us off the brink of major conflicts in other parts of the world. So I think that those are going to unite the country regardless of partisan affiliation, that’s what I’m looking forward to.
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