From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Vivek Ramaswamy: Restoring Faith In America's Institutions

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has shared radical ideas on the campaign trail, including raising the voting age to 25 and dismantling what he calls the "administrative state". Entrepreneur and 2024 Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy joins Sean and Rachel to share his vision for the nation, how he would work to balance the power of the government and put power back into the hands of the voters, and how the family is the most important factor in restoring the country. Later, Sean and Rachel are joined by Outkick Writer Bobby Burack as he weighs in on his latest article on the Durham Report, and why he believes universal truths have been attacked by leftist ideology. Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Mejuri. From November 25th to December 2nd, get 25% off everything on orders over $150 in Mejuri's biggest sale ever. From bold hoops to minimalist stacks, Mejuri has something for everyone. Mejuri makes handcrafted fine jewelry for every day made with responsibly sourced materials.

So you can look and feel good about gifting and wearing them. Shop your wishlist 25% off at Mijeri.com today. Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life and my wife, Rachel Campbell of Duffy. It's great to be back, Sean. And boy, we have a big guest today. We have someone who's running for president. Of course, he was first an entrepreneur, very successful entrepreneur. And now he's running for president. With no further ado, let's bring in Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek, so great to have you. We're happy as people who've been in politics

to know that you just came from working out. Sean can tell you it's very easy to put on the pounds when you're campaigning and you're running out of time and they're feeding you stuff you're not used to as you're on the road. So you're looking good. So good for you. I appreciate it. I'm still out of breath. We just got out of my workout, but it's good. It's good to be on with you guys. I know you get it. So thanks a lot. Healthy mind, healthy body. I believe that. So listen, let's just get right to it. We don't have a lot of time with you and I want to get right down to brass tacks here. So the GOP is a party that talks a lot about tax rates and the border and all these things are really important. Health care. We talk a lot on this podcast about the family.

And I believe that the things that are actually ailing America at its very root, at its very core, is the breakdown of the family. And I think the breakdown of religion and tradition among those families. So talk to me about what you can do from your perch to strengthen families, which I think are the most important unit in America. You are right on target because we will, we can talk our faces till we're blue about foreign policy or economic policy. And as you know, I have a lot to say about both, but those are downstream of our fortitude, our strength, who we really are. So who are we? That is grounded in our identity. And what is our identity grounded in? It's grounded in things that are true. My faith in God, my belief in this

country. And you open your heart to both if you grow up and experience the love of your family first. We talk often about what we're against, and all three of us I know are. We're against big government. But I think we should also stand more unapologetically for the best known form of governance known to mankind. That is the nuclear family. Christian tradition want to get you there? Great. You want to read Aristotle instead? That's fine. Aristotle said the same thing. The household is a unit around which the rest of society and civil societies build. And the irony is that the government itself, that other governing structure, is now effectively hostile to the nuclear family and family formation itself. How is it hostile? So this gets to what

you can do. We pay people not to form families. That's right. That's what Lyndon Johnson's great society has, by the way, the biggest misnomer in American political history. The great society has created a society that is anything but great. I just went to the South side of Chicago last week. Okay. Predominantly black community, predominantly Democrat. What I found is a community that is actually, to some at least, surprisingly conservative in their desired values. But what you have is many single mothers who have been paid more to be a single mother than they were to be married. individuals who make those choices when the government incentivizes them to make those choices. But if you look at, for example, this Black America, the same is true. It's not limited to Black America, but the stats are most staggering because Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was supposed to help Black America. Over 70% of Black kids were born into dual-parent households in the

1960s. Now it's less than 30% in the other direction. And regardless of race, we have 25% of households in this country now that are fatherless. And it's a big issue among white families and Hispanic families too. Asians are the only exception in the other direction, largely because it's first generation immigrants that skew it towards family formation. So I think you're right over the target. That's the building block around which we regain our self-confidence. Pass on self-confidence to the next generation of Americans. Depression, anxiety, the loss of civic pride. These things

are downstream of shoring up our identity, our sense of who we really are. And that starts with the family. That's why I love you guys doing this podcast together. I mean, we need to find ways of you guys do it. Make it cool again. Make family cool again is one of the things I say in the campaign trail. I think we can do it. You know, I do think it's important to actually talk about it, to hold it up, to lift it up in our international conversations, to make people aspire, to go, listen, maybe families are not so bad. Maybe families are a really good thing to bring happiness and fulfillment in my life. And I don't think our leaders do enough of that. But I want to pivot to you, Vivek,

because I spent almost 10 years in Congress. And one of the most frustrating things is the fact that you can win elections. We can have a Republican win a presidential campaign. But they get into the Oval Office and they recognize that in this massive executive branch, they have all of these embedded liberals who you can't fire. They're protected by the civil service laws, by their union, and they will fight you every step of the

way. So though you want an election, you can't implement your agenda because these guys are going to be fighting you. And no one ever elected them. No one ever gave them the baton of power. They gave it to a president who was duly elected by the people. How do you address that? Because I don't think the democracy functions unless elected leaders have the power to actually change policy and change direction of the country that the deep state be damned. So you're hitting the nail on the head where we have three branches of government in our constitutional republic. But in practice today we have four, and the fourth is the most powerful because it lives outside of the separation of powers. That's the administrative state.

So I do not believe the administrative state can be reformed top down. I think it's an illusion. It's a false promise. It sounds good. Reform the administrative state. It doesn't work. Why? Because the beast should have never existed in the first place. So I know some will find this extreme, but I think the right answer is you have to be willing to shut it down and do it based on firm constitutional footing, not vengeance and grievance, but moral conviction, moral authority, constitutionally principled grounding. So let's just take one department that I happen to have studied a lot. I have a clear plan for how we're going to shut it down, the U.S. Department of Education. It shouldn't have existed. Now, Sean, you've been

in Congress, so you understand the mechanics of this. Let me tell you about what happened here. What used to happen, the way the founders envisioned it, is that the president of the United States and the White House and the executive branch would ask Congress for permission to spend money. With the rise of the three-letter acronym soup, that is the administrative state, presidents started to get lazy. They delegated draft budgetary language to the administrative agencies, and they said, go through the OMB, and otherwise just work directly with Congress. Well, the draft language they started submitting for budgetary appropriations would say things like shall spend instead of what it used to

say, which was may spend. So then the language comes back. Congress just signs off on that language. Now the language comes back and says, Congress has said, no, no, no, you shall spend X instead of what it used to say is you may spend. So then let's say the president walks in and says, well, I don't want to spend that money. Deep state comes back, says, no, no, Mr. President, Congress has actually mandated that you spend it. And so that separation of powers, you can't overstep your executive authority. That's backwards. I believe in what's called the unitary theory of the executive branch. It's not a radical idea that there's one executive branch, not two. That's what the unitary theory of the executive branch means.

So under my presidency, all budget requests run through the White House. They will go back to asking deferentially for permission to spend money. But that means I exercise my executive authority to see if I find waste, fraud, abuse, absence of statutory authority to spend. We're not going to spend that money. And that's going to be the authority of the chief executive, the duly elected president of the United States under Article II of the Constitution to do what the president is empowered to do. Fire people if necessary. Shut down departments if necessary. Move branches of government outside of Washington, D.C. if necessary. You get a two for one with that one. First of all, more accountable to the people across the country.

Are you willing to address the administrative state, the unions inside the federal government? Because right now, you can say, I want to fire them, but it's very challenging to fire them. They're lifetime employment positions. You got to be able to change those rules and laws that protect people that won't do the will of the president. Will you change that? Absolutely. And we have a clear legal basis for doing it. So I think, A, a lot of those civil service protections are unconstitutional. Article 2 of the Constitution says the president runs the executive branch. I'll tell you, from having been a CEO, a simple understanding of the Constitution, not from my law school days, but from a CEO's version of it, if somebody works for you and you can't fire them,

that means they don't work for you. That's right. It means you work for them, right? Because you're responsible for what they do without having the authority to change it. So I think the civil service protections read against Article Two are actually unconstitutional. Second, there's other statutes like the presidential reorganization statute that gives you actually power that interacts with the civil service protection statutes that allow you to fire them. And third is the civil service protection statutes don't apply to administrative agencies that don't exist, which is why shutting them down is also a promising mechanism. So we could go on and have a multi-hour discussion about this.

But I think that to answer your question, am I willing to sidestep or run straight through them? Absolutely. We have strong legal, statutory and constitutional footing to do it. But that's what it's going to take. And so my HR human resources policy as the leader of the executive branch is that if I can't work for the taxpayer for more than eight years and collect the paycheck for longer than eight years, which I think is a good thing, then neither will most of those federal bureaucrats reporting into me either replace the civil service protections with eight year term limits for the bureaucrats, right? People usually talk about term limits in Congress. You're missing the show. I think that can be a good idea, too. But that's a sideshow compared to who's really wielding political power in Washington, D.C., without any political backstop whatsoever. That's actually where we need the term limits. We'll have more of this conversation after this. we need to turn on this. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Mijuri makes handcrafted fine jewelry for every day made with responsibly sourced materials. So you can look and feel good about gifting and wearing them.

Shop your wish list 25% off at Mijuri.com today. Yeah, I mean, listen, we lived through the changes in the union, the teachers unions in Wisconsin. And boy, you unleash the wrath of, you know, and I'm by the way, I'm all for eliminating the Department of Education. In fact, that brings me to my next question. I always wished that Donald Trump had done that. And that was one of the problems with having someone coming in. I mean, I'm not dissing what he did, because I think it's remarkable what he accomplished, given that the deep state and the intelligence agencies and everybody was working to get rid of him and to undermine him at every corner. But I had thought that maybe he could have eliminated the Department of Education. You say you will.

I think that's fabulous. I think it's going to come with like Wisconsin times 100 if you do that. But good on you. Wisconsin times 100, if you do that, but good on you. What else did you see, perhaps, from the Trump administration that you would do differently? And I hate to give you a two-part question, but I believe you also said you would pardon the January 6 prisoners. Yeah, well, look, I think that some of these things go together, Rachel, which is that I'm going to take the America first agenda further than Donald Trump did, building on the foundation that he laid, learning a lot of lessons that he learned along

the way. But I think we go further with the agenda if we're doing it based on first principles and moral authority, not just vengeance and grievance. And yes, you strike the swamp, the swamp strikes back. They did to Trump. But my job is to make it not as easy as he did for them to be able to strike back. That's how we go further. The last president who did that well, I think, was Ronald Reagan. That's the model for the way I'm looking at taking on the administrative state. principles. I'll pardon Donald Trump. I think that he's being pardoned. He's being persecuted through prosecution in New York using a federal statute as its nexus. That's, I've written in the Wall Street Journal, a basis for presidential pardon. I said I'd deliver it to Trump. I'd also deliver it to any January 6th protesters who were peaceful and who were denied due process rights, which was many of them, such as Brady rule violations, where they were denied the right to see exculpatory evidence. That's wrong. Left wing

or right wing, it doesn't matter. That's first constitutional principles. It's not vengeance and grievance. It's constitutional principles. So that's what I think we actually need to stand on. And then we go further with the agenda, shut down the Department of Education. You're right, Trump could have done it. They would have come for him. But if I'm doing it based on constitutional principles, that this never had actually the authority to exist in the first place, I think we actually get further with the agenda itself, not just building the wall, but using the military to secure the southern border, not just talking about DEI training, but actually ending affirmative action by executive order. Actually, Lyndon Johnson created it by executive order. The president can end it by executive

order too. And so that's, I think, what we need to learn is we're building on Trump's foundation, learn from what he did well, but also learn from where he fell short to take that America first agenda to the next level. principles. I actually think we unite the country in the process. Because the way we get to national unity is not through compromise, compromising on our principles. Some people think that that's the way you get to unity. I disagree with that. I think the way we get to national unity is by being uncompromising about the principles that make us American. And so yes, I'm all for putting America first, but we need to rediscover what America is. And once we make that connection, I think we build on Trump's foundation, but go far further than he did in his four years in office. Listen, I like that idea. I like the conversation about, you know, first principles and being uncompromised. And one of the problems I think we have is we have put a generation of kids through what I call commie camp or communist camp.

They've been indoctrinated with a set of ideas and principles that aren't based in the traditional American ideas, and they truly believe it. That's why they think speech is violence. They think they have to get rid of the Second Amendment. The most critical issue facing humanity is the environment. I mean, they've been sold this every single year of K through 12, and they go to college. It's that much worse. And so I don't know that we have a group of young people who can buy into a core set of American principles and ideas. And I wish that

wasn't the case, but that's what I see in my own life of who's coming out of our education system. I know we only have you for a little while longer. I wanted to ask you about the FBI and the DOJ, and I think this feeds into just the deep state. But if you don't have a law enforcement organization that is going to truly have lady justice who is blind, they're going to equally apply the law, Regardless of your party or your color or your race, you don't actually have law enforcement and justice in your system. And I think the FBI and the DOJ have fallen so far off track. And there's been conversations whether they're abolished and rebuilt, they're defunded in part, or just the bad actors are fired. How do you get the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA,

the FISA court, how do you get your hands around what has become a rogue political organization targeting conservatives and supporting Democrats? So I've said this long before, like long, long before this has become a more recent conversation in the wake of the Durham report. I think it's shutting down the FBI is the right answer. I'll tell you how it deals with some of those other institutions, too. First of all, it sets an example to say that we're serious about reform of a law enforcement agency that actually views the law as an inconvenience rather than its reason for existence. And by the way, you see disconnected incidents in recent weeks. Daniel Penny, Sergeant Daniel Penny in the state of New York.

You've got the southern border crisis, 15,000 migrants crossing per day, and then you have the Durham report. On the face of it, these three things have nothing to do with each other. But the deeper, real root cause, the cancer, is the abandonment of the rule of law itself. And when the chief federal law enforcement agency is itself abandoning the law, then why do you expect ordinary American citizens to abide by the rule of law? Heck, why do you expect people who are outside of America to abide by the American rule of law when America's law enforcement agency, chief law enforcement agency, isn't itself abiding by that same rule of law? So these are symptoms of that deeper abandonment of the rule of law.

Here's what I would say, though. Abandoning and shutting down the FBI is far more realistic than you think. And for me, these things aren't slogans. They're actually paths to getting something done. At the local level, you have local police and local prosecutors. You don't have a separate investigative arm sitting in between. At the federal level, you have the U.S. Marshals and the DOJ. The DOJ has its own problems. We'll come back to that. But you don't need this separate intermediary investigative institution. And when you have a separate bureaucracy for the sake of having it, when it wasn't, strictly speaking, necessary, that then becomes a cesspool,

a laboratory for corruption itself. So it's almost like we're asking for it. And it's not now a right wing issue only. Go back 60 years. It was the same FBI under J. Edgar Hoover that was pressuring Martin Luther King Jr., literally threatening him to commit suicide 60 years ago. Now it's still, I'm not kidding you, you just go to Washington, D.C., you'll see it, the J. Edgar Hoover building that people walk into every day. And so when an institution has become so, so rotten beyond the point of repair, you can't just reform it around the edges. I think you have to shut it down. Now, I think that then sets an example for the rest of that national security establishment, each of which have their own vestige of corruption to say that,

holy crap, this guy's serious, right? And I think that as the leader of the executive branch, you then make that statement. I think that reverberates through the rest of the administrative police state and the national security establishment. And I think it's the most achievable one from a pragmatic perspective and the most justified based on recent evidence as well. And so, again, I think we can shut down the FBI. A lot of this will restore efficiency. I mean, the DEA pursues its drug cases entirely in a separate silo, sometimes pursuing some of the same suspects under a different investigation from the FBI. That's just a waste of money and inefficiency. So it actually is the more pragmatic thing to do in certain cases to shut it down. But I'm not just saying

it because it's pragmatic. I'm saying it because, more importantly, it gets to the essence of reforming a toxic managerial bureaucracy, which is to say you don't reform it, you shut it down. And that's the way I'll govern. And I think that brings back the lifeblood to our civic republic. I couldn't agree more. You know, I've heard people, Sean and I have actually had that debate about the FBI. He's like, no one can ever shut it down. You could reform it. You could cut some of its spending. You could make it smaller.

I'm a little more radical than Sean, and I kind of agree with you on that as well. But it's been interesting having. She is more radical than me. Every viewer of Fox understands that. Every viewer of Fox understands that. But it's been interesting having RFK Jr. in the race because a lot of us have forgotten about what happened to his dad and to his uncle. And so you're talking again. We talked about Scott Walker taking down the teachers unions in Wisconsin.

Now you're talking and you talk about the taking down the Department of Education. This is taking down the, you know, intelligence complex, the surveillance complex in our government. And we saw that with Trump. So I'm sure you've thought about that. What do you think? So, look, as I said, we're all human beings. look, as I said, we're all human beings, but I have an obligation if I'm running for president to make sure that we're operating at the best standard we possibly can to make it not easy, but as difficult as possible for them to strike back. And back to our first conversation, Rachel, where we opened this up. I don't just preach about family values. We live according to the values

that we preach, faith in God and so on. I do believe that it's not just being done by us. It's being done through us. My faith is real to me. It's not a box check in campaign trail. And so I'm not saying anything about anybody else but myself. I think that that puts me at least on a footing where I'm going to be able as best I can to take this on. It will involve some sacrifice. I'll also say that I won't be the same person eight years from now that I am today. I don't think Trump is the same person now that he was eight years ago. You go drain the swamp, the swamp will drain you. At a certain point, you pass on the torch to the next guy that takes it a little bit further along,

and that's the best we can do. But right now, I do have fresh legs. Right now, I am 37 years old. I haven't held political office before. I am genuinely optimistic. I'm not yet jaded, cynical and defeated. And I'm going to go as far as I can. I think Reagan went as far as one could have in recent memory. I think he was the last president who I think is a model for what I think is possible or even attainable or even surpassable if we do this right. But I think that's the moment we have ahead of us in 2024. We're all human. There's no Messiah coming from on high to save us. I'm not going to promise to be one. That would be a false promise. But I do think that if we're guided by our sense of purpose, if we're practicing what we preach, we stand on a foundation that makes

it difficult for them to come back and strike back at us. I think we go further with the agenda itself. And I have a legally constitutionally grounded plan. It's not a slogan, a vision for how we actually get this done. And you're in my view, Rachel, I don't think it has to be the extreme view or the impractical one. I think in many ways it is downright practical, but it's not the pragmatism that motivates my passion for this. It's a three branch constitutional republic where a fourth one is now actually the chief obstacle to that constitutional republic. And a fourth one is now actually the chief obstacle to that constitutional republic. And if something's standing in your way, you run straight through it without apology.

Just a quick question, because again, when we ran for Congress, it's not like running for president. But we had a two-person team. It was just the two of us. No one thought we could win. We were really, really- Underdogs. No one thought we could win. We were really, really underdogs. Worked my heart out. It was 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

How are you doing on the campaign trail? How's your family doing? Are you enjoying it? What's tough for you? What do you actually, what invigorates you? Tell us about the campaign trail and kind it what it means to run for president um all the travel all the uh impact on the family and what you love about it i appreciate it we're doing it as a family which is the first thing that's making mostly fun it is mostly fun so far i'd say it's 80 percent about 80 there's about 20 that's just a straight headache and there's just no way around it. The

administrivia, the morass, you know, some press thing here, some lie about some God knows what. I mean, you guys have some sense of how this goes. And so that's just the cost of doing this in this lane. The part I like about it, just on the bright side is, you know, one of the things you do when you try to travel with the family and go on vacation is, I mean, there's plenty of beautiful places to see in the world, but when you really to travel with the family and go on vacation is, I mean, there's plenty of beautiful places to see in the world. But when you really travel to a place or you're visiting a place or having a different experience, what do you do is you try to meet the people of that place. Even long before I was running for president, if we were to travel as a family, that'd be one of the things we'd try to do, go out of our way to do. That's what the campaign trail is all about, is actually you're getting to know the places of this country, not just by seeing them with your eyes, but by actually experiencing them and meeting the people. And what kind of unique experience is that for all of us,

but even on the bright side of it for our kids? I mean, there's a part of it that's certainly very difficult for young children to sort of go through by being slugged around. My three-year-old, I think he's taken a lot away from it. And us doing it together as a family, it is actually kind of a special experience. And I think the communities that we're showing up in, that's what you're talking about, what invigorates me. I think it's the interactions with the people on the ground, especially when we're going as a family. Sometimes, you know, a family can't always travel. So I'm away for three, four days straight. That can be a little draining.

But especially when we're most of the time trying to do it together, it's actually quite invigorating. And you show up in places in the middle of Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina or elsewhere, you have people who are really ready to catch you. You're sort of literally helicoptering in or airplane landing in. You have community there ready to catch you and is hungry to engage in conversations and stay in the open with their otherwise saying behind closed doors. And we give people the permission to do that and vice versa. I reciprocate in return. And so that's what really gets me going. And my view is the commitment we made early on is I'd rather speak truth at every step and lose the election if that comes to then to play some political snakes and ladders and win. I think that's actually going to be the winning strategy.

But that's not for me to decide. That's for the people of this country to decide. We're going to be guided by truth. I think if you tell the truth and you're always standing in your truth, you can't second guess what you did because there were no other options, right? If you had to think about maybe they want me to say this, then there's like 10 other options of what you maybe could say. So I agree with that in life

in general. I think it's a great way to do it. I also agree with traveling through the country. I mean, I love doing speeches mostly because it can be so depressing doing the news and all the negative stuff and hearing it. And then you go and you meet people in the middle of Wisconsin or Kentucky or Missouri and you say, oh my gosh, this country is filled with so many good, faithful people who do so many volunteer activities and, you know, gathering flowers to put on the table at the event at the pro-life. I mean, these are the people that I'm like, that's America, not all this crazy crap we see in in D.C. or New York City and the things that disillusion us. I'm fascinated by your background and your family. By the way, you might not know this. I noticed that your father studied in Kerala. I spent a summer in Kerala, India, which, by the way, is a Catholic state. The most Catholic people I've ever met have been from Kerala, India. So I'm curious about how having immigrant parents, I have an immigrant parent, how that has colored your view of America and this campaign.

Yeah, I mean, look, it's for the better, undoubtedly, because I think there's a certain sense in which you value something you made a choice to be a part of, as my parents did. It sounds like as one of your parents did, too did too. Rather than something you just inherit and take for granted. I think it also comes with the responsibility. I think this is a country that has given, I'm a first generation American, I was born here, but given me a lot. I've lived, my parents came here with not a lot of money. I founded multi-billion dollar companies. I'm now 37 years old running for US president. This is the country where- The American dream. dollar companies. I'm now 37 years old running for US president. This is the country where we have an obligation, I think, to keep that civic lifeblood and spirit alive, even in families that

didn't have the privilege. And I do think it's a privilege of a certain kind to be the kid of immigrants who made a choice to be here, to spread the sense of purpose and meaning and gratitude that that gives us. I think that comes with that as a responsibility, too. I do think immigrants have been given special opportunities, and people like you and me, Rachel, first-generation Americans, but I think that that comes with a responsibility, too, and part of my responsibility in speaking about my gratitude for this country and the civic ideals that were founded on as part of living out the other side of the bargain of what this country allowed me to enjoy. We can't just quietly, you know, we can't just quietly enjoy that.

I think in some ways you have to reverse the classic adage also and preach what we practice. Right. And I think that that's that's an obligation to we practice the American dream. Now we actually have the obligation to preach it. And that's what we're trying to do as part of an obligation, too. We practice the American dream. Now we actually have the obligation to preach it. And that's what we're trying to do as part of this campaign, too. So I appreciate you guys. I love the way you guys set a good example for the country, too. And, you know, bringing, like we're doing the campaign as a family. You guys are doing the same thing.

And I love that about you. Your family will be so enriched by this experience. It's amazing. Not to quote a Chevy commercial, but you do see the heartbeat of America when you actually get out and meet people and shake their hand. I want you to come back and tell me when you shake so many hands, Vivek, that you get a callus between your thumb and your pointer finger. Because in the summer. You mentioned that because I do have one. I didn't notice it. That's what that is from.

You grip and it's like you'll shake so many hands. And then you know. Then you know you're on the way to victory. So now we know he's really been working. He's got that callous on him. I didn't even notice that you mentioned it. You know, absolutely. Shake your hands. Listen, Vivek, good luck on the campaign trail. I know how hard and exhilarating it is. Best of luck to you. Keep telling the truth and sharing a message of hope and optimism for the country and not

being afraid to talk about ideas that actually will fix the space that we're in and make our future bright again. So I'm grateful. And I've enjoyed every part of your campaign. I love what you're talking about. I loved your announcement. It was wonderful. So keep it up.

We're grateful. Thank you, guys. I appreciate you guys. And we'll be talking more, I'm sure. All right. Take care. Yes, keep it up. Thank you. We'll have more of this conversation after this. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and

policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Listen, I want to thank Vivek for joining us. Listen, I think he is a big thinker and throwing out big ideas to fix the big problems that we face in this country. And I think that's what the country needs is someone to go, I'm going to be bold. I'm going to be unafraid to talk about what has to happen to lead this country in a new direction, an American revival. And he's been doing it. I mean, he really has. And I appreciate him for that. Yeah, I do, too. I think I don't know where his campaign is going to go. Obviously, the the the big guy in the race is Don is Donald Trump. I don't think he's beatable if I had to predict at this point.

But boy, would a Vivek Ram Swamy, Donald Trump, Vivek, vice president ticket would be remarkable. Because I do think that he is, as he said, he has this experience of the American dream. I think that's powerful. He's wicked smart. I was actually surprised at how young he is. Not that he doesn't look young, but he certainly, the way he comes off his intelligence, his ability to explain ideas and go with the flow, he just has a lot of wisdom for somebody as young as he is. He's not winging it.

He's done his homework. He knows exactly what he wants to do. Oh, no, no, no. He's actually 100%. And I love that he does have those big ideas, and I think he's going to change the race in many ways. If there is a debate, I know Donald Trump has said he doesn't want to have a debate.

He should have a debate because he's good at debates. But I think having Vivek and Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis on a stage debating ideas at this level, I mean, and what I mean at this level, I don't mean at this presidential level. I mean at, like, the level of should we or should we not eliminate, get rid of the FBI or the Department of Education? These are the conversations we should be having. We have been playing small ball on, 5% tax rates and decrease or whatever. No, these are the real questions that we have.

I know he talked about the system that pays women to not get married, that inhibits family formation. These are the conversations we should be having. So I'm excited about that. What I think is interesting is I don't know where his campaign goes. I would agree with you. Donald Trump is, I mean, leading in the polls. After that is Ron DeSantis. He's in a different tier, but the race is long.

Yeah. But what he will do no matter what is he's going to change the conversation. That's right. He will change the conversation and force every politician, every candidate to talk about this set of issues. We didn't talk about ESG and, you know, this this this woke capitalism. That's his sweet spot. It is. And that's a huge issue, which is why we didn't go there. Yeah, he's talked about it. But he is going to drive a different conversation for candidates, which is going to make the candidates better. And if one of them should be elected, make their policies when elected even better, because Vivek has thought through them and on many of them, he's right. And that is why I'm excited about RFK Jr.'s entrance into the race. Again, I don't know

if RFK Jr. could beat this Democrat machine that, you know, the Valerie Jarretts and the Obamas and the Susan Rices and, you know. The left-wing media shunning him. All the people who are running Biden's campaign. The left-wing media shunning him. All the people who are running Biden's campaign and the left-wing media who's clearly thrown their hat in with the globalist crowd and Big Pharma and everybody else. But just having him there, at least even right now, he is changing the conversation.

20% of Democrats are voting him. That is not, or are supporting him, at least right now in the polls. That is not a small thing. That could eventually, if he ekes it up to 30 or 40%, that's going to force Biden to have to talk about those issues. And so I love it. I don't know where it goes. Can I tell you about one complaint I have about Vivek? Sure. I mean, it's a big issue. So Fox Nation did a special on who is Vivek Ramaswamy. And I did the... You were the host.

The host of the show. Well, Vivek has... I mean, I had to talk about his wife's name and the name of his, like, tech, biotech companies. Yeah. All of... And I'm not pretty good at that, as you know. Yeah, they're tough names.

All of these names I had to say in the, who is Vivek, I'm sorry, I'm like, dude, can we make some easier names, Vivek? Could we be like biotech something and make it easy on me? And then the name of the drug that he came out with. Next time we have him, we have to talk to him about his mom because his mom was a, or is a geriatric psychiatrist. And I wanted to talk to him about

her thoughts on the impact of covid on the elderly because we talk a lot about the impact of covet on on young people and kids but we don't talk enough about how covid deeply impacted our elderly so what there's lots to talk about with him we'll get to that another time he was obviously was obviously pressed for time. All right. That was a great conversation with Fivic, but I don't want to leave the kitchen table. I'm not ready either. Let's continue the conversation with another guest on another great topic. Yeah. And he's a good friend of ours. His name is Bobby Burak and he is with Outkick. And let's have him in because he has a great article out right now. I actually just retweeted. I loved it so much. It's called Our Leaders Declared War on the Truth.

Bobby, welcome. Talk to us about the premise of this article because it's resonating with me, where we're being forced as a culture, as a nation to say things, believe things that we know are not true. And you talk in this article about how demoralizing that is. Yeah, first of all, I appreciate you guys having me. But I've been fascinated by the topic of division and why we are so divided. Why do people hate one another so vehemently what has changed and I think it boils down to this I don't really like cliches but there's one old adage that I believe is absolutely true and that is divide and conquer

which means essentially our leaders divide us by topics that make it where we can't unify in opposition. The more subordinates and opponents detaste one another, the less they can focus on those above them. So go back, let's just talk about the past three years. Imagine you believe everything our leaders told us about COVID, race, Trump, Russia, white supremacy, transgenderism, if you believed all that, and a lot of people do, you would absolutely hate the other side because you would believe that they're bigoted, racist, transphobic, I mean, threats to democracy. However, what they say about that stuff isn't true. Most of it has turned out to be a lie. And I think what we're finding right now is the greatest divide in the country is not between the left or the right, Republicans or Democrats. It's between

those who believe the truths they are told to believe and those who do not. And that is such a staunch divide because the access is so wide right now. I think it's interesting because I think you're right. People are told something and they just believe it, right? If you don't get vaccinated or don't wear a mask, you want to kill me and my parents. Well, the truth is the vaccine didn't stop you from getting COVID and masks, we now know, didn't work. But I think the root cause, to go to Kamala Harris, the root cause of this goes to our education system. And I think a lot of people haven't been taught how to think for themselves, how to analyze data and facts and draw a conclusion that makes sense to them. It's almost like we've been training people to be sheep and be told one thing and to not question it by the authority of the government and accept it at face value. And

there was a time when that wouldn't happen. We would have, you know, free thinking, analytical human beings in this country who have great educations, who would question and ask for, you know, backup data to prove the points that government were telling us that doesn't happen any longer. Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to a previous story that I delved into pretty deeply. And that is these institutions, Ivy League, Brown, Yale, Cornell, if you speak to a lot of graduates from those colleges, honestly, Sean, they're not the most independent thing. A lot of them pretty much just go along to get along.

It's as they go to these fancy institutions, come out and probably get a big job in corporate America. But they're not taught to look at things critically as much as they are to believe what those people above them tell them, then crush the people below them. I think you're absolutely right that it starts in the education system. But let's look at the topic of the Durham report. of the Durham report. So that came out last week. And pretty conclusively, it finds that the FBI worked as a disinformation shop for Hillary Clinton and tried to rig the election for her. And there was no collusion between Trump and Russia. Well, that seems pretty definitive based on the report. Yet the news, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, the FBI, and then Democratic politicians like Eric Swalwell say, no, it doesn't say this. It actually proves that Trump did collude with Russia. So now all of a sudden you have this divide between two Americas where one side thinks that the FBI rigged the election for Hillary,

while the other side thinks Trump asked Russia to rig the election for him. Well, only one side of that is actually true. And it's not the side the media and politicians and FBI are telling us to believe. I mean, why is that? Because that's pretty concerning, because there's now two narratives, but only one truth. Yeah, that is so interesting. You know, what fascinates me as well is the number of people who know what's true, but are afraid to say what's true and i think we had a really great example this week where there was a track meet and you had you know four four placed winners on a podium and the person who was getting second place was in fact, a man. It was a person pretending to be a girl who won.

And the parents in the stands, seeing that their daughters, who maybe should have gotten second or third or fourth or maybe some that aren't on the podium but would have been on the podium, had a boy not been competing against them, have to all sit there in silence. And they were frustrated, angry.

I think it came out that, like, if they were to say anything, they claimed that they were silent because if they said anything the way the rules of the school were, that their actions would be considered bullying, the parent actions, if they were to protest against this. It would be considered bullying towards the trans student, and therefore their own children would be eliminated from further competitions. So the rules were set up in that way. But, boy, I have to say, this reminds me of COVID. If every doctor had said, excuse me, we all believe in natural immunity, when did that not happen? They wouldn't have been able to make an example out of just the few doctors who were willing to speak the truth and say it publicly, who then got punished.

And again, I look at the parents and I'm like, if all the parents, and we know most of them understand what biology and sex is, if they all banded together and said, enough of this, we're not going to say your lies anymore, and we're not going to allow it to hurt our girls, then it would end. But I think it's this cowardice and this fear of losing social standing that keeps people trapped in the lies. Yeah, and what you just described is what I would call self-censoring, right? People aren't censoring them, they're censoring themselves preemptively

so nobody can attack them. So I dive into the trans movement in this piece. I had a lot of people reach out privately and say, you're so right. We think all this stuff is a farce and a ruse and it's just damaging to women and girls, but we can't say it publicly because we might lose our job or we might get mean tweets or maybe we lose our

social standing. I mean, Rachel, that can't happen because that is precisely how the government and our leaders gain more control over us if afraid to speak out against these movements. I mean, if you go back through all throughout history, most governments that have unilateral control over their citizens is when people are either not allowed to speak out or afraid to speak out. And that's where I fear a lot of this is going, because whether it be race or transgenderism or COVID, people are too afraid to say what they actually believe, because some people above us have decided what's appropriate, what's right, and what is wrong. And they've done that so dishonestly because I think

most people are like you and I and look at this stuff and say, men should not be playing sports with women. Men should not be showering with freshmen girls in schools. But all of a sudden, there's these labels that if you do that, you're transphobic. So people sit idly by and watch our culture just deteriorate based on these lies. Bobby, I had your colleague from OutKick, Clay Travis, on the bottom line. We were talking about this very story. And he made the point, he's like, listen, the little girl that got fourth place because the transgender boy got second place in women's sports, that fourth place girl doesn't get to go

to state. And if we all look back to our high school years, going to state is a huge deal. And a boy took that right away from a girl because she got bumped out of third place to fourth place. And we talk about the ability to speak up, and we do have the ability. Everyone has the ability to lend their voice to a cause though they might feel like they get shamed or bullied or called names like you're transgender or transphobic but the truth is if every girl on any team says you know what if you're gonna bring a boy on my team that's going to shower with us in the bathroom and compete with us in the swimming pool or on the track, we're out.

We're not going to participate. And if everybody quit and they just leave their transgender boy on the girls' team, these policies would change really quick. And so I think the power differential is interesting. All the power is with the families and these kids, these girls, but they don't exercise the power. They live in fear when it's very simple to actually engage and win in the transgender play. I'm just going to interrupt for just a second. I think that for the girls, it's extremely difficult because I think you and I have no concept of just the social pressure on them to not be transphobic.

I blame the parents more. I blame the parents more. And you've seen the fear. Listen, I wish there were more brave girls. And I interviewed some of the brave high school athletes who have come out of these situations. high school athletes who have come out of these situations. And I praise them to the high heaven because I know that they faced a lot of social backlash. But I'm so angry at us as parents. Why have we not stood up for our girls? Why have we not done more to protect them in their bathrooms, in their showers, and on the track field and in the pool. Hold on a second, Bobbi, before you answer that. We have had 17, 18-year-old young men in far more fear over the history of this country by putting

a uniform on and storming the beaches of Normandy where they're going to lose their lives. Don't tell me that they're so afraid that I'm going to be called a bully and transgender and I can't stand up to that when in our history we've been able to stand up and do amazing things where people have given their lives, not just their reputation on social media. So I do think they can. We're giving them a scapegoat to go. The pressure is too powerful.

They have the administration against them. They have their teachers. They have all these wokey students who have been indoctrinated since preschool. Go ahead, Bobby. I'm sorry. We're having a marital fight here. No, no, no. All good.

So I think Sean brings up really interesting points. So what happened with Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney? So some corporate stew decided to put this man to celebrate him for 365 days of girlhood or whatever. And the common man, the average beer buyer, rebelled and said, well, we're going to stop buying Bud Light. Well, what does that show you? The common man still controls this country when they exercise their right, because now Bud Light is panicking and trying to undo what they just did. So I think Sean brings up a really interesting point that we still outnumber corporate, societal, and political leaders. So if we come in unity and say, we're not going to put

up with this stuff, we can defeat the movements that they're provoking, but not enough people are doing it because they're afraid to. I think the Bud Light example just shows that. I mean, people finally said, we're not going to support a beer can that celebrates the appropriation and mockery of the female gender. So I think all these causes, by and large, can be defeated and be won so long as people are able to overcome getting called these names for 36 hours. But Bobby, here's what I think is different in this case. I actually think a lot of these kids do believe in this trans ideology. It's the parents in the stands who know better. They know because they were probably many of them spared the, you know, indoctrination, at least the levels are at right now that their kids are. I mean,

if you talk to young people today, a lot of them do believe gender is fluid, that you can identify as whatever, that, you know, if you take enough hormones that, you know, it's not that unfair or they're they believe that, you know, just the act of opposing it, that that's hateful and that's worse than, you know, that fourth grade girl, not fourth place girl, not going to state. So you've already got a student body that's divided because at least a third, maybe even half of them, believe this stuff. But the parents in the stands, I bet that is probably 75% to 85% of the parents, deep down, if not more, believe that men should not be competing in women's sports and they actually have more power um listen i'd love to see a boycott like that and maybe somebody should

start i mean riley gaines has been amazing maybe we should have a nationwide you know women's protest remember when the women said we're gonna not sleep with our husbands is it a girl cut boycott yes yeah a girl caught uh remember when there was the, during the, I think it was related to Trump or something, they said, you know, you can't sleep with men because of, you know, Trump or some stuff like that. Maybe there's a girl cot where they say we're not going to do any sports until we get men out of our sports. Maybe that could happen. But I think you have a collective action problem. Really hard to do.

Parents have a lot more power in this, and they have totally abandoned their daughters. because we're divided by actual lives, because I think a lot of younger people believe that gender is just a costume that you can take off, wear and change back and forth, which, by the way, is an attack on our most basic common sense. I mean, the first thing you learn when you're a toddler or even a baby is what gender you are. I mean, it's one of the first things that you realize. So to tell us that our most basic truth is now subjective and up for debate really is just befuddling, I think, consequential. But I think you're right that the younger people have fallen for this lie that gender is like a mask that you can wear and take off. And it's like cosplay now. So I do think it's up to the parents or just other people in society to at least raise awareness about what this is doing.

I mean, you see some of these videos that talk about gender affirming, which I think is really not an accurate term. I don't know if kids are aware of the long-term impact of not only changing genders, but genital mutilation. A New York Times story came out last month interviewing seven doctors, and they said it's arguably one of the most dangerous surgeries because when you start chopping body parts off your mind treats those scars like permanent wounds those never heal you're succumbing to a lifelong pain by cutting off your body parts in the name of transgenderism so i think it comes to the parents to not only push back but raise awareness of the long-term, not just

short-term consequences of this gender ideology. Well, you mentioned Bud Light. People can quietly quit Bud Light. The people in the liquor store don't know whether you're a previous Bud Light purchaser and now you're a, you know, a lining Kugel's purchaser. They don't know that. So you're not really stating, you know, publicly your position. Right, it's easier. However, I do think instead of making a big deal about not participating in the track team

and you're really good, you just quietly quit. You know what? I don't want to compete this year. And all the girls are like, no, we just don't want to. No, we're fine with trans. Have at it.

But we're just, we're not going to participate. There's always going to be some stealthy little liberal who's now going to get the scholarship to go to whatever. And so be it. So I do think, I do think to Rachel's point, we need more bravery from kids and for parents. And Bob, you mentioned a good point as well. It's like, listen, this isn't an attack on truth. If they can get us to say there's no such thing as male and female, there's not much more, any more basic than that.

Truth is dead. And if it's going to be resurrected, people have to stand up for truth, to your point. The one truth I have, Bobby, I'm going to give you a hard time right now. I would never, if those who are just listening, Bobby's wearing his Nike sweatshirt right now. I boycotted Bobby Nike a long time ago, and that's the first thing I saw when he came out. I'm like, no more Nike for me.

You're out, kick, and maybe you've got to wear Nike. I don't know, but I'm out of Nike. I won't buy a pair of used Nike shoes because I'm so angry at that company. Just kidding. I'm calling you out, Bobby. You know, I've got to say, usually I defend any criticism. This one. Just kidding. I'm calling you up, Bobby. You know, I got to say, usually I defend any criticism. This one I can't.

I think you got me, Sean. I mean, there's so many other brands that I could be supporting. So for me to go on camera with a Nike sweatshirt, that's on me. So I can't push back on you on this. So you got me.

But I'm also going to find a way to get you because you're right. I would have said you could have wore Adidas, but now Adidas are making swimsuits that men can hide. Women's swimsuits that can hide the male junk with male chest hair. Yeah, tuck it swimwear for women. Way to go, Bobby. It was so disgusting. It was just so gross.

Pete Hegseth and Will said they were going to wear one for Fox & Friends and see who wore it better. And our producers were like, wrap, wrap, get them stopped for talking about that. Well, by the way, I see the ratings. You guys are number one every week. And that might be the one thing to push you guys to like third or fourth, those guys in the female scene. We just need that bathing suit contest. I think there's a lot of, you know, women in the audience of a certain age group that are like, yes, let's put Will and Pete in the Tuckett female gear from Adidas. Listen, Bobby, great article. Really insightful stuff.

And always has good articles. This is not the first Bobby Burak article that I've retweeted because he's so insightful. He's so smart. He's always on it. because he's so insightful. He's so smart. He's always on it. If you're not following Bobby on Twitter, you should because you'll always get some good stuff to think about and ponder about.

I will say one more thing about Bobby. At Fox & Friends, both Fox & Friends First, Fox & Friends Weekday, Fox & Friends Weekend, we had a fantasy football league. And I did surprisingly well on the fantasy football league for somebody who can't even get the pronunciation of most of the teams right because I don't know what they are and my secret weapon was Bobby Burr he was advising me and helping me with my fantasy Bobby a lot of people like is Sean doing this everyone thought it was JP my son doing it I'm like then then

then now there's a secret weapon here but I can't tell you who it is at the end. Yeah, so it was like mid-November, and I was on the phone with Will, and I knew he lost because I was help running your team. And I said, oh, how did you do on Fantasy Football last year? Oh, I can't believe it. Rachel got all these free agents. I don't know how she knew all this stuff. She goes, somebody must be running her account.

And I knew who was running it, but I just said, I don't know, Will. Maybe you're just losing your grip on the National Football League. We're a pretty good team. I love hearing that Will was pissed off about it. I think Will got that. Yeah, Will set up the whole bonding

fantasy football thing. I didn't even really quite know what it was. Obviously, I'd heard of NFL Fuse Football, but I didn't know how it worked. Bobby, you're the best. You saved me. You made me look good all football season. Everyone was so curious about what was going on with me and my sudden knowledge about football. Fantasy football. You're so great.

Well, Bobby, thanks for joining us. You're the best. And great article. Again, I encourage everyone to follow Bobby on Twitter and at OutKid.com. Hey, I really appreciate it, guys. Congratulations on the show and all your successes.

Thank you, Bobby. Thanks, Bobby. Take care. Bye-bye. You know, Rachel, Bobby's not an old soul. He's a young man who's incredibly smart. He truly is. And that's what I'm like, I do have hope for America when you a young man who's incredibly smart. He truly is. And that's what I do have hope for America when you see young people who are so insightful and so thoughtful on the topics that we're confronted with today and bring in some wisdom out in the writing. And he is one of them.

Yeah, he can see through the lies. And he did touch on something that I think was so important, which was that every single authoritarian regime has used this trick. If they can force you to say things that you know are not true for fear of punishment from the regime or social shame, it works. It's part of that whole cancel culture and, you know, woke culture that you see on campus. It has now bled in a way that I don't think was predictable, you know, just 10 years ago, that it would bleed as it has into our public life, into our civic life, into even tearing up families where you see people canceling their own parents because they're Fox News watchers, they're voting for Donald Trump. This is a really evil, and as he said, it divides people all the way down to the most basic level. It divides families. We need to be able to speak our truth. We need to be able to tell the truth. We need to be able to say things because this is a country based on free speech and it doesn't feel like it

many times. You know what? We do still have free speech. We do still have the opportunity to fight back. The question is, are people going to take that opportunity, take that speech and use it to put the country on the right course? And the transgender... Speak now while you can.

Speak up now while you can, people. If you're opposed to a boy competing in girls' sports, you're not going to go to jail by talking about how unfair that is. Now, you might get shamed. You might get blamed. You might lose a few friends. Maybe they weren't your friends anyway. But maybe it's time that you

stand up and go, you know what? If I don't do it now, where is this country going to be in three years, five years, ten years? What kind of country do my children inherit if I don't lend my voice to freedom today? And again, the ask of us today is an ask that's so much less than the ask that was made of the greatest generation. I thought that was such a great point you brought up in that conversation, Sean. So we can't do it, but do we have the courage to do it? Yeah, it was such a great point because, yeah, it sucks to be a young person and be socially ostracized. And you have to kind of go back to being 15 and 16. It's easier now.

I'm, you know, older and I can handle that and I don't need a lot of friends because I have such a big family. It's hard for anybody. But it's hard. But it's really hard for young people. But it's not as hard

as storming the beaches of Normandy. Darn it. Or having your best friend, you know, be blown up right beside you and you live with that for the rest of your life. I mean, there have been real sacrifices. You know, whether, I mean, look at Joey Jones.

I mean, Joey Jones, who's lost his legs. Yeah, absolutely. The sacrifice that he's made to go was, I think, you know, you go, well, if Joey can make that sacrifice, can I actually lend my voice to this cause? Yeah. I think you can. Can I not be in the cool group? Can I get, you know, have all the other girls on the on the track team you know not want to be friends with

me that's hard but not as hard as losing your legs like joey jones good point protest quietly quit just get out just let the transgender boys compete in girl sports see how long that lasts um because i think the policy well you have a collective action problem sean i'm still you do but you have to have you have to unite. That you do. Well, listen, this has been a long kitchen table conversation. It's been great, though. It's been fun.

From your date to Bobby. It's been wonderful. Listen, thank you for joining us at the kitchen table. We appreciate being able to do the podcast and share interesting topics that are meaningful to us. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts, but specifically at foxnewspodcast.com.

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From the Fox News Podcast Network. I'm Janice Dean, Fox News Senior Meteorologist. Be sure to subscribe to the Janice Dean Podcast at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to spread the sunshine.