announcer: former republican presidential candidate vivek ramaswamy, and the newly elected chair of the rnc, michael whiteley, discussed immigration and the economy during remarks at the north carolina gop convention in greensboro. ♪his is about 35 minutes. [applause]

michael: wow. what a room. and what a day. i've got to ask, is this a great day to be a republican in north carolina, or what? [applause] it is so good to be home, and so good to be with my north carolina republican family, and it is just absolutely awesome to see all of you here and to know that our republican carolina is absolutely strong. [applause] now, i do feel compelled to remind everybody in this room that four years ago, russia was in check.

they ran was in check. -- iran was in check. china was in check. our southern border was secure. our economy was strong and getting better. and the world with a much safer place. look where we are today. after four years under joe biden and democratic control, russia has invaded ukraine. iran has openly attacked israel for the first time ever. china is saber-rattling all across the taiwan straits and threatening taiwan. over 10 million illegal immigrants that we know of have come across our southern border. we don't know who they are. we don't know where they are. and we don't know what we're doing. our economy is getting crushed

by the weight of joe biden's inflationary policies. thanks to bidenomics, it costs twice as much to buy a house today as it did four years ago. rent is up 50 percent. gasoline prices are up 55%. we are right now, nowhere near as safe a world as productive the world, and as healthy a country as we were four years ago today. the people of north carolina, the people of the united states of america, indeed, the people of the world cannot take four more years of joe biden and democratic control. [applause] when you think about it this election cycle, how in the world are we going to be able to slip

the white house? slip the senate, and -- flip the white house cannot flip the senate and extend the majority in the house of representatives? everybody in this room knows the answer because we have done this. north carolina is the tip of the sphere when it comes to the 2024 election cycle. reuters, the wall street journal, ap, cnn, msnbc, and fox news all agree on exactly one thing, that north carolina is the most important battleground state in the entire country in making sure that we will take back the white house and expand our majority in the house of representatives. [applause] and everywhere i go, all around the country, people are, like, how did you do it in north

carolina? how did you take a purple state where 30% of our registered voters are republicans, 33% of our registered voters are democrats, 37 percent are unaffiliated? and win like we did in north carolina? i was having breakfast with donald trump right after i became the chair of the republican national committee. and he looked at me and said, all right, michael watley, what's the plan? how are we going to win this thing? and i said, sir, typically, for a new chair for the rnc gets two years. you get a year and you run around the country and get to meet a lot of people and build a lot of infrastructure and raise a lot of money, then 6, 7 months out from the election, it gets, very, very real. well it just so happened i was

having that conversation seven months out from the election and today, we are less than six months out from that election. i said, sir, we don't have time at the rnc to be all things to all people. we don't have time to focus on places that don't matter. we don't have time to do things that will not help us win. we are going to strip down everything at the rnc to two critical missions. we are going to get out the vote and we are going to protect the ballot. [applause] and the president said, you know, that sounds pretty good. four do we need? how are we going to get out the ballot? i said, i'll tell you how we did it in north carolina. when it comes to getting out the vote, we have to have a conversation.

there are two things you have to do. you've got to get your people to the polls and you have to persuade the unaffiliated, the independents, the undescended voters. and we are going to do that by making sure that we are reaching out to them and we are talking to them. everyone in this room has heard me say it a dozen times, and all of my former staff is in the back groaning right now because they know it's coming. [laughter] the most important statistic in all of politics is if you have a five minute conversation with an undecided voter they are 6% more likely to vote and vote for your candidate. we are going to have more five-minute conversations with undecided voters than we have ever had in the history of this country. ■.■m50% of our votes are going e cast before election day this year not just in north carolina , but across the country.

ates independents, it includes all voters. we are going to talk to those voters before they vote. it is commonsensical that we want inform voters to go to the polls. so we are all building at the rnc of an early vote program. we call it bank of the vote. we are also reaching out to minority voters, black voters, hispanic voters and for asian-american voters who are coming our way every single y. shown a shift among black voters and hispanic voters from joe biden to donald trump in the last four years. [applause] we are also winning jewish voters every every single day because donald trump stands for israel, and joe biden does not. [applause] and most surprisingly íis the fact that in the first time i have ever seen, we are now

leading in voters aged 18-30 four. think about that. [applause] so we are going to get out the vote from there to clear seeing those programs already in place today. we are also going to protect the ballot. we are going to have election integrity. when we talk about election integrity, what do we mean? there are two key aspects to a successful election integrity program. first is what happens before people go vote. we want the rules, we want the regulations, we want the laws all across the country to be in place to ensure that we are going to have a fair accurate , secure and transparent election. if you want only american citizens to vote. [applause] we want states to clean up your voter rolls. and we want those votes to be

protected. when we are doing a mailing votes or absentee votes, we want things like a signature requirement. things like a witness requirement. we don't want them dropped and ballot boxes. we want those ballots in by election day. everyone of thesehings are strongly supported by 75% of the american people. and yet, when we talk about election integrity, and we talk about putting these in place, we are called election deniers let me tell you here in north carolina, we are not election deniers, we are election winners. second thing is you have to be in the room. here in north carolina, we built the largest most successful election integrity program in the country. in 2022 we had 11,000 volunteers on our ballot protection team . they served 25,000 shifts on election day in all 100 counties. we want attorneys and volunteers in the room whenever a vote is being cast and whenever a vote is being counted.

our model work here in north carolina and that is why president trump me to put the program in place around the country, which we are doing as we speak. [applause] but it is absolutely critical for us to know where we are going to play and how we are going to play. it's also important for us not just to read the columns, not just to read the news and to read the polls go and say we have got this. right now in seven battleground states that people will decide this election, places like arizona, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, georgia and here in north carolina, we are winning in the polls in every single one of those states. now most of those polls are pretty close. we are less than a point margin in michigan and wisconsin we are a two-point margin in

pennsylvania. got a little healthier margin here. but i promise you this election cycle is going to get much more intense. the democrats have announced that they are going to drop a billion dollars in 10 states over the next six months. we are going to see an onslaught from their media communications wing, the mainstream media, and we know they will do everything they can to take donald j. trump off the ballot and down, even by locking him up in jail if they can. but it's not going to work. now, i assure you, i have spent five years here in north carolina, and in all my time at the rnc telling everybody who will listen there is no such thing as a red wave. we cannot look at the polls that show a 5% or 7% lead in north carolina and think we've got this. we don't permit everyone in this room knows 52-48 is a landslide , in north carolina. the reason we won in 2020 and 2022 is because we did the work.

because you did the work. we need to be unified. we need to be on the same page. i had a conversation with donald trump -- president trump -- in houston and dallas together on wednesday. he said, how are we doing in north carolina? i said, we are doing great. he said, make sure they know we love them. of course lara and eric took , care of that last night i guess. but he is we know. we know in north carolina that there is no such thing as a red wave. we know we need to get out and do the work. so thank you for being here to support the north carolina republican party in its crucial mission to make sure that we , carry the tar heel state. and i can tell you, we've got nobody that i trust more than jason simmons and his leadership team to make sure that we win this race. [applause]

so in addition to being here to say thank you, for all that you did to support me when i was the chair, for all that you do to support jason and the nc gop, for all that you do to support donald trump and the rest of our candidates up and down the ballot, i actually have another job, i get the opportunity to introduce to you a man that has become a good friend over the last several months. a man who has become an emissary all across the country to conservatives and to the youth vote. he is a businessman and a champion for a free economy. he is a champion for conservative principles and we are really profoundly happy to have him here joining us in north carolina. ladies and gentlemen, please

welcome vivek ramaswamy. [applause] vivek: we love you guys. round of applause for your former rnc and future chair michael whatley right there. good man. leading this party at the national level. it's good to be here. we will do whatever is required for this country and that is what everyone of you is doing, through your hard work on the ground. michael watley he's been inviting me to come to this long before people knew who i was. i wrote my first book, woke inc., very few people in this country had paid attention to

that. but he read it and told me and i three years later after the presidential run to make it, but it's i mean this is a state thas set an example for what is possible for great candidates across the board. pat herron is here, congressman, you hear? mark harris, good man from a pastor to run for congress in serving his country. give him a round of applause. jason simmons, susan mills, people working hard on the ground. they don't have to be doing what they're doing. they are leading a party fearlessly and i respect people making the sacrifices. one man who i met for the first time today, though i told him i felt like i knew him for a long time because i read about him in the new york times. i knew if they were coming after him, he must be doing something right. so i intrigued and we built our relationship. your next governor, mark robinson! [applause] where is he? i know he is right here. there he is. [laughs]

[applause] your next governor right here, give him a round of applause year, guys. [applause] so we are going to pose here if msnbc or cnn for "new york times" once there was a nightmare, come here -- [applause] talk about the future of the governorship here. this is what it looks like. what do they say, "the brown face of white supremacy? i am losing track of what they come up with. you want to say something? just get this job done, that is what we will say. mr. robinson: glad you get to hear from him. we are looking forward to great things from him in our party. our party is expanding exponentially, despite what the mainstream news media says. this is not just the party of old, rich white guys. [applause] this is the party of true inclusion and true freedom and

we always have been. thank you for being here and we appreciate you. [applause] vivek: love this man. the media is waiting -- now they are conceding -- maybe after the end of trump, it will go away. people like mark robinson told me we are just getting started. we've got the theater to worry about first and that is why i am here. i don't say this with pleasure. we are in the middle of a war in this country. it's not a war between black and white, as the media would have you believe. it isn't even a war it really between a man or woman for gay or straight, not even a war between democrat and republican really. it is a war between those of us who love the united states of america and our founding ideals , and a fringe minority who hates this country and what we stand for. that is the real war in this country. [applause]

it is a war between the deep state and the managerial class and the everyday citizen it is a war between the international great reset and the great uprising that starts in 2024. there is no middle ground here. we have played for the middle ground game for a long time, there is no middle ground. either you believe in merit, or you believe in a group. you can't have both. either you believe in free speech, or you believe in censorship, you cannot have both . either you believe in american exceptionalism, or you believe in apologizing for who we are. you cannot have both printed and right now more than ever, this year into 2025, we need a commander-in-chief who will lead us to victory in this war and that man will be the 47th president of the united states, donald j. trump. as i am counting on all of you here in north carolina to send him back as our commander-in-chief. [applause]

but it's not just going to be one man coming from on high to save us, it doesn't work that way. if we are going to be saved, it'll be because we save ourselves. i am here to ask everyone of you to make a sacrifice for this country, that is what will be required. right now we are going through this national identity crisis in our country. i speak as a young person, relatively speaking anyway -- my kidson't view it that way, but i was the youngest person ever to run for u.s. president as a republican, at the age of 30 eight. [applause] thank you. i will tellin my generation. thomas jefferson was 33 when he wrote the declaration of independence and invented the swivel chair while he was at it.

[laughter] our founding fathers, there was something in the water back then. i will come back to that in the second. but the thing going on with young people in this country -- i was talking with mark earlier about the campus protests in places like you that turned violent. it's not that young people are against us, actually. it's that they are lost right now. hungry for direction and purpose. you hear these protests after october 7, on college campuses. one of them, they got the footage from it. they were chanting the word "infitada," when they were actually trying to chant "intifada." they didn't even know what they were actually trying to say. [laughter] we say antisemitism. i think it misses the mark a bit. it's a sense of loss of purpose and meaning in this country. if you are a young person, we need something that grounds us . faith in god, belief and family, in nation, hard work, patriotism, when these things disappear you get a black hole. when you have a vacuum that runs

that deep, a poison fills the void. doesn't matter what the poison is. we obsess over that. i have at times -- wokeism, transgenderism, climatism, cism anti-semitism, you could say president zelenskyyism fits in that. if you have a hole the size of god in your heart and god doesn't fit don't pledge allegie to that flag, the united states of america, you are going to pledge allegiance to a different flag instead. that is where the transgender flag comes from. i took my son to washington, d.c. last june. i kid you not, you see more transgender flags on the streets of washington, d.c. than you see american flags in our ownnatio'. there is a deeper sickness in our country and it is the fact that we are lost. criticize what the other side

puts up. if that is why we had the red wave that never came, in 2022. remember that? i am going to give you a warning right now, and i don't mean to be the wet blanket on the party , ■!i think we are right now on track for another red wave that doesn't come unless we step up and actually do the right thing , whicfox news most nights, i'm doing something like that. it is not enough. first of all, i think there is a good chance it's not going to be biden. why did they put that debate on june 27? the earliest ever presidential debate in televised u.s. history, three months before the last presidential debate was held? i think it was ford or nixon had one of those early debates this is three months ahead of that . even before their nominating committee. so mark my words, this is the final hoop they are making him jump through, through their elder abuse, to make sure that

they are actually ready to nominate him. if he does or exceeds expectations, they will use that to reset the race. he fails miserably as i expect if he will, they will use that to swap him out at their convention permitted by the way, he is not even really the president of the united states. he is a puppet for the managerial class in the deep state that sits underneath him . [applause] so we are sitting here criticizing a puppet when in fact we got to do the opposite thing. we have to offer a vision of our own. what do we actually stand for as republicans, as conservative, as americans? you see, the left is very good at this. say what you will about the left, but you have to recognize when the other side is doing something and they are doing it well, they will give you a vision. it's not the right vision. race, gender, sexuality, climate. and we are sitting here criticizing that vision without offering an alternative of our

own. what do we actually stand for? the individual, the family, the nation and god. that race, gender, sexuality and climate permit if we have the courage to actually stand for something. that is who we are as conservatives. who we are as republicans. [applause] we can't anymore be the party running from something. this is our mome to start running to something, back to what it means to be an american in the year 2024. it means we believe in the ideals of 1776. that is what it means to be an american today. that's is what our founding fathers fought a revolution to secure 250 years ago. and that's the revolution we are going to fight and win this year . it means we stand for merit. that you get ahead in this country not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character and your conibutions . that is what i will end by dei

agenda in the military and end racial group quota systems in every area of american life. we are done with it. it means we stand for the rule of law. and i say this as the kid of legal immigrants to this country , that means your first act of entering this country it will not break the law. that is why we will have the largest mass deportation in american history because we stand for the rule of law in the united states of america! [applause] it means that people we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government, not the deep state" can washington, d.c. that is pulling the streets of power. when president trump is an ex-president, if i have anything to do with it -- he and i talk regularly, we are going to fire 75% of those federal bureaucrats ■xacross the board. send them home packing! [applause] that is how we get this country back. that is how we drain the swamp

this time around. whatever is required for the country i'll tell you there is no job too big or too small for any of us. state legislators, and have several of them in the room, there has never been a time in our history where there has been greater impact for being a state legislator. because we have got to send back more of the power to the states , it is our founding fathers' vision. shut down the department of education, give that money back to the people so you can choose where you send your kids to school. that is true federalism. these are not black ideas or white ideas. they are not even democrat ideas or republican ideas. they shouldn't be. these are american ideals that we fought a revolution to secure . and the question is, do we believe those ideals still exist? i do. the next question is, are you willing to fight for them? [applause]

that is what this year is about. we talk about our founding fathers. we don't often stop to ask what became of them. that there i56 men who signed the declaration of independence. they were landowners, lawyers, merchants. they were not politicians. they were people who succeeded with their own hard work. they got together to sign that declaration of independence in 1776 because they made a sacrifice not for them. they made it for us. what became of them? 56 men. 12 of them had their homes ransacked and burned to the ground by the british. five of them were captured by the british and tortured ed until their death. none of them died in the american revolution. three more of them had their own children die in the american revolution. many of them died bankrupt because they had their own private property seized.

they knew the risks they were taking, but they took them anyway because they were fighting for a vision greater then themselves. and so when we meet george washington and alexander hamilton and thomas jefferson and john jay in the afterlife , and they look us in the eye and ask us, "what sacrifice did u we better have a darn good answer to give them. that is my ask to everyone of you, is what sacrifice are you really should make for this unhave lived the american dream as i have. my parents came to this country with no money 40 years ago. i have gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies , and did it while marrying my wife who lives the american dream, she is a throat surgery and saving lives every day. i speak for my wife and myself and i think every parent in this room when i say, the real inheritance we want to give our kids isn't just a bunch of green pieces of paper. it is a country greater than the one we inherited.

the one hour founding fathers gave us. that is the one that will take sacrifice. [applause] we have grown as a country so accustomed to celebrating our diversity and our differences. that we forgot all of the ways that we are really the same. as americans. bound by that common set of ideals. e pluribus unum. it's on the bottom of every one of our coins. we forget that sometimes. e pluribus unum, it means from many, one. that is what our founding fathers believed in, a country greater than ourselves. we can't even answer what it means to be an american. our diversity -- i was joking around with mark robinson earlier, but you know, diversity could be a beautiful thing. if, there is something greater that unites us across that diversity.

but without that, think about it l, what are we? a bunch of different-looking two-legged higher mammals with a , bunch of different shades of melanin, blocking some geographic space that we, country, doing what our iphones tell us to do on a given day? that is what i see sometimes i's more to this life and to this nation than the aimless passage of time. we have got to rediscover what america first is really about. to put america first, we have to rediscover what america is. that is the moment we live in. you know how we do it? it will be by all of us, not just me, not just mark robinson, not just donald trump, but all of us starting to speak the truth in the open again. there is a culture of fear that has spread across this country like an epidemic. fear of losing your job, fear of kids getting a bad grade in

school. fear of becoming an outcast in your own community. and that culture has totally replaced our culture of free speech in america. if you ask me what is the best measure of american democracy, here■= at msnbc feeling about this every day of the week -- protecting our democracy. please democracy, i wonder at times. what is the best measure of the health of democracy? it isn't the amount of paper in our bank account. it isn't in the ballots we cast every november. it is in the percentage of people who feel free to say what they actually think in public, and right now we are doing poorly. ideally we will fix it is if all of us started to speak openly again, when you are the only person in the room who believes what you do, you have an obligation to say it. say it with a fine. with conviction. with respect.

but part of respect is that you respect your neighbor enough to tell him what you actually think . that is what we stand for as conservatives and americans. we stand for truth and we do not apologize for it and we will make a sacrifice to speak that truth without apology, that god is real. that there are two genders. period. [applause] that fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity. that reverse racism is racism. without an open border is not border. at that parents should determine the education of their children. that the nuclear family is not a bad word,s the greatest form of governance known to mankind. that capitalism is the best system known to man to lift us up from poverty. that there are three branches of government in the united states, not four. and that the u.s. constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedom in human history.

that is the truth! [laughter] [applause] we fight for the truth. we stand up for the truth. that is what won us of the american revolution. what reunited us after the civil war. that is what one, 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 grievance and victimhood, then a nobody in the world, not a nation, not a corporation, not china, is going to defeat us. that is what american exceptionalism is all about and that is what this year in 2024 , we will revive to save this great nation. thank you all for coming today, guys. god bless you and your families, and may god bless our united states of america. do not stop fighting for this nation until we get the job done. this is a nation worth saving, and we will. god bless. thanu