MANCHESTER, New Hampshire – Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told Breitbart News on Wednesday that if elected president, he will issue an executive order within his first three months in office to disclose every instance where “a government actor pressured a private company to do what the government could not legally do itself” over the past five years.
After fielding questions from voters at a town-hall-style event at Murphy’s Tap Room, Breitbart News caught up with the anti-woke entrepreneur, who is vehemently opposed to leftist Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing. Last year he launched Strive Asset Management, designed to compete with BlackRock and other companies that have pushed ESG policies.
Nick Gilbertson/Breitbart News
When asked how he would take his fight against ESG to the next level if elected to the Oval Office, Ramaswamy said, “You know what Elon Musk did at Twitter is he published the ‘Twitter Files?’ When I’m president, I’m publishing the state action files.”
“Every time in the last five years a government actor has pressured a private company to do what the government could not legally do itself, I’m airing that, and the entire public’s going to see,” Ramaswamy said. “We’re going to roll that log over and see what crawls out. It will not be pretty, but the first step to solutions is transparency and sunlight.”
“It will take more than three months to collect all of the files, but in the first three months, I issue that executive order,” Ramaswamy revealed.
His pledge to sign the order in his first three months comes on the heels of his initial tweet Tuesday that first referenced the “state action files.”
Just as @elonmusk did at Twitter,
as President I will release the “state action files” from the federal government – exposing every instance where the feds pressured companies to take constitutionally prohibited actions. Roll that log over & see what crawls out. Won’t be pretty. https://t.co/7b3kQMz9XY
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) February 22, 2023
Ramaswamy is a staunch critic of “wokeness,” having written a New York Times bestseller “Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam in 2021, which delves into the consequences of “stakeholder capitalism” and woke corporatism, arguing they strip Americans of both their wealth and their identity.
Identity, specifically national identity, serves as a central theme of Ramaswamy’s campaign, as he laid out in his launch video Tuesday night:
We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis today. Our nation is hungry for a cause, for purpose, for meaning. The things that used to fill that void like faith, patriotism, hard work, and family have disappeared. We now embrace one secular religion after another, from Covid-ism to climate-ism and gender ideology to satisfy our deeper need for identity. Yet we cannot even answer the question of what it means to be an American in the year 2023.
“This isn’t just a political campaign. This is a cultural movement to create a new dream for the next generation of Americans, and this time around it isn’t just about money. It’s about the unapologetic pursuit of excellence in our country,” he said, later adding that the country needs a revival of “American Exceptionalism.”
His populist vision was on full display on the campaign trail the next morning in Rochester, New Hampshire, as Breitbart News reported.
“There’s not going to be somebody coming from on high to save us; we’re going to have to save ourselves. I’m bluntly asking everybody here we met today for help in that journey, not help for my candidacy; that’s the least of it,” Ramaswamy added. “Help for the vision, in advancing the vision, revitalizing our sense of American pride. If we revitalize that pride – it sounds like a soft thing – but actually, the policy stuff becomes a lot easier if we know who we really are.”
