TRANSCRIPT: Vivek Ramaswamy Holds Town Hall in Springfield, Ohio

I met with the city management. I wanted to come see with my own eyes because I don’t really trust the media anymore. We’ve been taught not to, okay?

We’ve been taught not to. We invited them. But that doesn’t mean we have to trust them. And if you actually want to trust the people of this country, the best way to do it is to speak directly to them without filters.

I’ll share with you what my perspectives are coming out of some of those meetings with members of the Haitian community, leaders from that community, city officials, here’s my takeaway. There’s about 70,000 people now in Springfield. And by the way, people ask me, why did you come to Springfield? One of the media networks, MSNBC, last night said, I’m descending on Springfield to do this event.

Connection to Springfield

I think this is a fair question. Why are you here in Springfield? I grew up an hour from here. I live less than an hour from here now. I actually spent a lot of time in Springfield growing up. Anybody been to Mike And Rosy’s? Okay. I’ve had more subs there probably than most of you here.

We used to play in Wittenberg. Every summer I had a tennis program I would participate in. I’ve got aunts, uncles that have lived here, still live here. So this is close to home for me.

And if an issue of national significance is happening in my backyard, no, I’m not going to turn my back. I want to actually see what we can do that’s positive for this community. But one of the things I’ve learned, here’s my view, is that I don’t actually blame any of the 70,000 people in Springfield for the mess in Springfield. That includes the 50,000 people like my family members or others of you who have lived here for a long time or for generations.

Perspective on Immigration

After meeting with a bunch of them today, I don’t even blame the 12 to 20,000, most of them certainly. I don’t blame the 12 to 20,000, most of them, the Haitian migrants who were brought here by unconscionable means. I blame the federal policies that are responsible for what’s going on in this city. And that’s what we’re going to talk about tonight.

We’re going to talk about it in an unfiltered way. People are angry. Let’s acknowledge that. You’re not going to deny, you’re not going to fix that problem by saying, don’t be angry. That doesn’t work. You’ve got to acknowledge the reason why people are angry. Here’s some hard facts. Right?

This is not narrative. It’s not fanning flames, just fact, okay? Hard facts are, this is a city with twice the poverty level of the national average. This is a city where since 2020, in the last several years, sometimes in the last couple of years, you’ve had carjackings and car thefts go up by 50%.

You’ve had shoplifting go up by 100%. You have seen a rise in communicable diseases. That’s real. Those are facts. They’re not deniable. The traffic related incidents, those aren’t quantifiable, or maybe they are, but I don’t have the facts on that. But undoubtedly there have been some wounds in this community dating back to last year. And out of respect to the family, I’m not going to go into the details of it, but I know this community has been through a lot.

Addressing the Issues

And so we’re not going to sweep that under the rug. The question is, how do we channel that anger to actually do what’s right, both for Springfield and for this country? So I have a bias. I’ll put it on the table at the beginning is, and I shared this with the Haitian groups I met with earlier today, too, we’ve got to ask the question of what is the right legal immigration policy to this country?

I’m dead set against illegal immigration. If your first act of entering this country breaks the law, you should not be able to enter this country. Okay? That’s not debatable.

I say that as the kid of legal immigrants to this country. My parents came to Cincinnati 40 some odd years ago, legally the right way through the front door. Your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And so if we’ve had the largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history, that it stands to reason we should have the largest mass deportation of immigrants in American history.

Because that’s what it means to stand for the rule of law. And that’s not, that’s not racist or xenophobic. That’s what it means to stand for the rule of law in the United States of America. The issue in this community, I will admit, is a little tougher than that, right?

Because many of the people who are breaking the law at the southern border, I mean, they’re sneaking in, they’re bringing in or snuck in by cartels illegally hiding from the system. Many of the Haitians, most of the Haitians who are here, at least our own government told them that they’re actually allowed to be here. I blame the government for that. But that’s a separate issue of legal immigration.

Views on Legal Immigration

What type of legal immigrant do we actually want in this country? That’s a harder question. I’ll give you my view. You don’t have to agree with me.

But here’s one principle that I think not just the Republican Party or the Democrat Party of America would do well to agree on is, if you’re going to depend on government services or the welfare state when you enter this country, then you should not be permitted to enter the country. And I want to tell you something that surprised me. And I’m looking around to see if, if, and I, and I was, and I totally said it was, it was respect their decision. It was their choice.

But I’ll tell you something that surprised me, and this is a positive. The Haitian community leaders who I met with here, I believe in honest dialogue. I told them, you’re not going to, may not agree with everything I say. You may or may not.

They had, several of them had very compelling stories. Some were, one was a doctor educated in Haiti, but he, they don’t recognize the medical license here, so he put himself through nursing school and he’s actually making contributions to this community. I told him, here’s my view, is that our communicable disease going up or our social services strained Medicaid, running out of money and run very poorly schools under strain welfare food stamps. Here’s my view is I don’t think you should be allowed.

It was difficult thing to say you’re in a room face-to-face is that I don’t think you should be able to enter this country, if you’re going to depend on the entitlement state or the welfare state, what do you believe? And I’ll give credit to actually people in that room, they thought about it and, and to a person, there was at least four community leaders that that’s fair, actually, that’s a fair way to look at this. And so my hope is that through open conversations, through actually speaking without fear, we actually not only solve the problems of this country, but dare I say, unite this country as well.

Q&A Introduction

That’s what I hope to do tonight. So my friend, Tiffany Justice is here. She’s going to help take questions from the audience. I promise not to talk too much.

Just wanted to get some stuff off my chest to kick this off. I’ll be glad to answer any questions. But the thing I really want to do is hear from the actual experiences of the residents of Springfield, a town that means a lot to me, town where I spent a lot of time growing up, a town whose best days don’t have to be behind it, but can still be ahead, just like the rest of our country. And so if you, if you have a question, just raise your hand and Tiffany will call on you and help bring you up.

And the goal tonight is don’t hold back. There’s one risk you can take, which is to censor yourself. The other risk you could take is you say too much and you might offend somebody in the process. Take the second risk, not the first. And that’s how I think we’re going to get our country back. So thanks. A friend, Phil Plummer. Good to see you.

PHIL PLUMMER: Thanks. Thanks you guys. Let’s hear it for Vivek. Spending time coming over here to help us out in Springfield. He’s the man. He is the man. Vivek, I’m a, I’m a current lawmaker, same thing I can do for you guys in the state of Ohio. I know this is a big national problem.

Feel free to call me. I’m also the former sheriff of Montgomery County, so I understand the problems here. But Vivek said on a lot of it, I mean, we let the media grab the story about the ducks and the geese and the dogs and the cats. That’s not the story.

The story is what this is costing you guys, right? What this is costing the American citizen when your hospitals are full, we’re getting new diseases here. You know, there’s a lot going on that you guys should not have to pay for, and I feel sorry for you guys. I’m right across, in Dayton, Ohio, Vandalia, that’s where I’m at, and I see this migrating in my community, okay?

So we’re with you guys in spirit, but Vivek, we have to figure out a way to close these borders. You know, when I was a sheriff, we had three drug cartels in Dayton. Now I’ve got nine cartels in Dayton. They’re killing our kids with fentanyl.

But thank you for being a warrior, fighting for this community. These guys need leadership. They need love. Thank you, sir.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you. I appreciate that, my man. Thank you for everything you’re doing as a state rep. I appreciate that.

It’s a good man serving the state. It’s not a thankful job all the time, but I appreciate that. We need more people to make that sacrifice. So thank you, brother.

QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes, I just wanted to come up, and I know we’re talking a lot about the immigrant population and stuff here, but, you know, I want to talk about, like, the veterans and the people of the actual Springfield. Like, I was born and raised here. In Tucker Carlson’s debate he had the other night, they were talking about how we were destroyed by taking away our factories, and then they filled them full of drugs, and then they sent all of us out to war, but we’re not getting any support. You know, the vets that are across the United States, but in Ohio, like, we have a terrible VA system.

We need a lot of help. You know what I’m saying? And so I hear, like, people talking about the Haitians and the different things going on, but, like, our veterans need help. And so I’m just kind of curious to, like, you know, what ideas you have, you know, to help out for the veterans.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Have you personally served?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’m a combat veteran, yes.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you. Give this man a round of applause.

Thank you. Thank you, man. So I think one of the things we need to do in this country is to fix the VA once and for all, to really, you know, to really treat it the way a business treats its shareholders is the way the VA should actually treat its veterans. That’s who you actually work for.

And I personally believe that, see, here’s the problem in this country. I’ll, you know, just give it to you straight. I think the people we elect to run the government, they’re not running the government. The people who are pulling the strings are unelected bureaucrats, both in the public sector and the private sector.

And that’s happened in the VA. And I’ve had family members who worked in the VA. My mom used to work in the VA at the University of Cincinnati, outside the University of Cincinnati, the VA there, taking care of patients with PTSD who had served this country’s combat veterans as well. My wife’s worked with the VA system.

Here’s the reality is, I think every veteran, just like the shareholders of a company vote for who actually runs the board, I think the veterans of this country should get a vote on the compensation and pay of the people who run the VA based on how good of a job they’re doing as well. And that bureaucracy, it’s not just in the government. So it exists in the, see, the deep state’s not just in the government, actually. That’s the dirty little secret.

It pervades every other sphere of our lives. I wasn’t planning to mention this in my introduction, but you brought this up and it relates directly to it, right? So I posted on social media about this event, and I wanted to be constructive in the community to set a tone where your mayor and other city leaders have asked for help. I’m not in office right now, and so I want to think about as a businessman or as somebody who’s lived the American dream, how can I help?

I appreciate that. I tried. Thank you. And we didn’t get to Ohio.

But I think about, you know, this country’s blessed us with so much. We’ve lived the American dream. I thought, okay, how can we use our resources to do what’s right and help the community here? So this is a story about this trip.

It just tells you about the power of bureaucracy in America. So we say, okay, maybe it’s the hospital that’s strained. So I call around city leaders and say, no, it’s not really the hospital. It’s primary care that’s actually been strained the most.

And there are some nonprofits working on primary care here. And so we offered a $100,000 gift to support those charitable efforts. And guess what got in the way? They turned down the gift, bureaucracy along the way.

Bureaucracy and Problem-Solving

And I think that it has something to do with my, I can only speculate, it has something to do with my political perspective or otherwise. But I think that the reality is we need to put that to one side and say, if we have ways to solve problems, whether it’s in the VA, whether it’s in the private sector, whether it’s in philanthropy, just get the bureaucracy out of the way so that at least in government, the people who we elect to run the government once again run the government. And in the private sector, too, the people who actually are running the show are people who actually care about solving the problem rather than looking after their own optics or appearances. And if we do that, I think we’re going to save the country.

So thank you. Why don’t you come on up, sir? Thank you. You can go to the microphone, though.

There’s like a million cameras here, so we can get you a video after, too. I like this helmet, though. It’s good.

Community Involvement

AUDIENCE QUESTION: AGV, best helmet brand, very safe. Ooh, baby, who you watching? Matt Elrida on the cam. All right. So something just fired me up and told me that I needed to be here. I don’t know if it was God or what, but I had a wake-up call the other day.

So I was motivated by being scammed by a shady business, Drip Season. They scammed me, and it motivated me to, you know, go out and do on-scene investigations on local businesses. So I’ve been in these streets working my butt off while working a normal job that I feel like I’m just struggling there.

And just with all this stuff that’s been going on in the community just makes it even harder to where I’ve been so motivated to pull 60-hour days, 23-hour days out filming, you know, giving back to the community. But I’ve been going around local businesses like GameCycle, Codezeros, Bubby’s Chicken and Waffles. Do you have a question? I thought you said I can talk about local.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You can, but we’ve got a lot of questions. I’ll make it quick.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yeah, super quick, and then we’ll give some other people a chance. So the commissioner of the city said something that I thought was very inappropriate. To be honest, I don’t know if it was a deep fake or not. It’s going all over Facebook. I don’t really trust Facebook. But she said that she doesn’t give a S-word about local businesses.

And it’s been going all around, like it’s been super viral. And that put a fire in my butt and made me want to come up here and mention this. I thought that was unprofessional. Sorry.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: No, you’re good. So if you’d like to give me the keys, if you’d like to make me answer that question.

Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t aware of that, man. But I’ve got to say it annoys the S out of me, right, to hear people who we elect to actually represent us as we the people, to actually say that right now what are people suffering through?

Prices have gone up. Wages have stayed flat. Small businesses are going to be the backbone of saving this country. And so I don’t know which city official you’re talking about, but the reality is both some city officials. The only thing I’ll give her credit for is effectively the people in the federal government right now, in my opinion, think the same thing. It’s just that they’re not saying it out loud. So in her case, for saying it out loud, at least I’ll give her small partial credit for that. And as a small business owner yourself, if you are, that’d be good.

I want to give a chance to this gentleman, and then we’ll come back at the end. Thank you, brother. Thank you. I appreciate you. No, I appreciate you bringing it up. Sir, go right here, and then we’ll come right here. Thank you. Okay.

Springfield’s History and Current Challenges

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Springfield’s got a lot of great history. I believe it was this very building where Orville and Wilbur Wright came to see their attorney for a patent for the airplane. We have a lot of great history in this town, and I’ve been a lifelong citizen here for 59 years, and I have my trucks loaded for the last of my things outside. When I was a little kid growing up, and I don’t want this to sound like a speech.

I’m going to try to make it as quick as I possibly can. I see these infomercials on television about these little bony Haitian kids with the bloated stomachs and the flies flying all over them, and I would cry myself to sleep growing up. I was traumatized by that. It mortified me, and I was so proud of my family.

It’s something that nobody in this room knows, but just a little piece of the great history of the city of Springfield. I’m related to all of the well-drilling companies in the 1970s, the well-drilling companies of Springfield-Clarke County. I’m related to all of those people, pretty much. I think all of those companies.

And they, on their own dime, went to Haiti on their own dime and drilled the water wells that gave them fresh water to drink, and that came from Springfield, Ohio. I don’t think anybody knows it. It’s just a little piece of history I’m proud of. Nobody would know that. We’ve got a whole movie of it, but nobody’s ever talked about it. But my family’s dealing with some things. My sister got hit. Somebody went left of center with no license and no insurance.

On my birthday a year ago, and so now the SAC payers are in it now for about $400,000, and she’s had multiple surgeries and still can’t walk. She didn’t get to be there and hold her babies, her grandbabies that were all being born and things like that. And I have my issues with my health issues. It’s preventing me from working.

And so you try to get into a hospital that’s 100% capacity, and I hear that one whole wing of it is HIV patients. I don’t know. But you try to get your testing done, your MRIs, your x-rays. You try to get your EMGs. I scheduled an EMG on June 11th. I was still employed at that time. They were very patient with me. But I just got my EMG just the other day.

And so here we’re dealing with just my own family and some of the things that we’re dealing with. You know, something that’s near and dear to my heart is, is the motherless kittens in the alleys of Springfield? Where’s the mothers? Okay, there’s the animal thing. If we can’t care for the least of these kittens, I don’t think it’s something that Kamala should be laughing about.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I agree with you. Thank you, my man. What’s your name?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Kevin.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you. Give this man a round of applause for his love of the history of this city. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Education Concerns

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hello. Thanks for being here. We really appreciate it.

I’m with Moms for Liberty in Madison County, but our youngest daughter does go to school here in Clark County. One of the questions that really I want to focus on are, what is the plan for us to safeguard the educational system here in Clark County, mainly Springfield City Schools, for our children? Because as we know, our educational system is failing our kids. It is our taxpayer dollars are always being used against you, just in case you weren’t aware of that.

Property taxes that are being paid are going to these school districts who are wasting money. They’re not educating. They are indoctrinating. We now have an influx of people coming into these schools that the focus is on them because they have not assimilated, they do not know the culture, they do not know the language.

What is happening to our kids is not fair. So what can we do to safeguard our American citizens’ children so that they are not sitting in class not being engaged for eight hours a day?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you. From a dad to a mom, thank you for that.

I’ll give you a couple of pragmatic answers. One is actually the schools are strained for dollars, public schools are. I’ve got a good place to find them, actually. So there’s about $80 billion spent by this behemoth thing called the U.S. Department of Education. The first step is shut that down and send the money back to the people of this country. That would actually work pretty well.

The second thing is, as I gave you, it’s one of the things I want to try to develop over today. It’s not something I’m preaching at you, but I want to hear from you and tell me what you think of it. In developing a sensible immigration policy for this country, especially now as it affects our schools, so I gave you one principle earlier, which is that, and this is legal immigration. The easy stuff is, okay, if you’re in this country illegally, send you back, build the wall, use the military, use aquatic barriers. That’s the easy stuff, all right?

So get that done. That goes without saying. But on the hard stuff, if you’re going to depend on the welfare state, you don’t get in. Here’s one more or two.

I believe that you should be able to speak the language of the United States of America, English, in order to enter. And as it relates to schools, that burden alone, it’s not going to fix all of the problems that you just asked about, but that alone is actually going to go a long distance in relieving the pressure on a lot of schools, especially public schools, when it comes to language as a basic barrier, versus there’s actually many more people who do want to come to the United States of America than can, who have skill sets, don’t depend on the welfare state, and know English. If you’re going to pick the limited number, you may as well pick the ones that are most likely to be able to assimilate, most likely to be able to be participants in economic action, and those who are able to actually integrate their kids into the schools. That would be a suggestion I’d offer, and you guys let me know what you think.

Local Engagement and Event Planning

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you for coming. In a couple of months I’ll be a resident of Springfield-Clarke County for 61 years. If our city council and everybody wants to be a part of the solution, I’m just sitting right there by the door. I haven’t seen a single one of them come in here.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you. All are welcome. Well, thank you.

And I know that there were all kinds of concerns. One thing I will own. This rests on me. So on Saturday night I was having dinner with my wife and a couple of friends. We were talking about what was happening in Springfield. It felt silly for me not to be here. I got on my phone. I put out a tweet.

I said I’m going to Springfield. Thursday was the first day I could be free to get here. I want to thank Jim Likos because I think it was very difficult to find a spot to host this. So he did a great job of volunteering this space for us. But I under-anticipated. There’s 2,000 RSVPs, and we only had space for 350 people. So to the extent somebody couldn’t get in, in a town of 60,000 to 70,000 people, that says a lot. But regardless, if people couldn’t get in, that’s on me.

Immigration and Local Challenges

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Ramaswamy, thanks for coming tonight. Definitely appreciate it. I’ve been a lifelong resident of Springfield for 46 of my 50 years. Four of those were spent in the U.S. Navy. So I know this city very well.

So prior to the arrival of our immigrants, we were suffering from, as many American cities have, and we continue to suffer with the drug epidemic and homelessness, among other issues that’s plaguing our city and the country. And now with having an additional 15,000 to 20,000 new residents in such a brief period, our already burdened sectors of government, private and public resources, are now critically overwhelmed.

I voted for President Trump in 2016, 2020, and I will again on November 5th. President Trump vowed to do, quote, large deportations from Springfield, Ohio. But like he said earlier, most, if not nearly all, of the immigrants here are here legally. So the notion of deporting all of them and then everything will be okay is not based on reality.

So my question to you is this. What realistic plans can you, President Trump, and Congress produce for Springfield and cities like Springfield to be able to adapt and thrive for all of us, both citizens and immigrants?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I appreciate your thoughtful question. I don’t agree with 100 percent of it, but I appreciate you identifying who you’re voting for but still are able to ask tough questions.

I like that. So I’ll say something here, first of all, is the most important part of your question is we can fall into a trap, and I don’t want to see us fall into this, is there are real problems that we need to address in this country that actually have nothing to do with immigration as well. And I think that we can sweep a lot of that under the rug. Those are failures of our elected and increasingly unelected leaders of the country that we’ve got to address by way of economic growth in this country, wage stagnation in this country.

You think about even workforce training and preparedness for the changing economy, our reliance on China for our modern way of life. These are big issues even outside of the specific immigration and mass migration issues. So part of your point is we can’t sweep all that under the rug and just blame it on immigrants. I agree with you, actually.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. How are we going to achieve mass deportations? Well, first of all, you’ve got anybody who’s committed a crime in this country, anybody who is actually currently detained, that’s an easy set of deportations right out the gate. You’re talking about millions of people that fit those two categories together.

That alone would be the largest mass deportation in American history. The next thing you’ve got to do is it’s like you’ve got a clogged drain, right? What do you do? The first thing you do is you turn off the faucet. You don’t try to clean the drain while you leave the faucet on. Use our military to secure the border. Use the National Guard if necessary. Aquatic barriers in the Rio Grande.

And, yes, complete the construction of the wall, which is not a racist or xenophobic action. And so the way I think about it is let’s just talk about some principles we can agree on. Maybe if I was writing this down it would be a little more precise, but I’ll give it to you kind of off the top here. Think about it like your body, right, violation of your consent.

A nation’s body is its land. No migration without consent, number one. Number two, consent should only be granted to migrants who benefit the United States of America. And number three is those who enter without consent shall be removed.

Immigration Principles

If anybody wants to disagree with me on that, that’s fine. We can debate that. But I haven’t met an American who actually disagrees with those three principles. So if we all agree on it, the country that put a man on the moon can get this job done. It’s just a question of actually having the will to do it. Thank you. Thank you.

Corporate Influence on Immigration

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hello. I saw an article, I think it was Epoch Times, where they were talking about there are five companies who want these Haitians here to be workers because they need the manpower. And I don’t know how many of you know, I found this out accidentally, there is a massive, massive Amazon fulfillment center being built down, I think, at the south end of South Charleston. I’m sure a lot of these people are being brought in for that as well. If these companies, these big companies, need these people, why are they not paying their way to get them here and house them, especially Bezos?

He’s got plenty of money. If he needs those people, we’ve got some greedy landlords putting out long-term renters who are going to, a lot of them, end up on the streets. They’re getting rich putting 20 migrants in a house. They’re getting $200 per migrant in these houses.

And the long-term renters that pay $700 to $900 are out on the streets. How do we stop that?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, so it’s a good question. I mean, I think a lot of this comes from, I think, special currying in favor to industries that manage to lobby for advantages to them.

One of the things is even in the legal immigration system, people don’t talk about this, even actually the immigrants who are left holding the back. So the H-1B system, for example, you can’t even switch companies. You’re attached to just the company that brought you. You know who lobbied for that? The very companies who got the advantage from the law in the first place. So I think this is one of those cases where, and here I’ve heard tales of the ways in which these companies actually subsidized particularly. I want to get to the bottom of those facts. But if we end lobbying in the federal government, I think that actually solves half of this problem.

To say if you’ve served in Congress or served in the Senate or served as a bureaucrat, for at least 10 years you can’t lobby that same government, half of this melts away right there. So it fixes the corruption. Half the problem is that government’s actually responsive to the people of this country. Thank you for that question.

I appreciate it. I was going to get my back to them the whole time.

Mass Migration Concerns

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thanks for coming, Mr. Ramaswamy, and much respect too for the climate here. It wasn’t exactly welcoming. But I was a little concerned about the topic of this conversation, the dialogue for unity, because I think one thing we should be united on, there simply are too many mass migrants here in this town, and they’re too richly subsidized. It’s pushing people out of their homes. It’s pushing people out of jobs.

I know there’s employers that say they need the employees. Amazon has just fired hundreds of people to replace them with migrant workers. So we need less migrants in this town. We can’t absorb them.

We need to take some of that money that’s being given to them and give that to people in the community who’ve been harmed by this. Maybe give some money to local businesses so they can upskill. So they can upgrade their equipment. Rather than hire low-wage, no-steal migrants, let’s upgrade their equipment, maybe give some grants to tech schools so we have kids qualified to run modern equipment.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Let me ask you a question, because part of my objective here is also to inform my own views, not reading what I mean in the newspaper, but hearing from our fellow citizens. What do you believe should be the criteria for the kinds of immigrants or migrants that Springfield should want to keep versus the criteria for Springfield to want to export, expel, or not allow in in the future? What would be your perspective on it?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I mean, if it was up to me, we’d send them away and start all over because they were brought in without our consent.

Some people were getting ripped off of it, but it’s harmed the rest of us. If there are people who are working and these are honest jobs, fine. If they’re here, again, they’re taking up Social Security. 20,000 people here, and from our former state senator, said they are getting an average of $600 to $1,600 a month in Social Security.

So to say it’s an average of 1,000 and say there’s truly only 20,000 here, that’s $20 million a month being spent in one county just to subsidize these people, and that’s driving other people out of their homes. We could take that money, and I said, give it grants to businesses so they can modernize. Instead of bringing in migrants to work low-wage jobs, let’s make the high-wage jobs, and let’s train our kids to take those jobs. That would cost a lot less than $20 million a month.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: What’s your name, my man?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Bill.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Bill? Yeah.

I appreciate your thoughtful perspective. I’ll give you mine here, all right, because I think that this is so – the situation is so broken, the status quo, that I think it’s pretty coherent to say, you know what, just start with a blank slate and start over. Here’s my view on it, is that there’s a dishonesty to the current program and the justification for it. And here’s the dishonesty I’m talking about.

It’s usually an economic justification for a program that actually was not economically motivated in its first place. So the program I’m talking about, many of you are – I’ve been surprised talking to people in Springfield today how knowledgeable people are on the actual legal details even. But the program I’m talking about is Temporary Protected Status, TPS, okay? It was designed as a humanitarian program largely used after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

And I think it is beyond bizarre that we should somehow assume that all of those people organically just decided to come to Springfield, Ohio. I mean, I love Springfield, Ohio. Don’t get me wrong. I think that most of them on the CBP One app, which is what they use to come into the country, check Chicago, Miami, New York.

I don’t think Springfield is on the list. So I think that that’s also a separate question, which I’m open to taking some questions and comments on. I think that there are just been – you know, there’s been some hard questions asked about exactly what the heck is going on there. But in response to that, I want to – I’m not in favor of necessarily throwing the baby out with the bathwater, in the sense that if you have somebody that came in 20 years ago from – there’s a whole range of other countries, too.

I mean, you know, people who were maybe a doctor in the community who trained in the right way, came legally, that’d be one thing. But if somebody came here through Temporary Protected Status, which is a humanitarian program, and now you’re using an economic justification to keep them, that’s dishonest. There is – yeah, so that’s dishonesty. And I think we’ve got to at least be honest and speak the truth.

And the T in Temporary Protected Status means something, right? It stands for temporary. So all I would say is if you want to bring people to the country economically because it’s going to benefit the citizens of the United States, pass that through Congress, make the justification, say how it helps Americans who are already here, and do it honestly through the front door, but don’t do it through the back door because that’s just dishonest and erodes public trust in our system and in our government. And I think it’s another example of our government systematically lying to us.

So that’s where I land on it. Thank you. Thank you.

Community Engagement

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I have one question. My name is Chrissy. You came here from your hometown. We have city officials that live right here in Springfield and have not set up a meeting like this for Springfield. You said your tickets were free, right?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yes, they are. We’re not making money today.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Okay, listen to me. But why can’t the city officials – I’m serious. Why can’t the city officials do this, go to the north, south, east, and west of Springfield, maybe get people that want to come, and find out what their really living circumstances – and here’s why. We’re paying for those, right? I’ve been in Springfield for 66 years. I know a lot about Springfield, okay?

So my take is if you don’t talk to people, even Haitians – I have Haitian friends, too. I know all of them are over here illegal, too. But what I’m saying is this is a community. If you want to be open about things, talk to the people.

Don’t just make it seem like President Trump did, like everyone’s lying. They don’t really know if they’re not living on that side of town. What really goes on? So how will you know about a city if you’re not bringing the people together, right, and talking to them? It’s called communication, number one.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: What’s your name?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: My name is Chrissy.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Chrissy, I appreciate you being here.

So I’ll tell you what I think is actually going on, okay? The first thing I’m going to say may not be very popular in this room, but I’ll tell you the truth, okay? This is what I truly believe, so I’m going to share it anyway. Actually, before I came here, I was in City Hall.

I met with a number of the city officials. I invited them to be here tonight, actually. I thought it would be productive, because I don’t have the power other than through philanthropy or through public advocacy to change something here, and we’ll try to use the power of a platform voice to cause positive change here. But I invited them to be here because they’re in a position to run the city, and I’ll tell you what I believe.

I know many of you may feel like your leadership doesn’t care. I met with them. I don’t think that’s true. I think they actually – I sat there for an hour with them after we met with the Haitian group.

I think they actually really do care, at least the subset I met with. And I know that’s not a popular view maybe in this room, but I will tell you what I do see happening in the country. I think there’s a culture of fear, actually. I think the reason they’re not here tonight is not because they don’t care about this.

It’s because they’re scared, actually. And I think that culture of fear has spread like an epidemic across our country, where actually what you really need is just transparency. You report to the people. You know, if you work in a company, how many of you – anybody in here work in a company?

Your CEO is the boss of your company. But people mix this up. When you’re in government and you’re a city official or you’re a mayor or whatever, your boss is actually the people who are in this room today. And it’s not just the people in the city who mess that up.

That’s the federal government as well. And so what I hope to do today is to show that actually talking to the people of Springfield isn’t that scary. The way the town council meeting somebody came up will be demonized for speaking about their own experience. We’re live-streaming this for the world to see that actually these are just good, patriotic Americans who love their country and love their city who are struggling because the people who they elected to run their federal government all the way down have let them down.

And you don’t have to be scared of actually being face-to-face with your fellow citizens. So I did my best. I can’t control what they do, but I did do my best to highlight this today.

Perspectives on Race and Community

AUDIENCE QUESTION: If there’s fear, and I’m going to say this and people might not like it and maybe I shouldn’t say it because my family is probably going to say something too, but I’m a black woman in America. I’m going to put that. I’ve been in IT for over 40 years. I’m usually the only black and usually it was men that I work with, right?

And so what I’m saying is there is that fear factor. There’s a fear factor because you go in a place, you don’t really know anyone, but you’ve got to meet people, right? But the city officials, and I agree with you, I don’t think all of them are that, but forget about the fear factor. People are hurting.

And to be honest with you, I came up here for one reason. Hopefully they hear me. I live all over Springfield. I’ve been living in different parts of Springfield, okay, and I’m 66. But what I’m saying is people were afraid of me. The workers that I work with were afraid of me because I was different and they would tell me that after they became friends. I don’t want to hear this fear factor, right?

People are hurting. People are living in conditions that people don’t know about at the official level because they don’t live with those people.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, that’s well said. I got a question for you. I got one question because you brought it up, right? You said you’re a black woman growing up here. Okay, so I grew up here, guy with brown skin, spent a lot of time in Springfield. You’re a black woman who lives in Springfield. So that the rest of the country can hear you. Is Springfield a racist city?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: To be honest with you, there are people there, but after they get to know you, that’s gone. I live where there wasn’t a lot of blacks over there, right? And we were only 30 years. We built our house. My husband and I, we’ve been together for 51 years and married for 46. People were afraid when we moved in the neighborhood, okay?

All my kids, three with masters, two with masters, bachelors and everything, but they had block parties where everybody in the community around there for blocks around came and had parties and talked. The kids played with each other. Kids don’t have fear. It’s the adults that have fear.

So that’s what I would say. If I would say anything, do a big thing. We’ve got the fairground. We’ve got Snyder Park. We’ve got the reservoir. Bring everybody together. And I guarantee you, Haitians will come. But then you talk with them.

Listen, you’re going to have bad in every race. Forget it. Let’s be real, right? There’s not one that doesn’t have a nut in the tree someplace, and that’s just the truth. That’s the truth. It’s the truth. So bring them all together and then make the Haitians feel welcome. But they also have to learn our culture.

And the biggest thing is they don’t know how to drive. They don’t. I know. Because where they practice at is a church that I did attend, and they run into stuff, but they don’t mean to. Because guess what? The culture where they came from is not our culture, and our culture is not fair. We have to learn. But if everybody’s so fearful, just leave Springfield and put somebody that’s not fearful. That’s what I would say.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you. I appreciate that.

TIFFANY: So am I allowed to move around a little bit with the microphone?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I’ve been bringing everybody here, but I want to try to get around.

TIFFANY: Why don’t you come over here and we’ll do your question here, and then I’m going to start coming around a little bit.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: We’ll go to this side over here. Yep.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What’s up? You look a really good person, by the way, too, man. My name is Brock. I’ve lived in Springfield 20 years, all my life, pretty much. Since this story leaped, and this is something that everyone needs to hear, the hateful language in this community has spiked. It’s really, really bad. I’m half black. I’m half Hungarian. I’m half black, half white, whatever you want to say. I’ve become a target of the hate. I can probably count on my hand, both hands, how many times a racial slur has been said in my whole life.

I’ve been called the N-word twice this week by just people who group me. It happens. Even though my skin may be lighter, I think people just group us together. There’s horror stories of people who are darker skinned that have been chased down by people who are white saying, get out of this country, friends of mine, friends of friends, and say, like, get out of here, you’re Haitian, we don’t want you here, even with a six-month-old baby at a grocery store.

Regardless, I find it shameful and I find it inappropriate, whether I’m Haitian or American. What would you say to my fellow people here in the community in regards to this rhetoric? I don’t think I can tolerate it. Tell me.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Brock. All right, so this is a serious question. I want to take a minute to address this.

I’m going to speak some truth here. I’m in the camp of longstanding believing that the United States of America is not a racist country, the least racist country known to mankind. I have never experienced that type of invidious racism growing up. But I also want to speak a hard truth here, because there’s something going on in the country right now.

When I say right now, I’m talking like the last nine to 12 months in this country. There is a weird uptick in racial tension in this country that did not exist in the 30 years that I grew up right here in southwest Ohio. And I’ll tell you what’s going on, because this gets to the essence of what’s going on in this country and bothers me. Take the immigration issue.

You take 20,000 people who are unprepared to integrate into a community, dump them into a city of 50,000. You’re going to get a reactionary response. Then you demonize the people who have the reactionary response, who say, oh, you’re blaming me. They’re going to have ill will, in this case, towards the Haitian community.

On the racial point, let me mention this, too, because I see this happening. There’s no better way to create racism in America anywhere than to take something else away from someone’s family because of their skin color. So whether it’s a seat in college or whether it’s a job or now even forms of federal aid under the likes of Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris, say that you only get certain forms of aid if you’re a racial minority, if you’re black or Hispanic. That actually creates more racial animus in response.

And so this is what I think many people on the right sometimes miss, which is that are these anti-racist programs? Are they racist against whites or Asians? They are. But actually, it’s not just that it’s racist against whites and racist against Asians. It is literally fueling a new wave of anti-black racism in the country that otherwise would not have exist if it weren’t for those woke anti-racist policies in the first place. It is divide and conquer. It’s the media. The media is throwing kerosene on this.

And so here’s what was happening. It’s like — it’s like the final embers of racism were burning out in America. And then they’re throwing kerosene on it all over again. It is a divide and conquer strategy. They want to divide us on ourselves. And you know who it’s up to to make sure they can’t do get away with that. It’s up to us. It’s up to we the people to say hell no to that vision.

You will sell us this myth that we’re divided. You’re going to try to pit us against each other. But you know what? We the people who are citizens of the United States of America are the people who we actually elect a government to represent.

And all of us are American regardless of our race or creed. And that’s what made this country great the first time around. And that’s how we’re going to make this country great again. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Thank you, Brock.

Crime and Safety Concerns

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi. So I have a young daughter. I have two daughters, actually. And one of my daughters is younger. So I want to talk about the crime a little bit.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Sure.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Personal crime. So she’s been followed around Walmart. She’s been stalked. She ran to her car, threw her stuff down, ran to her car. She was chased. Okay? They were immigrants. She was chased by a man with a machete on her way to work. Called the police. She told them what had happened and wanted to file a report.

Two hours later, the police still had not called her back and never checked on the crime. So that’s how you know there’s no crime in Springfield, because no one’s reporting it.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: That was your daughter. So, I mean, I guess, does she have any sense for whether those were illegal immigrants into the country? She probably wasn’t conversing with them while they’re chasing her with a machete.

Okay. See, here’s the thing, and it’s uncomfortable to say this, but it’s true. If your first act of entering the country breaks the law, then you’re more likely to break the law when you’re already here. Right? And I don’t like just talking about the easy issues.

Let’s talk about the hard issues. I mean, they hit President Trump a lot for the so-called the one they really tried to nail him for was the family separation policy. Right?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Right.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Anybody in this room know how many mothers in the United States of America are in prison right now? It’s about 350,000, actually. And I have a book coming out next week, and I’ve got a Fox Nation special coming out next week. It’s called Truths.

It lays out a lot of these hard truths. That’s one of the truths. It’s a hard truth. It’s about 350,000 mothers who are in prison. You know who we don’t make them take with them? We don’t make them take their kids. Right? And we say, you know, that’s a difficult situation, but you deal with it in a different way.

And so I think we have to restore the culture of the rule of law in this country. In this town alone, double the number of shoplifting crimes in the last two years. Two years is not a long time for shoplifting rates to double. Auto thefts are up by over 50% in that same timeframe.

And as you said, based on your daughter’s story, that’s against the backdrop of many of them likely even going unreported. We’ve got to restore that culture of the rule of law. But part of the reason we’re seeing this, too, is that many illegal immigrants into this country, many other criminals in this country, when they see the top law enforcement agencies in the United States of America themselves not following the law, then they rightly ask the question, why the heck should I have to follow the law anyway? So top to bottom and bottom to top, we have to restore the rule of law in the United States.

It’s who we are. And that’s how we save this country. So I appreciate that. I’m glad your daughter’s safe. Thank you for, thank you for sharing the story.

Voting Rights and Citizenship

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you. When the illegal immigrants are coming in to not only Springfield, but throughout the country and they get their benefits and they check a box to register to vote. That’s a very big concern. What’s your thinking about illegals voting?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Yeah, I’m against it. That’s sort of where I land on that question. I actually, I spoke to President Trump earlier today.

And one of the things that makes a lot of sense is, you know, and the thing about him is he says a lot of things that make sense. And sometimes the things that make sense hurt your feelings a little bit for a while. And then you got to get over it and realize that actually there’s a hard fact at the heart of it. So there’s this, there’s this statute called the SAVE ACT.

I don’t know if anybody’s heard of it. And it’s this really controversial law that says that if you’re going to vote, you have to be a citizen of the country. And you know what, for some reason, we just can’t get that through. And actually it’s not just Democrats.

I think that they have a lot of Republican reluctance around this too, which is, which is strange to me. You know? I think that, I think that the reality is if we can’t agree that the people who vote in the United States of America ought to actually be citizens of this country, then I think we’re done, actually. But here’s why I don’t think we’re done, actually, because most people in this country, at the level of the citizens, the people, we the people actually agree on that.

It’s the managerial class, and in some ways the bizarrely behaving elected leaders of this country that are actually betraying we the people. Now, on this, you know, my goal here is this is not a campaign event. I wanted to come here, the concerns of the community, and to share some of my own thoughts and start a conversation that this city, I hope, benefits from. But I will say that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that you do have a chance to change it.

Okay? You don’t like the direction of the country and the way it’s going. You want to change the rules. You got to win under the current rules first, and you each have an opportunity to do that on November 5th. So do your part as a citizen. You show up, and you do your part, and I promise you Donald Trump’s going to do his. I’m going to do mine, and that’s how we’re going to have to save our country.

Homelessness and Housing

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Oh, right here? Sure.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: My name’s Donald. I was a Springfield resident for 50 years. Out of those 10 years, I was in California. I was homeless for four years in California, living in hotels on the street under bridges. I left and came to Ohio. The thing is, my question is, what is the United States government or state governments or local governments going to do about the homeless problem that is around the entire country? It seems like they care more for the illegal immigrants than they care about the homeless in our country.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So I’m going to say, I said one controversial thing earlier, which is that the people we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government. I’ll say a second controversial thing now. The first and sole moral duty of U.S. elected leaders is to U.S. citizens, period. And I don’t think we’re behaving that way today.

Now, how do we address this problem of homelessness? We ought to have more housing in the country. That brings down the cost of housing. And the reason we don’t have that, actually, a lot of this does start at the state and local level, where you have all of these zoning ordinances. You’ve got all kinds of regulations with respect to the sizes of homes that can be built. Sometimes, first, somebody’s starter home doesn’t have to be a mansion.

But it can be a one-bedroom home or a single-family home that is more affordable. It’s like the laws of supply and demand. If you have more supply, the cost is going to come down. It becomes more affordable. We need to increase housing construction in the country. And I know it takes a lot of guts, man, to say that, to share that background of yours, coming from California to here. I hope you find a better life in Ohio than you did in California. And if I have anything to do with it, I promise we’re going to try to make sure that you do.

So thank you. I appreciate it, brother. Thank you. Good to meet you, man.

Views on Current Administration

AUDIENCE QUESTION: So my question is, I’ll make it short and sweet. I’ve been here for 35 years, here in Springfield, Ohio. As you guys, I’m a full-blown Trump supporter. I’m a full believer that he’s the man that’s going to save us. Do you currently think right now that the current administration is the reason we’re having all this trouble currently here in Springfield, Ohio?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I do, actually. I really do. And that’s actually probably the number one most important policy takeaway here. You know, I think if you’re going to run for public office at the local level or at the state level, you’ve got to be ready to take the heat, all right? If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen. And I do think that criticism at every level is fair.

But if you want to understand where I think the real problem is, I don’t think Houdini himself, as a magician, could have fixed a problem in Springfield if you have federal policies that are permitting millions of illegals and stretch the law to make them legals entering this country and dumping them into cities like this one. It would be like the equivalent of sending two million additional people to New York City. Can you imagine that? That’s the effect of sending 20,000 people to Springfield.

That’s a direct result of those federal policies. And again, you don’t always have a chance to change it. But this time, in about 50 days, you actually do. And it’s time that we actually use our chance to do it. Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Concerns about National Priorities

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’m Bill Albright. I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio. This country cares more about Ukraine’s borders, Israel’s borders, everybody else’s borders, transgenders in Pakistan. They quit caring about us long before Trump’s last administration. This country’s gone downhill for a long time.

The Declaration of Independence states that people have a right to alter or abolish the government that has destructed their rights and safety. It’s been like that for a long time. When do we burn it down? I like your ideas.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you, my man. I appreciate it. And you know what? I don’t think it makes sense to send a bunch of your taxpayer money so some Ukrainian bureaucrat can buy a bigger house. I’d rather this gentleman right here buy that bigger house. So thank you. I appreciate you sharing that.

Well, we’re going to do our best to change it, brother. Thank you, my man. I appreciate it. Thank you. And you know what? Shut it down is the way I say it in terms of a lot of these regulatory states and the federal government. The right answer is we’re never going to actually reform that beast. Some Republicans, I think, fall into this trap. Good people, but they fall into this trap saying, hey, we’re going to get there and reform it around the edges and cut off one head of an eight-headed hydra.

It grows right back. You want to actually fix this, you get in there and you go from one agency to another, thousands of federal, millions of federal bureaucrats haven’t earned an honest dollar in the private sector in their lives. Go in there and actually shut it down. And then you start actually, and NGOs are part of it. It’s part of the three-letter agency. So that’s my philosophy. But I think we’re going to do it. Our founding fathers had to do it one way.

We’re going to do it the peaceful way, and we’re going to do it the way that we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. We’re at a place in the country where it’s a 1776 spirit. Channel that to what we do this November, and that’s the way we’re going to get it done for the country. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Convincing Family Members to Vote

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Mr. Ramaswamy, so my mother voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She voted for Joe Biden in 2020. She voted for Obama twice. What can I do to convince her to vote for Donald J. Trump this November?

How can I convince her to secure my future as an American? How can I convince her to make sure I have a future I can look forward to and not make that mistake again?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: How old are you, man?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I am 19 years old.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: He’s 19 years old. I love this guy. So you’ve got to love your mom, all right? Just as a mom.

You know why I can say that? Because she’s raised a good son. And that’s the best part of a good mother right there. So here’s the thing. I don’t actually – sometimes people, when they’ve just been inculcated into a culture by the media, it’s their first thing to take that TV remote at home and just turn it off. Shut that down, too, actually. All right? The next thing to do is actually how did she manage to raise somebody who actually was this young and good?

It’s by having school systems that actually focus on the education and merit of children rather than some equity agenda. How are you going to get a job when you graduate from high school or from college? Who’s actually going to allow you to earn more money? Lay it out for her.

Kamala Harris, she wants taxes on unrealized capital gains, tank the economy, shut down drilling, increase gas costs, and actually shut down the economy. Tell her this. I think it might be the most convincing thing because nothing overrides the parental instinct. You’re going to actually live a better life, you personally, and make more money after you get out of high school or after you get out of college if Donald Trump’s in the White House rather than Kamala Harris.

And I think that’s going to convince your mom to bring her along. So tell her to try it. And the last thing I’ll say is you tried it the other way. You said Obama twice, Hillary, Joe Biden. You tried it the other way four times, and here’s where we are. What’s the harm in trying the other way one time and see how it turns out this time? So that’s what I would say. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yes, yes. Good to see you, my man. Thank you. I appreciate it, brother. You keep at it. Thank you, yeah.

Nonprofit Work and Community Support

AUDIENCE QUESTION: It’s great to be here. I’m on my ex. I know where to go. So I’m here today. I follow you on Twitter, one of only three politicians that I follow.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Who are the other two? I’m curious.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: RFK Jr.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Okay.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And Tulsi Gabbard.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: All right. Good people.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Anyway, I’ve probably gotten in trouble now.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Not in my book, yeah.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: So your initial tweet on Saturday.

First thing I want to – it’s kind of two things. Number one, the first thing that you said is you want to come and help, and I appreciate that. And you said you want to bring a contribution, you know, to a nonprofit. And you answered part of that earlier, but it seems that that money is still up for grabs.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: It is. I would love – as long as it supports this community.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I wanted to tell you that I work for a nonprofit in Springfield. It’s a faith-based nonprofit. We have 26 ministry partners doing incredible work in our city. We have multiple ministry – multiple partners that are community partners. We work with our local schools. We work with our health department to try to tackle some of the biggest problems in our community.

And this is the respect and honor –

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You come up next. You come up next. This is the respect and honor that you asked for. So here’s what I will say.

Because we have started – we are – we asked our business and government, what is the biggest problems in Springfield right now with the Haitians? And they said, well, we need driving school and we need them to learn English because 80% of our population cannot speak to 20% of our population. And we said, okay, we’ve already proven that we can solve problems in our schools by connecting churches to schools and meeting 300 – wow. Facts.

I’m sorry. There’s facts. Literally. We’ll give Ms. Ternan – Literally. Just one? This is my minute. We’ll give you the microphone. Jiminy Christmas.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You get to finish, sir. You get to finish, sir, and then we’re going to give her a chance. Thank you.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: So here is the problem. I actually have facts. We’ve given away $300,000 from the faith community to solve families’ problems in our city schools. It’s an incredible program. It’s nationwide. It’s called Care Portal. We are the implementing partner of the year nationwide. We are doing really good work in Clark County with that.

But here – so – but the needs are vast because of the overwhelming –

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: May I just say one thing? Because I’m happy to commit to this. I will look at and learn more about the work. And I will say something.

I know it feels like we have a disagreement. We’re going to give this woman a chance just to speak right after. But here’s one thing I will say is, irrespective of this specific exchange, I think actually the revival of faith in our country is going to be a good thing to reunite us. That much I stand for.

And in terms of the impact that I want to have, one of the things I’ve made – you make mistakes as philanthropists. You think you’re having an impact. You give money and then it doesn’t actually have an impact on the cause you thought it was given to. I want to make sure that we’re helping this community.

And I promise you that I will take an honest and earnest look at whatever you’re working on. Okay? I appreciate that. Thank you. I’m going to give this woman a chance to speak and then we’ll move on.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: But I need to respond to what she said. Give her a chance to speak because we couldn’t hear her. We couldn’t hear her. So being dumb and having all of your private information on public is okay with people like this?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So, sir, I want to be – have a seat and we can actually have her speak. Have her speak as well. Go ahead.

We’ve got two rules tonight, honesty and respect. Right. So we’re going to follow both of them. Okay?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I think that we’ve had a lot of church groups in the Springfield community, Catholic, Christian organizations that have – they’ve contributed to bringing – you know, we could have handled 3,000, 4,000 people. No, we’re not unwelcoming to that effect. But 20,000, when does it stop? And we’ve had a lot of outside with religious organizations, some cults, who have brought in and who have benefited, whether it’s a financial benefit, if it’s an ego, from their ego to benefit to virtue signal that they’re good people.

And they have done a disservice. They have done a disservice to our community. And, again, I’ll get to 5,000, 15 or 20. And I want to say to the Haitian community that I’m not mad at the Haitian community. I get it. I would have ran here.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: If we were in their shoes, we’d have done the same thing.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Absolutely. And I’m not an unkind person. And I’ve been kind, and I will continue to be kind. But we’ve had – it’s been enough. We have been called racist by our mayor, by our city council. We have had NGOs come into the city council, call us racist, put up signs in their churchyard. I love Jesus with all my heart. But you’ve got to bring truth in the word of Christ and not bits and pieces.

We’re not doing that. And that is what we’re seeing in our community. We are – I don’t know what to do. Like, you’re here, Vivek. What do we do when you’re not here anymore? What do we do for our mayor who is pushing back on us instead of the federal and state government? We are the one he’s pushing back on.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So let me tell you – no, don’t apologize.

Never apologize for speaking your mind. And I want to be respectful of this gentleman as well. Let me see if I can build one bridge here we might be able to agree on, all right? I talk about this in some of my writing, my upcoming book, and we talk about a solution that maybe we can, as people of faith, agree on here.

You’re a Christian. You believe in God. You have a kind heart. You also believe that we have to protect our country, and we can’t through the back door actually slowly erode the fabric and the economic health and security of cities like Springfield.

For those who have a charitable mindset, those who have compassion for kids who are born in the third world or in nations like Haiti, there is an option that we actually don’t talk enough about. Consider adoption, actually. You adopted? Really?

Okay, I didn’t know. We’ve never met, I promise. Yeah, no, I didn’t. You adopted?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I sure did.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Our country, if you want to actually exercise charitable instincts, America first applies to the government, but if you in your life actually want to alleviate human suffering, that’s one of the most beautiful things you could do. And I think adopting a child, especially for people who have the capacity, interest of raising or bringing more children into the world and bringing them up in a household as Americans, in that case, is a great way to do it. America also has a great tradition of philanthropy.

We’re one of the most philanthropic nations in the history of Earth, actually. There’s no other nation with a greater culture of philanthropy than in the United States. And so there are many ways to exercise compassion for those who are suffering in other parts of the world or elsewhere, maybe born into families where they weren’t able to be raised. You sound like you have actually been somebody.

Thank you for also considering adoption as a path. But that doesn’t mean that bringing those people through our government-ordained or NGO-ordained systems to the United States of America, that’s not the right answer when we’re actually as public officials looking after the citizens of our own country. And you said this, what are you going to do when I’m gone? Look, I’ll make one promise to you.

The promise I’ll keep to you is I will look after whatever I believe is the right nonprofit cause to drive maximal positive change in Springfield, and I will follow through on that even though my first attempt at that was thwarted. My commitment to you is I don’t know what comes next for me after this next 50 days. We’ve got a goal. But you know what?

If we move to Springfield, Mayor, I promise you that we will do whatever we can to actually serve this country in the biggest way possible. I promise you that. I’ll keep that promise, and our family is fully behind it. I appreciate you being here.

Thank you. I understand. We’re not going to leave.

Journalist’s Perspective

AUDIENCE QUESTION: How are you doing, sir? I’m a journalist. I’m from Oregon. I’ve been here just to cover the events. I have to say that the people of Springfield have been awesome.

You guys have been very welcoming. And if you guys use that energy to welcome me here with me being around town, I see that you guys have welcomed these Haitians as well. But it’s a little bit different. I tried to imagine having one-third of my town being filled with immigrants, and I’ve seen you guys are gracious people, but it’s just too much for you guys.

I’ve been feeding the homeless all this week, and what I’m seeing around town is that the local governments are not taking care of the citizens rather than the immigrants. That’s what I’m seeing. They’re getting their homes paid for. They’re getting a car. They drive nicer cars than most of us. They also get free food. But I see that a lot. I’m talking a lot.

I’ve interviewed so many people. A lot of citizens here in Springfield feel completely forgotten, 100%. And I’m going to wrap it up. One question to you. Are you going to run for governor of Ohio?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: I’m a little more inclined than I was about 10 seconds ago.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: My second question is a little education goes a long way. These Haitians were here because of July 7, 2021. That’s what they told me. They were also told by the local governments here that they were here to help the economy. I’m being honest. That’s what they told me.

A lot of different Haitians have told me that. So my question to you is how can you energize this community to be more effective in a positive manner than the negative manner that we’ve been seeing in the media, which I don’t think is happening. But how can we spread a positive message through what’s going on in Springfield?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Sure. I appreciate it. Well, I think that the truth of the matter is while we’re here in Springfield, and I’m here because I grew up near here, the city’s important to me, you draw a 50-mile radius around Springfield, just circle it. That’s actually just a cross-section of the country.

And so the other reason we’re here is the story of Springfield is the story of the United States of America right now. And so how are we going to fix it? I think it starts with, first of all, overcoming that culture of fear we talked about. You’re doing it today.

Tell your neighbor what you actually think, not some woke-washed version of it. Seek the truth for yourself. Don’t depend on cable television to serve it up for you. And then the truth of the matter is, you know what, most people in this country are earnest, hardworking people when given the chance still want to make the most of a better life for their own kids.

Haitians, I don’t particularly, you know, as I said earlier, if we were in their shoes, we’d be running into this country too, which says that for all of our failures, we still are the best country still left on planet Earth. But to keep it that way, we’ve got to separate. And I use this expression, all right. I teach it to my kids.

It’s actually our family saying, you’ve got to be strong enough to protect your kindness. Both of those things are important. So, yes, should we preserve our kindness and our charitable instincts for those who are suffering? Anywhere, absolutely.

But we’re never as a country going to actually be able to do that unless we actually preserve our own strength as well. So that means saying no when appropriate, even in the face of being called a racist or a xenophobic person or transphobic or whatever it is. The next insult, though, you’ve got to be strong enough to say, this is what’s right for my duty. As a mayor of a city, my duty is to the residents of this city.

As a governor of a state, my duty is to the residents of this state. As a president of the United States, my duty is to the citizens of this nation, not another one. But to remember at every step, that’s not because you were unkind. It’s because you have to be strong enough to protect your kindness in the first place.

And it’s by remembering both of those things that we actually save this country and revive who we are. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thank you.

Military Families and Immigration

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi. My name is Bruce. My son is serving in the Army right now over in Germany.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Your son?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: My son is.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, tell him thank you for his service. I appreciate it.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: But the problem is, he’s married over there. He’s going to be having a baby next month. For him to get the baby to come here to the United States and his wife, he has to do four more years.

But the Haitians come over here and get everything. So in order for them to get their visa, their plane tickets, he has to do four more years. That doesn’t sound right to me.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: He’s getting screwed. I mean, he’s more than getting screwed. This is why. Anybody aware of this? We have a 25% recruitment deficit in our own U.S. military. And you want to know why? Young people aren’t stupid. They’re saying, if this is how you’re going to treat us, then I don’t feel like serving the country anymore.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: He’s been there three years already now.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: You know what? When you talk to me after this or talk to my team after this, I want to make sure the rest of the country is able to hear the story of a man who is serving his nation, having a baby abroad. We should be celebrating that child as a child of this nation, especially against the backdrop of a southern border that’s as open as we’ve ever had.

No, we can’t have both those things at once. I’m not okay with that. And we’re going to make sure that gets fixed. I appreciate that. Thank you. Tell your son thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Public Safety and Law Enforcement

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi. Hey. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.

Okay. I have a question. My concern is public safety. And obviously around here we’ve had a lot of traffic issues. But it goes a little further in my mind when it comes to, like, crime and things like that also. I try to follow what each side would do in terms of with serious crime. And I’ve seen Harris say that she would do away with cash bail and make it to where people didn’t have to do that. And I guess my question is, what is your take on people that are doing crime?

Because in our community they posted something that said we are not taking anyone unless it’s a failure to appear or a felony or a domestic violence. And put it on the police window. So the message that people get is you can go out and do anything. And that puts our law enforcement in a bad way and our community in a bad way. So what’s the solution?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, first thing I want to do is also recognize the fact that we’re able to have this discussion here is in part possible because we’ve got law enforcement here in Springfield today. We’re protected. A couple of you in the back.

So thank you for your service to this community. And I think part of the problem in this country is that we have handcuffed police officers’ ability to actually do their jobs. We got it backwards. So here’s what’s going on in the country.

At the federal level, federal law enforcement, right, the FBI, the ATF, you name it, you know, go straight down the list of the three-letter agencies. They’re making up crimes that don’t exist versus their political opponents. Donald Trump’s at the top of that list in my opinion. But at the same time, you’ve got political belief.

You know, we used in this country, it’s existed. The FBI has discriminated based on race in our national history. Today, there’s discrimination based on political belief. But the problem is at the local level.

So at the federal level, they’re making up enforcement of laws that don’t actually exist or that are unconstitutional. And at the local level, we’re failing to actually enforce the laws that protect people in their communities. We got to actually fix that bottom up where the people we really need enforcing laws right now more than ever are at the local level and tell the police officers like those here in Springfield that, you know what, we actually have your back. Don’t defund the police.

Actually fund and build up the police. Restore law and order in the United States of America, including in Ohio. And I’ll tell you, that’s not just Donald Trump’s job because most of those laws are enforced by states. And we need leaders at the state level, state legislators, governors, mayors at every level who are actually going to stand behind the police who are enforcing their state laws.

And do I think we could be doing a better job in this state? I absolutely do. Do I think we could do a better job in this city? I absolutely think we do.

But it’s going to take a culture of leaders who actually tell the police officers like those in this room, we’ve got your back. So I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

TIFFANY: Vivek, we’ve got five more minutes, so we’re going to do two more questions, okay?

Local Government and Citizen Concerns

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi, Vivek. Thank you for coming. But I’m kind of sorry you had to come because there is a reason why you’re here, and that is because our local government failed to listen to us. We have been going to – I got this, guys.

Remember August – I like your shirt. Remember August 29th, do you remember that? So we have been pleading our case for well over a year, and every time a citizen brings a concern to the city government, they only get three minutes and they’re always then painted with a broad brush that your comment is racist, when, in fact, if you listen to the underlying concerns that they have, they are based on a socioeconomic and a sociocultural basis. I would say to you that if our city commission had come to us and listened to us and given a seat at the table, that we probably wouldn’t need to be here.

We, as citizens of Springfield, are very resilient. We’re caring people. But when we are pushed up against the wall, there’s very little that we can do. And the way that I look at that is at the beginning of this, in 2021, we were frustrated.

And then we became, as time went on, we became discouraged. And we’ve reached a level where, in August, we were despondent. Well, we’re at the stage right now where we have been put down and called racist, not only in print, but also to our faces at city commission meetings. And now we are at a level of desperation.

And I would say to the citizens of Springfield that I understand your pain. We understand your pain. But please don’t take desperate action. We understand your desperate words and we hear your cry.

And so Vivek has now stepped up to help us out. And I’m hopeful that the city commission will now understand that you cannot disregard your citizens because this is what you end up with when you ignore our voices. It’s we the people for a reason. Thank you.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: We’ve got your back. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Social Media and Youth

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you guys so much. I’m going in the wrong direction here. But we are all here tonight. We’ve got a huge divide in our city when we’re talking party-wise. Social media is a devil.

I think a lot of us in the room are probably on it. I’m a huge flamethrower on social media. I’ll be the first one to admit it. What are we doing and why are we not listening to our 13- to 17-year-old children who are in these classrooms with these kids every day fueling the fire from us?

We’re feeding our kids with this danger because you’re either Republican or you’re Democrat or you’re just the devil.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: So I’ll tell you, this is made to work this way. Mark Zuckerberg was a year ahead of me at Harvard. And the actual way they made Facebook, so the predecessor to Facebook was a website called Hot or Not.

I’m going to click on something one second faster. And the whole premise is based on how quickly you’re able to prey on sort of the basis kind of human instincts, you’re actually able to learn something about somebody’s soul deeper than you will ever have into your own. And that’s exactly what the backbone for a multi-trillion-dollar industry. So I’m a capitalist.

I believe in capitalism. But I also think that virtue is a precondition for capitalism. We’ve got to restore faith and family to make sure people, when they have those instincts that they’re trying to have exploited, you can’t exploit them that easily if you have strong personalities. And here’s a law that I do favor.

I think if you can’t smoke an addictive cigarette until the age of 18, you shouldn’t be able to use an addictive social media product until the age of 15 or 16 either. And I think that’s, as a parent, something I think we can all agree on. So that’s where I would land on that. Thank you.

I appreciate that. It’s well said.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I just have one final thing with that. What would be the opportunity for even our commissioners to have a meeting like this with our 13- to 17-year-olds who are the next leaders of our country?

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Well, I don’t want to volunteer on behalf of Jim, who was kind enough to host this venue this time. But what do you think, Jim? Do you think we might be able to? Yeah, I think the same way.

And I invited them to be here today, but, you know, it’s certainly their choice, and they didn’t feel like that was the right venue for them to join us tonight. But I think it would be awfully productive if we were able to especially bring even young people to this conversation with your city’s leaders. I’ll do my best. If they do, I promise you I’ll even come back for it, all right?

So thank you, guys. Thank you.

Human Trafficking and Media Concerns

AUDIENCE QUESTION: My name is Pete Santilli from Cincinnati. My voice is hoarse because I’ve been here for four days talking to a whole heck of a lot of people. I have a quick statement, a message from the Ohio State Troopers that I’ve spoken to and who shall remain nameless, but they come with credibility because I’ll prove my point. First of all, how dare anybody?

We love our cats and dogs. Talk about cats and dogs. And, of course, not recognize the 400,000 children that have gone missing in the United States of America. Secondly, Ohio State Troopers I spoke to out in front of the schools recently were shocked when I told them after I spoke to the mayor that Governor DeWine indicated that 33,000 bomb threats were actually a hoax from overseas.

Law enforcement wasn’t notified of that. Springfield PD, they were shocked. And their question to you is why hasn’t the mainstream media conveyed to the public what Governor DeWine said because it would put aside the election interference that’s going on right now because this community is gripped in fear. Their children are going to schools.

The police are there. And the mainstream media is where they get their information from. It’s not being conveyed.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: Thank you, sir, for asking the question.

I’ll say a few things. I’ll say this in a joking tone, but you can decide how true it is. The mainstream media generally only tends to care about foreign election interference if two things are true. One is if it’s from Russia, and two is if it’s not actually happening.

So other than that, they’re not super, super interested in it. But the other kinds of foreign election interference, somehow they’re fine with. On the question about, because I’m glad we were incomplete this evening not to hit this issue of human trafficking and child trafficking in the United States of America. And I still have unanswered questions leaving here tonight how much of a human trafficking concern we ought to be talking about even in places closer to home right here in Ohio and in Springfield.

One of the things I’ve found, so I left the presidential campaign. As you said earlier, I tried. But one of the things I’ve also found is you can change a country in a lot of ways. And not all of it’s through politics.

And this is something that I would invite all of you to consider as well. You change it through our culture. Make people aware of problems that don’t exist. One of the things I did this year in a little more spare time after leaving the campaign is I became an executive producer on a film.

It’s called City of Dreams. It’s about child labor trafficking into the United States. And I encourage you to watch. It’s not a financial venture for me.

I don’t make money off of it. But I wanted to inform people of the actual scourge of human trafficking. It’s related to this immigration issue and the failed border policies. This is a story of one boy who actually fought back.

I have tried to write a book. It’s coming out next week. I have a special with Fox Nation, a series that’s launching next week. Both are called Truths.

And the reason I do this stuff is actually because sometimes when you get just into the realm of partisan politics, sometimes people just close their ears. But if you’re making a movie or offering a documentary series or you’re even writing a book, people may have a preconceived notion, but then they read it, and it actually opens their minds in different ways. That, too, is also a way of changing a country.

Conclusion

And so it’s not just going to be a close on this. In my opinion, we have to put Donald Trump back in the White House this November. That’s my opinion. And I’m going to be voting, and I think Ohio needs to show up as well. But it’s not just going to be one man coming from on high from the White House to save us.

It doesn’t work that way. If we’re going to be saved, it is going to be because we save ourselves, actually. So it takes every one of us, right? And every one of you here, I mean this, every one of you here, every one of us has our own unique God-given gift.

It’s not the same as the person sitting next to you. And so what I’d ask you to do for your township, for your state, for your country, is just go home tonight and look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, what is your unique God-given gift? What gift has God given you? And how are you going to use that in the short time that we have left to actually save our country?

And if you all do it, it’s not all going to be through politics. It’s going to be through politics. If you all do it, I promise you, we don’t have to be this nation in decline anymore. We don’t have to be ancient Rome.

Springfield doesn’t have to be going in the direction that it’s gone. I truly believe that our best days as a country can still be ahead of us. Not in some fake politician way. In a true way, our country’s best days can be ahead of us.

And so this time around, when we say make America great again, we don’t just want to go back to the Springfield I knew when I came here in the 1990s and 2000s growing up. We want a country greater than the one that we grew up in. We want to make America greater than it has ever been. And it’s going to be through conversations and honesty and courage, like so many of you have shown tonight, that we’re actually going to do it.

May our best days be ahead, guys. Thank you for coming out tonight. God bless you and your families. May God bless Springfield and our state of Ohio.

And God bless our United States of America. Thank you, guys. God bless.

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