Vivek Ramaswamy announces GOP bid for president in 2024

By Brian Rokus, Kit Maher and David Wright, CNN

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy announced on Tuesday that he’s running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“To put America first, we need to rediscover what America is. That’s why I am running for president,” Ramaswamy wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial. “I am launching not only a political campaign but a cultural movement to create a new American Dream—one that is not only about money but about the unapologetic pursuit of excellence.”

Ramaswamy is a biotech and health care entrepreneur who has written two books, “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence” and “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”

The GOP primary field is still in its early stages. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United States ambassador to the United Nations, became the first major rival to challenge former President Donald Trump when she announced her bid last week. Trump announced his third campaign for the White House last year. A number of other Republicans have been making moves suggesting interest in a national campaign and openly considering presidential bids.

“We embrace secular religions like climatism, Covidism and gender ideology to satisfy our need for meaning, yet we can’t answer what it means to be an American,” Ramaswamy wrote in the Journal.

“The Republican Party’s top priority should be to fill this void with an inspiring national identity that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance,” he continued.

The editorial also called for securing the border, eliminating affirmative action and repealing civil service protection for federal employees.

He filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission earlier Tuesday and is scheduled to speak at a Polk County GOP event in Iowa on Thursday.

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