Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy compared himself to Founding Father Thomas Jefferson on Saturday while defending his age in the presidential race.
When asked by conservative radio host Erick Erickson if he is too young to be running for president, Ramaswamy said, “I don’t think so. If I did, I wouldn’t be in this race.”
“I’ll remind you that I’m in this race to revive those 1776 ideals of this country,” he added. “Well, who wrote those 1776 ideals on a page? Thomas Jefferson when he signed that Declaration of Independence. He was five years younger than me right now, he was 33-years-old.”
The 38-year-old billionaire entrepreneur is the youngest candidate in the Republican presidential primary race and argued his age actually helps him reach members of Generation Z. Ramaswamy said he debated waiting 20 years until his sons are older, but ultimately decided to run now because he does not believe “we have 20 years left as a country.”
“I think the truth is 20 years from now, I don’t think I’m going to be as effective in reaching a Gen Z where only 16 percent of them say they’re proud to be an American, where 60 percent of them say they would sooner give up their right to vote than to give up their access to Tik Tok,” he said at the event in Atlanta.
Ramaswamy explained he is taking inspiration from Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, who he said “were born in an era where there’s something else different in the water. It didn’t say you had to be an expert.”
“And you know what? If Thomas Jefferson could do it at the age of 33, and we’re taking our inspiration from our forefathers to revive those ideas that we’ve forgotten, that might just take somebody else who was a contemporary and age to be able to do the same thing at this moment for our nation to take it forward,” Ramaswamy said, calling himself an “explorer” and “pioneer.”
The candidate said he “accepts” the inquiries surrounding his age as a “legitimate” and “very serious question.” He took the opportunity to bring up the case of somebody being too old for president, an argument that has been echoed on both sides of the aisle.
“Is somebody too old to be president? I actually think not,” Ramaswamy said. “And there are plenty of older people who are sharper than many people my age and may still yet have their best days ahead of them.”
Erickson asked Ramaswamy if this was President Biden to which Ramasamy said, “That’s not Joe Biden.”
“I mean, the deeper problem with Joe Biden is, he’s not really even the person running the country, I truly believe that. It is the managerial class wielding him as a puppet,” he said.
Ramaswamy went on to say he doesn’t believe he will be running against Biden in the election, but rather somebody else.