Ramaswamy Stated Goal: “Protect the Constitutional Republic”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 24, 2023) — In an interview on Maria Bartiromo’s Christmas Eve edition of “Sunday Morning Futures,” 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy expounded on his pledge, made the same day a majority of the Colorado Supreme Court declared 45th President Donald J. Trump “ineligible” to have his name placed on the state’s presidential primary ballot, to remove his own name if the opinion should stand.

The four-person judicial panel claimed Trump’s “inciting” of an “insurrection” allegedly occurring on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and bars him from seeking future federal office.

During the interview, which began at 10:30 a.m. EST, Ramaswamy told Bartiromo he had called upon the other top Republican primary contenders — Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Chris Christie — to decline to “participate” in the primary so as to nullify the court’s decision among Republicans.

Only “radio silence” ensued from those candidates, Ramaswamy said.

Ramaswamy declared the court’s action “unconstitutional” and said his candidacy’s objective is to “protect the constitutional republic.”

“That’s the first principle we have to stand for above all,” Ramaswamy said.

At a rally in May, Ramaswamy claimed to have a “deep understanding” of the nation’s founding document.

He appeared Sunday morning with his wife Apoorva, an ear, nose and throat physician who said she had not been familiar with the political process prior to her husband’s declaration of candidacy, made in February on the now-defunct Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

While declining to criticize Trump, Ramaswamy told Bartiromo his ability to take Trump’s accomplishments “to a higher level” would rejuvenate the body politic regarding America’s foundational principles and its future.

The “national character” must be “revived,” Ramaswamy said.

In a September interview with NBC News, Ramaswamy answered an “eligibility” question which several P&E readers as well as this writer had posed to him through his campaign website. His parents, he told NBC’s Dasha Burns, were not U.S. citizens when he was born in Cincinnati, OH on August 9, 1985, and moreover, while his mother eventually naturalized, his father has not.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution sets forth three requirements for presidential candidates: that he or she have resided in the country 14 years, be a “natural born Citizen” and a minimum of 35 years of age.

While controversy has long existed over the meaning of the term, historical references and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Minor v. Happersett indicate the court “doubted” whether an individual born in the country to non-U.S. citizen parents qualifies as a “natural born Citizen.”

A letter which future first U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay wrote to Constitutional Convention president and former General George Washington expressed the latter’s concern about foreign influence entering the office of the presidency:

Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolved on, any but a natural born Citizen.

In contrast, the constitutional requirements for members of the U.S. House of Representatives are:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

For the U.S. Senate, the Founders required: 

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

When Bartiromo asked Ramaswamy if he would be open to accepting a position in Trump’s cabinet should he win re-election, he responded he is “not a ‘Plan B’ person,” nor has his wife ever been in her medical career. 

He is seeking to win the primary and general election, Ramaswamy stressed.

According to a recent Fox News survey displayed during the interview, Ramaswamy is polling at 7%. A successful entrepreneur who said he is self-financing his campaign, Ramaswamy often decries big-government initiatives and has called out Haley, in particular, as being “corrupt.”