STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The former president has had a rough several weeks. Trump got a new opponent, lost some of the spotlight, had a contentious meeting with Black journalists. And on social media, he pushed a series of claims suggesting, for example, that he felt Joe Biden somehow was going to come back into the race. Amid all of this, Vivek Ramaswamy said the campaign needed a reset. He is Trump's former primary rival, now his supporter, and he's on the line. Welcome to the program, sir.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: How are you?
INSKEEP: I'm doing OK. Thanks for joining us so early. I really appreciate it. I'm thinking through the situation as it would look from the Trump campaign's perspective. Some events are outside of Trump's control - he got a new rival. She gets a lot of excitement. She gets a bump at the beginning - but there are things within his control, like what he says, what his message is. What has been going wrong, in your view?
RAMASWAMY: Well, look. I do think that there was a bit of a bait-and-switch, and that did catch a lot of Republicans by surprise, but the path forward is to focus on policy. Those are three words for the Republican Party that I think is a path to success - focus on policy. Who's going to secure the border? Who's going to grow the economy? Who's going to stay out of World War III? And, more intangibly, Steve, who's going to restore national pride in this country? I think Donald Trump has a strong case on all of those counts, and I think he and the Republican Party will be well-served to focus on the policy contrasts.
One of the reasons that's difficult, I have to admit, is that Kamala Harris has not yet offered many of her policies as a presidential candidate in 2024. So my suggestion there is she did run for president in 2020, and so use her policy platforms from back then. I think it is fair game, if she hasn't said what her policies are. Extrapolate that to the present, and you do have a presidential candidate there who has favored a tax on unrealized capital gains, sought to abolish private health insurance, favored a ban on fracking and offshore drilling and tried to end the filibuster to ram through the Green New Deal. I think these are great, unexploited policy targets.
INSKEEP: I guess we'll just note that when she was running in the 2020 primary, she did endorse "Medicare for All" and a variety of other things - including things like a ban on fracking that she's now reversed on. It's also correct that Kamala Harris has not given a lot of detailed policies, although she's been promising to begin to correct that in the next few days. I just want to be explicit about what you're saying here. I think you're telling me that some of the things the former president has made news for in recent days - questioning Harris' racial identity, seeming to pine for Joe Biden's return, claiming that Harris' crowds were created by artificial intelligence - those are not the kinds of things you're talking about, it seems.
RAMASWAMY: I think a stronger focus on policy is the path to winning this election. I also think it's better for the country. Just speaking as an American who isn't a partisan, necessarily, in one direction or another when I say this, I think Donald Trump is going to better serve the country and better serve his own electoral prospects by focusing on his policy record and how his policy vision is different from Kamala Harris'. I think Kamala Harris would better serve this country if she sat down for tough interviews. You mentioned the interview that President Trump did with the National Association of Black Journalists. Well, I credit him for sitting down with an audience that actually had contrary views to his own. Kamala Harris needs to do the same thing. If she's going to sit across the table from Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, she should be willing to sit across the table from her fellow citizens who disagree with her, including journalists who ask her tough questions. She hasn't done that yet, and I think that's the biggest disqualification for president - is the refusal to engage with opposing opinions.
INSKEEP: And we'll just note that we have invited Harris on NPR News, and we certainly hope to hear from her. We have heard from her in the past, before she became a presidential candidate, and hope we get her back. Now, with that said, there's something else that's on my mind, and it's the very thing that sank Joe Biden's candidacy - his age. Former President Trump is now the oldest person in the race. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, he is the oldest person ever to accept a presidential nomination. He's a little bit older than Joe Biden was in 2020, and he has said a lot of strange or erratic things, off-message things that have raised questions. How should he handle the issue of his age?
RAMASWAMY: Look - I don't think that age was alone the issue for Joe Biden. I think it was mental acuity, and the sad truth is even friends around Joe Biden have said the same thing - he's not the same man that he was 10 or 20 years ago in terms of his own sharpness.
INSKEEP: Is Donald Trump?
RAMASWAMY: I think Donald Trump is much - is absolutely in a normal course of maturity. And in a certain sense, if you look at his experience, he speaks from that in a lucid way, where I'm hopeful that his second term is actually going to be even more successful than his first, where he learns from a lot of those experiences. Is Donald Trump lucid? Is he smart? Is he able to carry out the duties of the U.S. presidency? Absolutely, is the answer.
INSKEEP: If we go by his words, he thinks that Kamala Harris is not drawing any crowds and that the thousands of people who have attended were just made up by artificial intelligence. That sounds a little out of touch to me.
RAMASWAMY: Well, look - it's about as out of touch as, you go back eight years ago, to say that it was somehow a Russian disinformation plot that actually put Donald Trump into the U.S. presidency or, in the 2020 election, to say that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a figment of Russian disinformation. So I think if you go through these elections, every one of the last few cycles contained statements from all candidates that weren't necessarily on the mark, some of which had far more decisive impact on the election - and were actually outright false - than anything Donald Trump has said this time around.
But I come back to the same point, Steve. This election, for the American people to be best served, should be about policy, should be about competing visions for the future of the country. That's my advice to the Republican Party, and to the Democrats, in order to make that happen, Kamala Harris needs to step up, do hard interviews with the media and state what she actually stands for - and in fairness, that hasn't happened yet.
INSKEEP: And we'll just note, regarding Russian interference, a bipartisan Senate committee found that it did happen, although you're correct that Americans did vote as they voted. Vivek Ramaswamy, thanks so much. I really appreciate you taking the time.
RAMASWAMY: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
INSKEEP: Have a good day. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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