Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy compared himself to Thomas Jefferson during an interview.
Speaking with radio host Erick Erickson on Saturday, Ramaswamy dismissed concerns that he is too young to run for president.
“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 presidential hopeful said.
The 38-year-old biotechnology businessman is the youngest candidate in the Republican presidential primary race and argued his age actually helps him reach members of Generation Z. Ramaswamy claimed that he contemplated running now rather than waiting 20 years when his sons are older because he doesn’t think “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 during an event in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ramaswamy explained that 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,” he said, calling himself an “explorer” and “pioneer.”
This comes as new polls show that Ramaswamy is the closest rival to former President Donald Trump, who has a 47-point lead over the billionaire entrepreneur.
Ramaswamy has also surpassed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with 13 percent to DeSantis’ 8 percent, a stunning development from just a few months ago when the governor led the now-dark horse candidate by 14 percent to 3 percent.
