Vivek Ramaswamy, a health care and tech sector entrepreneur, conservative commentator and author who’s become a crusader in the culture wars, says he’s on a “listening tour” and is “considering possibilities” that could potentially include a run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“I’m interested in spreading my message. It’s what I’ve been doing through books, through media and through a lot of my travels over the past two to three years,” Ramaswamy told Fox News during a Wednesday visit to New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary in the Republican presidential nominating calendar.
Ramaswamy said his book tours have taken him to 26 states the past two years as he’s been “sharing my beliefs.”
“I’m a big believer that part of restoring free speech isn’t just talking about free speech. It’s about actually airing our ideas and listening to what people have to say in return,” Ramaswamy said. “That’s what I’m doing. I’m collecting that feedback and using it to inform how I have the biggest possible impact that I can have.”
WATCH: VIVEK RAMASWAMY URGES GOP TO RISE TO THE OCCASSION AND FILL ‘BLACK HOLE’ OF AMERICAN IDENTITY
“It is a fact that there probably hasn’t been one of those speeches that I’ve given to a large grassroots audience where there haven’t been multiple people who have urged me to consider running for president,” Ramaswamy said.
He added that when “hundreds of people who don’t know you tell you [to] do something like that, it’s a hard idea to shake off.”
Ramaswamy, the author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” started his day in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he addressed a “right-of-center” meeting in which invited guests speak to leading Granite State conservative office holders, officials, leaders and activists. He’s scheduled to end his day by headlining an event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics titled “Beyond the Soundbites — Putting Woke, Inc. to Bed.”
Asked about his potential political ambitions, Ramaswamy said, “I care about answering the question of what it means to be American in the year 2023. I’m 37 years old. When you ask people my age and younger what it means to be American today, you get a blank stare.”
“I have a vision of what the answer to that question ought to be,” Ramaswamy said. “I care about advancing that vision, and right now I’m going through a deep process of reflecting of how I can be most impactful in answering that question for the better for our culture. Is that through the private sector, is that through thought leadership, is it through something more? I’m seriously keeping an open mind at heart to every possibility.”