Wagging a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution he pulled from his suit coat, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said he would impose eight-year term limits for federal workers and reiterated his pledge to reduce the federal workforce by 75% if he wins the Republican nomination and is elected president.

What You Need To Know

  • At the California GOP convention on Saturday, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy reiterated his pledge to reduce the federal workforce 75% if elected

  • During an impassioned speech that ended with a standing ovation, Ramaswamy said he would shut down the FBI, CDC and other federal agencies

  • He also said America was so dependent on China that it was a fourth branch of government

  • During a question-and-answer session after exiting the stage, Ramaswamy deflected a question about whether he would be Trump’s vice president

“I will do what the U.S. president, the leader of the executive branch, can actually do,” he told supporters during a banquet luncheon speech at the California GOP Convention in Anaheim, Calif., Saturday. “We will shut down the unconstitutional federal administrative state. That is the head of the snake. We’re not going to tinker around the edges. We’re going to gut it.”

During an impassioned speech that ended with a standing ovation from the 200 or so people in the crowd, the self-described "America First" conservative praised former president Donald Trump for starting to drain the swamp and pledged to finish the job.

“If you roll that log over and see what crawls out, you better be ready to bring the pesticide,” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about: exterminating the swamp.”

As president, he said, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Centers for Disease Control, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Education would all no longer exist.

“We are not going to incrementally reform them,” he said. “We will get in there and shut them down. That is how you revive the integrity of a constitutional republic.”

After promising to bring mass layoffs to the D.C. bureaucracy, Ramaswamy turned his ire to China. Hinting that the Chinese Communist Party has become a fourth branch of U.S. government, he said, “Today, we depend on our enemy, communist China, for the shoes on your feet to the phones in our pockets. If that were a Russian spy balloon flying over half the country, you want to know what we would’ve done? We would’ve shot it down in an instant and ratcheted up sanctions, but we didn’t do it for China. Why? Because we’re scared. Why are we scared? Because we depend on it.”

Calling China an addiction similar to the fentanyl he said was “pumped over from China” and is crossing the southern border, he said, “We’re addicted to the digital fentanyl they put in our kids’ hands in the form of modern social media. We’re addicted to the financial fentanyl in the form of our national debt that they will continue to fund.”

Ramaswamy pledged to “cut the cord" with China. To fill the void, he advocated for reshoring jobs to the United States and reopening relationships with allies from South Korea, Japan, India and Australia.

“Who is willing to speak the truth, not just when it is easy but when it is hard? That is what this campaign is all about,” Ramaswamy said. “Speak the truth. Speak it with a spine, and stand up for it.”

Ramaswamy then enumerated what he calls his truths, to increasingly resounding applause: “God is real. There are two genders. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity. Reverse racism is racism. An open border is not a border. Parents determine the education of their children. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. Capitalism lifts us up. There are three branches of the government, not four. And the U.S. Constitution is the strongest and greatest in human history.”

Declaring that the country is at war and that it needs the right general — him — to win it, Ramaswamy said young Americans like him were hungry for a cause and starved for a purpose. At 38, he is the youngest Republican to ever run for president.

“What we need now as Republicans — as Americans — is a leader who will answer the question of what it even means to be an American,” he said to a crowd that yelled and clapped their support and swarmed the candidate after he concluded his talk.

During a question-and-answer session after exiting the stage, Ramaswamy deflected a question about whether he would be Trump’s vice president. “I will offer him to be my mentor and advisor for my first year,” Ramaswamy said.

Ramaswamy is currently polling third in the Republican primary with 6.6% support among likely Republican voters. Trump is first with 55.1% and DeSantis is second with 13.5%, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.