ATLANTA—Entrepreneur and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said that President Joe Biden is “not really the person running the country,” and that he’s running against the real culprits: the managerial class.

“The deeper problem with Joe Biden is, he’s not really the person running the country,” Ramaswamy, founder of the biotech company Roivant Sciences, said at The Gathering, an event at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead organized by radio host Erick Erickson.

Ramaswamy said he would prefer not to focus on Biden, and “the deeper problem is the cancer that lies beneath him.”

“It is the managerial class,” he explained.

Ramaswamy said his campaign represents a return to the “radical” values of the American Founding, and he framed his candidacy as a struggle “between the managerial class and the citizen, between the ‘Great Reset’ and what I call the Great Uprising.” (The World Economic Forum frames its “Great Reset” initiative as an economic recovery plan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, aimed at fighting climate change and social inequality. Critics warn that the plan would restrict the freedom of individuals in the name of elite goals.)

“That’s why we live in a 1776 moment in America today,” he added. “Do we trust ourselves as the citizens? Do we expect our government to tell us the hard truth instead of serving us a noble lie?”

He pledged he would fire “about 75% of the people who work as federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” through “mass layoffs.”

Ramaswamy said he aims to achieve three larger aims as president: slashing the administrative state by returning the government to the constitutional three branches, “not four”; making America “no longer dependent on Communist China for our way of life”; and getting the economy growing “at the fastest rate in the developed world.”

The entrepreneur, who rose to prominence through his books exposing the Left’s “woke” ideology, also warned that “the Left is feeding young kids race, gender, sexuality, and climate.”

“We can’t just complain about that vision, we have to offer our own, grounded in the individual, family, nation, God,” he said. “To make concepts like faith and family and patriotism and hard work cool again actually. These aren’t antiquated values, this is the stuff of progress.”

Ramaswamy, 38, also addressed concerns that he might be too young to serve as president. He noted that when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, “he was five years younger than me.”

“I don’t believe that it’s my job to wait my turn in some bureaucracy,” he added. “Twenty years from now, I don’t think I’m going to be as effective at reaching Gen Z.”

“I don’t think we have 20 years left as a country if we just passively stand by and watch,” the candidate warned.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  

The post Vivek Ramaswamy Says Biden Is ‘Not Really the Person Running the Country,’ and He’s Taking on the People Who Are appeared first on The Daily Signal.