Vivek's Vision for Ohio

Hey everybody, Kristen Wagoner, President and CEO of ADF, joins the show, and most importantly, Vivek Ramaswamy, running for Governor of Ohio, joins the show. What is his vision for Ohio? What does it mean to be excellent? That and more.
Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com and become a member today, members.charliekirk.com, members.charliekirk.com. Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country.
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We must be defenders of free speech in all different venues, especially on college campuses, including speech that you don't like. Joining us now is Kristen Wagoner, President, CEO and General Counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom.
Kristen, walk us through what's going on at the University of Memphis, what happened last evening and the reason that we decided to kind of call the bluff of University of Memphis regarding Kyle Rittenhouse? Well, last night was a tremendous victory for TPUSA, Kyle Rittenhouse, and the right to speak freely on our college campuses. I think we have to go back to really a year ago, last March in 2024, when the TPUSA chapter at the University of Memphis decided to sponsor an event with Kyle Rittenhouse.
and they worked with the University of Memphis officials, created a ticketing system through TPUSA, and had the event all planned out to host about 300 kids, students, and it was open to the public. But what happened in that instance is that the university interfered with the ticketing system.
It allowed disruptors to virtually take all of the tickets,

and then it allowed a mob rule to take over that event, and it had to be shut down because the

university officials and the police refused to protect the speech of TPUSA and of Kyle Rittenhouse.

So last night, after Alliance Defending Freedom sent a legal demand letter with very specific

demands to the university, the university complied with those demands, and TPUSA was able to

Thank you. Last night, after Alliance Defending Freedom sent a legal demand letter with very specific demands to the university, the university complied with those demands and TPUSA was able to move forward.
So we're so grateful for their courage and glad that they were welcomed back to campus. We also got one of the policies changed so that future students won't have to endure this again.
That is wonderful. Let's go to Cut 235 and play the news reports of this.
Action News 5's Bria Bolden joining us live now from the University of Memphis to explain, Bria, why Rittenhouse has been allowed to be back on campus despite all the pushback. Yeah, well, last year Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly left the stage at the UC Theater after pushback from University of Memphis students.
You know, Memphis, excuse me, members of Turning Point USA's University of Memphis chapter, the group that invited Rittenhouse to campus, were escorted off campus by Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers after being run off by students. Turning Point USA is a nonprofit that advocates conservative views on college campuses.
Rittenhouse is set to make his return here to the U of M tomorrow evening to discuss his 2021 trial and the Second Amendment. Kristen, tell us more about the encounter and the victory here based on that news report.
Yes, well, at ADF, we have about 450 legal victories on college campuses. And I have to tell you that in seeing many of those victories play out, the circumstances of this particular campus incident are some of the worst that we've seen.
Where at the University of Memphis at this event a year ago, not only at the last minute did the university essentially take over the ticketing system to allow even more disruption to occur, but it didn't even provide reasonable steps to protect the safety of TPUSA members, as well as Kyle Rittenhouse, leading them out in front of a mob and having that mob then chase those TPUSA members, threaten to kill them, spit on their cars to pursue them. It was just the circumstances were so deeply disturbing and fell so far short of constitutional and state law requirements.
The university officials are not allowed to let mobs rule and to essentially engage in a heckler's veto. So again, it takes courage to stand up, but thank God for these members who did as well as for Kyle.
And thank you for ADF for defending our students and doing a great job there. In closing here, Kristen, just tell us more about the great work that ADF is doing and how people can support it and get behind it.
Oh, thanks for asking. Well, first, I would just say we have a student's rights handbook on our website, adflegal.org.
We provide all of our services free of charge. And we believe that censorship, not only on campuses, but in our workplaces and through both government collusion with private collusion online, is the biggest issue that we have to fight today.
So a lot of our resources are going towards that, as well as fighting gender identity ideology and expanding parental rights. Because we do believe that gender ideology has been a Trojan horse to essentially compel speech by the government and to take away our rights.
And when we allow censorship to continue, we know that most countries around the world have free speech protections. It's only a matter of whether citizens insist that the government provide it.
So we love being able to serve organizations like yours and the good work you're doing. Yeah.
So tell us just quickly more about the transgender identity fight. How is that proceeding in the courts, men and women's sports, locker rooms? I know that some of the proponents of the more radical gender ideology use the Civil Rights Act.
How are you guys thinking about this legally at ADF? Well, we're thinking we're going to win and we're going to keep at it until we do win. It feels like we're starting to turn a corner, but man, Charlie, I think it's so important to go back to the beginning because it does dovetail closely with the work that you're doing on campuses.
And really the very first case that was filed in the United States was a case ADF file, but it was on behalf of three young girls who were in high school. They were freshmen and sophomore, and two boys had come in.
They were previously competing three weeks earlier as boys. Three weeks later, they're competing as girls, and they ended up displacing essentially 85 opportunities for girls to advance to other competitions and took 15 different state titles in just like a three-year period.
So that's where it started, and it's nearly 10 years that we've been fighting this battle. We have seen twists and turns along the way, and I'm thrilled to see President Trump kind of finish what he started in the first term to again stand for equal opportunities for girls.
But we have a lot of fighting still to do, as you can probably tell, with the cases that have been filed. And we know that the issue isn't just solved at the federal level.
We have to have Congress pass legislation, and we also need to have states fall in line to protect the rights of women and girls. So there's a long legal battle ahead.
Let me just say this. We have two petitions at the U.S.
Supreme Court right now on this issue, and we need the court to take the issue up because 25 states have passed laws to protect girls, and the ACLU is challenging the rights of these states to protect the rights of girls. Has the Supreme Court yet weighed in on this topic in history, or have they just kind of punted and delayed so far? Largely punted and delayed.
I would say that there's a decision called the Bostock decision, which involved whether sex included gender identity in the employment context, and that was several years ago. And I would say activists on the left are trying to use that decision to say somehow that that means that women don't have equal rights.
They're misusing that. And in that Bostock decision, the Supreme Court carved out essentially and said, we're not saying that this applies in any other way.
So we believe that the court is going to affirm these rights when it does take this case. The last thing I would say on what the Supreme Court's doing right now is, first of all, they're considering whether to take the women's sports issue.
We have two petitions that are asking them to take these cases. And then the second thing is in June, probably about June, we will see the Supreme Court decide a case called Skirmety, which involves whether states can pass laws to protect young children from undergoing cross-sex hormones and permanent irreversible harm in this area.
That decision could also impact the rights of women and girls moving forward. And we're thrilled to be able to have helped pass legislation in 26 states where states have passed the laws to protect minors.
So we have to think about this both in terms of a political issue, getting good people in office, then in terms of a public policy issue, getting them to pass good laws, and then also defending those laws in court and preserving the rights of families to be able to raise their children consistent with their values. This is a good way to end.
Let's play cut three of President Trump and the governor of Maine going back and forth around this very topic. Let's play cut three.
They understand Maine. Is Maine here, the governor of Maine.
Are you not going to comply with it?

Well, I'm we are the federal law. Well, you better do it.
You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't. And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports.

So you better you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding.

Every state, good, I'll see you in court.

I look forward to that.

That should be a real easy one.

He's ready to fight on it.

I know ADF is as well.

Kristen, thank you so much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Hey, Charlie Kirk here.

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I get asked frequently, Charlie, what are the dialogues look like? And these videos get seen millions and millions of times. This video in particular has already been seen, I think, 10 to 12 million times on TikTok and Instagram combined.
It's going super viral. But it was a really interesting window here because when people saw this clip that I'm about to play for you, it connected some dots.
I get asked all the time, Charlie, what is the next generation of teachers look like? And every single one of you that are sending your kids or grandkids to public schools have a moral obligation to watch this one minute and 23 second clip. This one minute clip shows you exactly the type of person that has become a teacher and wants to teach your child, that is teaching your kid.
When you send your kid to grade school that is publicly funded or government funded, to middle school, high school, or college, they are at risk of being influenced by people like this. You are handing over your children to a pseudo indoctrination state.
You are handing over your most prized possession to a enterprise that believes things that are directly contradictory to your values that are adverse to your worldview. This is not just a random college student that came up to me.
This was at the University of South Florida. This is a current teacher and also was a candidate for state senate.
And might I add, sometimes people say, oh, Charlie, you know, you're only debating college kids. First of all, people will no longer say that after next week based on a certain program that I'm going on.
Secondly, no, it's an open mic. Professors have come up before, teachers assistants.
This guy is a former candidate state rep and a current teacher. Anybody is welcome up to the mic.
Anybody. Just so happens college kids tend to overwhelm the population.
And most college kids are voters. Can we stop acting as if that it's some sort of protected species? They're 18 years old.
They can buy a gun. They can vote.
Let's stop acting as if that they need to kind of be, oh, you're not allowed to talk to college kids. Oh, only professors can talk to college kids.
Got it. So professors are allowed to talk to college kids, but Charlie Kirk can't talk to college kids.
Why am I such a threat talking to college kids? I didn't even go to college. Okay.
Listen, drop what you're doing. If you have a kid in public school, I hope you understand that they are likely to have a teacher like this.
They are likely to have someone like this influencing their worldview. Play Cut 101.
You're a teacher. Yes.
What is a woman? What is a woman? Oh, buddy. All right.
So we define gender as a set of preferences that you have. Excuse me.
Gender. Gender is a set of preferences that we have.
Woman. Woman is a social construct that we've agreed upon.
Typically, we imagine womanhood as makeup or whatever. It is...
There is a difference between the word woman and being a biological female.

Woman is a social construct that we use.

Listen for a second.

I'm telling you what it means.

Woman is a social construct.

We agree on these set of preferences.

If I tell you that I'm a man, it's because I want you to know that I like these set of preferences. If I tell you I'm a woman it's because I want you to know that I agree with these set of preferences.
Can men give birth? Can men or can males? Because males can't. Listen for a second.
If you listen to your bio professors, you'd understand there's a difference

between biology and what we think. So I want to thank you for proving a great point.

You are why we should eliminate the Department of Education. Thank you very much.

So a couple of things. Normally I tell the crowd to chill, but him being a teacher and a state

representative candidate and it being such an outrageous thing he was saying, I let him go. And I think for good reason.
I wasn't encouraging it. I wasn't saying, you know, continue.
I was just being neutral. I was listening.
Because I also wanted to demonstrate on video how much things have changed. Four years ago, if a teacher would have come up and given an explanation, all the kids have just been listening what's charlie gonna say what's going on now they have the self-confidence to say that is complete bs stop it you're a teacher one of the kids said you're not getting my hands on my kids and so typically i i want to give everybody the opportunity to speak and of course he did he had mic.
But a little bit of that background chatter, a little bit of the clamoring, I think was actually healthy here. I think it made for a better video and a better dialogue.
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Joining us now is the next governor of Ohio. Congratulations to my friend and great patriot, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Vivek, welcome to the program. It's good to see you, Charlie.
How you been? I have been great. Tell us why you are running for governor and your vision for an excellent Ohio.
Well, President Trump is going to do a great job in the next two years. But what that means, Charlie, is that a lot of programs from education to health care are now going to go back down to the states and to the people where they belong.
That's true federalism. That's what our founders envisioned.
But that means we're going to need strong governors prepared to take those programs and do the right thing with them. I look at my home state of Ohio.
I was born and raised here. I've lived most of my life here.
I'm raising my two sons here. We're a conservative state in our electorate.
We need to actually be governed like a conservative state. And if we are, this can be not just one of the better states in the Midwest.
I think it can be the best state in the country to raise a family, to start a new business. And also something I'm passionate about, you know this, Charlie, is giving our kids a world-class education starting at a young age so that we're beating China and the rest of the world in leadership.
And I want Ohio to be the model for showing how that's actually done. So in some sense, the federal job's already getting done.
I'm happy to see that's happening in spades. But now we need strong leaders at the states.
And I was proud to get President Trump's and Elon's and others endorsements at the national level out of the gate. What I want to do is show the rest of the country what's possible with a good state leader.
So we're in this for. Let's dive into that.
Ohio is uniquely geographically positioned. It's in the heartland.
Yep. Has access to Lake Erie, the Appalachia, Appalachians, mountains, amazing oil and natural gas opportunities in certain pockets.
Yes. An industrious people.

A. to Lake Erie, the Appalachia, Appalachians, mountains, amazing oil and natural gas opportunities in certain pockets, an industrious people, an industrious people, the hardest working people in the country, I believe are Midwesterners.
I say that as a Chicagoan myself. Talk about the assets that Ohio has, because far too often in our politics, we talk about the negatives.
Ohio has been deindustrialized, opioid addicted. We know that, but it has phenomenal upsides.
What are they? Sure. So Ohio actually led the way in the first industrial revolution.
And at the turn of the last century, Ohio was the wealthiest state in the union and was the third most populous state in the country because of those great natural resources and gifts, fertile farmland, great natural resources, including oil and natural gas and other minerals underneath our ground. We've got 60% of North America's population, not just America's population, North America's population within a single day's drive of where I'm sitting right now in Columbus, Ohio, those were the advantages we had back then.
Six of the top 15 wealthiest cities in the 1950s. Now that's not long ago.
I'm not even talking about the industrial revolution. I'm talking about in the 1950s.
Six of the top 15 were right here in Ohio. Toledo was the glass capital.
Akron was the rubber capital. Youngstown and Cleveland were the steel capitals of the world.
Dayton was the computing power capital. Cincinnati was the leader in consumer products.
Porkopolis powering the food supply of the country, known around the world as the Queen City. That was my hometown.
This was the place of the pioneers, the explorers. Neil Armstrong and John Glenn gained the self-confidence here as kids to go to outer space.
The state of the Wright brothers. So we were the state of excellence in America.
I think we can be again because we have all of those same advantages, same fertile farmland, same Erie Canal to New York City, Ohio River to the Mississippi, same location at the heart of the country. It's also pretty representative of the rest of the country.
It's not a monolithic place. You got from the inner cities to suburban communities to rural communities to the foothills of Appalachia.
You go within a 200-mile radius of where I'm sitting right now, you travel that area, you've traveled the entire cross-section of the entire country. So in some deep sense, it is a representation of America and who we are.
And what I think, Charlie, and here's where I'm going to lead us, and this is why I think I require in my calling to be the next governor, if Silicon Valley led the way in the American economy for the last 10 years, I want to make sure it is actually the Ohio River Valley for the next 10 years. And that's not hyperbole.
It's not going to be rubber production next time around, probably, but it'll be the sectors of the future. Semiconductor production, nuclear energy, biotech, Bitcoin, defense industrial base, using AI not to take jobs, but to make jobs, which is something I think we can do through workforce training and education.
So it's a modern day Northwest ordinance. That's the way I look at it.
And I'm glad to see people around the state. And we had, I mean, people haven't heard of this in a governor's campaign.
I was honored, Charlie, to see. I was shocked, actually.
We had thousands of people turning out in my statewide tour in a gubernatorial primary where the election's over a year and a half out. There's an enthusiasm for bringing back, not the Rust Belt, but what I'll call the Platinum Belt.
And I bear that responsibility. And I think we're gonna get that job done.
I believe you're to win. We're behind you 100 percent endorsement, the whole thing.
And I think if anyone dares run against you, it's political suicide, considering President Trump has endorsed you out of the gate. So let's talk about how you get this done.
Ohio has turned significantly red, but as you mentioned, not as conservative in practice as it should be. Why and how will you go about fixing it? Look, I think there's been a traditional fear in Ohio that governing like a conservative state will somehow lose us elections.
You go back to 2000, very close state, swing state. Ohio used to be a swing state in the presidential elections.
It's not quite right now. So I think the fear amongst Republicans in Ohio is that governing like a conservative state might lose us those close elections.
I view it the other way around, Charlie. That's not going to lose us elections.
It's going to win us elections because it'll lift up more people from poverty. It'll put more money in people's pockets and revive that sense of civic pride in our young people.
And the fact that Ohio was a state that had some trouble along the way, and I don't want to go into the particular politics of blaming individuals, but let's think about boys competing in girls sports. Let's think about preventing genital mutilation and chemical castration in kids.
The fact that some of the leadership of the state had trouble, conservative leadership of the state might have had trouble with those issues, I think shows us playing a little bit behind the ball compared to states like Texas and Florida that are governed like conservative states. But I'm not worried about the past.
I want to actually chase the future. We're going to win elections decisively.
Think about opportunities in the next few years. Not a lot of people are aware of this, but say Section 287G.
What is that? That allows local law enforcement to help ICE with mass deportations, with actually going after illegal immigration in our country. President Trump is going to drive his agenda forward.
But to really see it through, we're going to need strong governors who are aligned with that agenda to act accordingly. And I think that in our population, the way it is now, look at the margins President Trump's won by.
And actually, he's won this state by bigger margins than even people running down ballot of him. I think that signals the mandate to say that people are behind the conservative pro-American agenda.
Now, my job as the governor of the state is to explain it to people. Frankly, I think there's a lot of independents, libertarians, orphaned Reagan Democrats, other orphaned Democrats, politically homeless people here who may not have thought of themselves as that Republican coalition quite yet.
But if you explain it to them, if you actually show up, if you don't go through the traditional media filters, but just show up in person. I mean, we're drawing thousands of people.
Great. I'll use that to our advantage to go to all 88 counties and explain it without filters in between.
I want a big tent coalition where a lot of those former Democrats and current independents come along with us. And if they don't want to call themselves Republicans right now, I'm fine with that.
But I want to create a governing coalition that doesn't compromise on those core principles. That's actually going to make us even more successful in winning, I hope, in a landslide next year in the general.
And that's what I'm shooting for, is not just running for the Republican primary, but to win a general election that brings the majority of the rest of this state along as well. You mentioned this briefly.
We have two minutes remaining. One of the great challenges for governors and, of course, on the federal level is going to how to incorporate artificial intelligence.
Ohio is a unique place because, as you say, it was the advent of the Industrial Revolution. You could argue we are on the precipice of an artificial intelligence revolution.
Now, firstly, I think you guys are uniquely positioned because you have the natural resources, the land, and the geography to have data centers that would employ hundreds of thousands of people. But that's only one part of it.
That is the backbone. That's the infrastructure.
That is the meat and potatoes of AI, which is important. And I think Ohio will flourish because of it.
But what about the application? How could AI revitalize Hubbard, Ohio? How could AI revitalize Mahonig County, the forgotten counties of Ohio? I love it. And you're all over this, Charlie.
So on the AI data center piece, you're right. It's an opportunity.
One thing that we just have to do is bring down the permitting timeline for new power plants and new natural gas pipelines to make sure that we're not only ready, we're ready to be the leadership position of the country, and that's achievable. But the other piece of this is, you really put your finger on this, is a lot of people have focused on training the AI algorithms.
Of course, we've put hundreds of billions, really trillions of dollars into that enterprise. Beyond just training the AI, I think the underappreciated opportunity is training workers on how to use that AI to apply it to their respective fields, to their hospitals, to nurses, to financial services, to construction design, to really every domain where we're increasing the productivity of the worker.
And that shifts the conversation and it shifts the focus from, is AI going to take jobs to just say, actually, AI is going to make jobs that didn't exist. That's not going to happen automatically.
I think it's going to have leaders who have to shape that future. If you're just a price taker on the future, you might have a result from AI in your economy that doesn't look good for American workers or manufacturers.
But if you have a leader who's focused on training and making sure we're empowering our workers to use that AI, this is going to be a boom for our workers. It's going to increase wages.
And I think we need a leader who at least understand what that future looks like, and I hope shows the rest of the country, sets an Ohio standard of how we actually do this well. maybe you are one of the borrowers in America that has a private distressed student loan.
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Whyrefy.com. So Vivek, education space is one I know quite well.
I care deeply about it. What does education excellence look like in Ohio? And what do you plan to do to make that a reality? There's two prongs, Charlie.
The first one we talk about, and I think have executed well nationally on Ohio, I think one is I want to say execute on as well is school choice, not just in name, but true universal school choice, not just private schools, not just charter schools, but also homeschooling as a viable option for any parent who demands it. Give kudos where it's due.
Arizona, Iowa, certain other states have gone the full distance here. I want to see Ohio go to that full length as well.
That being said, there's also a separate frontier here where I want Ohio to lead the way amongst all states and especially conservative states to set a standard. We have to also make sure our public schools are equipped to compete with the best of the alternatives.
And we're going to start by doing something in the state that hasn't been done in any other 50 states. There's smaller things.
We're going to put every police officer, at least one police officer, at least in every school, a lot of other basic fixes on safety in other areas. But the big one is implementing merit-based pay for every teacher, administrator, principal, superintendent.
Your pay will be tied to your performance. And the fact that that's a foreign idea in our public schools shows how broken our public schools really are.
We're not attracting the best people to go into education anymore. They might go become a computer programmer in Silicon Valley or a banker on Wall Street.
Now that's what they may aspire to. They should be aspiring to be educators, but we're not rewarding them.
Other countries like Finland or South Korea, when you set up the right incentives for educators, you have some of the best and brightest graduating from the nation's own high schools, going into education. A lot of our young people would be passionate about being teachers, but for the fact, they're not going to be able to live the same American dream pursuing that path.
That's wrong. And that means the best public school teachers will get paid more, but it means a lot of the dead weight and a lot of the wasteful expenditures in those public schools need to be eliminated to make that possible.
So I'm not picking a fight with anybody, the teachers unions or anybody else, but I'm not going to back down from one if that's what's necessary to do what's right. Some other basic fixes, get the cell phones out of the schools, get civic education back into the schools.
You and I talked about this a couple of years ago. I'm going to make it reality in Ohio where every high school senior who graduates from high school will be required to pass the same civics test that we require of every naturalized citizen in this country.
It's just common sense. If someone's coming to this country from a foreign country, they better darn well know how many branches of government there are.
A little bit about the civics and history of the United States' foundation and our founding fathers and our constitution. But so should our own high school students graduating from right here, where 80% of them or more do not today.
You know, a little bit of tough love, bring back physical education, including the presidential fitness test. Remember that, we're gonna bring that back in our public schools as well, including the pull-ups.
And that doesn't mean everyone's gonna pass, but it sets a standard, because as we know, and the Maha movement's been great in highlighting this, the best way to save on health costs in the long run is to have that healthier population in the first place. So when you think about academic health, math, reading, writing, critical thinking, physical health, civic health, mental health, even financial literacy, incorporating that into K through 12 education, we're going to be the state that I believe leads the way.
Catching up on school choice, we're going to do that here, but leading the way is in addition on setting a standard, expecting more of ourselves in our K-12 public education as well. And I think that is how we're going to address this achievement crisis and make sure that China isn't laughing at us.
To the contrary, we're going to be the country that leads the way in the world when it comes to quality education starting at a young age. I think Ohio has some of the greatest untapped potential in the country.
When you have a hardworking, industrious people, natural resources, and you're geographically centered, it can become a new American renaissance. 45 seconds.
Any closing thoughts here, Vivek? How do people support you, help you? What is the call to action? Look, VivekforOhio.com, I'll take every bit of support. Even if it's $1, it doesn't matter.
It's a national movement that we want to build here of excellence, led by the states. President Trump is doing his part.
He's reviving our conviction in America. We need a leader here in Ohio, here in the heartland, here in the Midwest, who revives our conviction in our state and in our states.
I'm proud to have President Trump's endorsement, but to carry his agenda forward, we're going to need strong governors in the heart of the country to do it. So if you're able to volunteer and come here, we would love that.
And if you're not, those who are able to support us at vivekforohio.com, we welcome it and we're going to set a new standard for the country. It's good talking to you, man.
I just love this. I love this new generation.
You got Byron

Donalds in Florida, Vivek in Ohio. We're going to have an incredible team of rock stars here.

Excited about it. Vivek, thanks so much.
Thank you, man. Thanks so much for listening,

everybody. Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening,

and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.