NBC’s Chuck Todd put 2024 GOP Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy through the wringer over his demands to “shut down” the FBI.
Ever since Ramaswamy declared his candidacy, one of his most consistent talking points has been the demand for a major downsizing of the federal bureaucracy. To that end, Ramaswamy has pledged to shut down the FBI, the Department of Education, and other federal agencies he has denounced in the past as a “cancerous rot” on the country.
When Todd spoke to Ramaswamy about this on Meet The Press, he called it a “head-scratcher” and asked the GOP candidate what he intends to replace the FBI with. Ramaswamy envisioned the replacement agency as a “new apparatus built from scratch that actually respects the law instead of making it up.”
Todd called that “a huge charge” to make against the FBI, adding “there’s a lot of work the FBI does other than respond to complaints from elected officials who don’t like investigations.” Ramaswamy admitted “we need federal law enforcement,” but stuck to his argument that the FBI “has become so oscified in its own norms, in its own corruption, that we need to rebuild it from scratch.”
“So you’re going to replace the old FBI with a new FBI?” Todd asked.
“With a new institution built from scratch to carry out federal law enforcement,” Ramaswamy answered, “because the existing FBI, the people who work there, have worked there for so long they’ll be getting in their own way.”
“It does sound like you’re just replacing the FBI with the FBI,” Todd commented.
“The problem is there’s people who have worked there for decades,” Ramaswamy retorted. “What I say is, if I’m the U.S. president and I can’t work for the federal government for more than eight years — which I think is a good thing — then none of those bureaucrats reporting in to me should either.”
Calls for the FBI’s dismantlement have been increasingly popular among conservatives in recent years, which coincides with former President Donald Trump’s constant attacks against the Justice Department over the legal scrutiny he faces.
Watch above via NBC.
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