Ohio State’s chapter of Turning Point USA hosted former Republican presidential candidates Ben Carson and Vivek Ramaswamy at the Ohio Union Wednesday. Credit: Brendan Smialowski [Original Caption: US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson leaves the West Wing of the White House after a meeting on December 1, 2020, in Washington, DC.]
Ben Carson, who ran in 2016, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped his bid for the 2024 race in January, took questions from a crowd of 300 students and community members Tuesday night on topics ranging from how the two navigate the current political environment to Carson’s medical background. Turning Point USA is a “conservative grassroots activist network on high school and college campuses across the country.”
Aside from his presidential bid, Carson is a retired neurosurgeon who served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Donald Trump. Ramaswamy, who launched his campaign as a newcomer, is an entrepreneur with ties to Ohio. Both have supported Trump since leaving their respective races.
Ramaswamy opened the event, making his way to the podium through chants of “USA.” He praised Carson for moving into the political sphere and continuously emphasized this responsibility to the audience.
“It’s not going to be Ben Carson or Donald Trump coming from on high to save us. It doesn’t work that way,” Ramaswamy said. “In the civic realm we’re in, if we’re going to be saved, it is going to be because we save ourselves. I think it’s up to, especially, young people. Voter participation is low. They assume [your generation goes] in one direction. I don’t think it has to be that way. Step up and do your part.”
From there, Carson offered his own advice, asking the audience to consider all viewpoints and find a way of learning that matches their potential.
“Believe it or not, YouTube videos have a lot of information and it’s done in a relatively entertaining way,” Carson said. “If you do that for half an hour every day for a year, you will be a storehouse of knowledge people will be astounded by.”
Audience members followed up on these sentiments and others surrounding political polarization. In one question, Carson and Ramaswamy were asked about hatred toward Republicans in Washington, D.C.
Specifically, the audience member mentioned Trump’s social media company, which had an estimated value of $8 billion on its first day of trading, leading the crowd to applaud.
In response, Carson referenced a 1988 interview with Oprah Winfrey where Trump said he would not consider a bid for president unless the country was “going off a cliff,” in Carson’s words.
“If [Trump] hadn’t won in 2016, and Hillary had gotten three Supreme Court justices — we’d already be over the cliff,” Carson said. “And now having him come back now, with Biden in between, it seems like a horrible thing, but it’s actually a good thing because people get the chance to see them side by side, two different philosophies.”
Ramaswamy followed up on this, addressing the November election and encouraging the audience to cast a vote and not “wait for somebody else to solve a problem.”
“This election, 2024 — it’s gonna happen once in a century, maybe less than that,” Ramaswamy said. “You got four years of Trump, four years of Biden. In one case, you have closed borders. A growing economy, and staying out of major conflict around the world. In the other case, you have more porous borders than we’ve ever had in US history. You have a flailing economy, rising prices, flat wages and closer to World War III than we’ve ever been in our lifetime, but make your choice.”
A second audience member asked about productive conversations with others across partisan divisions and people who are “not operating under the laws of logic and reasoning.”
Ramaswamy said both his and Carson’s passions came from “trying on” other ideologies and understanding varying perspectives of an issue before choosing a conservative ideology and viewpoint.
“I am going to give you a set of clothes,” Ramaswamy said. “If it doesn’t fit, you can put it back on the rack and get a full refund, but I am going to ask you to try it out and see if it fits.”
