WASHINGTON DC, Oct 27 — The recent AMAC Presidential Town Hall featured interviews hosted by Rebecca Weber, CEO of the Association of Mature American Citizens, and investigative Reporter John Solomon. Their guests were GOP Presidential Candidates Donald Trump, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota’s Governor Doug Burgum.
President Donald Trump led the pack and focused on issues of great concern to 2024 voters: the Mexican border crisis, the threat of a Russia-China alliance, the lack of competency on the part of President Joe Biden and festering global hostilities
As regards the border crisis, he said, “we built 561 miles of wall. We were going to add another 200 and I said, we’re going to do 400 miles. And then we had that ridiculous result in the election, and it just sat there. And now I hear they sold a lot of [the materials] for a very small amount of money. Now they say we’re going to build it, but they’re only going to build 20 miles and they probably won’t even build that.”
As regards the Russia-China alliance, Mr. Trump pointed out that “Biden and Obama forced them together through stupidity. And they’re pretty well united now and that’s something that should never have been allowed to happen and it would have never happened with me.” Nor would the problem in Ukraine have happened or the soaring price of oil, he said.
In his Town Hall interview, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis focused on the mounting Israeli-Hamas crisis. He was there when it was getting started. “We’ve got very close ties between Florida and Israel,” he said. “So I knew that this was something that was going to impact our state directly. And I was really, quite frankly, shocked at how little the embassy and the State Department were doing to help the people who were stranded or caught in harm’s way. So we issued an executive order to scramble our emergency response resources in Florida. We arranged flights from Israel so that we could bring Floridians and other Americans back to the state of Florida.”
Meanwhile, DeSantis said, “what the State Department finally said they would do was to take them to Cyprus or dump [them] in Greece.” And, he said, “then they’re going to send you a bill for that. And I’m just thinking to myself, if you’re an illegal alien, you come across a border, they will fly you around at no charge to the illegal alien. They will put that on the U.S. taxpayer. They’ll put illegal aliens up in nice hotels at the cost of the U.S. taxpayer, and they don’t charge the illegal alien leaving a war zone. Our own citizens, they’re sticking them with the bill. It shows you just how this administration thinks. And now their main priority is to sink taxpayer money into the Gaza Strip and they claim it’s, quote, humanitarian assistance. But we know Hamas runs the show down there. You are aiding Hamas when you’re sending tax dollars down there. So I’ve been very clear over the last week, first, no Gaza refugees in the United States and second, no taxpayer money to Gaza.”
When North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum announced his decision to run for president a few months ago, he declared that he is “ready to bring small town values to the big stage.” However, he later said that “since we announced our campaign on June 7th, we said we’re running on three things economy, energy and national security.” But now, he said, we can’t proceed without focusing attention to the middle east miscreants, Hamas and Hezbollah. Their parent company is the regime that’s running Iran, the one that’s actually financing terror around the world. Iran is the world’s largest sponsor of state terrorism.” Yet, he added, the Biden administration is trying to make friends with them in an attempt to revive the failed Obama-Iran nuclear deal.
“In 2015 there was a law passed that said we couldn’t do a nuclear deal with Iran unless Congress approved it. So the Biden administration, tried to bypass the law. And now it is coming home to roost. But the worst is on top of all of this, which nobody is reporting and no one’s talking about, it’s the fact that if you look at the oil exports coming out of Iran they’re heading to China which is rebuilding its strategic petroleum reserve with Iranian oil. Rule number one is don’t negotiate with terrorists but that’s effectively what Joe Biden has been doing since he’s been in office. We’ve got an administration that’s bent on appeasement, whether it’s the withdrawal from Afghanistan, whether it’s the failure of us to have deterrence in place to prevent Putin from going into Ukraine. And now we’re negotiating and actually giving billions of dollars to an enemy that attacks us every day from a cyber standpoint.”
Burgum went on to say that “as president I would make sure that global terrorist organizations have no safe harbor anywhere, because we have to eliminate the ability for these organizations to terrorize our allies. America is more prosperous and safe when our allies are more prosperous and safe. And an attack on Israel is effectively an attack on the United States.”
Vivek Ramaswamy is an American entrepreneur who in February announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. An ABC News report noted that “Ramaswamy has been quoted saying that ‘abortion is a form of murder,’ and he supports state-level six-week abortion bans with some exceptions. He supports abolishing the Department of Education, the FBI and the IRS. Ramaswamy advocates for ending U.S. military aid to Ukraine and excluding Ukraine from NATO.”
He says that “there are really only two America-first candidates in this race. That’s Donald Trump and myself. It will take an outsider who’s not captured by the super PAC industrial complex. Every candidate dances to the tune of their biggest donor. In my case, that biggest donor is me. That’s the kind of independence it’s going to take to actually revive our country. But between Donald Trump and myself, there’s one big difference. I think we what we need is a commander in chief who has fresh legs. So I will honor Donald Trump and his legacy, as I have in this campaign. But I will reunite this country and reach the next generation in the process because I am from that next generation. That’s what it’s going to take to take our own America first movement to the next level. And yes, by the time I leave office in January 2033, when my two sons are entering high school, we will have shut down the administrative state. We will have declared independence from China. We will have grown. The economy kept us out of World War Three. But most importantly, my two sons and their generation will once again be proud to be citizens of this nation. That’s the way I’m going to lead this country and reunite us. And I think I’m in this race because I’m the only candidate who can do that. And if people ask me to serve as their president by voting me in, we will get that job done.”
He says he has a plan to address the needs of the U.S. economy head on. As he put it, ‘one of the easiest steps we can take to address inflation and grow the economy is to unlock American energy. Abandon this climate cult that shackles the United States while leaving China untouched. Let’s drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear energy, all of the above for American energy production. Put people back to work by no longer using taxpayer money to pay them more to stay at home.”
Ramaswamy covered all the bases during his interview. He said:
-“The first and easiest thing I’m going to be able to do as Commander in chief and I’ll do it in month one is shut down the US Department of Education. It should not exist. That’s $80 billion that can be put back in the hands of parents. Parents determine the education of their children.
-“Transgenderism, especially in kids, is a mental health disorder. When you’re a boy and you think you’re a girl, we don’t do you a favor when we affirm your confusion. That is not compassion. That is cruelty.
-“Let’s use our military to defend against our own southern border and if necessary, our northern border, too. But the best and easiest border policy. You know what it is? Stop creating incentives for illegal migrants to actually come here in the first place.”
John Grimaldi served on the first non-partisan communications department in the New York State Assembly and is a founding member of the Board of Directors of Priva Technologies, Inc. He has served for more than thirty years as a Trustee of Daytop Village Foundation, which oversees a worldwide drug rehabilitation network.