Entrepreneur and former 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy declared former President Donald Trump would “shut down the deep state” if elected back into the White House while speaking at a Trump campaign event in New Hampshire. 

Ramaswamy’s appearance at the Atkinson, New Hampshire, event Tuesday evening comes the day after he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump following the 45th president’s record-breaking victory in the Iowa Caucuses Monday. 

In a video streamed to Rumble by Rightside Broadcasting, the 38-year-old Ramaswamy said, in his impassioned populist pitch on behalf of Trump, that the nation is in “a war” that is “between the permanent state and the everyday citizen.” He said the country needs “a commander in chief who will lead us to victory in this war.” 

After corralling roughly eight percent of the vote in Iowa, Ramaswamy said Tueaday, “The people of Iowa spoke loud and clear”

“We heard ‘We the People’ last night, and that is why last evening I met my friend here. We met in person, and I told him that I would endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States,” Ramaswamy said. 

He pledged he would “do everything in my power to lead us to victory in this war.”

Channeling what had been a major theme from his own campaign, Ramaswamy said Americans are living in a “1776 moment right now” and offered his view of what it “means to be a Republican today.” 

He said: 

It means we believe in the ideals of 1776: ideals like freedom and merit and the pursuit of excellence; that you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin but on the content of your character and your contributions. End affirmative action, end the DEI. We are done with the nonsense, send it back home. It means you believe in the rule of law. And I say this as the kid of legal immigrants to this country, that means your first act of entering this country cannot break the law. And that is why we need to use our military to secure our own southern border in this country. That’s what it means to stand for the rule of law in the United States of America. It means the people we elect to run the government need to be the ones who actually run the government, not the shadow government and the deep state that runs the show today. 

He declared Trump will win the White House “this time around and actually shut down that deep state.”

He also slammed Iowa’s third-place finisher, former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), over her Social Security policy and a policy proposal she has since walked back about requiring social media accounts be verified by individuals’ actual names – which would effectively prohibit the use of anonymous online accounts. 

Trump praised Ramaswamy before inviting him on stage, saying he is a “true leader” and that he is “honored” to have his support. 

“He’s a fantastic guy, a very smart guy. He’s got some tremendous ideas, and he’s young, and he’s got some young ideas too, and that’s a good thing. So he has a big, beautiful, bright future ahead,” Trump said. 

After Ramaswamy spoke, Trump said he is “going to be working with us, and he’ll be working with us for a long time.”