Vivek Ramaswamy — only the third major Republican presidential hopeful to visit Nevada this cycle ahead of February’s first-in-the-West caucus — took a belligerent tone during a Las Vegas stump speech Sunday, describing his campaign as “a war.”

That “war,” he said, was between those who “who believe in the founding ideals of the American Revolution” and those who subscribe to identity politics, to notions of structural racism, adding that “we have to flog ourselves for our modern way of life and stop burning carbon.” 

“We are at war in this country,” Ramaswamy said. “And you can't win a war unless you first know that you're in one.” 

Ramaswamy has mounted an insurgent campaign this year as a political outsider, a pharmaceutical industry entrepreneur who has built his message around reshaping the federal government and following in former President Donald Trump’s footsteps. 

But standing before a banner emblazoned with his campaign slogan — “TRUTH. Vote Vivek” — at a honky-tonk bar south of the Las Vegas Strip, Ramaswamy could not shake the primacy of Trump’s dominance in the GOP primary — even before he took the stage. 

“Vivek is the only guy who acknowledges what Trump has done for America,” Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative radio host and former newspaper columnist who has often traded in conspiracies, told the crowd, after imploring them to applaud Trump’s presidency — “Let's have a little hand for the guy that did so much for America.”

“[Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald] is a Trump guy, and I'm a Trump guy and we're both here with Vivek,” Root added. “That's how much we really think of this guy.”

Root later suggested Ramaswamy could be Trump’s ideal vice president, a ticket to bring young people, women, minorities and highly educated voters back to the GOP fold. 

Ramaswamy, taking the stage immediately after Root, clarified he was, indeed, running for president.

“You want to win this war, we have to take somebody who has not yet been wounded by it already,” Ramaswamy said, arguing to voters why they should pick his campaign over Trump’s. “That will take a leader with fresh legs.”

Though he has risen toward the top of a crowded GOP field, Ramaswamy remains far below Trump in early polls. A FiveThirtyEight poll aggregator shows him nationally trailing Trump (54.8 percentage points) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (13.5 points) in a distant third place with 6.6 percentage points on average, where he is functionally tied with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (6.5 points).

On policy, Ramaswamy has called for a vast reduction of federal agencies, promising “mass layoffs” for the federal government through the elimination of five agencies, including the Department of Education and FBI. That promise would reduce the federal government’s workforce by roughly 75 percent. 

He has also called for the use of military force to combat drug traffickers in Mexico in a bid to close a border he has derided as “Swiss cheese,” and has routinely criticized the Chinese government. On Sunday, he mentioned China 25 times.

“They understand this game far more deeply than any of us do,” Ramaswamy said. “What China realized is alright, if these anti-American Americans are having that much traction and success already, on their own homeland, boy, we can get them to work for us.”

In the second Republican debate, however, Ramaswamy frequently came under attack from other candidates on that very issue. That included pointing out his former business links to China (Roivant, a company he founded, once had a Chinese subsidiary that has since wound down), and Ramaswamy’s more recent embrace of TikTok — which has come amid bipartisan criticism of the social media platform’s parent company’s links to the Chinese government. 

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ramaswamy received his biology degree from Harvard and law degree from Yale before founding the biotechnology company Roivant. He has since cut a public figure as a crusader against “woke” corporations, including publishing a book called “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.” 

At just 38, Ramaswamy is by far the youngest candidate in the field. However, after seeing a small boost in early national polls following an intensive campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, Ramaswamy has seen polling falter slightly following the first two GOP primary debates (sans Trump). 

Sunday’s rally drew roughly 200 people, even amid the counterprogramming of NFL football and a concurrent Raiders away game. 

It also came on the anniversary of the 1 October shooting, which drew a moment of silence during Root’s introduction but was not mentioned again during Ramaswamy’s remarks. 

His visit comes as other Republican candidates primary have otherwise ignored Nevada — the third contest on the GOP nominating calendar — in favor of early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The relative lull in attention coincides with a raft of national campaigns that have signaled wariness over the Nevada State Republican Party’s decision to hold a caucus, rather than the statutorily created primary. Party leaders have hailed the move as a bid to hold an election by party rules — including the use of voter ID, paper ballots and no same-day voter registration. 

But it has also come with stringent additional rules for candidates, who must also pay a $55,000 participation fee and agree not to participate in the state-run primary election. 

Some candidates and PACs, especially the DeSantis-linked Never Back Down super PAC, have criticized the rules as a bid to favor Trump. An official with Never Back Down told The Nevada Independent last month that the process was “rigged” to favor Trump. 

Ramaswamy was the first candidate to announce his participation in the caucus. Since then, the Trump campaign has signaled it is “committed” to the caucus, according to a report from the Associated Press, but has not announced any formal filing. 

However, if at least two candidates file for the state-run Republican primary, it will move forward alongside the caucus. Filing for that primary opens Monday, and runs through Oct. 16, though it remains unclear if — or how many — Republican challengers might opt for either the caucus or the primary.