Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy suggested to Tucker Carlson that the United States may be in a “1776 moment” in its history.

While talking with Carlson during an interview posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, Ramaswamy argued that the U.S. might be on the verge of another revolution, citing how the government tries to shield the people from the truth in the same way “a parent protects a child.”

“I think we are on the cusp of something,” Ramaswamy told Carlson. “I’d like to think of it as a revolution, in a positive sense of that word. I think that, you know I try to be an optimist at times.”

When pressed by Carlson if he felt like something was happening, Ramaswamy added, “there’s something going on. We’re like in the 1775, spring of 1176 moment in this country.”

“I think the people are hungry,” Ramaswamy continued. “Now, the form I want to see it play out in is reviving those shared ideals that unite us. That set the nation into motion in 1776, that I think are innate to our nature as human beings, as Americans. I think that there’s a hunger for a revival of those ideals.”

Ramaswamy, a business entrepreneur, explained to Carlson that among both Republican and Democratic politicians, there is this “bipartisan consensus” right now that the American people “can’t handle the truth.”

“My basic view in this campaign is, ‘no, we don’t need you on that wall, and yes, we can handle the truth,'” Ramaswamy argued.

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Topics related to the origins of COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccines, everything related to Jan. 6, and Hunter Biden‘s business dealings were brought up as issues that politicians use to argue that people “can’t handle the truth.”

Ramaswamy said he has received advice from various people within the Republican Party telling him not to tell the truth.

“I’d rather lose some election than to play some political snakes and ladders of what we’re supposed to say,” Ramaswamy said. “And, I think that’s really one of the questions at issue today as it was in 1776. ‘Do we believe that the public can be trusted with the truth?’ Whatever the truth is, just give me the hard truth.”