Vivek Ramaswamy: Five things the Republican presidential ...

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Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech multi-millionaire running for president, was a standout performer in the first debate between Republican candidates for the party's nomination.

With no previous experience of political office, he has positioned himself as an outsider willing to develop former President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda with his own personal spin.

That includes some unconventional proposals on everything from law enforcement to the war in Ukraine. Here are five things he believes.

Mr Ramaswamy has voiced support for raising the voting age to 25.

But under his proposal, those over 18 would be able to vote if they meet a "national service requirement", either by being an emergency first responder or by serving for at least six months in the military.

"We must think ambitiously about reviving civic duty in America," he said earlier this year.

He suggested that those over 18 would also be able to vote if they pass the same test given to those seeking US citizenship.

"I understand not everyone will like this proposal and that it will take persuasion to convince many of its merits, but I'm ready to take that on," he said.

Raising the voting age would require changing the US Constitution, meaning, among other things, that two-thirds of Congress would need to approve the measure.

In a departure from most Western sentiment on the war, Mr Ramaswamy has called for Ukraine to make "major concessions" in order to end the conflict.

"What I think we need to do is end the Ukraine war on peaceful terms that, yes, do make some major concessions to Russia, including freezing those current lines of control in a Korean-war style armistice agreement," he told ABC News in June.

He believes the "number one threat to the US military" is the Chinese-Russian alliance, and so called for "a permanent commitment not to allow Ukraine to enter Nato. But in return, Russia has to leave its treaty and its joint military agreement with China".

Mr Ramaswamy opposes sending aid to Kyiv and instead believes the president should focus on American interests.

"I think that by fighting further in Russia, by further arming Ukraine, we are driving Russia into China's hands." he said.

Mr Ramaswamy does not support a federal ban on abortion because, in his words, "the federal government should stay out of it".

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Mr Ramaswamy was jeered by his rivals in the first debate after saying: "I'm the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for!"

He has supported six-week bans on the procedure at state level, however, and described himself as "unapologetically pro-life".

"If murder laws are handled at the state level, and abortion is a form of murder, the pro-life view, then it makes no sense for that to be the one federal law," he told CNN.

Mr Ramaswamy has put forward plans to scrap a number of federal departments including the Department of Education, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI.

"In many cases, these agencies are redundant relative to functions that are already performed elsewhere in the federal government," he told NBC News.

He has proposed a reorganisation in which the FBI's funding would be distributed instead to the Secret Service, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner to win the Republican nomination, has repeatedly attacked the FBI as being part of a "witch hunt" against him.

And a Fox News poll in June showed public confidence in America's top law enforcement agency had eroded from 80% in 2017 to 59%, mostly among Republicans.

Mr Ramaswamy has been widely criticised for remarks he made about the 9/11 attacks in an interview with The Atlantic magazine.

"It is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers," he said.

"Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero," he continued. "But if we're doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened... absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to."

An official bipartisan commission, in a final report published in 2004, established the events of 9/11 and found no evidence of a government plot.

Mr Ramaswamy later said he had been misquoted by the magazine, telling CNN: "The truth is there are lies the government has told about 9/11. But it's not the ones that somebody put in my mouth."

The Atlantic then published audio which showed his comments had been accurately transcribed.

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