Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate for Ohio governor, headlined a Turning Point USA event on Tuesday night and took questions on a range of topics from immigration to Trump to Israel.

The event took place on Ohio State University’s campus and was moderated by Fox News host Lawrence Jones.

Ramaswamy defended some of his positions out of lockstep with the MAGA base, including his defense of H1-B visas for high-skilled immigrant labor.

When asked about Israel, Ramaswamy boasted that he was one of the first in the MAGA movement to call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

“Hi, my name is Nora Long. I’m a student here. As you know, the United States has spent $12 billion on Israel. This could provide for 3.5 million children with free healthcare for a year, two million families with a year’s free groceries, or 600,000 families with a year’s free rent. Since one of your main campaign promises is to provide for ‘America First,’ will you commit to lobbying Congress to stop the funding of Israel?” asked a student at the event.

“So I’ll say a couple things, Nora. I want to separate two important and different themes here. Okay. This is really important to hear from me. It’s very personal to me for a reason. When I ran for president — well, we’ll stick to Nora’s question for now. So when I ran for president, I was the only Republican on that stage who actually said that, in the long run, I think it was in the best interests of the United States — and for what it’s worth, in the best interests of Israel, but I’m looking after the interests of the United States — to say that $3.8 billion a year should be sunset,” Ramaswamy replied, adding:

That’s what I said, and I took a lot of heat for that when I ran for president. So that’s one thing. Geopolitics, foreign aid — that’s one thing. But I would be incomplete if I did not also answer a second dimension to this question, which is that I do think it is strange. As the person who stood alone on the Republican debate stage and took criticism from people on both sides of me — and this hurt me in my presidential run — I will say this: it is beyond bizarre to me the fixation on that $3.8 billion of the federal budget when you look at the extent of far more inexcusable waste, fraud, and abuse in a lot of different directions — foreign aid to hundreds of other countries that we also should not be supporting.

Which raises a deeper question of what the heck is going on with this particular line item and that obsession. And I don’t think it’s just about saying how many more American lives we could have improved with that $3.8 billion, because you could be talking about $3 trillion that we could be recapturing and recovering from wind subsidies to third-world-country foreign aid, a lot of which is actually corrupt.

So here’s what I do think underlies it. I think it’s this mentality — this mindset — that somehow one country in the world and the U.S. relationship with it, or particularly, let’s just talk about Jewish Americans, are somehow responsible for the struggles of Americans here. And I think that is also ridiculous, and I don’t think that we should be indulging this. So at once I can say: do I think we should probably sunset, long-run, $3.8 billion a year to Israel.

I think it’s in our interest, and for what it’s worth, I think it’s in Israel’s interests too, and views have changed since I was up there two years ago — I think a lot of people who might have disagreed with me then agree now. But I will say that while also saying that the focus, which smacks of — I would say — some anti-Semitic instincts, of laser-focusing on this without focusing on other problems, is also weird, bizarre, and should probably also stop. So thank you.

The student defended asking the question, adding, “I was just asking because you mentioned it before — because I’d read on that before — so that’s why I was asking.”

“Yeah, you were very fair in your presentation of it, but I get that question a lot and I wanted to separate both of those components of my answer. So thank you, Nora,” Ramaswamy agreed.

“So just yes or no though — will you lobby Congress?” the student pressed.

“My focus is not on lobbying Congress. My focus is on leading Ohio to be the top state — lower costs, bigger paychecks, and better schools for you guys. That’s my job. Foreign policy is somebody else’s. Thank you,” Ramaswamy concluded.

Watch the clip above.

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