US presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said on Sunday that while he expects to become the party’s nominee for the November 2024 US elections, he will vote for Donald Trump if the former president secures the nomination.

“If Donald Trump’s the nominee – yes, I will support him, and if I’m the president, yes, I will pardon him because that will help reunite the country. But it’s not the most important thing I’m going to do as the next president. It is the table stakes for moving this country forward,” Ramaswamy told ABC News.

“My bottom line is that I will vote for the person who I think is best positioned to move this country forward. I do not think that’s Joe Biden. I do not think that is whichever other puppet, Kamala Harris or anybody else, that they roll out after Joe Biden,” he continued.

He also reiterated that many of the charges against Trump are politically motivated that set a detrimental precedent for the United States. “I do not want to see us become a banana republic where the administrative police state uses police force to eliminate opponents from competition. That’s not the way it works,” he said.

Ramaswamy said that while he may have disagreements with several of his Republican counterparts on various issues, he firmly believes that any of them would be more effective than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in steering the US towards progress.

“That is my arbitrator when I cast my vote for who the next president is – who’s going to serve the interests of the American people? That’s not some sort of commitment driven by vengeance or grievance. It is driven by a commitment to our purpose as citizens of this country,” he said. “That’s what we need to revive in the United States, our civic spirit, remembering that even the ‘America First’ movement is bigger than Donald Trump. It is bigger than me. It is bigger than one political candidate.”