Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants to 'shut down the FBI' and replace it with something that sounds a lot like the FBI

• Vivek Ramaswamy, a 2024 GOP candidate, said he wants to shut down the FBI.
• It was a "head-scratcher" for MSNBC's Chuck Todd, who spoke with Ramaswamy on Sunday.

A relatively little-known Republican presidential candidate wants to shut down the FBI and replace it with a new bureau that sounds a lot like the FBI.

If you're confused about 2024 GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's proposal, you're not alone.

MSNBC's Chuck Todd called Ramaswamy's plan to shutter the FBI "a bit of a head-scratcher for me" during an interview with the candidate on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

"I didn't say defund the FBI. I said shut down the FBI and replace it with something new," said Ramaswamy, an "anti-woke" biotech millionaire. "I think it's a new apparatus built from scratch that actually respects the law instead of making it up."

"So, you're going to replace the FBI with a new FBI?" Todd asked.

The candidate has also suggested shutting down the Department of Education, limiting the Federal Reserve, and sending US troops to the Mexican border, according to The Washington Post.

"I personally believe someone who's running to actually run the executive branch of the government, when you have a bureaucracy whose culture becomes so ossified, every once in a while, you need to turn it over," said Ramaswamy, who notably has no political experience.

He added: "We need federal law enforcement, but that institution has, in a bipartisan way, become so, I think ossified in its own norms, in its own corruption, that we need to rebuild it from scratch and have something new take its place."

Ramaswamy said if there are term limits for him if he was elected (a "good thing," he noted), there should be similar limits for "those bureaucrats reporting to me."