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- [00:02]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name youe Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states.
- [00:26]
B
All right, welcome back to IHIP News special episode with Congressman Ro Khanna, our fearless warrior who is advocating for the Epstein survivors, advocating for democracy, but also advocating for a more progressive, more worker friendly, more reach, more of the people Democratic Party ditching corporate donors and having an actual political party that really is of the people, by the people, for the people, not for the corporations.
- [00:58]
C
We need a new moral vision in this country and for our party. And we need an FDR like moment for the Democratic Party. And we need to speak simply, plainly and in truth. We need to say what happened in Gaza was a genocide. We need to say there are no more military sales to Israel. We need to say we need to tear down ice, not just no masks and body cameras. We got to tear down the agency that is terrorizing Americans, terrorizing immigrants, and have a new agency like we had by the way, since 1940 to 2003 that actually respects human rights. We need to be clearly for taxing billionaires more. We need to be for Medicare for all. We need to be for $10 a day childcare. We need to be for free public college and a thousand trade schools. We need to be for a Marshall Plan for America. And we need to say things simply which are concrete. I sick a politician saying I'm for the American dream. I'm for renewing the American dream. I'm for standing for human rights. I'm for the American family. I'm for every kid having a shot. I'm for a high floor low ceiling. I don't even know what the, what it, what does it mean? Where do you stand? And that is the problem with the Democratic Party people. Republicans come up to me and they say, look Roe, I don't agree with half the things you just said, but at least you say what you believe. You know, one of the only lesson we should learn from Donald Trump is like he's not afraid to say what he thinks. Like Donald Trump is out there saying crazy, crazy things like let's conquer Greenland. And then we're like poll testing whether we could be for Medicare for all that.
- [02:34]
B
That is, that's what drives me crazy about the Democrats, the crowdsourcing what their opinion is. So here's Where I am and where a lot of my listeners are is we feel like the Democratic leadership is twofold right now. We need Democratic leadership and we need ironclad resistance to the fascism. And it feels like the leadership is really corporate vested. And then there are progressive members of that like yourself and others. And then you're seeing the base, like myself. I was a pretty, you know, MSNBC liberal, voted blue, no matter who harm reduction. And I've really moved further to the left and that's not happening in a vacuum. The polling is starting to fare that out.
- [03:22]
C
I thought you moved the whole base. That was my, my, the.
- [03:28]
B
But I think the real frustration is that. And we have to just name names a little bit. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer just do not seem equal to this task. We have a crazy psychopath, a dipshit of epic proportions who is crazier than a shithouse rat running the country, surrounded by people who will sit and pile a few sopres on him ad nauseam, bring him trophies. And it seems like it would be the easiest thing on the planet to say no. And what got my attention is like, why did they keep playing patty cake with this guy? Why are we even talking about funding ice?
- [04:06]
C
I, I agree with Schumer. I've called for him to, to step down as, as minority leader. And I don't understand why we're even talking about no new funding. Right? Like they were saying, oh, Ro, you may have to come to vote tomorrow back. I'm rushing back to, to D.C. and I'm like, why are we even talking about no new funding for ICE? They have $75 billion that was passed in the big ugly bill. We should not fund an additional dime in two weeks, in two months, in two years, not in Donald Trump's presidency until they tear down this agency and they start anew and they start with actually recognizing human rights and they start with recognizing the human rights of actually Americans and, and immigrants. Now, I would say in with, with Akeem. I think there is a progressive energy and majority in the House that allows him to be bolder. I don't think he's going to say an additional dime on, on funding for ice. He stood his ground on the health care fight when Schumer caved. He was very helpful in the Epstein fight in getting a coalition. So I. But the difference is that there's a lot of progressive energy in the House. The. You've got Greg Kazar, you've got Pramila J. Paul, you've got Jamie Rask. I mean, I, I don't want to leave people out, but there, there's at least 20 people, Delia Ramirez, who are really the, the heart and soul of, of the fight. And I, I love serving in the House because, you know, you go over to the Senate, it's like no one, it's a pin drop. Like you can't hear anyone. You can't talk. It's, you know, it's like, you know, and then it's like being in detention on the House. You know, everyone's screaming, everyone's. But it's much more the American people. And the House has the fight. The House gets the moment. The House gets that. This is not a time for just going along. And people are tired of speeches. You know, everyone is looking for sort of the charisma and showmanship. I said courage is the new charisma. What people really want is action. They want principled action. They want actually to get things done, to stand up. And what we showed with Epstein is if you're creative and bold, you can do things even if you're in the minority. Like we were in the minority. Exactly right. And we got Donald Trump to sign the law. We've done. Massey and I are others. We've tried a lot of things that don't work. We tried war powers resolutions that don't work. But you've got to take shots on goal. You've got to be out there. You've got to be out there on the streets. You've got, you know, I went to Minneapolis after Alex Preddy was shot and I stood there with third and fourth generation Minnesotans. It's not enough. A lot of these folks are, well meaning. They think, okay, you go to Congress, you, you know, you vote, you're in a committee. I often joke they've got all these comms people in committees. I was like, no one pays attention to what you're doing. Like, no one in the country is like watching these committee hearings. Get out there, be with the people. Be, be bold. Take, take steps to understand the moment we're in.
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B
I feel like if we had a different speaker, and I've had speakers not Minority Leader Jeffries on.
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C
Oh, you have?
- [07:08]
B
Yes. He's been on the podcast before and I understand. I think he's good natured and wants goodness. I feel like there is what the people want right now. And what would just be an electric lightning bolt that would make the turnout for the midterms too big to rig would be just some badass going, no, we're not giving you shit. You're killing Americans. You're building, buying warehouses to house people, AKA concentration camps. That's what this budget, this ICE budget is going to do. They want to put human beings in warehouses and grade people on legal, illegal, brown skinned. And then of course, I read this article the other day. There's a guy from Ireland that has been in a, he called it a concentration camp, his words. Who had like a visa issue for four months. And so when I think about that, the MAGA movement, you know, we can say, oh, it's about white supremacy and it's only for rich white men. They wanted to kill Mike Pence. He was a Bible thumper, right, right wing Republican, a good soldier. He just wouldn't break the law at the tail end. And they, and they wanted to kill him for it. I just feel like this moment, I 100% agree with you that Chuckles needs to go. He's not the man at the moment. He's completely compromised by Israel, in my opinion. And he. That is his first and foremost action as a senator.
- [08:36]
C
No, he's bragged about it, getting them support. When you've got a genocide going on and it's not me saying it's a genocide, that's what the UN finding is, genocide scholars. Yeah, that's what the scholars say. And you're then bragging about getting them more funding. But I think we can get the house to a point of no new funding in the stand. I mean, for me, it's personal. I'm, you know, the son of immigrants. My, my grandfather was in jail for four years as part of Gandhi's independence movement in the 1940s, 1930s, 1940s. I'm of Hindu faith. I grew up, I was born in Philadelphia, Bucks County. To this day, when I go on overseas trips, even though if I'm going in the Air Force planes, my mom says, don't lose your passport. I was like, mom, the Air Force has the passport. It'll be fine. And so to see a country. And I grew up in a time in Bucks county where teachers believed in me, Little League coaches believed in me. I was never told, you can't do what you want just because you're a son of immigrants or have a different faith or look different. And now I go places and people are in lines and they, they, they're brown. And they say, here's my passport. I'm carrying it in the United States of America. I went to the California City detention center and I met with these immigrants who were detained by the way they put Me in a room with 47 people and the prison warden left. So they're obviously not a security risk. They wouldn't do that if they were murderers or rapists. And one person talked about showing me his broken nose. No medical care. Someone talked about having blood in his urine. Can you get me a doctor's appointment? They can't get a doctor's appointment. People wanted to be voluntarily deported. They were that sort of. Sort of mistreated. And they couldn't get voluntarily deported because there's no judge. It's all backlogged because Stephen Miller has a quota of 2 to 3,000. Let's just fill these places. And they're private detention centers, so they don't want to spend the money on the food or the medical care or getting the legal processing. This is happening in the United States of America. And what the American people want to say, not just kids of immigrants, what third, fourth, fifth generation Americans want to see is a Democratic Party that says, that's not America. That is. We are going to stand up against that because it's a violation of our faith. It's a violation of human dignity. It's a violation of the Constitution. And people want strength and they mistake. Our party mistakes strength. Oh, let's just get the guy with the military uniform or law enforcement. No, strength comes from conviction. That's how Gandhi led. That's how Mandela led. That's why Bernie leads. Strength comes from moral conviction and standing on a moral ground. That's why Mamdani was so powerful. And in what he did in New York, people knew he believed what he was saying. And I just think if we had that kind of leadership, we would, we would have a sweeping majority. We had a realignment in this country for decades.
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B
I think for decades we would have it like, like you mentioned earlier in FDR style Rain. Let's talk about the billionaire tax. I read an article on the way here that state legislatures, Democrats in states were drafting bills to tax billionaires. And they're running into a problem. The governors, the Democratic governors. So these state legislators are now having to battle their Democratic governors. Here's what pisses me off about the billionaires like the ones here in New York. You just mentioned Mamdani. They spent more money trying to run ads against him, Islamophobic ads against him to terrorize everybody. Then I think they would pay in billionaire taxes. You know, like, these guys are so entitled that they're willing to buy JD Vance and spend all of this money, but cannot give it to the country that has A system that has made them this way. So there's two things. Number one, it's easy to villainize Jeff Bezos. It's easy to villainize. Oh God, it's so easy to villainize Elon Musk or Peter Thiel. But it's the system, right? The system that we're seeing right now. These governors in your home state, Newsom, put up a wall and advocate for billionaires and they keep propagandizing us that, oh, this is going to be bad for business. And I think it's such a leadership failure and not reading the room right now. This eat the rich French Revolution moment that the rest of us are kind of living in right now to not be able to stand up to the billionaires and say, no, we all need to chip in here. This is not sustainable. He's tearing down the doj. How are you going to take your contracts into court and have an economy? If he tears down the doj, we're going to go straight the way of Russia. And it feels like there's no moral clarity within upper echelons of the Democratic Party against billionaires and wealth tax.
- [13:26]
C
Yeah. And you know, Newsom doesn't want to offend the donor base, but here's what they're missing. The younger progressives, they say to me when I talk about a tax on billionaires and 1% a year or 2% a year, they say, roe, I don't think they realize you're being nice. Sure, you know, wait till we get into power. Like the reality. Look, let's look at some just basic economic facts in this country. I represent a district in Silicon Valley that is a third of the national wealth. A third of the stock market is in my 50 mile radius. Apple, Google, Nvidia, Tesla, Broadcom. $18 trillion of wealth. The entire national stock market is 70 trillion. Income inequality in this country is at the highest it's been in 60 years. The worker share of income in this country is the lowest it's been in 75 years. Young people, even with college graduates are having a hard time getting a job because AI is eliminating some of those entry level jobs. And then you've had the tariffs and you've had a slowing economy. And in all of this, you have billionaires in California having increased their wealth in the last three years. 158%. 158%. And what we're saying is we want some percent a year. Now you could do the details, okay, don't tax voting shares, etc. But the broader point is we need everyone to have a stake in America. And you can't have a society, you can't have a nation half prosperous and half in decline. 70% of Americans don't believe in the American dream. And if we're going to have a Democratic Party that just says, okay, we're going to stop Trump's craziness and we're going to get back in there and we're going to do business as usual, and yeah, we won't have the ICE raids and we won't do dumb tariffs, and we're not going to insult Mark Carney, but we're just going to allow the income inequality to continue, especially with AI. Then you're going to have someone like Nick Fuentes come in 2032. We need to get in there and we need to tackle the fundamental economic divide that has ripped this country apart. Part that has fueled such an anger at the elites, at globalization, at the demographic change. And we need to say our highest mission is going to be the economic independence and security for people who haven't had a fair shot. And that, to me, I call it a new economic patriotism. That, to me, should be our philosophy with a new moral vision. And I really believe we have a shot. We just looked at the energy and that instead of dismissing Mamdani and others, if we looked at the energy these young people have, we have it much easier than President Obama was a genius in terms of his oratory and all. He was going uphill in 2008. It was like, who is this guy? There weren't armies there. Now we've got the armies, but we've got our own party fighting the armies. Yes, mobilize the armies, lead the armies. You've got the armies there.
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B
Let me ask you this. Do you think this corporate Democratic, centrist govern incrementally the way that the Democrats have been doing it, the way that the corporate Dems and leadership want to do it now? Do you think that incubates an electorate that's primed to vote for authoritarianism or fascism?
- [16:48]
C
I think it does, because I think it makes people apathetic. I think people say, well, yeah, my life didn't change. I still have health care costs, I still have Medicare costs. The wealthy keep getting wealthier. What changed in my life? And so then someone like a demagogue comes in and says, well, I'm going to tear this whole system down because the system's not working. And they're like, yeah, how much worse can it get? Well, it can get a lot worse. We're Seeing you can have ICE raids, you can have social unrest, it obviously can get worse. But then we just promise them, okay, we'll undo the damage. Let's return to normalcy. No, let's recognize that Donald Trump fundamentally was a symptom of a broken system, that we are living in something worse than the Gilded Age, that we've got people who don't have health care. I mean, the famous actors from Dawson's Creek who couldn't afford cancer treatment, so now his wife has a GoFundMe page to keep her home. And we're producing more wealth than ever before, and we can't give everyone health care that a beloved actor can't afford it in this country. What hope is there for a firefighter or a nurse if they get cancer? So people want a clear direction, and then they say, okay, robot, why not be pragmatic? Even if we win and if we don't have 60s votes in the Senate, then how are you going to get things done? How about we start with what our North Star is? How about we start with what the society we want to see is? And we fight like anything to get there. If I had started out with the attitude, well, we can't get the Epstein files released Roe, how are we going to get the President to sign it? How are we going to get the Senate to pass it? How are you ever going to get the speaker to bring it up? I wouldn't have started in the first place. Now, have we gotten the whole files released? No, but when you fight, when you make it a tenacious goal and when you have a North Star, you get progress. And that's where the Democratic Party needs to be. And I think we would inspire people if we had that.
- [18:42]
B
I completely agree. Do you think your centrist is Democratic? Colleagues in the House understand the shift in the electorate, the shift in the blue. And independent voters have, in my opinion, have really shifted away from corporate politics. Like, a lot of people had no idea what AIPAC was a year, two years ago. I'm one of those people.
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C
I had no idea what they're spending against me, too. They're not happy.
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B
So now you have organizations like Track, apac, and I have these friends in Oklahoma City that never been that political before. Like, we're not voting for a politician that takes apac. The electorate is getting savvier.
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C
They are.
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B
They're off the corporate media tit. They're on to the independent media getting facts. Do your colleagues understand this shift in the American electorate? Because it is everywhere.
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C
I don't think they fully get it yet. It's slowly. I mean, but what you have done and what you're describing, I think is very important. Because it used to be, I think, in Trump's first term that there were a lot of resist liberals who said, okay, who's gonna put up the fight against Trump and who's not? And there were people on the kind of centrist lane who said, as long as we fight against Trump, as long as we show that we've got the fight, we're taking him on. It doesn't really matter if we don't say genocide. It doesn't really matter if we don't tax billionaires. It doesn't really matter if we don't have national health insurance. So we don't have to take on these powerful interests. Why upset the billionaires? Why upset aipac? Why upset the private health insurance companies? Let's just win the vote by showing that we have got spine and are going after Trump. And I don't think that strategy works anymore, because a lot of the resist liberals have also understood that to really defeat Trumpism, we have to change our society. That some of the anger that Trump voters had was anger at a broken system. And if that system stays broken, you're going to continue to have uglier and uglier populism. And, you know, my anger is not with people who voted with Trump. My anger is that Trump sold them a bill of goods and manipulated their legitimate anger. And my anger is with our party not recognizing for decades what we did. I mean, hollowed out towns, rural communities. You go through, I'm sure you have, into places in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, where I grew up, okay, steel left, aluminum left. What did we do when a kid growing up in my district, the world's their oyster. What's happening to kids in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Warren, Ohio? And you're telling me, well, we can't get traditional manufacturing back. Yeah, we can have new industries, but what did we do there? Did we create childcare jobs? Did we create elder care jobs? Did we create tech jobs? Did we have any plan for a Marshall Plan for America? So you're there and your life is worse off for your kids, and you're sitting there saying, why shouldn't I vote for someone new who's going to tear it down? And then Trump has combined this with race. Well, your life used to be better before Roe's parents got here. His nostalgia, his economic nostalgia is combined with the racial nostalgia. Until we fix the economics, we're not going to build the Kind of multiracial democracy that I believe is our country's destiny.
- [22:03]
B
And I think I agree with you, everything you say. I also think the Democrats need to develop a 50 state strategy. I think Democratic representatives like yourself and others should go to states that aren't in your district.
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C
Yeah.
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B
And let me tell you what happens in like super MAGA, super majority states like Oklahoma. You have only one party rule. And so then they start out crazing each other. So you literally have like, we were MAGA before MAGA ever came down the escalator, before Trump ever descended. So you have no mediating voice anywhere. And so the electorate gets so confused and involved in this kind of propaganda psychosis. And if they were to hear Democrats come and say, look, I'm a Democrat, I am not a Satanist, that's what they think. And I think that the Democrats are going to have to invest in all 50 states and they might lose an election or cycle or two locally in Oklahoma places. But it wasn't that long ago Oklahoma had a Democratic governor. In the 2000s, we were ranked.
- [23:09]
C
David Boren, right?
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B
No, Kylie, what was his name? Brad Henry. And in the like 22,009, Oklahoma is ranked 17th in education.
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C
Now we're 50th because they cut the funds.
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B
Republican supermajority. They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the Supreme Court, they have the governorship. And this is my whole thing with all of the MAGA bedwetters right now that are, you know, wound up about Bad Bunny. You have everything you wanted. You've got Trump, you've got a submissive little pipsqueak speaker of the House that will say, yes, sir, you want me to jump how high? You've got the Senate. You've even got the Senate Minority leader that writes strongly worded letters. And you're still ma. Still upset. Why are you upset? Because the system sucks. Because everybody's lied to you. Republicans have lied to you and Democrats have lied to you.
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C
Exactly.
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B
And that type of messaging, you know, people can say, oh, they're liberal or they're progressive or they're leftist. And it's just, it goes back to your North Star conviction, having conviction. Like, we only have this one life and this is our country and are we really, really going to give it up for this old queen Donald Trump? I mean, that's just. This cannot be the end.
- [24:22]
C
And we've had so much sacrifice. Right. I mean, the sacrif of people in World War II and on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and in the Civil War and You know, I fundamentally, because of my life story, people. When I was in law school, I was with worked for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the daughter of Robert Kennedy. And one of the staffers said, raoul, you really have these great ideas and conviction, but, you know, as an Indian American of Hindu faith, you'll never get elected, so go work on this hill sometime. And I found this country to be amazing. I found that at any step where people said it's not possible, you know, the country is fundamentally decent and fair. And I have spent since I got to Congress. I was going to factory towns, rural towns for 10 years, to places like Johnstown, to places like Warren, to places like Paintsville in Kentucky. I was going on podcasts of people like Sean Ryan and flagrant and conservative podcasts. And my belief is if we're out there and we don't lie about what we believe, I don't go there and say, oh, I'm not for immigrant rights, or I'm not for.
- [25:23]
B
You don't. Seed ground.
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C
You know, I don't see ground. But I say, look, here's what we really. I understand the economic future. Let's talk about what's actually going to get your kids jobs in the 21st century. Let's talk about why the elite class betrayed so many communities. Let's talk about how we build a new national purpose. And you go there with respect, and you go there with a vision, and you go there with conviction. I believe most Americans, even if they don't vote for you, will say, yeah, okay, I see where he's coming from. And I think we need a belief in this country, goodness of this country, decency of this country, which I have because of my life experience. And then we need to have a conviction. And by the way, if it doesn't work, you know, so what's the end of the deal? You won't be in Congress. You'll do something else. But that's how we make progress. That's how we move the country forward. The only thing that I will say, the survivors made Epstein happen. The only thing I think Massey and I had was a willingness to lose, a willingness to take risk. And I think anyone who wants to lead this party, in the House, in the leadership, in any place, needs to say, what are the things I'm willing to lose for what are the things I'm willing to believe? Mamdani started like 1%. You think he thought he was gonna be mayor? No. Here's what he believes, and let it be out there. And if it's not you, your time. Fine. You've made a contribution to the country. I really think that would solve so much of this. This risk aversion of the Democratic Party where people don't feel like we stand for something.
- [26:51]
B
I completely agree. I want to thank you so much. And you have to get back to D.C. to keep fighting fascism. Tell Hakeem we want him to be a little tougher.
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C
I got it.
- [27:01]
B
We need it.
- [27:02]
C
Well, you're an important voice. You're such an important voice that in the week of FC, probably my busiest week of my 10 year career in Congress, I flew in this, this morning and I'm flying back because what you're doing really matters. So I appreciate it.
- [27:15]
B
Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, we'll see you later, listener.
- [27:29]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with a name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states, day or night.
- [27:51]
D
VRBoCare is here 247 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home. We're here to help things run smoothly because a great trip starts with the right support. And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either.