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- [00:00]
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- [00:50]
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- [01:33]
Jennifer Palmieri
The President of the United States continues news cycle after news cycle to talk about how hot he thinks the men that he meets are. And he just did this with the Egyptian President. Play the clip.
- [01:43]
Donald Trump (clip)
Still a big deal for me to be with the great President of Egypt, but not as big as it used to be before Iran. So he was in a hotel and I met him and we fell in love. Deeply in love. And he didn't even want to see Hillary. He said, you're going to win. I don't want to meet her. You're going to win. He didn't want to see her. Remember that? So we had a good relationship right from the beginning. No, we met. We didn't know each other before that. We had great chemistry and I stayed twice as long as I was supposed to.
- [02:17]
Jennifer Palmieri
Interesting. Here to discuss this with me, of course, is our progressive fighter warrior Congressman Ro Kanah, who represents California's 17th congressional district and is serving his fifth term. Congressman, how are you today?
- [02:31]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Good. Good to see you Again, I don't know how you find these clips pretty, pretty out there.
- [02:38]
Jennifer Palmieri
I feel like we're just like a new cycle or two away from him moving Melania out, moving somebody new in. He's like I say, he's in his deathbed confession era where the dementia has lowered his inhibitions and he just keeps, you know, like your old grandmother in a nursing home. Like, I really liked your little sister better than you. And this is what we're witnessing on the global stage.
- [03:00]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Seriously. I mean, he was talking about Modi, who is the Indian Prime Minister and how he was a very good looking man and is a killer inside. But he went on and on about Modi's looks. I mean, it's just bewildering what he bases his decisions on. But it would be comical if it weren't for the fact that it has real consequences and led to 14 service members Deaths in the case of Iran and all of us paying higher prices for food and gas.
- [03:29]
Jennifer Palmieri
Let's just switch gears here to Elon Musk. And this is just, it's unfathomable what is happening. He is now worth at least $1.3 trillion. Pop this up, Kylie. Elon Musk, if he lost $1 trillion, Congressman, he would still remain the world's richest person, per Bloomberg. And we're seeing reporting that Elon Musk has made more money in the last 24 hours than Warren Buffett has in his lifetime. This is just unfathomable that, that, this, that we have a system that allows this.
- [04:12]
Congressman Ro Khanna
It really is. And he has more money than Sweden, than Taiwan, than countries entire GDP is, I mean, it is a absurdity. And people say, well, don't you believe in entrepreneurship and innovation? Sure, but that doesn't mean that you accumulate a trillion dollars. That's because we've had low corporate tax rates. That's because we haven't taxed stock buybacks. That's because we haven't had collective bargaining. That's because we haven't had appropriate marginal tax rates. So it's a lot of things in a rigged economy that have allowed for this kind of accumulation. And then when Bernie Sanders come around and I'd say let's have a 5% tax every year on these billionaires and trillionaires, people, they get all upset. They ran a primary challenge against me because of that. I mean, the guy got 6% of the vote. But still, but think about this, Jennifer. For 5% tax one time on Elon Musk, you could have universal childcare in America, $10 a day for every family that's one person, one time 5%. And he wouldn't even miss it because the market would grow by 15% and his wealth would still grow. And yet they're opposed to something as basic as that.
- [05:28]
Jennifer Palmieri
You know what bothers me is when we talk about taxing these obscenely wealthy people. We have to thr in these caveats and they'll still be rich. We have to placate the feeling and he'll still earn more and his net worth will still be big. We always have to placate and defer to their feelings. And if you think about Elon Musk and how he is online, not to mention the back to back sick heils that we all witnessed with our own eyes after Trump won, then he re grams or reboosts or retweets all of these like holocaust deniers, white nationalists, and then his own former BS bff. Donald Trump, the one who felt just fell in love with the Egyptian president, said that Elon Musk gets more subsidies from government than anybody else. When Elon Musk was like, hey, the reason that, when they broke up and it was like, hey, the reason the Epstein files aren't coming out is because Trump is in it. And Trump is like, hey, Elon Musk wouldn't be rich without the government. And so it's amazing to me how we have a system that allows people to universally bash the government all day long. Re gram retweet Nazi shit on a site that he had to pay $40 billion for, however much it was. And he is profiting from the very system that he benefits from. Not to mention per Maga's ideology. This isn't my ideology, this isn't your ideology, but per Maga's ideology, we can't let immigrants come in here and take our money and our jobs. And Elon Musk is a fucking immigrant. It's just, I can't, I feel like my brain is spiraling over this.
- [07:10]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, is the right kind of immigrant from their perspective, they don't want immigrants from certain countries coming here. But of course, a South African, they're, they're fine with a white South African. But the reality is that you're, you're right. I mean, Obama made Elon Musk. I mean, that's not exaggeration. I was in the Obama administration. They gave him a loan of hundreds of millions of dollars for Tesla. Tesla was going bankrupt. And Anna Ash, who is no longer in Congress, who represented Palo Alto, will tell you that Elon Musk used to Call her every week, begging her, can you please do something for the Obama from the Obama administration. I'm going to go bankrupt. Literally used to call this member of Congress. So Obama gives the loan. There's a mistake made when we gave that loan, one we didn't require him to have labor neutrality. So he builds Tesla without union labor. That was a mistake and that we did not take some share some part of Tesla for those loans. And so he builds all this wealth on the backs of taxpayers and he acts like he's totally self made. The other thing is that Obama's Defense Secretary Ash Carter helped him get the SpaceX contract, saying that we wanted you to him to have the contract instead of Lockheed and Boeing and he's got no acknowledgment of any of those, those contracts. And then out there saying, well he is a better allocator of capital. This is the thing I that drives me the most crazy. I mean that Elon Musk is an allocator of capital and the government can't do anything. The government's the one that invented the Internet with Vint Cerf at darpa. The government is the agency that has led to a lot of the fundamental scientific advance that these tech billionaires are capitalizing on.
- [09:00]
Jennifer Palmieri
So it sounds like you're saying our system creates this situation. Our system has created this. Obviously we are attaching these horrific personalities and they're like so easy to hate on. Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, they're super easy to hate on. But regardless of their individual personalities, we have a system that is enabling and creating this unchecked wealth and also a system that then we feel like we have to placate and cause their wealth. And I remember back in the day like when I was really young, people had a sense of patriotism about giving to the country and that seems to be completely gone. And the, the merger of these tech oligarchs with government, it's hard to find where they begin and end. And here's an example. Pop this up, Kylie. The Pentagon used elon Musk Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran. And if you might remember, Congressman Gr Grok AI Elon, whenever he either either in my opinion takes too much ketamine or is having a narcissistic crash out, he gives Grok a lobotomy. And Grok had this lobotomy where you could ask it like who's more athletic LeBron James or Elon Musk? And Grok responded Elon Musk, which is just insane. And we're giving this guy Pentagon contracts. It's, this is like, I feel like the demise of our country is such an accelerating rapid rate that we are rewarding insecure, untreated addicts that have AI lie to their users and say that Elon Musk is more athletic than LeBron James. Yeah, let's give him 2,000 missiles to fire at Iran. Am I a crazy person? Like, can we check this?
- [10:56]
Congressman Ro Khanna
You're not. And then it has life or death consequences. I mean, I don't know whether they use GROK or some other AI or what they use. But you know, we did strike that school where young school girls were killed. And we don't have a Pentagon willing to have guardrail saying that we need human judgment before launching missiles. So it's not just that we may have a biased AI, but we have the most lethal military in the world dependent on AI that's leading to life or death consequences. But the problem with Musk is that you have, first of all, three times the concentration of wealth than in the gilded age. So 19 billionaires have about now trillionaire. Two have about 12% of the economy. That was in time of Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan only 4%. So we got three times the wealth concentration and whatever you thought of for Rockefeller and Carnegie, and they were certainly not angels. They built things like public libraries. They built University of Chicago where I went to school. What are these billionaires doing? It's just like they hang around some of them with Epstein. They're trading money. It's not like they're engaged in civic projects of we're going to build universities, we're going to build hospitals, we're going to build libraries, we're going to take care of people who are homeless. And that's, I think, part of the other anger here. They've got wealth concentration, they're buying off politicians and, and no one thinks they're really doing things for their community or country in terms of a civic way.
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Jennifer Palmieri
Yeah. And then like Elon Musk is just like chronically online. I mean, it would be sad if he didn't have the money to get the help to treat all of his many disorders. But moving along, another billionaire that's fun to hate on and just delivers up hateable statements all the time is of course, Jeff Bezos. And here is a video of him speaking at a conference today where he says, I won't cause labor shortages. Play the clip.
- [12:55]
Dish Network Advertiser
Concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant and so on. I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think in fact AI is going to create a labor shortage because it's going to make it possible for people to identify more problems. We have an endless set of things to invent.
- [13:17]
Jennifer Palmieri
Okay, that's a jet stream of bullshit, clearly. I mean, it's just utter bullshit. Furthermore, this guy started a bookstore and kudos to him. He built this big, you know, global retailer, whatever. He's not an economist. He doesn't understand, he's not an expert in this field. And this is a fundamental cultural problem with America and our unregulated capitalism is we attribute intelligence and areas of expertise to anybody that is rich.
- [13:46]
Congressman Ro Khanna
And like, yes, you're absolutely right.
- [13:48]
Jennifer Palmieri
Jeff Bezos is not an expert in this. Elon Musk isn't an expert in defense. And we as a culture attribute, oh, he's rich, he must know about everything. And it's such a fool's errand on our part that we attribute to their egos and we enable all of the worst impulses of these men. But what do you have to say about him? In my opinion, lying about AI not wiping out the workforce?
- [14:12]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Jennifer, first, your insight is absolutely right. That's how we got Donald Trump. I mean, we, we give people who have wealth or the apparen of wealth this deference that somehow they know about foreign policy or economic policy or have morality. And it's the arrogance of some of these folks that offends me the most that they think, they think they know it all. But look, Bezos is obviously wrong on AI and jobs. He's wrong in a just anecdotal sense. Go to any university campus and ask young folks do they have concerns about the job market and they'll all tell you they have concerns about being hired. I mean, he would have been booed if he had given that those comments at any university, as you saw all these commencement speakers being booed, he's got no self reflection. I'm not saying that what he did with Amazon didn't have value, but he's got no self conception of all the local bookstores that were put out of business, the retailers that were put out of business, the hollowing out of rural America. And so they only see one side of it, the wealth accumulation. And yes, consumers, maybe there was ease in lower prices, but they put a lot of folks out of business in doing that. And then with AI, you just, even Dario Amade and the people like Sam Altman at AI are saying this is going to displace jobs. Yeah, may create certain types of jobs but jobs that are entry level jobs, jobs which are dealing with accounting or law or bookkeeping, that the customer support are going to be eliminated. And it's just no credibility to deny that. If he had said, look, there are new jobs that are going to be created, etc, but we're going to have massive displacement or possible displacement as well, you'd have credibility. But, you know, he is just out there talking about what's going to be good for the capital class completely.
- [16:06]
Jennifer Palmieri
And he has a Supreme Court that is not really protecting Trump as much as it is him and all of the oligarch interests. Everybody knows that. I mean, I call Donald Trump, instead of calling him a lame duck, I say we're in the dementia duck phase of his presidency. And the Supreme Court, they're young, at least the Trump appointees, and they're going to be installed for a long time and they consistently deliver for this class of people and not for working class people. And in the same interview, Congressman, he actually was sitting there talking about wanting to colonize the moon. And I think it's just so detached from the American experience. People are like, colonize the moon.
- [16:43]
Apartments.com Advertiser
The moon.
- [16:44]
Jennifer Palmieri
Like, of course, if you are not flying commercial and you're not seeing like, oh, my God, the flight I Normally take was 400 round trip. Now it's 1100 dollars round trip. And my gas used to be $40 a tank, now it's $80 a tank. You know, then you're completely out of touch. And he's talking about colonizing the moon and Elon Musk colonizing Mars. I don't know about you. I wish they'd both just get on with it and move up there. But I want to, I want to shift gears to Zorro Ranch in the Epstein files. This is something that I think is really interesting. It's my understanding that there was never a thorough investigation of this property of Jeffrey Epstein's. And you've been on the forefront of fighting for their survivors and trying to shine a light on these injustices. And the Zorro Ranch was very, very isolated. And I am not a crime detective, but I watch a lot of true crime. And it seems like if you wanted to commit a lot of crimes, you would have isolated spaces. And we know of the island and that we also know of this ranch. And pop this up, Kylie. The Wall Street Journal is reporting New Mexico investigators have sent letters to J.P. morgan, Google and more than two dozen companies ordering them to lock down records tied to Jeffre Epstein and some of his associates. A sign of the widening criminal probe into his Zorro Ranch. You have been in the forefront of this. Tell my viewers and listeners what the status of this is.
- [18:23]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, I melt met with the New Mexico attorney general and I'm glad that they're pursuing this. First I said he is standing actually to sue the Department of Justice to get the files. I mean, the reality is that, you know, Massey and I passed that law. Three million files have been released, but they're still sitting on 3 million files. Well, now you are the New York Attorney general. You actually have standing saying, I want to be able to look at what happened in this ranch. I want to be able to conduct criminal investigations. And the Trump Department of Justice is withholding certain documents in violation of the law. So I appreciate how aggressive he's being, but it has been a totally undercover story. There was abuse on Epstein's Island. There was also a lot of abuse on this ranch. And it needs to be investigated. And these men who did this need to be held accountable.
- [19:19]
Jennifer Palmieri
Is it true I read that a, like Trump super donor bought Zorro Ranch and currently owns it?
- [19:26]
Congressman Ro Khanna
I am not sure that I had read the same thing, but I don't want to, you know, confirm it without facts. But I had read that. I know it was owned by someone. I didn't know whether there's a link to Trump there.
- [19:39]
Jennifer Palmieri
Okay, last question. As we head into the midterms, the Democrats are primaries are rolling out all over, and the Democrats look primed to take back the House, possibly the Senate. How worried are you about some of these red states like Texas, where Trump has a situation that he wanted with Georgia in 2020? He has, he has made, he has, he has primed the soil in Texas and some of these red states. One thing he is, is he learned his lesson from Trump 1.0 to remove guardrails. Susan Collins is right. He did learn his lesson. He learned how to be a better criminal. Donald Trump, he learned how to skirt the system better. And so I'm very worried about these red states. What oversight in Congress are y' all doing anything? Do you have your eyes on this that you can tell my listeners? Because I do not want we have to talk about this, but I also don't want it to suppress voter turnout.
- [20:40]
Congressman Ro Khanna
I'm very concerned. I mean, Texas basically admits Abbott and Paxton, that they do things to make the vote harder. And it, it doesn't have to be like stuffing ballot boxes. If you close polling places in certain places, if you use ICE to intimidate, if you clear out the voter rolls, if you make it hard in terms of what ballots actually get counted, in terms of disqualifying ballots and technicalities, you can really impact the results. Especially when in a state like Texas, it's going to be a few percent. So I'm confident in states like California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, in Virginia, where we have Democratic governors, but where we have Republican election officials, Republican governors. We need to be very, very vigilant. What does that look like? We are need to have relationships with local election officials. We need to have huge amounts of volunteers out there. We need to make sure that we're coordinated with the local media. It needs to be a full out campaign. Now the good news is that every week Hakeem Jeffrey does convene a meeting specifically on this issue of what are we going to do to mobilize and shine the light on, on elections across across the country. And it's going to take all of us. So instead of just worrying about it, if you have the time in the last couple of weeks in October and November, say I'm going to go to a red state, I'm going to be an election observer, I'm going to work with local election officials, local media, and let's get the type of turnout on those on election day like we've had at the no Kings rallies. That's really what it's going to take.
- [22:29]
Jennifer Palmieri
Yeah. I had fascism expert on my podcast, Jason Stanley, and he said that in order to overcome these types of authoritarian style governments that are rigging elections, like a, what do they call it? Electoral. Yeah, Electoral autocracy or Democrat, where they rig the election, we have to win by like 25 points like they did in Hungary. And I think considering our country has such a low voter participation, and that's by design, you know, with a lot of the Republican voter suppression laws and tactics. But I really want us to continue to talk about this because we have to turn out in a manner that's too big to rig to give you guys in, in the House the ability to go after these people. And if you, if, if Jefferies gets the hammer, are y' all going to hammer down on them in the House?
- [23:24]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, absolutely. And the first time I heard the too big to rig was on your show. I don't know if you coined that phrase or others did, but you're absolutely right. And we have the opportunity to do it because people are really upset at the war. They're upset at Epstein, they're upset at food prices and gas prices. They want to vote them out, but we need to, to, to come out in, in huge numbers. And I do believe that once we take power, it's. There has to be accountability. There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk. You know, they're celebrating that he created 4, 400 millionaires, but they don't talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling US Aid. He needs to answer for that. He needs to be subpoenaed. He needs to face investigation. He needs to answer for what he did with Doge. That it's not just let's move on. And we will use the Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee to hold people accountable who violated the law on ICE and abused power with ice. Who violated the law in killing people on boats in, in the Caribbean. Who violated the law when it came to Iran and some of the strikes. Who violated the law with Doge. There will be accountability. There needs to be accountability before reconciliation. And certainly there are voices like Robert Garcia, Jamie Raskin, myself, who are for aggressive oversight and investigation, including of the Epstein class.
- [24:50]
Jennifer Palmieri
That's why the three of you are some of my absolute favorites. I love that we need to keep pushing the talking point that you just had, that we don't need to celebrate Elon Musk making other people millionaires. If you are the party of pro life like you say you are, maga, he's killing millions of the poorest people on the planet. And so I think that's that hypocrisy. There is something really stunning. Congressman, thank you so much. I hope that you come back to New York soon or maybe I'll come to Washington D.C. keep fighting the good fight.
- [25:19]
Congressman Ro Khanna
We need you out there. Jennifer, thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [25:33]
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- [25:54]
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- [26:27]
Dish Network Advertiser
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