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Today, Explained
The “Epstein class”
00:27:35
No one did enough to stop Jeffrey Epstein, including elected Democrats. Rep. Ro Khanna says they should be held accountable.
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- [00:01]
Interviewer
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Congressman Ro Khanna
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Congressman Ro Khanna
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Congressman Ro Khanna
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Interviewer
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Narrator/Advertiser
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- [00:31]
Interviewer
welcome to TODAY Explained Saturday. So everybody knows our politics are divided, Democrat versus Republican, left versus right, divided on lines like age, gender and race. But the biggest divide in our politics may not be about identity at all. In my opinion, it's insiders versus outsiders. And it's only gotten more noticeable in recent months as issues like the Epstein files and questions about artificial intelligence and have seemed to pit the elites against the rest of us. Congressman Ro Khanna is at the center of both of these issues. He wrote the Epstein Transparency Act. He brought one of the survivors of Epstein's abuse to this week's State of the Union, and he's coined the term Epstein class, meaning the group of wealthy and connected individuals that he says deserve accountability, even if they're Democrats. Khanna is also the congressman from Silicon Valley, meaning he's worked with companies like Google and Meta and seen them transition over the years. And he's at the forefront of one of the most important political questions of our moment. Is AI about to put us all out of work and is the government going to do anything about it? So this week I traveled to Washington, D.C. to talk to Kana about this and a whole lot more. Let's dig in. Congressman o', Connor, thank you for joining me.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Thanks for having me.
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Interviewer
I want to talk to you for a lot of reasons, but specifically about two issues. Most clearly, I think that with this second Trump administration, some of the big dramas have been expected, you know, over immigration, over things like the economy. But things like the Epstein files and things like AI and the future of work have become these topics. And I feel like you are really right at the center of both of those. I wanted to start with the Epstein files. This has become such a large part of the work you're doing in Congress. I just wanted to know where that started for you. How did you become the voice for this issue or one of them?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
I have traveled to a lot of rural towns, factory towns, I'd Done a lot of podcasts of Trump voters. And I knew that this was something that Trump campaigned on, that he was going to hold elites accountable, that rich and powerful people were getting away with breaking the law, and that that was wrong. And that's really what started my interest.
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Interviewer
Can you give us a status update? Obviously there's been a massive document dump, but it can be hard to keep track of. How much have we got? Much is still out there.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
At least 50% still has been hidden, covered up. But what has been released is shocking. Messi and I didn't think we'd get this far. I mean, they've released a fair amount. It's still that they're keeping the worst stuff. But what they've released is not a good look at our elite class. It's not a good look at the Epstein class. I mean, these are powerful people in business in Silicon Valley and Hollywood who are visiting Epstein's island knowing young girls are being abused, knowing young girls are being raped. And every day a shoe drops. Now, other countries are prosecuting, they are prosecuting Lord Mendelssohn, they're prosecuting former Prince Andrew, former Prime Minister of Norway, leaders in France. We are seeing resignations of powerful law firm people and powerful banks. But we have not yet seen investigations and prosecutions.
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Interviewer
Yeah, we haven't seen that level of accountability, particularly legal accountability here. But I know that you've been focused on a couple of documents, most specifically the 302 victim interview statements, the prosecutor memo from 2007. I wanted to know for the documents you've both been focused on, have we gotten those?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
No, but the issue is broader than that. It's not just the F. The 302 statements of the survivors about the President, it's the survivors statements about the many men who may have abused or raped them. A lot of those 302 files have been redacted and we need to get that information. That's where the survivors tell us who were the men who abused them. And the prosecution memo tells us why these charges were not brought. Why did Epstein get a sweetheart?
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Interviewer
We haven't got that either.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
We have not gotten that.
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Interviewer
What's the recourse? I mean, obviously pressure, political pressure, public pressure is. I mean, is there like some magic solution that can get you at least the documents you're most looking for?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, first of all, the public pressure has worked, right? It worked from Donald Trump saying absolutely not, not going to sign this bill to signing a Democrats bill. I mean, who would have thought that the most significant piece of Democratic Legislation that Donald Trump would sign would be the Epstein Transparency Act. And it's worked in terms of first they dumped documents that were total junk in December, and now they've had a real release. It's not a full release, but it's a real release. So we need to continue the public pressure to get them to drip by drip, give us more of these documents.
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Interviewer
You mentioned your work with Congressman Thomas Massie, who obviously that relationship has been critical for the success of you all's advocacy year. How did that develop?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
It was because of our work against these overseas wars. In fact, we're partnering. It hasn't gotten as much attention, but next week we're going to force a vote to stop the war in Iran. We do not like America getting into wars overseas. We think that's a waste of our money, it's a waste of the lives of our soldiers, and that certainly Congress should be saying whether we should go to war or not. So that's really where our friendship came. And now, of course, I've gotten to know him personally. I know his wife. I have gotten to see him when he lost his wife grieve. I mean, I, you know, you get to know someone on a personal level when you work with them.
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Interviewer
I think one of the reasons people have really like, you know, have been focused on this relationship is because it seems more and more rare to see Democrats and Republicans kind of pushing for similar issue, even if they have other disagreements. You know, I want to do want to ask about the War Powers resolution that you all are introducing. Obviously, Donald Trump has made very clear that he is considering strikes on Iran with that War Powers resolution. I mean, what is the likelihood that it could. What is the likelihood that they could pass and could force Donald Trump to require to, to listen to Congress ahead of something like an Iran strike?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
It will be a close vote. We will keep most of the Democratic coalition, I think probably 95 to 97%, and then we may pick up a few Republicans, but it's going to be very close.
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Interviewer
But is this issue different than like Venezuela or other times it's come up
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Congressman Ro Khanna
like it's a more of a commitment for the United States. I mean, I didn't agree with what we did in Venezuela, but you could say that's in our hemisphere and it wasn't a long drawn out war. This is a country in the Middle east that has 90 million people that if we want to topple the regime, would take many, many troops. This is not an easy effort. Even the Joint Chiefs has said that Keynes, that This is not like Venezuela. So you have many. This is exactly what Donald Trump ran against. He said no more endless wars.
- [07:04]
Interviewer
I mean, your work, as you're kind of mentioning here, has included a focus on reaching across the aisle, has a close. Basically feels like you'll bring your message to anybody. But on the other hand, I have also heard from Democrats who can sometimes feel that, you know, that legitimizes people. They don't want to legitimize that. Like, you know, you're at a Epstein press conference next to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Right?
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Interviewer
Is, you know, that's someone who has pushed some conspiracy theories, has, you know, has. I wonder how you think about that. Like, in your advocacy. Do you ever worry about legitimizing actors that aren't partners in democracy?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, look, I don't compromise my values of where I stand on immigrant rights, on human rights, on LGBT rights, on trans rights, on women's rights. But I work with whoever comes to Congress where I can on issues where there are common ground, because that's the only way that we can move forward and make progress. And that's the only way we're going to start to bind the divides in this country. Now, Thomas Massey sends a Christmas card every year where he's got his entire family with machine guns in front of his Christmas tree. Do I agree with him on gun policy? No. I've voted for an assault weapons ban. I voted for universal background checks. I voted to limit magazine capacity. But if I said, okay, I'm not going to work with Thomas, we would never get the Epstein files released. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she had not shown the courage she did. She gave up her seat in Congress over this. We would not have gotten the files released. So I believe that the key is the to be true to your values. Don't throw trans kids under the bus just because we lost an election. Don't go vote for the Lake and Raleigh act that basically gave ICE the ability to do these raids just because you want to be tough on the border, but while being true to your values, listen and have dialogue with others where there can be common ground on a principled basis.
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Interviewer
I wonder if that. If that instinct ever puts you in a difficult position. I know you were someone who were calling for Democrats to work with Doge, for example, that didn't necessarily seem like an earnest effort from this White House to do the things I feel like you wanted it to do. Was that a mistake?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, I think when I said that we should work with Doge in the beginning, and I wrote an MSNBC op ed on it. I said that the place to look is the Department of Defense. I voted against the Department of Defense every single time. It's a almost a trillion dollar budget. And yet when Elon got there and he had done SpaceX, which disrupted Boeing and Lockheed, and I said to Elon, look, go after Defense. That's where it is. He defied that. He started going after USAID in an unconstitutional way. It was less than 1% of the budget. It's cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa. So do I think that it was a mistake in terms of what he ended up doing? Yeah, but he, they didn't approach this in terms of any good faith. And once he started doing things that violated basic constitutional rights, I was one of the first people to call him out on it.
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Interviewer
I'm going to get back to Epstein. You said earlier, earlier this month, you stood on the House floor and read aloud the names of six men whose identities have been redacted from the files. You said, quote, if we found six men that they, that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3 million fouls. What made you decide to go to the floor and read those names out loud?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Because there was no accountability because they've been covering up so many. It's because Massie and I did that and I went to the floor that two of the people finally had accountability. The Sultan, who's the CEO of Dubai, who resigned, and Les Wexner, and that, yes, he was in other parts of the file, but this was the part which said he was a co conspirator. And finally they were acknowledging that. Now it turns out that they did not tell us that six of the men were, whose pictures were there, were pictured with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein because they were part of a lineup. And even when Massie and I asked them for clarification, they just unredacted it without context. And that was, in my view, a total breach by the Department of Justice. I've since talked to at least one of the men and, you know, invited him to come to the Capitol and said that, you know, I'm happy to make it very, very clear that they had nothing to do with, with Epstein. But there, the problem here is that the way the Justice Department has redacted
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Interviewer
these files, I was going to ask you about that because obviously the DOJ later pushed back and said that several of those men were completely random, had no connection to him. Les Wexner has said the same thing. Do you have any concern about getting ahead of where the legal proceedings were?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
No, my concern is that the DOJ is covering up. My concern is that the DOJ is still covering up for predators. My concern is that the DOJ did not provide the context for lineup when they could have and when Massie and I asked them for that. My concern is that there are so many people in these files that they still are protecting, and the question is, why are they protecting these rich and powerful people? And there's still so many of these survivors whose names they're exposing. So they have and zero credibility around this, around this issue. And that's why I took the dramatic step of having to go to the House floor to put the pressure on getting some kind of accountability.
- [12:31]
Interviewer
I totally hear you, and I don't want to downplay the reality of the information that we have seen from this stuff and I think the kind of grassroots desire for accountability. But I've also heard over the last couple of weeks increasing concerns about whether this is putting people in uncomfortable positions who weren't supposed to be there or whether this has amounted to something of a witch hunt or what's the kind of limit here? Do you have any concern that the kind of Internet sleuthing of it all is painting a group of people that you call the Epstein class maybe with too broad of a brush?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
I'm more concerned about the predators who weren't being prosecuted. Right. If there was a balance, there are more people who have gotten away with things who are part of this Epstein class then who are being branded in a witch hunt. I mean, I don't subscribe or want a witch hunt in any way. But the real issue here is the people who are being protected. The real issue is two tiers of justice in America. The real issue is people with power and wealth using it to be above the law and escape even investigation or prosecution. And the names who have been exposed are people who have said emails, like Bill Gates. I'm not saying he did anything criminal, but just the fact that he is corresponding and not been asked. What did you see? What did you know? I mean, it is shocking to the conscience. Now, do I think that if someone sent an email to Epstein before Epstein was convicted or if someone showed up before Epstein was convicted to an event that, that. That they should be shamed? No. There's always has to be context. But right now what I've seen is. Is far more on the end of no accountability than on the side of some kind of witch hunt.
- [14:21]
Interviewer
Hey, everybody. Asted hernton here. I wanted to let you know that Vox Media is returning to south by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcast. Join us from March 13 through March 15 for live tapings of Pivot Teffy Talks, Professor G's Markets. Where should we begin With Esther Perel and the special live taping of Today Explained hosted by yours truly. The Vox Media podcast stage will also feature sessions from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, Marcus Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Tu, Robin Arzon and more. Visit voxmedia.comsouthbysouthwest to pre register and get a special discount on your south by Southwest innovation badge. That's voxmedia.com south by Southwest. Hope to see you there. How would you define the Epstein class?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Rich and powerful people who feel entitled that they can use that wealth to be above the law.
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Interviewer
I mean that certainly rings true to the behavior we have seen from these files and what we know to be the facts of, you know, Epstein, Maxwell and the people they surrounded themselves with. The question is whether that, you know, how is that different than billionaires or elites or whatever.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
There are billionaires like Jensen Huang who are public spirited, wanting paying bill tax. I don't agree with him on everything. Very committed to the community, a great immigrant story. I would never describe someone like Jensen Huang as part of the Epstein class.
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Interviewer
It's not just the billionaires.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
It's a specific they're billionaires who do extraordinary things for the world. Warren Buffett, you know, is by and large done incredible things. I don't believe that just because someone is a millionaire or just because they're a billionaire that that makes them suspect. It is the use of your money and privilege to defy the law, to abuse the law, to, to think you're above the law. That is what enrages Americans. Most Americans like people to, to, to build wealth and admire economic success. It's the corrupting influence is where we draw the line.
- [16:37]
Interviewer
That makes sense. But a question I wanted to ask you is something we actually explored last week, which is why didn't Democrats push to have these files released while Biden was president?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
So we first brought this up in 2019 under Elijah Cummings on the Epstein files. But we should have brought more attention to this during the Biden years. And I believe that should have been brought to attention years ago, decades ago having talked to these survivors. So I'm not going to give a free pass to previous administrations. I mean obviously we should have. The reality is though, they couldn't have released these files under the Garland and really Bondi couldn't have until we passed the law. Right. It's only when we pass the law that they could then override the privacy concerns of Justice Department policies and get these out. So if you're saying that we should have, as a political matter, as a moral matter, called for the release of these files and accountabilities years before Donald Trump became president, you're absolutely right. In fact, initially Mask and I gave Trump credit when we started this saying, you know, Donald Trump brought this up. He was right to bring it up. We're passing the release act because we want to do what he said he would do in the campaign. We didn't think it was going to be as opposite.
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Interviewer
He was going to go 180.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
And then he just, you know, said, no, no, no, I'm not doing that. And that's where it became a fight.
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Interviewer
I was talking to a journalist last week for the show about specifically Epstein Pfau and they said, quote, I think if it wasn't. I asked about why Democrats didn't do this years earlier and the quote was it wasn't politically beneficial for them. I wanted to know how true is it that the reason why we didn't get that push earlier is because the party itself was also wrapped up in it.
- [18:17]
Congressman Ro Khanna
I believe the fact that there's so many rich and powerful people coming out, some of whom who are Democratic donors, certainly disincentivize the political class from speaking up. And it's one of the reasons Trump and Vance ran on this, saying they're protecting rich and powerful friends. Trump says this to this day. They're Democrats and there are a lot of Democrats in the files. Let's be honest, there are a lot of those friends who are Democratic donors. So I do think that the political class, I don't think that there was some kind of conspiracy, but they weren't. Let's just say they weren't rushing to come to the aid of these survivors. Yeah, they weren't rushing to expose all of this.
- [18:51]
Interviewer
I'm gonna ask about one Democrat in particular. Stacey Plaskett, the non voting Democrat from the Virgin Islands has been proven to have an extremely close relationship with Epstein throughout these files. She texted him during the 2019 committee hearing, took advice for him about what to ask Michael Cohen, President Trump's former fixer. Recent information shows she was still in close communication with him just weeks before his 2019 arrest. Should she be serving in Congress?
- [19:13]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, she needs. She owes the American people an explanation. She should be coming under oath, both in investigation with the Congress or with the Justice Department. And the same rules should apply to her as apply to Bill Gates or Bill Clinton or anyone else. I mean, I've been very consistent about that. Now she, she may have an explanation, just like I don't think like there should be criminal charges against Bill Gates. He should be investigated and there should be a due process. She should, she should have the due process to explain her side of the story.
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Interviewer
Of course, you also represent Silicon Valley and AI and the future of work has become such an important topic. I wanted to make sure we talked about that. You know, you've said that you think income inequality is one of the issues of our time.
- [19:54]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Yes.
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Interviewer
Do you think Silicon Valley agrees?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Not all of it. Some of the billionaires don't like me these days because I'm saying that they should be taxed more. But some of the people, like Jensen Huang again at Nvidia and other tech leaders do agree that we can't have a nation where we have an island of prosperity and seas of despair. I mean, we have 19 trillionaires who have 12.5% of the GDP in terms of what they can buy. It's three times the gilded Age in terms of their wealth relative to the size of the economy. That is staggering, the level of wealth inequality. And yet we have people losing health care, people without childcare, people who can't afford education. This country is being ripped apart because of this inequality.
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Interviewer
On the AI front, Senator Bernie Sanders warned of an oncoming AI tsunami at a recent event with you at Stanford. But he's called for a moratorium on building more AI data centers. You have not. Why?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, I think we need data centers. We need data centers because I also has a lot of good. But what I've called for is the Singapore Finnish model where AI data centers aren't just extractive tools. AI data centers would mean that the company provides renewable energy, that they pay for the electricity costs, that they use dry cooling so that you are not taking water from the land, that any of the energy generated can be put back into geothermal so you're actually good for the climate.
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Interviewer
Is there any risk for Democrats of becoming an anti AI party?
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Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, I say I'm not an AI accelerationist. That's what the Vance President Peter Thiel are. And I'm not an AI doomer. That's the anti. I'm an AI democratist.
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Interviewer
I know you, but I'm saying some folks in your party have kind of embraced some doom about. I would say even Sanders call for a moratorium on data centers. Do you worry that that puts Democrats kind of outside of where the future is headed.
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Congressman Ro Khanna
My belief is that why is AI polling at the lowest in terms of positivity in America compared to any other country in the world? It's because people know that the technology could be good, but they don't trust the institutions, they don't trust our billionaires and they don't trust our politicians to make sure AI isn't going to eliminate their job or cause some crisis. And so I, what I believe is the Democratic Party should not just be anti AI, but what we need to do is provide a framework for how AI actually can be regulated smartly and provide jobs for fix the trust gap. Yeah.
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Interviewer
You know, you also call for reforming Section 230, which right now is the legal shield that lets platforms make their own moderation decisions without being sued for every cost. But if you strip that protection, some have argued that they have two options. They can either stop moderating altogether or you know, let everything fly or they over moderate maybe to avoid legal liabilities. Is that a better world than we have now? I guess I wanted to ask you how is that not handling the government a backdoor into censorship?
- [22:49]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, but I haven't called for the full repeal. I've just said that you should have a repeal for algorithmic amplified violent content. So not just if you post something, but if I'm Google and you're posting something that is incentivizing and violence and I'm amplifying it and showing it to young kids, that I shouldn't be protected from that. And I believe if we strip these platforms of that protection from these more extreme cases, then we would disincentivize the most extreme hate that is being spewed and pushed to a lot of our kids and people around the country.
- [23:29]
Interviewer
You mentioned the kind of big moment for you this year when you backed California's proposed billionaire tax, a one time 5% levy on people worth over a billion dollars. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has said that this would drive wealthy earners from the state, that this would stifle innovation. I wanted you to respond to that point.
- [23:45]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, first of all, there's a choice. And the choice is do we tax billionaires 5% one time over five years or do we have 2 million people lose health care?
- [23:57]
Interviewer
And specific this specific to California, which is California.
- [24:00]
Congressman Ro Khanna
And some of the people who are opposed to this are saying, well the union is so self interested, yes, they're self interested. They're looking out for their home care workers and the nurses aides and people who are doing elder care. And I guess my values are that I'm fine with billionaires paying 5% more, 5% of their wealth when they've had 150% increase, 158% increase so that people don't lose health care.
- [24:24]
Interviewer
The reaction though was swift and was intense. I mean, not only a call to primary you to try to get you out of office, but some folks who I think you know, were former supporters of yours kind of seem to be turning their back. What does it say that a one time 5% tax over five years was enough to break your relationship with some of these folks?
- [24:39]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, I still have relationship with a lot of tech leaders, of course, but what it says is when push comes to shove, people will know who I stand with. I'll stand with the kids who I grew up with in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with working families, not with people in power. My values are one that I want to see this country work for those who are left out, who those who don't have health care, those who don't have childcare. I'm very proud to represent Silicon Valley and proud of the innovation. But they have to understand that there is a broken social contract. There needs to be a social contract where they build wealth, but then that that contributes to the economic security and success of every family and every person.
- [25:17]
Interviewer
You know this, the issues you talk about, you know, we specifically with the questions of like AI and tech felt absent in the 2024 kind of presidential race. I know that this has been a focus of yours and I know that you've traveled across the country kind of making that message clear. Should I see that as a soft launch for a presidential run? And should I see that as you're trying to fix the fact that we weren't talking about this two years ago?
- [25:39]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Well, it's certainly a soft launch to get these issues as part of the national conversation. You know, I am. Someone said, oh there was this Ossoff took your Epstein class for his speech. I said, great, every senator, I'd love every senator to do that. I'd love every senator to take my AI seven principles and congressperson to take them and run with that. I have a vision of where I think this country has to go to solve the economic divides, to make sure we don't have a next gilded age. That's even worse. To make sure that we have economic contract that actually meets the moment to have economic independence and success for every family in every community. Now, whether that means that I'm actually a candidate or not. I'll look at that after the midterms, but I certainly want to be part of the conversation.
- [26:26]
Interviewer
Congressman, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.
- [26:28]
Congressman Ro Khanna
Appreciate it.
- [26:31]
Interviewer
That was California Congressman Ro Khanna. This episode was produced by Jesse Ash. It was edited by Today, Explained executive producer Miranda Kennedy, Fact checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado and mix by Shannon Bahoney. Special thanks to supervising engineer David Tadashore and Christina Vallis, our head of Video. Every Saturday, we'll be in your video and audio feeds with an interesting interview in culture or politics. You can also watch the Saturday interviews this week and every week on the Vox YouTube channel. Subscribe@YouTube.com vox.