Congressman Ro Khanna argues Donald Trump defeated party establishments by exposing frustration with globalization and interventionism, while criticizing Democrats for defending the status quo. He disputes the constitutionality of Trump's unilateral federal payment pauses, supports federal infrastructure financing alongside private innovation, and advocates local decisions over bans on transgender sports participation. Addressing race, Khanna defends a middle ground against hate speech, clarifies his "river to the sea" stance supports Palestinian rights without endorsing Israel's elimination, and defends Bernie Sanders' grassroots funding. Ultimately, he urges focusing on economic opportunity and national unity rather than cultural polarization. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, look, I often talk about you on the show and I say you're on my kind of short list of sane.
I do obviously want to do a little autopsy on what has happened to the Democrat Party.
I was a Democrat for most of my life.
The last two Democrats, we did a little digging before you came in, the last two Democrats I've had on my show were Bobby Kennedy, who ran as a Democrat, no longer a Democrat, and Tulsi Gabbard, who only four years ago ran.
For some reason, we have become the party of defending institutions and the status quo, and we got painted as the party of military interventionism and war.
Both are a mistake.
We have to recognize that people are really angry, righteously angry.
What's happened in this country for the last 50 years?
Their jobs snatched from them, offshoring the decline of the working and middle class, and a foreign policy blob that has gotten us into a lot of overseas wars that weren't in the American interest.
The single biggest problem of the Democratic Party is we can't be the party of the status quo.
We've got to be a party of change and transformation.
Because even, and we'll dive into what's going on right now, literally just blocks from us, where, you know, right now, Elon Musk and Donald Trump and this administration are trying to just, as I see it...
Open the books and figure out what's going on with our spending.
And you've got Democrats outside of these buildings saying basically, no, don't go in there, don't look and have no idea what's happening with our government.
Well, look, I was one of the Democrats and I've known Elon for many, many years.
I was one of the Democrats when he was appointed who said, OK, if you're going to expose wasteful spending, if you're going to expose the projects that we shouldn't have and have more competition.
Fine.
Let's work on that.
But start with the Department of Defense that's 56% of the federal budget.
Where Elon and I have parted and had a conflict is on the Constitution, and we can get into it.
If you've appropriated something, if we already have laws saying that we're spending this money and he wants to have that money cut, he should come to Congress and say, look, here are the places that the spending is wasteful and vote on it.
And if I vote for that wasteful spending, my constituents will hold me accountable.
But I think the problem people have right now is there's this sense that...
He's going to be making these decisions unilaterally.
I agree that they've exposed certain things that have been wasteful, but I don't think they've taken on the holy grails or the big items yet.
I mean, most of the USAID, we can discuss what should or shouldn't be in there, but the vast majority of spending, as you know, in the federal government...
But is the argument that you think that they won't come up with anything there or that...
You just don't like the order that they're doing it in.
I've heard some other Democrats say that, basically.
Like, you should go to defense first.
I mean, to me, they're dealing with some of the easy stuff first, that we don't need to be funding, you know, trans comic books in Peru, which quite literally USAID was doing, and then you get to it.
So is that not what you think ultimately will happen here going forward, that they'll expose this stuff first and that that will inherently make Congress tighten the belt on some of these things and not do them going forward?
I think what spooked people is the stopping or pausing of payments.
I mean, what really got the country, in my view, upset was when they had, for a few hours, the portals on Medicaid funding stopped.
Now, I'm not a sensationalist.
We open those portals, and right now, you know, the Democrats need to be careful in what's actually happening and not just make up sensational things.
But they have paused certain types of funding.
They paused, for example, the NIH grants, not the direct cancer research, but the funding for the infrastructure to do that research.
Those are things that...
They need to come to Congress for, for example, in the NIH, I would vote for the funding of helping the clinician who's doing cancer research have his electricity and infrastructure paid for.
Now, if Musk wants to argue why that shouldn't be the case, make that argument in Congress.
In fairness, there are conservatives who believe that the Constitution, that Congress's power is simply to set a maximum level.
And my counter-argument to that is, imagine you had Barbara Lee become president from California, and she believes you should have 50% spending on the Pentagon.
Now she's president.
Congress has a $900 billion Pentagon budget.
And Barbara Lee says, OK, I only want to spend $300 billion of it.
I think there would be outrage in this country.
So Congress, in my view, doesn't just have the power to set the mandate maximums.
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So when I see some of your other colleagues or some of the people in the Senate, so Elizabeth Warren or Bernie, and they're outside USAID and they're there, the optics of it, I think, are they don't want anyone to see what the government is doing.
From what I understand, you're basically saying it's okay to open up the books and look at all of this stuff, but then bring it to us and we will deal with the spending.
So this is, again, where I think the Democrats, because they're so hysterical so often, if there's a constitutional issue to be fought here, your position makes sense to me where they seemingly want to hide all of what we're exposing right now.
Well, this is why initially, and I got criticism from my own party when I said that there is waste in government, that we shouldn't be the party that says we are for all government spending.
I'm a progressive.
I want to expand certain government funding.
It's more important for me to be able to convince the American public that that funding is going to be effective.
And so that's why I initially expressed a willingness to work together.
It's the pausing of payments that really had me break and express concern if they want to come to Congress and they want to expose things.
Yeah, I think the basic argument on the other side, and I'm trying to do this as a fair interviewer, and also people know my opinions on all of those things, but I brought you in to hear your opinions.
I think the counter-argument to all of that, in essence, would be this thing is so broken.
It's so obviously wasteful.
It's so deeply corrupt.
It's so across every institution that there's no way to break it properly, in like the most proper way, where I think you're looking for something a little more nuanced that maybe is not real politic or something like that.
Well, Musk would say, I didn't come to Washington to do a report to Congress, and Congress hasn't been able to get this wasteful spending under control for years.
Though the Clinton administration and the Clinton presidency did cut a fair amount of federal civil servants in the reinventing government.
But the point is, the Constitution matters.
The Constitution is sacred.
That's what makes us different from China or Russia or other countries.
And I have more faith in the American public.
I have faith that if you come with some of these crazy spending programs that aren't effective and you force members of Congress to vote on them, that you would get more effective government.
Now, I'm not speaking to the constitutionality of it.
That will be for the courts to work out.
Are they technically allowed to do this?
But I think the average person thinks that no matter how much would be exposed, no matter how much nonsense would be exposed, that Congress would just keep it going.
And I think that that's the feeling right now when they see these Maxine Waters and everybody else yelling, screaming out there, protecting these things that are just throwing our money away.
I agree with you that there is a feeling of Congress being broken, and that's what they're appealing to, and that's why Trump's numbers still haven't fallen, because people say, oh, he's doing things.
But there's a deeper principle which I do think at some point will backfire, and that is as soon as you have a stop of payment that's for something people really want or really like, they're going to say, well, who made that decision?
And so my view is actually they'd be more effective if they were able to make the argument to the American people and have the votes.
I'll tell you where we've got to get back to classical liberalism, and that is that we've got to have more exchanges of ideas, not be judgmental of people who have a different cultural or social viewpoint.
Recognize that you can't cancel people or police language or tell people exactly how they should express themselves and be more willing to mix it up and have argument and have real debate.
And to me, if there's one challenge the Democratic Party has had is sometimes we came off as condescending or unwilling to debate people on the merits of the idea, and we just throw out labels.
And that ultimately is not persuasive.
And so you can have a...
Progressive politics, which in my view are based on the vast income inequality and lack of economic opportunity for people, but we have to be willing to debate the idea.
Do you think it's possible that we just don't need government as much as we used to?
That now because of technology, because of the way we live and the ability to travel more and the size of the country, that maybe a hundred years ago as we were going through our industrial revolution, we needed the government to do an awful lot.
And there's just ways now to do things that the government is not particularly good at.
And that might be some of the tension we're seeing right now.
I think for certain types of innovation, you may not need government as much in terms of the development of AI and the development of quantum computing algorithms.
A lot of that innovation is happening in the private sector.
But where you do need government is to scale factories, to scale production.
That's huge capital costs, and those are not often borne by venture capitalists in the private sector.
What you do need government for is the uses of AI. Are we going to use AI to cure disease?
Are we just going to use it for the next chat box?
Where you do need government, in my view, is to make sure everyone has health care and has decent public schools.
So I am a big believer that a lot of innovation is taking place.
Technology is taking place in the private sector.
85% of jobs are in the private sector.
But if we're going to compete with China, we need a strong, smart government.
Not a communist government like China, but a smart strategic government.
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So where are you at on schooling?
I'm actually not totally sure.
Are you for school choice?
I mean, we're seeing the Department of Education kind of be packed away at the moment.
Well, first, I would say you really do have to look at all of it appropriately, which is what we're doing right now, because just saying we're funding something doesn't mean that the money is being used appropriately or anything else.
So that, I think we would agree on that part.
So that would be the first part.
The second part, I would say, is I don't know that it needs to be done at the federal level.
I think that that's what most people are realizing right now, that if I happen to live in Florida, we have no state income tax and have extremely good schools, which it used to be the joke of the country, Florida, because it was all the old people who weren't paying taxes and the schools weren't good, but DeSantis has largely changed that.
I think the more you do things at local levels and remove the bureaucracy here...
The better things will be for people.
So I don't think that there should—I wouldn't make the argument that you should have no directive.
You could have a basic directive from the federal government that there are basic things we should be trying to teach, but I think they should be guidelines for the states.
More than forcing everybody to have one type of education.
But I would like to talk about the school choice thing as well.
I mean, first of all, I don't know how much Florida, my guess is Florida has a lot of schools and working class neighborhoods that also get federal funds.
But Florida is a fairly rich state.
You know, a lot of people from Silicon Valley, after they make their money, or New York or other places, go there.
I mean, I'm very big on school choice, and we have twin two-year-olds that I'm not sure where they're going to go or anything else.
I think it likely will be homeschooled or pot or something like that, despite the good schools in Florida.
But I would be much more for just a tax credit.
To parents to decide whether it's going to be the public, you know, if the public school is no good, then don't send them to the public school.
And then everyone has to make their choices accordingly.
And then you do either the charter school or the private school or whatever else.
But do you mind if I ask how old you are?
I'm 48. You're 48. So I'm 48. I was going to say, I think we're about the same age.
And it's interesting because you said that you're a product of public schools.
I am as well.
All my schools, I went to SUNY Binghamton for college, the University of New York.
Elementary school, junior high, high school, all public schools.
And I think, and when I heard you say that, that's why I was asking your age, is I think things worked, basically.
If you're our age, if you're Gen X, and I think that's partly why Elon is involved in this now, the Gen X people were the last generation that the system basically worked.
And growing up in New York, we probably had very similar public educations.
But that would be very, very fundamentally different than what the average kid at a public school in Philly or in Long Island where I grew up is learning now.
So when you see sort of the woke stuff that clearly we did not have at going to elementary school and junior high, when you see that they're confusing children about their gender or teaching them that the actual founding of America was 1619 and not 1776 or the neo-racism— Are they doing that?
What you want the start of America to be is the Declaration of Independence that says all people are equal because that's the aspiration of the American project.
Talk about America being an extraordinary place, an extraordinary experiment.
And what makes us extraordinary is also to understand the things we've overcome in our history.
The question is, don't you think 80% of Americans, Republicans, or Democrats have that view?
And you've got a—I'm not saying that you don't have some people on the left who'd say the country started in 1619, but you also have people on the right who want to make that the issue to polarize.
Well, thankfully, it's been a good couple weeks for us.
But I would say that the people with influence in the Democrat Party, so the Bernies, the Elizabeth Warrens, the AOCs, whether you like these people or agree with them on everything, the people that seemingly have cultural influence, I don't think that they're fundamentally proud of America or believe in capitalism or believe that the...
So I don't have the exact same take on him, but I would also say that the revolution is eating him, which is why he's largely irrelevant at this point, other than kind of screaming with RFK, where he seemingly is defending big pharma, while Bobby's basically like, could we just look into what these organizations are doing?
He got upset there because Bobby Kennedy made a point, in my view, that was...
Just unfair.
And I'm not, there are things that Kennedy, look, what Bobby Kennedy is talking about, we want to look at our food system and make sure that we don't have too much sugar in our sodas and dyes in our food.
Fine.
But he said to Bernie Sanders, look, you're getting all this money from big pharma.
And the truth of the matter is, there are a lot of things you can criticize Bernie Sanders from.
But he was not getting money from the pharmaceutical companies.
He and I are on a bill that actually would say that Americans shouldn't pay money.
More money than an average person overseas for drugs.
Big Pharma hates it.
He had money coming from a lot of the employees of those companies who worked there because he raised $200 million and some of them were giving $20 or $30.
Bernie was saying, no, you're just tallying it up, basically.
He was saying, no, you took $1.5 million.
That's separate than all the individual donations.
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Putting Bernie aside, I don't want to get too lost in Bernie.
I do want to focus a little bit on the gender stuff and the race stuff, because I think if there's anything that drove...
This Trump wave.
I think it largely were those two things.
Probably the gender thing more than anything else.
I don't think this was really an election about trade or even economics or anything else.
So my view of why that ad worked, you know, Kamala is for they, them, Donald Trump is for you, is that it was about priorities.
People didn't believe that our party was singularly focused on their economic well-being.
They're getting good jobs.
They're getting health care.
They're getting education.
And they thought we were being distracted by things that affect a small percent of the population.
Look, my view is I believe everyone should be treated with dignity and have the freedom to be who.
But I'm not going to come and be judgmental of people who may disagree with me, but I'm going to stand, in my view, for in this country, we aren't cruel.
We treat everyone with respect.
And if someone wants to identify as the gender they are, then how is that hurting you or how is that hurting anyone else?
Let's focus on what it's going to take to beat China and build good jobs and have health care.
And my view is that something that...
We can agree to disagree on some of these issues respectfully and focus on what's going to matter to most Americans.
I believe that people have a biological sex at birth.
But I think that there are people who believe that they are misidentified, and I choose to identify with a gender, and that's who they think they need to be to fulfill their happiness.
And in our country, our Constitution says everyone has the right to pursue happiness, and if that's what they believe, why shouldn't they have the freedom to do that?
And we're a kind country, a decent country.
Let's not be cruel to people who have that belief.
If you don't have that belief for your family, you can...
You know, you can articulate that for yourself and your family.
And to me, if you're 18 and you're a guy and you want to put on a dress and call yourself a different name, as long as you treat me with respect, I'll treat you with respect.
So I'm with you on that.
But you do believe that there are two biological genders and that they're just making a choice to identify with the other one.
I'm trying to clean this up.
Well, I believe that people—I believe that you're born— You're not actually changing your gender.
Well, their gender, which is what I'm focused on, is what they self-identify.
Yes.
There's a biological birth, but then there's the gender, and that gender sometimes conflicts with what the biological birth was.
And my view is what we should do is respect people's self-expression of their gender because it doesn't affect my life.
I mean, it doesn't.
And in this country, we want people to pursue their happiness.
And as you know, we're talking about less than, what, 1% of the population.
Frustrated with on both sides is while China is focused on investing in new industry and focused on leading in the world and on Taiwan, our politics, by your own point, seem caught up in how we're going to treat people who are transgender.
Why can't we just agree to give you some space and respect and focus on the things that are...
That are really going to affect whether America remains a preeminent nation.
I think the issue really is that it's because so much of this has been taught I mean, we know there is a social contagion, particularly with young girls.
There's a ton of research on this that now are identifying as boys, but it's because so many of them have been taught this in our public schools.
Off the top of my head, I don't know the exact percentage, but Abigail Schreier wrote an incredible book called Irreversible Damage about just that, that there's a social contagion element to this where suddenly because...
So many kids are being taught in seventh grade health class that you can change your gender.
I'm glad to hear you say that you can't change your biological reality, but that it then leads these kids to all sorts of other confusions and everything else.
So, okay, I can at least get on board whether it's a federal issue or not.
I think that that's, you know, do you leave this to the states or whatever?
I don't think those, putting aside the skill level, which you're sort of whittling it down to the skill level, I mean, I don't think a boy should be in a girl's locker room.
There's one thing about playing a sport, and then there's the separate issue of how do we make sure that people have a sense of belonging, and then at the same time that people feel safe and comfortable.
In most cases, I mean, maybe this is...
Something in California, or most cases where they have transgender kids playing in sports, a lot of times people don't care at 7th, 8th, 9th grade.
Where it becomes an issue is these really competitive things in college and where people feel like they have a physical advantage.
But what I've said, and I did this whole conversation with Megyn Kelly on this, is...
I understand that there's a concern for safety for girls in their locker room and making sure that they feel safe.
I also understand that there's a real genuine concern for belonging and people who are transgender who face a lot of discrimination.
It's a difficult issue.
Why don't we recognize people are coming at it in good faith and try to let communities figure this out and what makes sense for the school districts and communities?
So let's move to some of the race stuff, because I think the other part of this is that I think that the Democrat Party has largely become an anti-white, mostly Mostly racist party.
Again, I had you on my short list of Democrats that maybe don't buy into all of this stuff.
But, I mean, we play them on my show day after day of this crop of progressives, AOC, and now Jasmine Crockett seems to be the new one right now.
And we hear it from Bernie, and we hear it even from Elizabeth Warren, and just this endless assault on white people and white supremacy and all of this stuff.
I mean, well, first off, I guess, do you think Donald Trump or Elon Musk or any of these people are white supremacists or racists or anything like that?
So, there was a guy, 25-year-old guy, who made social media posts who said to normalize Indian hate and who said that we should repeal the 64th Civil Rights Act, which says that if you're a private business, you need to serve blacks or whites or Indians.
You can't choose to discriminate.
And who made comments about eliminating all of Palestine.
I do think that person's tweets or social media posts were racist.
Now, do I think he is irredeemably racist?
No, I think those tweets were racist.
I said, if you want to rehire him, I don't think he should be banned from life for a job.
I don't think he should be banned from life from a federal government job.
I think I'm fine, actually, if you want to hire him today after three months of that.
And I got criticized for being willing to say that.
But he's got to retract those statements.
And he's got to have some public apology for statements that I do think were racist.
When I put that out, I thought that was kind of the middle ground.
But in essence, what JD said, and I'm roughly paraphrasing here, he was basically saying something that I tend to agree with, which in essence he was saying that this is kind of shitposting, that people put up all of these crazy things online all the time, and that the idea that this kid was inherently racist or something else...
Because he obviously is married to an Indian woman, and you're Indian, so there's a common cause here.
But I think his broader point was, if we're ever going to move past any of this nonsense, then we have to be very forgiving to kids that grew up with a phone in their pocket in a world that was very different than ours that say a bunch of horrible crap online.
It's just part of life.
As opposed to maybe, I don't know, a business leader who said some things.
Privately about race that maybe could be construed differently or something like that.
I mean, I can give you a long list of Democrat politicians in the last week saying terrible things about white people and, I mean, again, Jasmine Crockett and AOC constantly claiming that white people are white supremacists or...
But look, people saying that they ideologically believe that there are certain things that had white supremacy is different than talking about the specifics of white people.
You know, let's normalize hate against white people, right?
That's what he basically said.
Imagine if he said, let's normalize hate against Jewish people or let's normalize hate against any group.
All I'm saying is have accountability for that.
I guess the question in this country is this.
Can you extend grace?
Yes.
Can you make sure that we're not calling everyone a racist or a sexist if you disagree with someone?
Yes.
But can we also realize that there actually are things that are racist and sexist that we shouldn't be saying and hold people to account when they do that?
I think they mean, and I disagree with this, but I think they mean they want one state in that area that's a multinational state with Jews in Palestine with equal rights for everyone.
I don't...
I believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish democratic state and I, for a two state solution, not a one state solution.
But that's what they, that's what they mean.
But the point is, you know, we would be, we would be better off, you know, you should have, have Rashida Tlaib on your show.
Because, because I think if we're not, one of the great things about America is that we, if we can't have these conversations here, what hope is there for peace there?
I mean, so I condemned...
The River to the Sea chant.
I voted to condemn it.
But I don't think everyone who's saying that chant means that they want to eliminate the Jewish people.
It's been very refreshing, and I think if there were more Democrats like you, I think politics would look very different.
What do you think the future is for you politically?
because when I hear you, I think there's a lot of reasons that someone like you, like Tulsi or Bobby, could really be sort of the more liberal wing of a very wide tent Republican Party.
That makes more sense to me than trying to hang on to what I think has become a very radical party.
Look, I think that what Donald Trump has done Is defeated the establishments of both parties.
And I say, look, Trump took over the Republican Party in a matter of years.
I mean, I remember talking to Kevin McCarthy after January 6th, and I said, you know, Kevin, I think Trump may still be your nominee.
He said, oh, he's done.
No way.
Never.
And so what Trump shows is that people...
Dislike the status quo.
They're frustrated with a lot of the forces of globalization and the forces that took away their livelihoods and their dignity, and they're looking for a new approach in both parties.
I want to lead that from the Democratic Party, and what you can be assured of are a few points.
One, I deeply love and believe in this country, and you can't fake that.
You know, it's not about putting American flags at some convention.
It's about a belief that, look, I grew up outside Philadelphia.
I was born in Philadelphia.
I grew up in Bucks County, 99% white.
I had teachers who believed in me, little league coaches who believed in me, even though I couldn't hit this country.
You know, I got to represent Silicon Valley, arguably the biggest wealth generation place in the world as an Indian American of Hindu faith.
I love this country.
There's no other country like it.
This is an exceptional country.
And all of the policies that I care about come from that deep love of country that I want to see people have economic industry here, economic opportunity in places left out, healthcare education.
We can disagree on the specifics, but I'm on Team America.
And the second thing I want to assure people is...
You may disagree with me on transgender rights.
You may disagree with me in my spat with the vice president.
But I'm not in it to have moral judgment, to have condescension.
I fundamentally believe in the wisdom, ultimately, of the American people and that we have to extend some grace to each other as citizens because our challenge is to be the preeminent country in the 21st century and not let China do that.