Bulwark Takes - Elon Thought He Could Rule Washington

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Elon Musk’s political play didn’t go as planned. Rep. Ro Khanna joins Sam Stein to talk about what Musk got wrong, why grades matter, and how Democrats should push back on both extremes.

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tender, juicy, and its own sauce. Would you look at that? Well, you can't see it, but trust me, it looks delicious. New Mcrispy strips, now at McDonald's. Hey guys, welcome back to The Bullwork. I'm Sam Stein, the managing editor for the site, and I'm joined by Congressman Ro Khanna, a past guest who we've been wanting to have back. Now he's with us.

We're going to be talking a lot of stuff. Doge, George Will, how to get an A in San Francisco. Apparently, it's pretty easy these days. All that. But before we do subscribe to the feed, we appreciate that. Congressman, thanks so much for doing this. I want to start out with Doge because that's what we were talking about when we last did one of these things.

You had some interesting insights that I think now that it appears to be winding down, although actually, I do want to get to that, your predictions on that. At the time, you were like, look, I think, Elon, I think we need to work with Elon or at least try to work with Elon. I think it's important to try to go across the aisle. But you also said, I think Elon's important to try to go across the aisle. But you also said I think Elon's gonna get frustrated very quickly. I Think for three months counts as pretty quickly So why did you do you feel I don't know I say vindicated but what made you say that at the time and?

Are you surprised at all that Elon seems to be? Not just frustrated but like, you know depressed about it all We've all made calls in politics. I've made my sheriff erroneous prediction. No, no. It turned out to be correct because I know Elon's ambition. I've known him for 15 years. And I know he was coming into it saying he's going to save $2 trillion a year because we're in a $2 trillion deficit. And I said, Elon, you just aren't going to be able to do that.

And I said, look, let's start with defense. I wish we could cut defense. I've been voting against the defense budget for the last seven years saying it's going to go over a trillion dollars. You want to start cutting it, let's start with defense. And I guarantee you the Republicans in Congress aren't going to go along with you. And I just figured he would, he didn't understand how entrenched some of those interests were in Congress and was, was, was going to understand, would realize

that he wasn't going to come close to achieving what he wanted to achieve. to realize that he wasn't going to come close to achieving what he wanted to achieve. And Elon's not a type of person who doesn't like getting things his way done. And so I figured he'd get frustrated pretty quickly. It's not a positive, I mean, it's positive that he got frustrated in not being able to dismantle certain federal programs, though he's done damage. But it's not a positive thing that he wasn't able to touch the defense industrial complex. Yeah, you look at it differently than a lot of Democrats. You look at it as a missed opportunity.

I think a lot of other Democrats say, thank God, right? He could have done so much worse. And in fact, a lot of them actually think he did a lot of bad. But then push back. I don't want to, you know, dismantling of USA, the dismantling of some of NIH, though that's more Bobby Kennedy, some of the privacy issues. The way he ended up going about it, I think, was wrong. He could have done things to make government more competitive, more effective.

That's not the route that he's going down. That's what I was going to push back a little bit on, because you mentioned while he ran into entrenched entrants in Congress. In reality, to me at least, it didn't seem like he actually worked all that much with Congress. It seemed like he went in with a sledgehammer, in this case a chainsaw, proverbially, and tried to slash institutions down and got struck back by the courts. Do you think the problem actually was that he didn't work

more with Congress to get them on board, to get them invested in the enterprise? Yes, but I don't think he would have succeeded. I mean, I wish he had tried. I wish he had sat down and said, look, here's how we take money out of the defense department and make it more effective, which is why I got into all this trouble with my party

when I said, oh, we should look at Elon's approach and see if he can disrupt the Defense Department like he did Boeing and Lockheed with SpaceX. But that would have required him sitting down with members of Congress and it would have required him pushing back against people in his forces in his own party. And he wasn't willing to do that. So what did he do? He became more a cultural warrior. He went on this cultural crusade going after USAID, which was a mistake, firing veterans, which was a mistake, not really saving actual parts of money, which impact the $2 trillion bottom line.

And he tarnished his reputation. I mean, he was someone who was universally liked by a lot of people in around this country. I mean, you know, Democrats liked the guy, many Democrats used to like the guy who put rockets up in space. And Obama helped make Elon Musk with Tesla and SpaceX. And then he came in and, you know,

there's this unelected billionaire who was firing veterans who've been in Iraq and Afghanistan and Republicans were like, well, who is he? Why is he firing veterans? As one of the few people who had openness towards working with him, I just need to know, did you ever have any meaningful interactions with Doge up until now? Well, initially I was going to set up a meeting with him and Vivek Ramaswamy and I was going to get Bernie and Warren and try to get 25 people there.

This was right in the beginning and I penned an op-ed about places where I thought the Defense Department could be cut. I tweeted out an exchange text with Elon and Vivek saying, look, why don't we look at the Defense Department, why don't we, we were going to do a meeting where Democrats were going to have our ideas on fossil fuel subsidies or other places that we thought there, there was waste that never happened. And as soon it was clear that Elon wasn't going to work with Congress and soon it was clear that he was very upset at me. I mean, he unfollowed and followed me multiple times. How many times? I lost count. I was a dick on Twitter.

And then he'd appreciate it when I was like, well, we shouldn't be blowing up Teslas. I was like, I'm not for cheering for Tesla stock to go down, but I think you should work with the Constitution and come to Congress. What do you think? I mean, put it this way, what did you feel like you learned about the guy that you didn't know prior to his coming to Washington DC? How ill-suited he is for politics. I mean, I don't agree with a lot of things about Donald Trump, but he's a very effective politician.

I mean, I don't agree with his leadership, but if you heard a Trump rally, you see the effect he has on people, you'd be a fool to underestimate him as a politician. Elon, I think, never realized that it's a messy democracy. In a democracy, we love it that LeBron James is great at basketball. We love it that Taylor Swift is, is a great rock rock star. We love it that Elon is sending up rockets to space, but you know what? You don't get to call the shots a rule in America, the citizens rule. And I think he made the mistake of conflating sort of a celebrity and a

respect that he had in a different sphere and said, well, maybe I can translate this to politics. You know, Donald Trump had to over, you know, I disagree with him, but he, he campaigned for four years for the presidency. He survived two assassination attempts. Like the American people want you to roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty and earn their votes. And I think Elon just didn't get that.

Last question on Elon. Do you think, I mean, he says he's rolling back from politics, not gonna spend as much money anymore, says that Doge is kind of winding down. Do you actually believe that? Well, he's unpredictable. I mean, I think that's, you know, and who knows? But I think there's the one thing,

and I texted him. We'll see if he replies with my tweet. I said, you know, you're opposed to blanket tariffs. You've already said you're opposed to this budget that explodes the deficits. It's now deficits are going to be 8% of GDP as opposed to the Besant target of 3%. So he's grown, the Republicans are growing the budget deficit from 7% under Biden to 8%. I'm sure you're opposed to the ban on international students. You were. He was one. So can you start to speak out? And I guess my view of politics, and maybe

this is where I'm different than some of my Democrats, is I view politics as addition. I view it as- You want to bring Elon back into the fold. I want to bring anyone who's going to get to our side. And I don't think anyone should just be written off completely. I think let's have as many people advocating for our policy. So if Elon's going to start to say, you know, I don't like the fact that we're banning international students, or having blanket tariffs, or having deficit spending of the kind we are That would be helpful in my view. Yeah, we'll see let us know if he responds to your text

George will Has penned an op-ed? in which your name is brought up as I don't know how do it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, but he's talking about how conservatives have really become liberals And what he means by that is they're statists, right? He's like, you know, they're using the state to engineer all these outcomes that they want in education and the economy and so on and so forth. And he basically brings you up as a young, he says young, you're 52.

I don't know if I qualify. Okay, sorry. It's only Washington where they calculate, they calculate like the next election cycle and that becomes your age. Sorry. I didn't mean to add years to your age. What did you make of the op-ed? I thought it was clever, but you took it, you took it very like, um, you complimented

it. It's basically like, you know, I disagree with everything kind of stands for, but he's polite and he loves the country, loves the constitution. That's all we need these days. You know, I disagree with everything kind of stands for, but he's polite and he loves the country, loves the constitution. That's all we need these days. I was almost sad. I was like, George Will has been so disgusted by the Republican Party that he's basically saying, I'll settle for a progressive as long as he doesn't want to ban universities. I think his point is that you're less progressive than the Trump administration because you're

not taking the powers of the state to basically decide what the curriculum should be in these colleges. The point to his piece though is correct. The whole conservative view is that you have limited federal government, limited role of government, and that it's constrained by the constitution and states and civil society. And you have Donald Trump basically saying, I'm not going to be constrained by the courts. I'm going to threaten states like California based on like who's participating in an athletic contest.

I'm going to take away their funds. I'm going to start threatening universities. I'm going to threaten the arts and the Kennedy Center. I mean, it's the most expansive use of the state. In that way, yes, I would be for much more limited role for an American president, to be bound by the Constitution and recognize the role of states and localities and universities and civic society.

We were talking internally in our slacks today about this because, and we're playing off of Adam Seward piece in the Atlantic, that this is kind of a war on knowledge in a way. And you look across the spectrum, it's science, academia, the arts, I forget who it was today. San Francisco decided they want to join in too. Yeah, well that segues into the next one. Let's talk about San Francisco because this popped up in the feed where it looks like they're putting together some guidance around schooling there that essentially basically makes it so that everyone starts out with a B and probably will get an A. I want to say it's grading for equity.

And you had some strong thoughts about it that I do agree with. But some of the standards that they're going to be putting in place seem totally absurd because essentially there's no differentiation. Every kid ends up in some sort of place where they get like a fairly good grade or they pass and they're not really challenged. What I've understood is the anti-intellectualism going around in this country. I mean, San Francisco is basically like, well, if you get a 40% on your exams, you'll get a C, not an F. If you have an 80% and say, getting a B, you'll get an A. If you don't do your homework, no big deal. I mean, it's crazy.

And then, Donald Trump is out there basically taking a sledgehammer to Harvard as if the only people who go to Harvard are people Who are rich and the kids of senators or donors? How about just the kids who studied hard and who want to pursue knowledge? And why why is it you know? I believe we owe a lot more to people who don't want to go to college on the skill crates But do we have to bash the people who want to help move the world forward in philosophy and literature and art and science?

No. No. But you were pushed, you were pushed on, I think this gets into, which is like the Woken Week frame of the Democratic Party. And this has now become a thing where Democrats and the circus groups look Woken Week and you challenge Rahm Emanuel about it. But isn't this sort of why people think that when you have liberal cities whose school boards are saying, you know what, let's make sure that little Johnny doesn't feel offended if he gets a D and

let's put it up to a B plus. There is certain to that that suggest or connotes like, no, we're not comfortable like hurting the feelings of the little kids. And that feels a little weak. Well, that's not the Democratic Party. You have Democrats like me. Sure. Crazy. Well, it's a city that's kind of liberal. Let's be honest about it. Well, you know, the city has done a lot of great things. It's creating AI, creating technology. No one's taking that away, but we're talking about the governance of the

city itself, which is associated with liberalism. If you're going to say that there are excesses of local governance that Democrats need to grapple with, I would say absolutely. We need to focus more on public safety. We need to focus more on actual solutions to homelessness like Matt Mahan and the mayor of San Jose and Dan Lurie are doing in San Francisco. We need to be for excellence and hard work. But you can't say that that's become the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party at its core, in my view, is a party that believes in working folks having a shot and in making sure everyone has healthcare education to achieve the American dream. And that's the essence of our philosophy. Well, one way to give working folks a shot is to make sure that when they're four or five, they all get A's.

You got to start the ladder somewhere. All right, Congressman Ro Khanna, who always got his A's legitimately without great information. I have more A's than not. All right. Well, thank you for joining us. I'm sure you were good. Most people, you know, most journalists are better students than politicians. And, you know, it's got to...

I don't know about that I don't know about that. We'll see Maybe we'll do some quiz show or something. Ro. Thank you so much, man Really appreciate it. If you get that text from Elon, let us know appreciate that Thank you guys for watching on the YouTube's appreciate that to subscribe to the feed and we'll talk to you later