Some More News - Even More News: Ro Khanna on Medicare For All, Bernie, Economic Populism, and JD Vance

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Hi. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna joins Katy, Cody, and Jonathan to talk about the most devastating impacts of the Big Beautiful etc. bill, his belief that economic issues will help break the Trump spell, and why some Democrats are afraid to go on TV and hard-hitting podcasts like this one.Edited by Nick MundyPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.com/YouTube: https://youtube.com/@smnPluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle III, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the Grandview shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in the supernatural thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series.

Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Hi, hello, welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll. Hello, Katie Stoll. Welcome to me, the first and only, but probably not Cody Johnston. How are you doing? I'm doing well.

I'm doing great, actually, because we've got a fantastic guest with us here today. Democratic member of Congress representing California's 17th district since 2017, Rep. Ro Khanna. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Katie, thank you everyone, really excited about being on. Oh, yeah, of course. It's the first and only podcast. How could you not be stoked to be here? Before

everyone jumps down my throat? Yes. Yes. I hear you. Jonathan is also here. Hi. Let's not waste any time on me. Fair. We will. We wanted to get started by talking about the bill. I don't know what it's called now. Sch. Schumer changed the name, but it's the one big, beautiful bill act. The only bill Trump will pass. We had you booked previously and then it passed the House. And so you obviously had things to do. But now it's passed. Now it's happening.

And you go to a lot of red districts, you're talking to people, many of whom are about to see their hospitals close and their healthcare go away, maybe now, maybe after the midterms, we'll see. Is this kind of thing breaking through in your conversations with people? It is. It's the cruelty of snatching away something that the government has given. I mean, we are taking away people's food assistance. We are taking away healthcare. This means if you're disabled and you were relying on transportation to be funding, that is now at risk. It means that if you had a home care folks, that is at risk. It means if you were on the exchange, if you had home care folks, that is at risk.

It means if you were on the exchange, if you get your insurance on the exchange, premiums are going to go up about 100% this year. By the way, it's a tax on everyone's healthcare premiums because hospitals can't charge Medicaid and so they're going to make up for it by charging private health insurance. So this is hitting the pocketbook of many working class and middle class Americans and they're saying, why? Okay, you're taking this away from us. You're screwing us.

Why? And the answer is because they want to give the ultra wealthy in my district, Silicon Valley, $14 trillion of wealth, a tax break, the top 0.1% in this country will get $1 million a year in tax breaks. Now, if you think Donald Trump, the people who voted for Donald Trump were elected to give the billionaires and millionaires in California and Silicon Valley tax breaks and take away Medicaid and food assistance from the heartland and from people across this country, then you're for this bill.

But most people are not, they feel betrayed. Do you think, so you are seeing that breakthrough during your listening tour, because it's hard to get a gauge online, especially in our own separate districts, our own separate areas, about whether or not people are even fully realizing the impacts of what this bill,

especially since so much of this is going to come into play much further down the line, which of course there's been a lot of conversations about how to keep this conversation up in front and center so that people don't forget to connect the dots as to who did this. But yeah, I am curious about that, to know like when does the dam break for people?

The town halls I've been doing, people have been showing up, they're showing up with wondering what's going to happen to their elderly parent in a long term care facility. They're showing up with a kid saying, you know, my child was born with a NICU for a couple months, now needs a home care nurse. What's going to happen to that nurse? I mean, these are personal things. They're not showing up about the politics. They're showing up because they're fearful and concerned. And I think that we need to make sure we're continuing to highlight real stories, stories about people who are being impacted, stories about hospitals that may be closing, families that aren't getting the food assistance and the kids who are suffering, and that we can't

let up because unfortunately, American politics moves in very quick news cycles and the danger is that a year from now while people's healthcare premiums have gone up and when they've lost Medicaid, Donald Trump is going to try to blame Barack Obama. I mean, that's his go-to playbook. But we need to let people know relentlessly every day why this is happening and then highlight the stories of people in these communities. Yeah.

And you've sort of hit on something about not just this bill, but sort of the administration as a whole and this era, which is taking stuff away. They're gutting everything, they're cutting everything, they're firing everybody, they're getting rid of these programs. And eventually, ideally, hopefully, at some point, Democrats will have at least control of one of the houses of Congress, maybe both houses of Congress. We don't know what the future holds. Are there talks between you and your colleagues and folks about what would even be the first thing to do once Democrats have some more power to reverse any

of this? There's so much rebuilding that needs to happen from all of this just wanton destruction going on. Well, we need to stop the destruction. And then of course, when we have a Democratic president rebuild and have resilience in the agencies that they've got it, it's going to be a Herculean test. Rebuild the NIH, rebuild the USAID, rebuild the State Department, rebuild the EPA, make sure that they can do what they've done, reassign people and fire people without any cause, make sure that we're building these agencies that have been totally gutted. I mean, they have gutted. Their proposal is going

to gut 34%, one third of science research in this country. I don't think people understand how much damage they're doing, not just to people's lives, but to the long-term future of America. And it's very ideological. You're right, they're taking things away. Why? It's very similar. If you read, and I'm a student of history, Andrew Mellon was the Secretary of Treasury under Hoover's administration.

And he basically said, look, not many Americans are dependents. They don't work hard. The great people are the ones who do business and are the business leaders. And we need to take away and destroy all of these government programs so that the great enterprising people will be able to lead and will be able to lead the future. And that's what Hoover did. And we had the Great Depression. And you got the same mentality surrounding Donald Trump, that sort of folks who need help from government, whether they've gone to public school like me, or whether they've gotten student loans, or whether they get Medicaid, or whether they get food assistance, that they're not the hardworking ones. They're not the enterprising ones. It's the Elon Musk's that build the country. And so let's just destroy these government

programs. It's an ideological assault. And we have to understand that it's going to have the same consequences as what happened in the 1920s. You seem pretty confident that the institutions will hold. You said when we have a Democratic president, I'm like, okay. Yeah, please tell me more about that. But it doesn't feel like, obviously obviously the Supreme Court's not helping out. We constantly hear these stories from members of Congress like, oh, well, when I talk to

my Republican colleagues in private, they all say X, Y, and Z, but no one ever does anything. That never goes anywhere. They never actually, you know, Tom Tillis, after he says he's not going to run again, will start going on the news and saying bad things about Donald Trump. Yeah, when it's safe. But right, the spell doesn't break, the dam doesn't break. So what institution can save us?

The bond markets. And I think that's the one thing. The bond markets. Yeah, I know, right? The only thing that Donald Trump gets, gets spooked by is that as he gets close to teetering to destroying the economy. But look, I was hopeful and cheering on the Supreme Court initially, and now they've really had a series of decisions that are giving Donald Trump the authority to really wreck the constitution in terms of rights of people in this country.

It's scary, but it's why we need to take back Congress. One of the things we'll be able to do is subpoena power. We'll be able to hold people accountable who were part of Doge, including Musk. We'll be able to make sure that agencies are having to answer to the Congress. for those people who say, oh, it doesn't matter, it's not going to make a difference, let me tell you who thinks it matters. Donald Trump. That's why he's trying desperately to redistrict five seats out of Texas amidst a decade of redistricting. If Donald Trump thought he could just do whatever he wanted in Congress in a manner, he wouldn't be directing all his political energies in terms to try to save Congress.

He knows that the minute we get Congress back, we have subpoena power, we can at least stop the damage. And it's a sum check on Trump. And so all of our energies, in my view, should be focused on these red districts where people had literally voted to take it away. I like that phrase. It's simple, taking things away from people to give billionaires and millionaires tax breaks in this country. So you're off the bring Elon back train? Yeah, a quick question. the bring Elon back train? Yeah, a quick question.

A week back. You know, that was, I love the press. I never said misreported, but what I had said about it is I've never taken a dollar from Elon. I don't think we should take money from Elon. I don't think we should have Elon be part of a super product. But Barack Obama made Elon Musk. I was in the Obama administration.

The administration gave him the loans for Tesla. Ash Carter gave him the contracts for SpaceX. He understands that the Trump agenda on banning international students, by the way, he was an international student, banning the awful tariffs, repeal of the elected vehicle tax rate. Can you imagine they're repealing 30% the solar and wind production tax rate and they're having a tax credit 2.5% for coal? I mean, it's just the most reactionary policies. Wild. Anyway, so my point is instead of having his 200 million followers in feeding them things to attack Democrats,

I was just saying, let's have him focus on the atrocious policies of Trump and make sure that platform isn't the cesspool it was when it was going after Vice President Harris and Tim Walz. But I do not believe that he should be, that we should take his money, that he should be part of the party or that we want his support.

Yeah, his cesspool is getting even more cesspool-y the last few days of special. Grock thinks Cash Patel is you, which I'm sure you saw. Yeah, I know. This is just... I saw that. I mean, I, you know, I was like, okay, that's it. My career's done. I'm getting confused for Cash Patel. The greatest insult.

I used to take offense when they could confuse me for Rishi Sunak, who used to be the Indies Prime Minister of Britain, but now I was like, just call me, confuse me for Rishi Sunak, not Kash Patel. It only gets worse. So on this sort of rebuilding topic, I think that's such a, it's such a herculean task to even think about and implement.

But also you're one of the few, I think folks in Congress are in the Democratic Party, maybe one day one of the some, and hopefully one day one of the many, Democrats who support Medicare for all is something that you're pretty consistent on. And in talking about these sort of like support. Medicare for all is something that you you're pretty consistent on. And I in talking about these sort of like these

backroom conversations and and it's rebuilding. You're also hoping to build something for everybody that can't be taken away. And I guess I'm there's a recent poll out I think two days ago about Medicare for all being supported by I think 63 percent, something like

that and polls fluctuate. But is there are there conversations that you have with your colleagues behind the scenes to sort of, you know, convince them of these policies that are that are good, that are popular, that could unite the party with a unifying message of here's what something good that we want to do for everybody. Because I know there's obviously resistance to these ideas in 2020. The primary was all some form of Medicare for all, whether it's Medicare for all who wanted or a public option or something, it was very clear that health care was in the forefront of people's minds. And then it sort of dissipated. Do you talk to your colleagues about this in trying to just convince them

that this is the right path? Or is there any, is there, I'm sorry to, I'm gonna piggyback. Go ahead. Where has that gone? Where has that gone? I'm so befuddled. I, and I, this is all piggybacked on to yes,

reaching across the aisle, doing a listening tour, finding what other people care about, how we can reach across the aisle. But we are ourselves so fractured, but that was a huge thing. I'm like, I want to know if there is any incentive at all to be talking about this now, because it feels like the opportunity to. Well, look, I co-chaired Bernie Sanders' campaign in 2020 and I backed him in 2016 largely because of his support for Medicare for all and his support for taxing wealth and billionaires, which I, on the latter point, I just want to make

a quick point. I don't understand how that taxing billionaires is a hard vote for 434 other members of Congress. I'm the, that present the richest district in the world. Half the billionaires are in my district. I've been saying tax them. They keep sending me back to Congress. This should be a no-brainer for people representing every other district. Tax the billionaires so we can fund basic things like health care, child care in this country. But Medicare for all is a no-brainer for a few reasons. First, it would be much harder to take away. With the Affordable Care Act, which I supported,

I was so proud of, they've repealed basically 40% of it. That's what the cuts to the Medicaid expansion does. That's what the cuts to the subsidies does. They're going to gut almost 40% of the Affordable Care Act. They can take away Medicaid. When you expand Medicare, first to 60, 55, 45, that will be very hard to take away. That is the sustainable path to building healthcare for everyone. Second, if you care about rebuilding this country, and I have a platform of new economic patriotism, Reindustrialize America. You know, one of the biggest reasons we can't reindustrialize this country, one of the biggest reasons we can't re-industrialize this country, one of the biggest challenges to manufacturing is that it costs $25,000 to hire a worker to provide healthcare for their family.

And this is an enormous drain on the American economy. It's one of the reasons that we've had seen so much manufacturing going to China. So if you care just from an economics point of view, providing universal healthcare with Medicare for all will actually free up businesses to hire people to increase wages, to build manufacturing. So I make the economic argument to my colleagues. I have made the argument about its permanence and I made the argument that people are angry. I mean, my health care, United healthcare denies, I mean, not anything critical, but a nasal spray I needed denied or something. I mean, if this is happening, go remember Congress, think about what's happening to people and people

who have long-term chronic illnesses. It is an atrocity, our healthcare system. And if our party was simple, we said, we're all going to get behind Medicare for All. We're all going to get behind taxing billionaires. We're all going to say that we don't want war in Iran instead of half the people cheerleading Donald Trump to go strike them. Then the people wouldn't be saying, what does the Democratic Party stand for? That we could be a party that's for good jobs here, low costs, and against war. Instead, I think our problem is not, okay, we don't do enough podcasts, we should, or we don't go on Joe Rogan. I think our problem is we don't have a clear principle of what we're going to stand for. And this is one of the mistakes of people

looking at Zoran's campaign and saying, well, the key is let's go do man on the street videos. First of all, please don't do it if it're not, if it's not natural. Some of those things can be very... Right. Oh. Absolutely. So cringe. Okay. So like not everyone is like born to the son of a filmmaker. Mirror Nights is like a great filmmaker and not everyone has Zoran's charisma. I certainly don't. So like I'm not saying don't be in your comfort zone, but don't copy him or something. Secondly, that's not the main reason Zoran won. Zoran won because he was in a platform., but don't copy him or something. Secondly, that's not the main reasons Oran won. Oran won because he had a platform. Now I don't agree with 100% of his platform,

but he stuck with his platform and he had a vision, a substantive vision. And that's, I think, what the party is missing is a fresh, substantive vision. What don't you agree with? Well, I- I had a different question, but yeah, that's a good one. Well, I like the free buses. The childcare I would do at a federal level. I have a $10 a day

childcare proposal. So I think you need a federal solution to childcare. On rent, I would do, I can serve for rent freeze. I support Biden's rent cap where I would take away federal tax credits for rent that was going higher than inflation and I would exempt new building for rent. And then on the Middle East, I'm very concerned about obviously and criticized the bombing in Gaza and I voted against the funding to Netanyahu for that aid. But I do believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish democratic state, along with a Palestinian state. So there's nuanced differences. But the point is, I've endorsed Zoran.

He's our nominee. I think he's going to add his laser focus and affordability is terrific. But my point is less about whether you agree with all of his platform, my platform. There's substantive positions that he took and he didn't back away from them. And I feel like part of the problem is we're all talking about the messaging and there's something deeper with the Democratic Party is people want to see that we're willing to fight, not fight Trump, fight the interests that have led to a status quo in a system that has left people without economic security

and hope. I have a lot of conversations with people that disagree with me politically, so I respect that urge to get a pulse on what other people want. But bringing it back to the substantive vision, I agree. I think that across the aisle, that's what people want. We want real practical ideas that are authentic and speak to the problems we are facing that are overwhelming. You talk about childcare. Yeah, that's a winning issue for people. I have been banging the drum. This,

I feel like we've got a home insurance crisis looming, that people in my community talk about nonstop losing their home insurance, not being able to ensure their homes. You know, businesses, people tend to agree that we are basically living in a corporate oligarchy and They want to be able to open their small business. They want help. And I think that if Democrats have felt in a bit of a disarray for a while about scrambling for the right message, the right thing that's going to play instead of putting out substantive policies, like you have just highlighted as well. I don't know if there's a question in that.

I'm just emphatically agreeing. I think some of it can be very simple, right? I mean, the policy has to be complex when we get there, but we can say, look, we are a party that believes that we should have Medicare for all. We're a party that believes we should have child care at $10 a day. We believe that this country deserves a raise,

and we need to raise the wage to a livable wage. We believe we should be taxing millionaires and billionaires more. We believe we shouldn't have wars of choice in the Middle East and no wars. And we have a policy of how we're going to create good paying jobs across this country. And those are simple, memorable things. But instead, because we are afraid often of offending a certain interest or a particular donor or being painted as too progressive, what we end up doing is a very complicated policy laid in brief with all these exemptions and 15-point plans. the A, they don't resonate, and B, they sound like the status quo

that we've been at for the last 30, 40 years. I'll tell you one thing that never, like we don't need more of the same. We need a new, fresh, substantive vision. And I think that's what all of us should be building. ["Summer Movie Lovers"] Movie lovers! Summer movies are about action, action, action! And also comedy, romance,

drama, crime, spy stuff, mystery, and monsters. But especially action! Pew pew pew pew pew! And you can feel the explosive action all summer long on Pluto TV with movies like Gladiator, Beverly Hills Cop, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, Great Gravy, Good Burger, Stealth Gravy, Gravy of the Fireflies, The California Coconut Kids Club, Gravy from the Heart, The Peter Falks story episode one, Four Brothers, Star Trek, Camp Down Gravy, sing this song, and Pour Me a Foster's, you didgeridoo. So bring the action with you and stream for free on all your favorite devices. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. I want to circle back to Silicon Valley, which you mentioned you represent.

And yes, you say, let's tax the billionaires, but you also want to give Silicon Valley entrepreneurs a lot of stuff. You talk about building AI data centers in the US. You said last year being against Bitcoin is like being against cell phones. It's like being against laptops. And I don't see AI and Bitcoin as part of a substantive vision for the future. I think you're trying to entice a lot of people from Silicon Valley to come back, right? A lot of them ditched the Democratic Party for Trump.

A lot of them have moved to Texas. That doesn't enter your mind. You're on Bitcoin 100%. Well, I think AI and Bitcoin are different. I mean, AI is not going anywhere, and AI is going to have a transformative impact on the country. I think what we have to do is figure out how we're going to make sure that we have a people-oriented policy for AI and all the gains of AI doesn't continue to accumulate to the capital class. Let me give you a few examples of things we need, in my opinion.

We need to shift the tax code to incentivize hiring people instead of machines. Right now, Darren A. Smoglow at MIT has written about how our tax code allows for expedited depreciation if you hire machines or robots, whereas if you hire a person, you got to pay the healthcare costs and payroll taxes. So I would have a huge hiring tax credit to make hiring people much more preferable than automation. Second, I would make sure that we have a future workforce administration that is able to hire people, especially in entry-level jobs and after high school and college. And if they're being displaced at a certain point in the private sector, third, I'd make sure we have many more labor protections and workforce protections so that workers have a say over the adoption of AI.

And fourth, I would have AI academies everywhere because the reality is one, you're going to need new jobs in AI, asking people how to adopt AI to businesses, what questions to ask AI, whether you want to be an electrician, a carpenter, a nurse, having AI literacy I think is going to be critical. And so I've called for trade schools and AI academies. So I think how we manage the AI revolution in a way that doesn't exacerbate the wealth gaps of globalization is going to be a key challenge. On Bitcoin, my view is just it's here to stay.

It's like digital gold. There are a lot of people who have it. There are a lot of people who use it as a store of value. It's actually more used outside the United States than in the United States. And I guess I don't think there's much value being against it. I don't, whether you think there's utility to it or not, it's like, is there, what's the utility to gold? It's just a new form of, of, of store of value that a lot of young people, young people use.

But I don't view it as transformative in the way I view AI as transformative. I assume you don't, or maybe I shouldn't assume, you don't want a federal reserve of it like we have that Donald Trump has created. No. Because it's a, like, I don't think we have a reserve of anything that is purely speculative. No, I don't think we should be going up and buying Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to have a federal reserve. I mean, I, you know, if they want to keep the

Bitcoin, they seized, fine. But going and having the federal government buy Bitcoin would simply enrich the holders of Bitcoin, and I'm not for that. We should talk a little bit about this sort of... You faced a bit of online backlash about a recent appearance with Representative Randy Fine. Yeah. And just sort of in terms of, just I think addressing sort of this issue, I think a lot of Democratic voters have, and generally this sort of sense of reaching across the aisle

with Republican representatives specifically, not necessarily talking to, you know, voters, reaching out, trying to convince them of things, but sort of working with Republican representatives, officials who are all in on Trump and don't seem to care about any sort of sense of decency of norms of civility. And it's been, you know, we're at term two

and it's not clear that anybody on that side of the aisle is willing to compromise, is willing to show civility, is willing to do a lot of things that Democrats seem still very willing to do. And you know, Randy Fine has talked about nuking Gaza, called Ilan Omar a terrorist, I think a few days ago. And you know, Randy Fine has talked about nuking Gaza, called Ilan Omar a terrorist, I think a few days ago, among many other things. So do you still see value in sort of making any attempt

to sort of reach across the aisle to these people who have maybe the air of civility in certain arenas, but are completely not a civil in any way and are sort of all in on this Trump train that I think we can all agree is a disaster of a train to be on. Well, Randy Fine's comments were outrageous and atrocious about Ilhan Omar recently. It was quite bad timing. I was giving interviews of Cuomo and and they often have a Republican, and they had

Randy Fine as the Republican. Of course, no one watched the full clip. It was like five minutes, and I thought, wow, I really got him. I showed why the Medicaid cuts are devastating. But the interview started with a clip where Cuomo was saying how Democrats don't love America, or many Democrats, according to polling, not his state. And I said, well, look, I love America. The fact that an Indian American, Hindu Democrat can stand next to a Jewish Republican on your show shows that America is a great country. And I had no idea Randy's been in Congress for like four months. I had no idea that he had made these outrageous statements. So people pulled that clip and said, well, he's normalizing Randy Fine. But I wasn't there to collaborate with him. I was actually there to debate him

on Medicaid. And if I had known that he had made those comments, I wouldn't have made that broader point about civil dialogue. So since then, I've been very clear about criticizing him. But I think we do have to... That doesn't mean like we don't go on Chris Cuomo, and this is one of the reasons I do a lot of podcasts, I do a lot of media. And one thing they say to that is when you do that, you're going to find yourselves in embarrassing situations, you're going to say things you don't always agree with. And one of the reasons that Democrats don't do that is they don't want to have that kind of a situation. They want to say something that's wrong. And I just think in this world, people will respect if you're normal. And like when situations like that happen, you get an honest explanation of what happened, and that's

better than kind of being so sheltered and not engaging in talking points. So my temperament is, look, we have to fight most importantly the special interest in the rig system that has hurt working class Americans and allowed wealth to pile up in some places and left wealth out. We need to stand up to the Trump administration vociferously against the unconstitutional actions and call out Republicans certainly when they engage in ugly rhetoric. But my temperament is ultimately that I do think a vision of economic renewal, bio-economic patriotism can bring this country together.

And I do want ultimately to have a sense of reaching out to places to bring that together. I hear what you're saying. And there's a variety of opinions on this specific topic and how do we approach people. I tend to agree with you. I think that there are mistakes that can be easily made. Randy Fine is obviously a bad faith character.

But you're right. I think you're right that there needs to be a concerted effort to enter these spaces to even if this person you have a frustrating conversation, there's a lot of people that listen and maybe you make a point that lands with somebody and starts their wheels spinning. But in general, we can't move forward without approaching people and trying to find that balance. And it does take the willingness to put yourself out there and like, yeah, we live in a time of social media. That clip can be cut however it wants to be cut and passed around.

That said, there are absolute vultures out there and it's hard to distinguish. Well, right, that's the thing. I think they're, especially now you have basically the entire Republican Party calling Democrats satanic evil people and they're all terrorists, they're all insurrectionists, whatever. And I think that's where the frustration really comes from, is sort of taking them in good faith when they would never dream of offering the same. Sure. But I do think it's important. The challenge is, I certainly don't think we should boycott shows where Republicans

are coming on. Now the question is, okay, there are 435 members of Congress, every Republican, should I figure out what they said? I genuinely probably wouldn't have been gracious in that first comment if I knew like Randy Fine had made these comments on nuking Gaza and what he said on Ilhan Omar. But I think that temperamentally, one can be strong and yet civil in an appeal to an inspiring vision of this country. That's one in my blood. My grandfather spent years in jail as part of Gandhi's independence movement. And so, this sense that you believe in the redemptive possibility of human beings as a long line of tradition from Gandhi to the civil rights movement. But it's also my experience in America. Having been born in Philadelphia, grown up in Bucks County, I think this is at its core a kind,

decent country. And we have a difference in our party. And some people say, well, really, you know what Michelle Obama said about going high and not going low, that all that is outdated. And I disagree with them. I think that if we had Barack Obama running today, he would win in a landslide because he knew how to inspire people. And I think what this country, we didn't have that inspiration in 2020 to 2024. Like that's the blunt reality. And so, you know, what we need to do is figure out how do we inspire people in this country? Reaching out and like, you know, debating Republicans, talking to them and so on. You had this interview with Mehdi Hassan semi-recently,

and he asked you about some spats you've had, some interactions you've had with JD Vance, the vice president. And basically the question was, why do you bother doing that? Is it, you know, you see him as the sort of heir to Trump or is it just you find him annoying? And your answer was basically probably the latter. JD is the only one who's making some pretense of trying to give an intellectual justification to what Trump's doing.

Even Trump doesn't say I want to deprive people of due process. He says, I don't know about it. Whereas JD Vance is saying, no, no, no, an immigrant shouldn't have due process in the country, which I think is a very good point about JD Vance is saying, no, no, no, an immigrant shouldn't have due process in the country, which I think is a very good point about JD Vance specifically. And I guess, do you want to speak on that a little more and sort of like this intellectual veneer that he is attempting to put on?

I saw him do a speech recently about how, oh, Democrats are the party of hate and they're the party of like, oh, just they're trying to protect the elites and stuff. It's like literally you're Peter Thiel's puppet boy. So how can you be saying this at the same time? Do you ever see yourself even being able to have like a conversation, like a private conversation with him?

Because I find, at least I find a lot of these things so frustrating because they're so obviously lying and they're not going to be able to acknowledge any of that online or you know in public but is there ever a time you're like but you're not being honest about this um it's just so such an obvious uh grift that's going on and he is pointed at justifying all of this well he is is arguing and providing the quote-unquote intellectual veneer for Trumpism. Again, if Lincoln could argue with Douglas, I think we can argue with JD Vance, but we need to confront him and confront him with the facts about America. So one example, I don't want to get too detailed, I'll try to be concise.

He gave a speech recently when he accepted an award saying that America really isn't about an allegiance to the Declaration of Independence of the Constitution, that America is about generations of people who have sacrificed for this country. And some of the people, this is a direct quote, with the ADL consider and label neo-Nazis actually had generations who fought for America, and they're actually American because they have fought for America, and it doesn't really matter that they reject the ideals that the ADL thinks are- Bad take.

I mean, this is his- Blood and soil. He is literally ripping apart the Gettysburg Address and the conception of Lincoln. We were a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition, whether dedicated proposition, element, or equal. Lincoln asked, and we don't know whether such a nation can long endure. And JD Vance is challenging, can it endure? Can a nation be conceived on ideas actually live? JD Vance is saying, no, it matters. People are more American than Roe, because Roe's parents just got here, and they didn't fight in the Revolutionary War, and they didn't fight in the Civil War, and they didn't fight in the Civil War, they didn't fight in World War II, and that there's a status hierarchy of Americans. The more, the

longer back you can trace your heritage. And Lincoln, and the last point of this, Lincoln explicitly refutes this in one of the greatest speeches in American history, which is not the Gettysburg Address, but is July 10th, 1858 to July 4th celebration. And Lincoln has to try to figure out how can you be German American or French American? Because at the time in 1858, to be American, you literally had to be able to trace your heritage back to the Revolutionary War. And when I speak at events, I often say, how many people can trace their heritage back to the Mayflower Revolutionary War? There's always someone who can and they get a lot of applause. And I said, but then Lincoln says that if you believe

in the constitution and the declaration of independence, then you are blood of the blood, flesh of the flesh of the founders, and there's an electric cord that links your hearts to the hearts of the founders, meaning that I can be as American as Thomas Jefferson if I believe in those principles. JD Vance is explicitly rejecting that conception of America, and he needs to be taken on not because he may be the presidential candidate or he's vice president, because he's offering a rejection of the very essence of what I believe America is. It sounds very nice and optimistic, but I have to be honest that there is a deep cynicism right now, whether you say among

Democrats or broadly on the left. A big chunk of our audience is going to hear that and be like, but that doesn't matter anymore because they've thrown the rule book out and Democrats have to fight dirty. There's an Axios piece that came out a few days ago about this, you're quoted in it. Not that I'm suggesting that you need to be arrested every day in order to prove like you're willing to lay it on the line, but like there's a non-zero chance you're going to be arrested at an ICE detention center if you go or something like that. An inspiring speech from Lincoln in 1858, I don't think is going to defeat what is going on right now.

There's fear, there's panic about elections. Do you think that message is enough to break that? Well, I think it's both. I think we have to be willing to have courage in standing up and speaking out. And the most courageous has been the American people who've come out and protested the unconstitutional raids by ICE and taking away civil liberties. They'll come out on the no kings protest. I've tried to do my part by going to red districts, deeply red districts and holding town halls there and making sure that we have this proper security and making sure that

I've interacted with protesters out there to stand up for principle. But I don't think that principle without it being grounded in the country's history is the right approach. Because if we do that, we give the founding narrative, we give the narrative of American patriotism and the American story to the Republicans. I think we have to tell the story of America, of what this country's founding is, what these principles were, what the history is, what actually built manufacturing from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR, and how we can build that. And I think that's what's going to allow us combined with action to build a majority coalition because we've got to win not just the people in

California, we've got to bring the people in Pucks County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. And I remember my mom when people would come from India saying, the Valley Forge, this is where it all started for America. There is a deep pride in this country, a deep patriotism. And I don't think Democrats should see that. And that doesn't mean just the flag. That means grounding our ideas, grounding our action in the history of this nation. To me, Obama is a much better order and one of a kind, but that was his greatness.

Obama was deeply hopeful about the American promise and traced that. And that's why I think he had smashing majority victory. Yeah. I want to jump on that. You're right, and you've mentioned in this interview, we didn't have an Obama type inspirational figure type inspirational figure in 2020, 2024. And I wanna talk about that a little bit. You know, after the presidential debate last June. We had Bernie, but Bernie was, yeah, Bernie was. We had Bernie.

Well, this is kind of what I'm getting at is the Bernie of it all. And in general, the ignoring of factions of the Democratic Party, of people that are, you know, the bread and butter that are showing up and fighting for the Democrats. Animosity towards those people too. And there's been a lot of animosity to them.

And I'm kind of bundling, there's a couple of questions I could ask, bundling it along with the Biden conversation. And after the debate last June, you did express concern about Joe Biden's fitness. And in May, you said you were, you didn't call for him to step down at that point. And in May, you said that you were wrong about that. And I appreciate that.

We all appreciate that. During the last few years, we, a lot of us have felt gaslit by saying, wait a minute, listen to us, listen to us. He doesn't have the juice. We need somebody. We need somebody that has inspiration seeping out of them that is authentic, you know, like the mom, Donnie knows how to work the crowd, how to

convey his message and have a strong message. It keeps getting quelled. And I'm just, I guess I'm curious on what your thoughts are about this. How can the Democrats rebuild trust with us? I'm not going out and voting for Donald Trump or conservatives, but I think a lot of us have felt truly heartbroken about even Medicare for all has been abandoned. We don't talk about guns at all. And so we feel lost. And I guess, yeah, I'm curious if you have any ideas about how we can

start rebuilding that trust amongst our voters. Also understanding that it's a big swath. I understand that the Democratic Party has a lot of different people that we're including. But then also you have like the past couple days, you have Dean Phillips, John Fetterman, both saying that the Democratic Party doesn't have room for somebody like Mom Donnie. So there is this like built in animosity towards anyone, you know, to the left of them. Well, one, I'd say that Bernie Sanders should have won in 2020 if everyone had not dropped out

and, you know, hadn't come in and anointed basically Joe Biden at the end. Thank you for saying that. That, now I'm biased, I co-chaired his campaign. So I just didn't. Yeah. But I think after he won in,ide, basically Iowa won, New Hampshire won, Nevada. The prediction markets had him at 70%. And they literally, you had Buttigieg

drop out and get a cabinet role. You had Beto drop out. You had Amy Klobuchar drop out. And then you had the party at Coles around him, and that's because they didn't want Bernie. But that was 2020, and since then, the progressive movement has only gotten stronger. And the question is, for the progressives, is, okay, if you disengage, for the progressives is, okay, if you disengage, then we're going to have right-wing politics in this country. Or you can engage and we will have certain wins like Mamdani and we'll have losses. But we are much closer to a progressive vision today than we were in 2016 or 2020 in terms of the Democratic Party being a progressive party. And this is a party that we can shape. And so the disengagement is simply saying, okay, well then we're going to give the political field

to the status quo. And I would be ashamed. It would not honor what Bernie Sanders has done to do that. I think we're right at the cusp of it, to have a new progressive movement for the next 20 years. Now I- We can be. You know, and I think we're right at the cusp of it to have a new progressive movement for the next 20 years. We can be. And I think that if you look at Medicare for All, taxing well, child care $10 a day, raising the wage, free public college, making sure that you have free trade schools, that you- Home insurance. You know, that home insurance, I mean,

there's some basic, Thank you. There are basic ideas that can define a progressive party and still have room to win a lot of independent voters and build a majority coalition. And I think Bernie showed us the path towards getting there. Yeah, I think if Bernie hasn't quit yet, I think that that should be something

that we all take to heart. Are all three of you, they don't mind to ask you, were all three of you Bernie supporters in 2020 or no? Yeah. 2016, 2020, 2024, whatever year you want. I live in a community that is pretty conservative and I can't tell you the amount of Trump voters that have told me that they would have voted for Bernie.

And that breaks my heart. I mean, it inspires me and breaks my heart at the same time, especially as Cody highlighted, we're already seeing the playbook being used against Mom Donnie. And he's just getting started. There's so much fear of these radical ideas, which over and over again, people seem to be compelled by.

So yeah, I do have a funny question for you. It's a real question. You can ask me a real question. It's really important. It's perhaps the most hard hitting question you'll ever receive. All right. Okay, so, my mom got banned from Facebook

for no reason, for life. And she has been trying to get back on and it's just AI chat bots and she's heartbroken. She's 80. She thinks all of her friends think she's dead. I can't get her back on. And I was curious if any of your Silicon Valley constituents or even maybe Mark Zuckerberg can help me out. Well, you know, I'm happy to, if you send me a note, I'm happy to reach out to them.

I won't say Facebook doesn't love me because I've called for their breaking up in terms of anti-crash, but they have to take me seriously because I do represent them. And one of the things, people have their own view, but one of the things I said is the biggest advantage tech has is they're surrounded by people in Congress who don't understand tech and they know they can't guess like me. They know I understand it enough and enough people that when I'm talking about it, I can actually hold them accountable. And so it's outrageous. Not just your mom, Tech has censored some of the folks who have been pro-Palestine or spoken out about Gaza. And where is the left on this? When you get a conservative MAGA person who's censored, Ted Cruz will give a

oration on the Senate floor about the end of free speech. And yet when they're censoring people who are speaking out about human rights in Gaza, there's like silence from our end. And so I think that this is an issue and I've taken it up before. Sometimes with success, sometimes not, but I'm happy to take it up. All right. I mean, I did think that this would just get a laugh and then maybe some listeners would give me advice, but I'm happy to follow up with you. But you're right.

We'll get her back on the road. If we had infinite hours, I would love to talk more about that because this whole idea, I mean, it goes along with the cancel culture conversation as well, but the party of free speech, you know, or the Republicans, like we want free speech and yet it does feel like censorship left and right. Oh, Elon Musk saved free speech with buying Twitter. The opposite seems to be true to me. And I know that it's just infinitely frustrating.

Go ahead, Katie. Yeah, it kind of speaks to what you were talking about, Katie, this sort of frustration, feeling a little gaslit and where, for example, the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia and things, so much of the Democratic Party was sort of playing along with this narrative

of all these violent people, oh, they're doing this, they're misided, like sort of this narrative that it was bad from even the Democratic Party. And then Trump gets an office and he starts wanting to deport them. And then it's I think it's so hard for a lot of Democrats to then defend that because that's something that they kind of were already against. And then you have, I don't know, it seems like a lot of the Democratic Party will sort of play along with this larger status quo narrative. And then as soon as Trump is in power, he'll use it against people speaking out about these horrific things.

And then they don't really have a leg to stand on to defend it because they were kind of supporting the narrative when it was actually going on. I agree. Look, I think that there is a fault line in the Democratic Party around Gaza that can't be papered over. And it goes not just to the 55,000 people who have been killed in Gaza, yes, some terrorists, but many women and children. But it goes to the sense that the Democratic Party and politics has been so corrupted that we are unable to see people's basic humanity, that there's something deeply wrong with our politics, that people are not willing to speak up for what they're seeing on their television screens. And so I voted with about 40 other Democrats against the funding to Netanyahu. And that was probably the toughest vote I've cast in nine years in Congress

in terms of politics, not in terms of substance. To me, it was an obvious vote. But I think talking about recognizing a Palestinian state and Palestinian self-determination along with the Israeli state, making sure that we're funding UNRWA, making sure that we're not providing that say that was wrong, what the Biden administration did in providing these kind of arms to Netanyahu unconditionally the way they did, talking about what's going on with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation right now and how they're basically pushing relocation of people in Gaza, not just in Gaza but out of Gaza, 600 people killed. I don't think that's going to be papered over in the Democratic Party. I think it's a fundamental dividing

line. And I think it's going to be a wake up call to a lot of people in the establishment who sort of think this is just a niche issue and we don't have to talk about the Middle East because I think it goes to the broader values of human rights and dignity in this country. Do you think that some Democrats will be convinced to give up their AIPAC money and allow themselves to be attacked by AIPAC now that a majority of Democrats don't want there to be a war, they feel for the Palestinian people? More than ever, I think.

Right. Like is that going to, that's going to be a problem, right? I think that they're going to see that the people are very clearly on one side. Now look, my friend Jamal Bowman was taken out with $20 million of spending, and so people are fearful. But this is why I'm, with some of the lead, did a bill to ban super PACs. This is why I did a bill to, this is why I don't take super packer pack money. And ultimately, I think that Zoran's campaign showed and other campaigns have shown that grassroots organizing is more important than money in politics. But there is no doubt that

we need to get rid of super packs, and we need to have a clarity, a moral clarity on this issue. You could have a moral clarity of Israel being a secure state. In my view, it should be a Jewish democratic secure state, but still condemning what's going on in Gaza and what the Biden administration did there in terms of the unconditional aid. By the way, I was saying this throughout, even while I was supporting Harris. I think it was one of the mistakes of why we lost, not the only one, but one. Mom Donnie sort of addresses a little bit. I guess, do you see some of the tension between the phrase democratic Jewish state?

Like if we were to say, oh, we're a democratic Christian state, there is some tension there in the sense of like a pluralistic democratic society where there you know what i'm saying i feel like obama sort of addressed this yeah well look i think though but i don't think every society look america is a secular pluralistic democracy but there are plenty muslim countries in the world that are not pluralistic democracies and i'm not sure that secular pluralism is something that we uh get you should impose on every country in the world. There may be countries that say, no, we want to have a religious conception as long as they treat people with dignity. John Rawls wrote about this in Political Liberalism. He called them decent regimes. He said that you can, America is secular, but that doesn't

mean that we have to have every state be secular. And so I understand that there are people who disagree with me on that, but that's, and I've had long conversations with people like Peter Beinart and others about it, but I personally think that Israel should be a Jewish democratic state, but treat people within its borders equally in terms of their civil rights and political rights. Yeah, it just doesn't mean we need to be funding them. Well, and we're an ally with them. I don't think we're allies with any of the Muslim religious ethnostates. I believe it's maybe the only religious ethnostate

that we consider a critical ally. And that's a hard thing to- Jordan and Egypt. I don't know if Jordan and Egypt have Muslim religion as official religion or not. I mean, they're allies. They get a lot of our aid. My view on the aid is that, of course, I've voted for it many times, but I view it should

be conditional. In this case, I didn't think that the conditions on Netanyahu's war, just about it. But I lost a lot of support in casting that vote, but it was a vote of conscience for me. I ran the first Iraq war primary, anti-war, in 2003, opposing the war with Bernie Sanders. I did the Yemen War Powers Resolution to stop that war, and I led the War Powers Resolution with Massey to stop the war in Iran, and I voted against the funding to Netanyahu on this war in Gaza. Because at the end, while I care deeply about jobs and Medicare for all and child fair, $10 a day, the deepest influence on me is my grandfather who was part of Gandhi's independence movement. And I just think that we need to work,

yes, there are just wars like Ukraine and standing up for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. But we need to work for diplomacy and human rights and not have wars of choice and not deny people's self-determination. Ro, thank you so much for taking so much time with us today and for all the work you're doing. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having you guys. All right, guys. That's it for us today. We'll be back next week.

Have a good weekend. And remember, we love you very much. Much. There we go. From the waters of Lake Erie. It was raising flags. He said, there's no way that that fish should weigh 7.9 pounds.

It's just not big enough. To a nondescript office building in Richmond, Virginia, home to a $700 million fund for children with special needs. If there was a cliche list of how to blow money that you just stole very quickly, this guy did all of them. To the ski slopes of Salt Lake City, where a former Olympic snowboarder landed on the FBI's most wanted list. Ryan James' wedding is one of those interesting Norcos who have had two very successful careers, one legal and one illegal.

We're pulling back the curtain on a fresh lineup of opportunists who stopped at nothing to get ahead. These are the stories of people who saw a loophole, a moment of weakness, a chance to get ahead, and took it. I'm host Sarah James McLaughlin. Join me for a new season of The Opportunist on May 19th. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts. you