The Daily Beast Podcast - This is The Sinister Reason for Trump's Shutdown

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Rep. Ro Khanna joins the Beast’s Joanna Coles to reveal what he calls Washington’s most dangerous cover-up. The California congressman explains how the Epstein files hold explosive information and why his bipartisan effort to release them has been stonewalled during the government shutdown. He links Trump’s role in the stalemate to a broader system that shields the powerful rather than the public. From congressional gridlock to moral reckoning, Khanna argues that transparency is the only way to restore trust in democracy. Is Trump protecting national secrets or defending himself? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are a lot of rich and powerful men who knew that Epstein was raping and abusing young girls and kept quiet about it, hit it. You have to think, what force is so powerful that it's preventing the President of the United States and the American government for releasing these files? I believe that it is, that's the central question that people are asking. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And today we are going to be talking to a man who's really sprung to national prominence with his. his work on the Jeffrey Epstein files. We're going to be talking to Roe Kana about why he is so determined to get them released. He's been working with Thomas Massey, a Republican, and of course, Nancy Mace, Lauren Bober and Marjorie Taylor Green, the three women Republicans who've joined him in demanding alongside the victims the release of all the Epstein files. Come on, Dan Bonjino.

Come on, Cash Patel. You were asking for these, too, until you got into those big important jobs as the number one and the number two at the FBI. But Rokhanna has been at the forefront of demanding the Epstein files be released. He also has very thoughtful solutions for the Democrats to stop whining about fascism and get out there and start fighting for the future of America. We had a very lively conversation and we also touched upon why is it that so many of the leaders, the tech leaders, from his 17th Congressional District that he represents in California, where he has all the big tech companies, including five companies, worth over $1 trillion each.

Why is it those leaders just fawn when Donald Trump summons them to dinner? Why do they prostate themselves in front of our president? Anyway, no time to waste. Let's get straight into it. So Rokana, extremely excited to have you. you on the Daily Beast podcast. Thank you for joining us. I'm excited myself and congratulations. I hear you 400,000 viewers. That's incredible. Yeah, well, 400,000 subscribers on YouTube. We hit the mark today. Thank you very much. Yes. And frequent, Willie, we have in excess of

that watching. So let's hope we get a big audience. But you have, obviously, you've been in Congress for some time, but I think it's fair to say you've really sprung to nation, prominence with your work on the Epstein files. First of all, how should we think of the Epstein files? What exactly are they? In a very basic level, this is about standing up for survivors and protecting children. We've had for over 15 years young girls who were raped by Epstein when they were 14, 15, who were told to recruit other junior high girls or high school girls to be raped and abused by Epstein. And they have now grown into women and adulthood, and they still have not had justice. And Epstein got a lenient sentence. Then he was repr prosecuted. And no point during any of that

were the victims or the victims attorneys really consulted. And they have been pushing for the release of these files for for decades. The victim's lawyer has seen them, but the victims want these files. What are in these files? Information about the abuse that Epstein and Maxwell committed. There's also information about a farm system of people who Epstein may have sent women to be abused. And there's information about that in these files. And that's basically, you know, this is the first time some of them felt heard in this country. It's really nothing to do with Donald Trump. These people have been denied justice for over a decade.

And some of them were actually when they came to the steps of the Capitol pleading with Donald Trump to meet with them, to be the person who released the files. While he was calling them a hoax, they were extending their arms out with a cry for help from the most powerful person in the world. to actually hear their play. Well, you say it's nothing to do with Donald Trump. Yet Donald Trump campaigns saying that he would demand the release of the Epstein files. In February, his head of the DOJ, his former personal lawyer, Pam Bondi, said she was planning to release them. Then in July, she said there was nothing to release. There was nothing to see here.

So in a sense, are we, and then you have got involved with Thomas Massey, the two of you across the house, Thomas Massey, of course, a libertarian Republican, demanding the release of the Epstein files. Just tell us at the moment where exactly it is, because you've got the votes to demand it, right? But there are one or two delays going on. Can you explain to us where your request is right now? Yeah. When I say nothing to do with Trump, I mean, this is not somehow a sense to get Donald Trump. This is about releasing the files and justice for the victims.

It turns out that Donald Trump could have actually. actually done the right thing and could have been seen as a hero to these survivors. Instead, he has become part of the very corrupt system he railed against. He has become part of the system that is covering this up. And that's where people's anger is. And that we've, that's why we formed a bipartisan coalition, Thomas Massey, myself, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bopert, Nancy Mace. And we have 217 signatures in the House that we need to earn a which is a majority to force a vote to release the files. And we have Adelaide Grijalva, who has won her election for over two weeks back,

who's waiting to be sworn in. And the Speaker keeps canceling votes because he knows the day that we have votes in the House of Representatives, she will be sworn in and we will get a vote on the release of the Epstein files. But can you imagine this? I mean, people want to have a vote today, tomorrow, to pay our troops during the shutdown. And the Speaker and Republican leadership are saying, no, we can't have a vote. Why? because Adelaideh Grijalva will be sworn in 218th person,

and they're going to have a vote on the Epstein files. Now, they deny that the Epstein files are the motive for why they aren't having votes. But if that's the case, then why don't they just swear Adela Grijalva in? And then that would answer the question. If they swear her in, then we know that they're not canceling votes to prevent her swearing in. But the reality is they're not doing that. And this whole thing, this house is shut down because they don't want to have. have the release of the Epstein files? So why the cover-up? Why are the Republicans and Donald Trump

so anxious to keep the Epstein files, which one has to remind people that his head of the FBI and his number two at the FBI, so Cash Patel and Dan Bongino before they were put in those jobs, were constantly talking about the Epstein files, the Epstein conspiracy. What is at the center of this cover up. Why is Donald Trump so anxious? There are a lot of rich and powerful men who knew that Epstein was raping and abusing young girls and kept quiet about it, hit it. And then there are credible allegations that there were rich and powerful men who abused girls that Epstein formed to them. And a lot of these people are in those files. And my sense is that there are powerful people and powerful forces that don't want these files out. You have to think,

what force is so powerful that it's preventing the President of the United States and the American government for releasing these files? I believe that it is, that's the central question that people are asking. And every time they take these extraordinary measures like shutting down the Congress, not even having votes out of fear of releasing these files, it adds to the, skepticism and anger of the American public who think that there's something rotten there. So at this point, what we just need is a full release of the files. By the way, the first casualty of these files, the

slow release we've had from the Epstein estate, has been the British ambassador, who was the architect of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's victory. So this is nothing to do with what I said, left or right. This is about transparency wherever it leads. Right. I think you're a to Peter Mandelson, who was the British ambassador based in D.C., who in fact had organized what was supposed to be a triumphant visit for Donald Trump to meet the King of England, his second state visit.

And of course, Peter Mandelson was fired the week before Donald Trump went there. He was. And, you know, this shows how incompetent the Trump administration has been actually at investigating the Epstein Files. Because you would think if you were investigating the Epstein Files, one of the things you would do is write a letter to the Epstein estate to get all the documents. Turns out they didn't do that. I was on Lawrence O'Donnell one night, and right before me was the lawyer for the survivors who says, look, I have a tip for anyone in Washington.

Why don't you get some of these documents from the Epstein estate? And I then wrote a letter to the Epstein estate, and now that we, to chair Comer's credit, he subpoenaed them, and now we're getting these documents. But this is not rocket science. I mean, it just shows that there was no seriousness of actually getting these. these documents from the Trump administration. And now we know that these documents exist. People say, how do you know that they aren't mangling the documents or shredding the

documents? Because the lawyer for the survivors has seen the document. So we know what they exist. We know what true documents will be when they're released. And they're just covering it up. So yesterday, one of the senators asked Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and I always like to remind people she was Donald Trump, one of Donald Trump's personal lawyers before he appointed her to the head of the DOJ. If she knew about photographs of Donald Trump sitting with

topless young women with Jeffrey Epstein, and we do know through the works of Michael Wolf, who's someone that spends a lot of time at the Daily Beast, and he and I have an inside Trump's head podcast that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends for many years. But Michael Wolfe says he has seen these photos. And we're trying to figure out where are these photos? And it was very interesting when the senator from Rhode Island asked Pam Bondi, had she seen these photos, did she know about these photos? She didn't answer.

Well, this is why we need a release of the files. I mean, if there are any such evidence, that would be in the Epstein files. There are files that have the investigation that the FBI has done. They are witness memorandum. There probably was, in my view, some investigation or questioning of Trump just because they investigated and talked to everyone that Epstein knew. All of this is in the files. And it can all be made public. And it's in the discretion of Donald Trump and Pambandi.

And my view is that they should do it. This is not going away. Their strategy has been, well, let's just shut down Congress. go away. Let's just get a delay not swear in Adelaida Graholvite'll go away. And what happens is it does die down. And then it rears its ugly head back up because the American public is tuned into this story. And once the Congress starts again, they'll say, okay, let's release the files. So they are just having this drag on. They're not going to be able to shake this story. And I, if I were giving them advice, I'd say, just released the files. I mean, it's better than this drip, drip, drip. And people say, well, why does it

matter? Is it the most important thing to Americans? No, it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is, of course, right now that they have health care, that they are able to pay the bills, that they can support their kids, that they have freedoms. But it goes to the sense that our government has been rigged for powerful and rich forces and that this rigged government has just been asleep, Well, 70% of Americans no longer believe in the American dream. Well, wealth is piling up in districts like mine, and there has been decline across this country. And people are fed up, and they're saying this government isn't working for me. And the Epstein saga is Exhibit 1 for a government that has been corrupted.

It's a really good point. What did you think when you heard that Todd Blanche, number two in the DOJ, another former personal lawyer of Donald Trump's had been down to visit Gillen Maxwell after the appearance of a birthday letter from a book that she had put together for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday that apparently had a letter from Donald Trump in it. And then five days after a two-day interview with Todd Blanche, remember the number two at the Justice Department who should have other things to do, she got moved to a low-security jail. in Texas. What did you think of that? Well, I was outraged because I knew the survivors' perspective

about it. I mean, the survivors, when they were in Capitol, on the Capitol Hill, many of them were supposed to talk about the need for the release of the Epstein files. But they were so offended by what was happening with Maxwell that some felt the need to address that situation. I mean, Maxwell is a convicted sex offender. If you ask some of the survivors, they will say she was equally to blame for their abuse, that she basically recruited some of these junior high girls knowing that they would be raped, knowing that they would be abused, knowing that they would be farmed out. And a pardoning of that is basically saying to these young girls, your stories don't matter. The crimes committed at you don't matter. You were discardable objects because

it was a powerful, rich person who did this, whose partner happens to know the president's personal lawyer. It is really making people feel abandoned a second time as adults, even as they were felt abandoned when they were raped as young girls. And so there was such hurt, such anger, such disgust that this was even being considered. And so I felt that. Look, I have gotten more passionate about this issue, the more survivors I've met. It started out as something that I felt was a wrong of our government covering up and wanted to restore trust and wanted to do in a bipartisan way. But as I met some of these survivors, I mean, they have just had tragic lives, horrific lives. They have been silenced. And they were told you can't do anything about it because

they're rich and powerful people who know politicians who know people in power. And that's tough. And in some ways, many people sense that, that rich and powerful people get away with things that they can. This is the most extreme egregious case of it. Well, and I appreciate that people are, of course, concerned about the expense of eggs and milk and gas and things. But as you say, this story seems to encapsulate what people find infuriating about rich and powerful people who believe they can get away with things. Earlier this week, Caitlin Collins of CNN asked the president whether or not he would consider pardoning Gillesne Maxwell because the Supreme Court had refused to take her case on the docket, as I know you know. And he said he didn't know, he had to think about it. He put on, as Michael Wolfe called it, his Epstein face where he pretends that he sort of barely heard of Jeffrey Epstein.

It's ringing a bell. What is it? if he were to pardon Gillan Maxwell and there are certainly those who believe a deal has already been done and they're not going to do it immediately but over the next six to nine months she will be released from her 20 year sentencing what can the victims do to bring attention back to what they went through I mean it must be we've certainly interviewed victims on our shows on our podcasts and I sense how infuriating it must be to not be taken seriously. How can they respond? At one point there was talk that they were going to put their own list together of people

that they had all known, certainly when Virginia Joufrey did that with Prince Andrew, it turned out to be very damaging for him, certainly in the UK. what other mechanism is there for victims to be heard here? It would be a total punch in the gut to pardon Maxwell. It would be saying that we know that there is evidence and a conviction of someone who has abused young girls and we don't care as a society, that we are okay with it. And these young girls now are women who have to see the person who abuse them release. And the added fact is they don't even know the details of what happened because they can't see the files and the investigation that hasn't been made public.

What they can do is continue to demand justice. And I do think that there will be justice in terms of accountability of some kind of accountability of these files are released. We saw that with the British ambassador. I mean, we saw that within days, one of the most prominent British politicians who literally architected Blair and Brown's victims. increase, was asked to resign. And so it may not be that people are prosecuted with the statute of limitations and other evidentiary issues, but there will be accountability. If there wasn't going to be accountability, they wouldn't be so afraid of releasing these files. So I believe that for the survivors, what we need to do is get all of this information out there. And then as a society,

we need to have a reckoning because what happened is we had a culture of permissiveness for rich powerful people to abuse women and to abuse young girls. And we need to be honest about recognizing what the culture we permitted and make amends for that, start to make amends for that. We need a public catharsis of that, which the file release will do. You've got four Republicans who've against Donald Trump's wishes and against Mike Johnson's wishes crossed the floor to vote with you on this. Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert, and Thomas Massey. How difficult has it been for them to do this? Very. I mean, Thomas Massey is having millions of dollars spent against him in a challenge.

All of the other women, Republicans have shown courage. I mean, they have been lobbied by the White House directly pressured by the president to get off the petition. The fact that they've been on the petition now for over a month shows that. resolve. And I think at this point, the Speaker and the President to realize that they're not going to bully off these women. And that's why they're just holding off and trying to delay the inevitable, which is that Adelaide Grahova will come in and be the 218 signature. But I am hopeful that once she is worn in, we will get 50, 60 Republican votes when it actually comes for a vote on the floor. And then it'll go to the Senate. And if we, if we

get a strong vote from the House, there'll be an enormous pressure for the Senate to pass this. So, Congressman, just a final question on the Epstein story. What do you think happened to him in jail? Why do you think he died? I have no idea. And the reason I don't want to speculate is that I don't want to fan the flames of conspiracy theories. And I have no preconcept notion of the truth here. neither do I have a partisan motive. What I want is simply transparency, and I want all the facts out. And if it was a suicide, it was a suicide, and let's get all the facts out. If it wasn't, then let's get the facts out.

But what the country needs is the sunshine is the disinfectant. We need all the files out. And I have tried, and Thomas Massey has tried not to speculate about the content, because our interest is really just getting the facts out. Congressman, hold on one second. We're just going to take some ads. And we're back with Congressman Roe Connor talking about, well, pretty much everything. Okay, I am going to ask you to speculate about something else, which is Donald Trump's health, which I believe a little bit like our previous president, Joe Biden's health, was actually,

there were symptoms in plain sight that people chose not to take any notice of or not enough notice of, We know what happened in the case of Joe Biden. But how confident are you that Donald Trump is actually in sufficiently good health to be president of the United States? Well, first, I'm less concerned about Donald Trump's health and more concerned about the health of America. The fact that we have a president who's attacking universities, who's defunding science,

who is attacking free speech by getting comedians outlawed, who is banning international students when we need. need to be recruiting talent who has ICE agents acting with total impunity, parading young kids, half-clothed on the streets and ripping kids away from their families. That is not America. And whether it's Trump or the people around him, they have really taken a stake to the fundamental values of this country, of the dignity, respect of every person, of a belief in scientific progress of a belief that America is a moral beacon for the world.

In terms of Trump, I mean, look, I think it is this incredible irony, and historians will try to explain it, why this country brimming with youth, brimming with the future, which is America's self-conception, breaking away from Europe, breaking away from ancient civilizations. I mean, people come here to start anew, has been, had the unfortunate coincidence of having been led for the past decade by 80-year-old men. I don't understand it. I think that there is going to be such a burst of a new generation of energy in 26 and 28. And some of these people need to step aside who have been in politics on both sides. And they've been there. If you've been elected in the 1970s before I was born, you probably should be

stepping aside. If you've been in an afflective office 30, 40 years, step aside, make way for a new generation on both sides. So I view Trump is a symptom of a broader problem of a gerontocracy that has held on and that hasn't held on well. It's not like they're the greatest generation. It's not like they saved us from fascism. On their watch, the American dream has declined. Wealth has concentrated. Income inequality is high. Maxwell House is saying we are no longer going to be called Maxwell House as a coffee shop. We're going to be called Maxwell Apartments because young kids are more likely to live in apartments. This is the governing class. We need to indict the governing class and say we need a new vision, a new generation that's going to carry this country forward.

Okay, that was a very powerful rally in Christ. So who are you excited about in the Democratic Party? Who do you think would emerge as a realistic leader for a country which is, for the most part, in the middle? We may have 10% on the right, 10% on the fringe left. But we know that the majority of people are somewhere in the middle. Who can appeal to enough Americans? I think it will be a next generation leader. I hope it will be in the mold of what Kennedy summoned America to do.

That's what inspired my parents to come here. We were on the march. We were humming. We were the place to be. And there was a sense of national purpose that we were going to do big things, that we were on the march on civil rights, women's rights, peace, but also economically preeminent and a leader to the world. And I hope someone of a next generation, we have a lot of talent in our

party will do that. I hope it'll be an aspirational vision of what America can do. I hope it'll be a vision of bringing this nation together after all the division. And I hope it'll ask Americans to be bigger. We have been so coward in our small version of ourselves with fear and division and ugliness. And I think it's time that we're summoned to a new national calling of renewal in this nation. I think whoever can do that will emerge, whether it's on the Republican side or Democratic side. I mean, we have a lot of talent in this country. They just haven't had the chance to shine because of the grip that the old guard has had on political power.

I think a lot of people listening and watching this will totally be nodding their heads and agreeing with you. But the people that you're thinking about will already probably be elected at this stage. So if you're going to call upon three or four Democrats to lead the party into the future, who would they be? Who would they be? And I'm assuming that you might be in there.

Would you be up for running for? for running for president, assuming the Democrats put forward a strong numerical bench for it. Do you think that you would be up there? Well, look, I think there are going to be 10 to 15 people who should run and who will bring different strengths. I mean, there are people who are Governor Shapiro is a friend and is someone who I've worked with. Governor Bashir, there's great progressive leaders who may not run for president, but who

are going to, Greg Kazar, the Progressive Caucus, Joe Neguse, who's in Colorado, Jonathan Jackson, who's a new generation leader in Illinois. But the point is that first we've got to win the midterms, and that's not just theoretical. It's really what's in front of us. And then we need to have a contest and a contest of ideas. I believe the first test for the Democratic Party will be how do you unify the party around an inspirational vision. If you cannot unify your own party, how are you going to unify the country? One of the things I've been proud to do is I got to campaign for Mikey Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger, and Zoran Mamdani, all of the folks. And we as a party have to do three different things. We have to bring back young people who we lost. Kamala Harris didn't

win enough of, we have to win back the working class, steel workers, auto workers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, who didn't vote for us, blue-collar workers. And we have to win back the business class because a lot of business leaders went for Trump. And so a lot of times I hear all these Democrats fighting about, well, do we have a young person problem, a blue collar problem or a business leaders problem? We have all three. And guess what? You got to put that together to lead the free world. It's not supposed to be easy. We've got to do all three to build a coalition to be able to win back the House and the White House. Do you think that Carmelah Harris should run again in 28. Well, that's totally for her to decide. I mean, the great thing in this country is

everyone gets to decide what they want to do and run. And I will say there's any pundit who's sort of predicting something ahead of time, oh, someone can't win or someone can win because of their gender or their race or that they ran before or the office they hold. I probably take the opposite bet because the only thing I know about pundits is that they've been dead wrong. They were wrong about Trump the first time. They didn't think he could win. They were wrong about Trump the second time. They were wrong about Barack Obama.

They were wrong about Pete Buttigieg. You know, it's sort of, that's not because they're bad people, because they have conventional wisdom of thinking. And the American people want change. They want something different. And so, you know, in terms of her, it's totally her decision what she wants to do and how she best thinks she can serve. You say the American people want to change and wanted different, but then they re-voted in Donald Trump. Well, he was, believe it or not, he managed to be the outsider. I mean, this four times impeached president was the outsider.

And I think part of it is because he hadn't spent a life in politics. His only experience of politics was sort of four years. And he managed to say, untruthfully, that he was going to lower prices on day one. He hasn't done that, that he was going to bring people's jobs back, that he was going to take on the status quo. And he became the candidate of change. He's been the candidate of tearing. down a system of not having a system that's not working for people. And he's offered in it nihilism,

just tear it all down. And some people say, yeah, just tear it all down so we can start building again. And the Democrats have to be the party that says, yes, we need to reform these institutions and the system, but we have something better to build and that we want to rally people around the impulse, not of lighting a fire, but of building things. You know, I once had a college professor, I was very proud of myself. I had this critique that I thought was devastating of John Rawls's theory of justice. And the professor said critiquing someone or a dime a dozen, try building your own ideas. That's much harder.

You know, in politics, it's easy to tear things down. The great leaders build things up. The Democratic Party will defeat Trumpism by aspiring to be excellent, by aspiring to be big, by aspiring to offer a vision big enough to deal with the problems that we have today, of AI and job loss, of the economic devise because of globalization of the loss of the American dream. And to say, we see the future and here's how your family, your community is going to participate in that future, and here are the changes we need to make that happen. So you sit in a Congress district, which is literally at the heart of Silicon Valley.

You're over San Jose. You've got Cupertino, the home of Apple in your constituency. What do you think when you see those tech leaders who have more money than God, more power than God, sitting alongside Donald Trump, humbly thanking him for the opportunity to get together? I mean, you know, I was thinking about watching Bill Gates and hearing him say, you know, thank you so much for bringing us all together. You know that Bill Gates doesn't like Donald Trump. We know this. So why are they doing it? If you have all that money and all that power, why do you have to sit and prostate yourself in front of a man that we know, and Donald Trump knows, doesn't, don't respect him?

Well, one of the aristocrats have done their need of the king. I often joke that there's only one aristocratic class in the world today. It's these tech leaders. There they are at the White House with Donald Trump. And then two weeks later, I see them there with King Trump. Charles in in in uh in in England you know that nothing everyone else changes but the tech it's like the tectoterie is uh is the modern nobility uh but i i i guess look i pragmatism says that obviously they have to meet with the president but what i wish some of them did is

what uh jensen wong did this morning which is to say immigration is at the foundation of the American dream i mean how about saying that when you meet with Donald Trump or uh you can't just have blanket tariffs or one third of the AI talent is in China. So if we stop immigration, we're going to hurt American competitiveness or don't destroy the funding for AI and science at the National Science Foundation or the funding for medical research. But instead, they are there with total deference. And it's, I understand what their view is. They want to just be under the table and not incur his wrath, not be singled out for being fired or having punitive issues on their companies. And then, you know, if Gretchen Whitmer were president in 2028, they'd all line up

behind her. But the problem is that the pendulum in America swings. It doesn't swing automatically. And the real sadness is not just the early acquiescence of Congress. I think we have found our spine. But America has very diffuse power centers. We have power with the media, power with finance power with technology, power with law firms. And what has been saddening to see for me is the acquiescence of so many centers of power in America. We need to snap out of it. We need to understand kind of a wizard of Oz moment that Donald Trump isn't as, that the bite is not as loud as the bark and collectively have the strength to stand up to him for

fundamental American values. Congressman, just one second for some messages. And we're back with Congressman Kano, who is determined to make sure the Epstein files get out there. We had Anthony Scaramucci, his former White House Communications Director, admittedly only for 11 days, but who'd been very involved in Trump One's campaign and also was part of the transition team hiring people to work in the first cabinet. And he said that Trump is laughing at these tech leaders. He's just laughing at them as they prostrate themselves. Are we wrong to think of them as just fawning?

Are they being literally, I mean, you mentioned the word pragmatism, but how pragmatic is it to be out there fawning away in public? Well, I don't like it, and I don't think they had to go that far. But I guess their assessment of the situation is that they don't want to risk upsetting him while he has power and that they will do that until he has power. I think an alternative approach to Donald Trump, though, is something that President Shanebaum did, where she did stand up to him, where she did push back, and at the same time has engagement.

And I actually think that's something that Trump would respect more than complete subservience. So each leader has to figure this out for themselves. but my view is that there are values deeper than even your responsibility to your company and shareholders, and that is your responsibility to the country and to humanity and on basic issues that you should speak up and speak your mind. And I take your point about the President of Mexico. When you talk to tech leaders, and I know you do, I know they hold you in great regard, what do they say about the President? What's your insider takeaway from what some of these tech leaders think actually about him?

Well, they're concerned about his anti-immigrant rhetoric. They're concerned about his tariff policy. They're concerned about his attacks on universities and signs. They like his deregulation on AI. I disagree with them on that. I think that we need to have safeguards and to make sure AI isn't just in the tools hands of billionaires, but actually is something that is going to benefit all of us and that we have a plan for jobs. But they are fine with sort of his deregulation.

And they are basically biding their time, thinking that they don't want to be hurt or hit directly in their companies, making money. And their valuations with AI are soaring of $14 trillion in my district, five companies over a trillion dollars. But I often say to them, you know, you ought to pay more of a tax, but call it the end. anti-revolution tax. I mean, there's no, you can't, this is not sustainable. You can't sustain a country where you have this kind of massive wealth inequality and people feel that they're losing hope and losing the American dream. And you're playing by fire by countenancing Trump's ugliness in his politics. And so I think it is short-termism. It's a short-term our company will survive, but the American project of a cohesive democracy is being hurt.

Okay, so final question, you have been very outspoken, consistently so, about the power of social media to change our public discourse. What do you make of the current situation around the ownership of TikTok? Well, look, I'm concerned. First of all, I believe, I mean, I know some disagree with me. I believe one of the reasons that there was such an outcry over TikTok is because there were young kids. kids who were criticizing Israel and American foreign policy on there. And that's really when a lot of this started in the Congress. I voted against the TikTok ban. I said, look, we can have the data

here in the United States. We can have a law that says any foreign government should not intervene with American decision making and an American company's algorithm. But you should not be banning an app because you don't like some of the speech. And now, let's see. Let's see. see who buys that algorithm and the TikTok app, and let's see what they do with it. But if they move it to the right, like Elon Musk has done with X, you're really hurting speech in this country. And that the right has a plan, a roadmap to take over as much of the media ecosystem that they can to bias, to tilt the playing field. The good news is that America is still a very noisy, vibrant country. And if you have a voice, you can find an outlet, even if the playing field is slightly stacked against you.

It's not as stacked as it was against Dr. King or John Lewis or other, or even, I would argue, Barack Obama. And the country is a country that can be won over and that Donald Trump ultimately speaks for 42, 43%, not for 60%. So we're going to win the elections in New Jersey and Virginia. I'm confident that this ballot in California is going to pass that will help us win seats there. And this will be the jolt that the Democrats need. I'm tired of the Democrats going on programs and saying, you know, we're losing the country to fascism and we're all going down the road of fascism. Imagine if Winston Churchill had given those speeches in the 1940s. imagine if when you're on a plane and you have turbulence,

the pilot keeps talking about how you're going to crash. We have 15 minutes of Democrats doing better. The country is doomed. Why would you want to follow someone like that? Talk about how the country is going to be resilient, how we're going to make it out of it, how our greatest days are ahead, how we're going to be a vibrant, strong democracy,

the first cohesive multiracial democracy that is the leader of the free world. And this is our plan to get there. And Donald Trump is not going to stop a nation that has fought a revolutionary war. overcome the civil war, defeated tyranny, defeated communism, overcome slavery and Jim Crow, that we are much stronger than Donald Trump. The Democrats, when they say fight and project strength, what they mean is project strength about your vision for America. I think that you are

going to be running in 2028, even though I know it's three years, three years to go, but that was highly coherent, very optimistic, and you've thoroughly cheered me for the day. So let me ask you, It's a government shutdown. Does that mean your shutdown as a congressman? What are your plans for the rest of the day? Well, we're trying. We have a call with Leader Schumer. We have calls with other colleagues. We're trying to figure out a way to get the government to be back open.

And the reality is that most of the Democrats are here. The Republicans are not here. And I'm not saying in a partisan way. That's just the truth. But we're trying to figure out how do we, as a Democrat, credit party, get these health care tax credits extended and reopen the government. All right. Ro Khanna, good luck with that. And we will look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. Thanks so much, Joanna.

Well, it's very clear that we are going to be hearing from Congressman Kana a lot over the next few months as he continues his demand and presses his demands for the release of all the Epstein files, which I'm sure has spread over all sorts of government departments. But he's clearly very determined to get at the heart of what he's at the centre of this conspiracy and why does it so unnerve our president and the people around him and the people running the DOJ and the people running the FBI. Anyway, we'll clearly be hearing a lot from him about other issues too, not least the tech economy which really does fall within his congressional district. Now, if you haven't subscribed yet, please do. We are independent media at the Daily Beast and we really appreciate support.

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