The Young Turks - Rep. Ro Khanna CALLS OUT Democratic Leadership & Makes MAJOR Prediction

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Cenk Uygur and Rep. Ro Khanna discuss Iran strikes and the Republican budget on The Young Turks. Do you agree with TYT's take? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. How in the world are you proposing to save 12?

trillion dollars it's pretty simple but roe to ask you a tough question here when the democrats are in charge we don't vote on these either so is it is it true that some of your democratic colleagues also take fossil fuel money and that's why we never get a vote on us i just think we have to have more uh a principal in being willing to stand up for what's right our party should be willing to tax the ultra rich more And yet on all these things that I mentioned, you probably would have to be hard pressed to get a majority of the Democratic caucus still on board. So if AOC runs in that Senate primary and Chuck Schumer stays in the race, you think AOC wins? I think she wins. I think she wins decisively. All right. Back on the Young Turks.

Joining me now, Congressman Rokana. He's up to a lot of interesting things. He was trying to stop a war with Iran. I'm going to ask for the latest updates on that. And then he put together a realistic budget to cut $12 trillion. Now, I mean, if you're a populist right, left, or center, you should love that plan. So we'll talk about it and we'll see if you do love it or not. Roe first, let's talk about the War Powers Resolution at it.

So you had that resolution co-sponsored with Tom Massey. Donald Trump has attacked Tom Massey for that. I called him a little boy, pathetic, and all these things. And so you lined up a bunch of Democratic sponsors. But now we're apparently in a ceasefire. So does that mean that we're not going to vote on that? And is there any scenario where we do vote on that resolution? We still may vote on it.

There's still opportunity to co-sponsor it. Look, Donald Trump has two people on his shoulders. One, the neocons saying regime change, regime change, you got to bomb Iran, the Lindsay Graham Wing. And then he's got the MAGA base that are Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, we don't want any wars in Iran. Thomas Massey is up that we don't want any more wars in the Middle East. And we came together on this war powers resolution. I do think everyone's speaking out in MAGA, people speaking out in Progressive Caucus and around the country, the anti-war movements, as well as the War Powers resolution, convinced Trump to abandon the idea for regime change.

He said, okay, I've done the bombing enough. And the hope is that that sticks. But look, you've already got Lindsey Graham saying it's not enough. You've already got Republicans saying, well, we may not have destroyed enough of the nuclear capability. So he's going to continually have this push to go back in. And that's why we need to make sure that before he does anything further ever on Iran, he comes to Congress.

Do you think that the MAGA rebellion against the war, the split that they had, did that make a little difference or a lot of difference in your opinion? I think it made a significant difference. I mean, I think that Donald Trump tweeted out that regime change may not be a bad thing. You have joked about it, but he was getting a lot of pressure saying just keep bombing, take him out. I'm sure Netanyahu was pushing him in that direction. And I think he started to hear for people saying, look, you promised us no endless wars. And so he comes in and he says, well, no American lives lost.

I just struck them. We're in a day. I'm done. I'm not for endless wars. And like classic Trump, he kind of tries to have his foot in both camps. But the point is, I'm glad there are two camps. We've gone through presidencies where they're not two camps. And this is when people say, well, did it make a difference?

In politics, you never know what makes a difference. but I certainly think that if he's threatening Thomas Massey with long social media posts in $20 million, you got his attention, you got under his skin. I can't, and he knows how to read the room. He knows popular sentiment, and that he factored that in. Yeah, it certainly seems that way. So if it comes back and the ceasefire somehow violated or Trump says to go back into the war and then this goes to a vote, it doesn't look like a lot of.

Republican politicians are going to support it, though. Because Massey's got, you know, no co-sponsors on his side. Last I checked, if I'm wrong about it. One, one, Chuck Edwards, but yeah. Okay, Chuck Edwards. And how many co-sponsors did you get on your side? And do we think that that most of Congress would actually vote for war if it came to a vote? So we've gotten 73 and counting.

I mean, it's been harder than I thought. We would think every Democrat would get on this war power resolution, but it's been a harder push. we have passed a war powers resolution, as you know, once before with Bernie Sanders and me to stop the war in Yemen. So it is possible. But it depends on how egregious the action is and how much Republicans find their courage. I will say that the reason Donald Trump targeted Massey is that we were talking to at least 10 different Republicans who were seriously considering getting on if the war had continued. And I think he wanted to have a chilling effect saying don't even think about this unless you want my political team coming after you.

Yeah. So, and of course, the politicians inside Congress are very different than Trump and MAGA and progressives. So the voters are very different than the folks in Congress. And I mean, look, that may be the most profound statement you've made ever. You know, that is a fundamental disconnect. The voters, the base of people are so different than the people who are actually elected. It's sad, but it's true. It's a disconnect. It's what allowed for Donald Trump to become president. It's what allowed Bernie Sanders to become this phenomena because they had the guts actually to go out and say, look, the establishment is working. Yeah. Man, look, I hope it doesn't come back up. I hope the ceasefire holds. We never bomb Iran again. They never hit us again.

None of that happens. And et cetera. But I would be curious if it did come back and you guys had that vote because APAC's in the building. And they're, so let me just ask you last question on that. How much of an effect do you think APAC would have on a vote like that? It'll have an impact, obviously. But, you know, people, uh, describe all the, the blame to APEC, but it's a whole coalition. You've got the national security hawks. You've got the defense hawks. You've got, of course, APEC on that. And they all, uh, are this foreign policy blob where you get painted as a week on national security, weak on American security, and that has an impact. Yeah, defense contractors that would make billions from the wars, et cetera. So, okay, let's talk

about saving money instead of spending money. So, you know, Donald Trump and Elon Musk talked a big game, Doge, and we're going to cut $2 trillion from the budget and all this stuff. And then we didn't get very many cuts. A lot of the cuts on Doge were disputed to begin with. But even if they were all true, it's kind of a drop in the bucket after they're going to add three to $5 trillion with this tax cut into the budget. And they added to the Pentagon. So they got no savings at all. They're going in the opposite direction. Trump was obviously empirically full of crap on cutting from the budget. He's adding to the deficit and the debt, right? So but how in the world Are you proposing to save $12 trillion if you would do it with left-wing populace?

Well, let's look at the basic map. So we're $36 trillion in debt. Over the next 10 years, we've got basically $2 trillion deficits. If not if you just keep the status quo, it's about $20 trillion over 10 years. The Republican budget would add to that. So their budgets would have $24 trillion added. And what ours would do is save $12 trillion. So you're still running a small deficit, but instead of having $20 trillion more of deficits or 10 years,

now you're having about $7 to $8 trillion a deficit. So how do we save the $12 trillion? It's pretty simple. You tax the billionaires and multimillionaires more. You have a tax on stock buybacks and make sure that people, when they're getting an inheritance, are actually paying the capital gain tax. But you also cut spending. You cut the defense contractors.

You don't have a Pentagon budget over a trillion dollars. You cut the fraud from Medicare Advantage, which everyone acknowledges that they're upbilling and ripping off the American taxpayers by making it seem that people are sicker than they are. You cut the fossil fuel subsidies. You cut funding when it comes to waste in procurement because we don't have a competitive process. And with that, you would, and then you know, negotiate for prescription drugs to bring the cost of prescription drugs down. With that, you can save about $12,000. Now, we put it out there. I guarantee you there's going to be

something you don't like in the budget, either some tax you disagree with or some spending cut you disagree with. But it's an honest budget. And I think at this point, why don't we actually have every member of Congress offer an honest budget of where they're going to get savings instead of putting the, you know, having a magical view that we're going to have 3 or 4% growth and basically lying to the American people. Yeah, so let me probe into a couple of those. So on the corporate tax increases, they're pretty modest, actually. You'd be bringing them to 28%, which is still lower than where they were pre-Trump, you know, in 2015.

So, okay, so that's certainly not radical. It's very normal. How about the tax on the wealthy? What do you mean by that? How would that go out? Well, if you're over $100 million, you would get one to two percent of your assets taxed every year. And, you know, you're making at least 7, 8 percent on returns, just if you put the money in a mutual fund, probably much more. But you pay one to two percent on that.

And the reality is most of those folks are not paying tax. They're, they're just letting their money continue to appreciate. Yeah. I mean, they're not paying tax until realization. Yeah. So that's a, it's a tough issue because they avoid a lot of the taxes by just taking out loans based on the amount of shares they have in different stock. And it'll be interesting to see how you could put an end to that.

But it applies to only people making it above or that have it above $100 million or And it's not taxing unappreciated capital gains. So one, you can tax the loans as a realization of event. Let's say you're worth a billion dollars. Now you go up to $2 billion. If you were to tax unrealized capital gains at 20-some percent, they unrealized gains would be a billion dollars. That person would be paying $200 million in tax. But if you're just saying we're going to pay $1% of $2 billion, you're paying $20 million in tax. So this is not saying that unrealized gains are being taxed. This is just like a property tax. Your estate includes not just your property, but your net assets. And I think it's a much easier sell than taxing the unrealized

capital gains. That's really interesting. Okay. So now we go to the ones that I think are kind of relatively easy. And what I really want to ask is since they're, they have overwhelming popularity, I mean, all these, these three that I'm going to list are probably above 80%. So the real way, they get stopped is through your colleagues. So let's start with one of them, ending the fossil fuel subsidies. So your estimation is that it's about $17 billion a year. So over a decade, we save $170 billion. So okay, if you put that up for a vote and all of the American people were paying attention, it might be unanimous. Why would we give the richest companies in the world extra money from the average American who could barely afford it, especially that they're not a

nascent industry, they're a very mature industry, et cetera. So why doesn't it ever go up for a vote? And why can't we end these preposterous subsidies that no one other than oil executives want? Well, because it's the oil lobby, the big oil and gas companies have huge lobbies. They give a lot of money to take the members of Congress. They have PACs and they paint you as, oh, if you're opposed to fossil fuel subsidies, you're opposed to, are you opposed to natural gas? Are you opposed to oil? No, we're not opposed to it.

It's just, you've had these subsidies since 1916. Maybe it's time that we move on. I mean, imagine if we still had to have solar subsidies in the year 2100. The absurdity of it is we have a tilted playing field in this country. The tilting playing field isn't in the advantage of, let's get the new industry, solar, wind, and geothermal. The tilted playing field is in the advantage of oil and traditional fossil fuels. And all I'm saying is don't give them an advantage. No one is saying, okay, don't let them do business until there's a transition away.

It's just don't give them a taxpayer advantage. Yeah, look, I'm livid over the $4 billion we've sent to Israel every year. but 17 billion is more than 4x that and it's every single year for almost now I mean like it wasn't 17 billion back in the day but these subsidies have been going on as you point out for over a hundred years so it's just criminal but row to ask you a tough question here when the Democrats are in charge we don't vote on these either so isn't isn't it true that some of your Democratic colleagues also take fossil fuel money and that's That's why we never get a vote on this. Well, I push very hard in the chair of the environment committee to get a vote on this. I pushed to get it in the inflation reduction act. I pushed to get it in the American rescue plan. I kept getting shut down.

And the reason is some of it is oil and gas money. Some of it is a perception that Democrats don't want to get pertained as anti-oil and gas. But I don't think even someone working in the oil and gas industry will object if you say, I don't want to subsidize your industries, which is going to not. Not to you. It's going to the executives. I mean, if there was some subsidy for tech companies, even though I represent Silicon Valley, I'd say that's crazy. You don't need to subsidize the corporations and the executive. So I just think we have to have more a principle in being willing to stand up for what's right. So I want to understand how these lobbies actually get

things done. Because another one of your proposals is getting Medicare Advantage. For those who don't No. It's set up in the wrong way. So it's incentivized this giant scam. And some of you might be familiar with it because, you know, you've got a call saying, oh, we're your insurance company. And we'd like to send a nurse over, right? And so what a wonderful thing, right? No, the nurse is going to pretend that you have a lot of ailments that you don't have and charge the American government and totally and utterly rob us. And they robbed us of at least, what, $100 billion a year. I don't know. It's just a monster, monster number. You would know better than I would. But so the only people who are in favor of that is the health insurance companies, because it's nothing

but a robbery, right? So again, if you go to propose this and to vote on it, there is no excuse for it. So do Democrats or Republicans just say, like what did they say internally? Do they say like, yeah, well, obviously I'm a crook and I'm taking money from these guys? Or what's their excuse here? Well, the dirty secret in Washington is it's not how people vote. It's what comes up for a vote. So the way the lobbyist work is they don't allow it to come for a vote. They'll make sure that it's not part of these big bills. They'll make sure that it doesn't advance through committee. And you can't blame someone. It just becomes amorphous. Well, the leadership didn't want. Well, who's the leadership? Well, is a committee chair? Is it the speaker? Is it the House majority leader? Is it some caucus? It just wasn't included. We didn't. have the votes so we aren't going to include it. So this way, no single individual has to take blame. No one ends up going on the record and no change is made. And 90% of things where American people are like, why can't we get that done? The reason we can't get it done is because it doesn't come up for a vote. It's not even that people are voting against it. It's just that they don't

want it to come up for a vote. So Roe, I have a theory and I want to bounce it over you here, because I think that a lot of this stuff gets solved if you just find a way. And this is not an easy thing to do. But if you find a way to put a national spotlight on it. And so look, if we had a progressive president, then it gets infinitely easier because they could just use the bully pulpit and go one by one on these issues. But like whenever Trump wants to put a spotlight on something, he puts a massive, massive of spotlight on it. If you put a spotlight on any one of these subsidies and scams and actual

waste fraud and abuse, the American people would hate it. And then they, so is it possible that that kind of public pressure and just being able to highlight it so that there's a national conversation around it could actually make a difference in getting it passed? I think it's incredibly important. It's 60% of the game. It's something we didn't do enough up in the last presidency with Biden. But I think it's 60% because Trump lacks something that is also needed, which is follow through. So Trump did put a huge bully pulpit on big format ripping off Americans, and they're charging Americans more than any other country. He said, no, that's got to stop. You can't charge Americans more for your drugs than you are in other

industrialized countries. I get if you want to charge people in Africa less, but not people in Japan less. I introduced that executive order as legislation in Congress, and we have a couple Republicans co-sponsored. And since then, it's just languished. Now, what it would require is not just a president signing that executive order, it would require Trump on food social every other day saying, I want that legislation to pass. I want the spotlight, not just to be there, but I want to translate that spotlight into legislation. And that's where you have these great presidents like Lyndon Johnson, who don't just highlight it, but then work every legislator to actually get their things done. Biden had some of the skill of getting legislation

through. He didn't have the spotlight. Trump has some of the skill of spotlight. But he doesn't care a lot of other details of the legislation. And so that languishes as well. Well, it of course is one other thing with Trump, which is that he doesn't actually want to do it. He just, he wants to get the credit for the marketing. Like, I'm a lawyer my guy. Right? And you're like, okay, well, Roe turned it into a bill with a couple of Republicans. Why don't you back that? No, he's busy backing the giant tax cut for the rich. So that's where his priorities are. But you know, actually tonight. Coincidentally, we didn't know you were going to be on tonight, but we have an Operation Hope meeting right after this interview, and people can sign up at t.yt.com slash hope,

and our volunteers decided that they're going to try to back your House Resolution 3493 to lower drug prices. Oh, fantastic. I appreciate that. That'll be a big help. You know, half the challenge of these things is just getting Democrats on board with it and Republicans, but it's so frustrating to me, how many of some of these issues, we don't even have consensus within the Democratic Party. Like, our party should be against fossil fuel spending. Our party should be against big pharma ripping off Americans. Our party should be against huge defense contractors making record profits. Our party should be willing to tax the ultra rich more. And yet on all these things that I mentioned, you probably would have to be hard pressed to get a majority of the Democratic

caucus still on board. Yeah. So, first of all, I didn't realize they called it Conachare. I love that operation. Hope did that. But look, so it rose right, first of all, when it comes to the Democrats, do you want lower drug? I mean, literally every Democrat has said they want lower drug prices. So this puts them to the test. There's no reason to say no to this. None, right? This is Democratic agenda 101. And to Rose's point about the Republicans, well, it wasn't Trump executive order. So are you pro-Trump or anti-Trump? Right? And so, and why it's kind of genius and why the Operation Hope guys, you know, are focused on it is because we don't think Trump really meant it. And so it's kind of calling his bluff. And so, and that's a, that's a smart way to go and say, okay, if you meant lower drug prices, deal. We'll take yes for an answer. So, Roe, last thing on this, you've been doing a lot of media, and which is smart, Nets, you've got to get your message out.

And you've been challenging leadership a little bit, too, including a challenge of Chuck Schumer on an issue, et cetera. So what's been the response is mainstream media a little bit more open to what you're saying here, because if any of these things got national attention, again, they're all, not based on, oh, I like them, but based on national polling, enormously popular in. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it.

Shop now at IKEA.ca. Well, I appreciate it. I feel like I've been doing double media because I, do it and then I see you mention one of my policy proposals on all the podcasts you're doing and all the shows you're doing. So I appreciate that we're getting this out there. But you know what I found in candor because I'm always as straight. You know, initially I was a little more diplomatic and I say, you know, here's what I believe. And I wouldn't really call out Chuck Schumer who spent a week trying to equivocate and not getting my war powers resolution or Keynes a

war powers resolution on the floor. And then I realized that if you actually just tell the truth and say, you know, these leaders are actually not moving it and you're willing to call them out. It's only people's ears perk up. And they're like, okay, this guy has got the honesty to call out his own party. Maybe he's one of the more honest ones. Let me hear what he has to say. And so now I feel of lost any inhibition.

And if there's someone from our own party who's standing in the way, I just say it as I see it. I never engage in personal attacks. I never would say, you know, someone is corrupt unless there's really a corruption or someone has a scandal. I just said the facts, you know, and I think that that's really important. People, you start to build credibility when you're willing to call out people in the status quo. Yeah, I totally agree. Okay.

And then lastly, Zoron Mamdani just won the Democratic primary for the mayor's race. I mean, I don't know if you can tell. That was good. So, look, the last post I had on X was one of the results of this is that if AOC enters the New York Senate race, Chuck Schumer's going to drop out instantly. I mean, nobody wants to go out like Andrew Cuomo did. So what's your sense of that Senate race? If AOC gets in, do we think that Chuck Schumer probably says, it's been a good career. I appreciate everybody and maybe steps down.

I mean, if he has any political sense, that's what he would do. I mean, this is, you know, look, in New York Senate seats, it's a big deal. It's a seat that Robert Kennedy had, Hillary Clinton had. It's a huge thing. And that's probably why Schumer clings on it. But, I mean, it's amazing to me with Zoran's victory, how clear a path has now to winning it. And I think if you're, if you're Chuck Schumer or you're one of the other people, you and you have any political sense, you would see that.

Why you'd want to lose is, you know, you can't explain human emotion. But I think it's becoming more and more obvious. And I think it probably gives progresses the courage to run. Because the argument always used to be, well, okay, she's AOC's up in the polls, but they're going to dump $20 million and they're going to change the numbers. Well, they just tried that against O'Rand. It didn't work, if anything, it backfired. Yeah, they spent $25 million on a mayor's race and couldn't get the job done.

In fact, yeah, his numbers went up, not down. So last thing to put a button on that, so if AOC runs in that Senate primary and Chuck Schumer stays in the race, you think AOC wins? I think she wins. I think she wins decisively. And I think she gets support to do that. And my sense is, look, if we don't win back the Senate, I would not be surprised if you have other people say, look, I'm going to be a leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate. And frankly, it would be shocking to me if others didn't step up to do that.

I mean, part of the problem, I think, has been that the old guard has held on too long. But the one thing that Biden says, which is somewhat true, he's like, well, why did they run against me, right? I mean, it takes two things. It's like, okay, you want to step aside? Yes. But then you also need the other generation to say, yeah, I'm going to run. And I would be shocked if someone doesn't step up and say, you know what?

We can do better for Senate Minority Leader after 2026. Yeah, makes sense. All right, Representative Roe-Connor, thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you, Jay. And look, our motto is get caught trying. And you're one person in Congress that does that seemingly every day. So we appreciate it.

Appreciate your ideas. All right. All right, guys. Operation Hope is next for some of you guys. Check it out on TYT.com slash hope. And we'll see you tomorrow.