Ro Khanna on Crime, Censorship & Congress: Fixing What’s Broken in America

26:46He did this on foreign aid. He's done it on some of the things with Department of Education. We can go through other programs. I got into an argument with Elon when he was there. I originally said, look, I'm open to working with Doge if there are reasonable things that we can say. But you've got to do it through a process. And they have a view. Their view is, well, Congress are never going to do this. So we're just going to go there and we're going to do it. And that's not the way the Constitution works. And so you can't expect Democrats to say, OK, we're going to give you our votes for a budget if it's all discretionary and Trump can do whatever he wants anyway with the budget.

27:21And that's the basic fault line. The second argument is over health care. This is just factual. If the tax credits expire on the exchange, people who are paying about$7 ,000 on the exchange would go up to about$21 ,000. I mean, you'd basically be kicking off a ton of people off the exchanges. And Democrats just can't do that. Now, you can say, well, you lost the election. then I have no problem getting rid of the filibuster and the Republicans have the votes in the Senate and the House and Trump and they can pass the budget. But my hope is that they will realize that these tax credits are worth saving, that they're not going to want people kicked off healthcare and they're not going to want these premiums going up high and that will be the deal.

28:12The argument on the other side says that the tax credits and the healthcare subsidies will largely go to folks that are here illegally. Can you confirm or debunk that? First of all, it's a very small portion of people that we're talking about. So 90 % is not anything to do with those who are undocumented. That's just the math, right? I mean, so we can argue about the 10%, but we have in this country something called emergency Medicaid. What does that mean? If you're undocumented and you show up to the hospital, we will take care of you. I believe that is correct. I don't think if you're undocumented and you show up to a hospital that you should be denied care.

28:56Well, who pays for that? We have an emergency Medicaid program. And I guess if you mean that when you fund Medicaid, when you fund the Affordable Care Act, that you're saying you're funding some of it for undocumented people who are showing up in emergency situations, then, yeah, you're funding. that. But my view of it is that, let's be honest, that that's not where the big money and the budgets are. You're talking about a small group of folks. You can argue the cultural point about it, but don't make that the numbers point. So for the average person watching, listening, what technically happens if there's a shutdown?

29:38Like what happens to their everyday lives? Well, first of all, it's bad for some of the public servants, right? Will the Capitol Police, will police officers get paid? Will military get paid? If they have a family member who is in government service, will they get paid? And they just may, as Americans or family members, care about that. Or you're going to have people without pay. Second, there will be some services that will start getting cut, right? Like if you're flying a plane, you may not notice it for a few days, but then after a few weeks, you're saying, oh, they have less government, less flights because we don't have enough people showing up or staffing at the airports and some of the parks may shut down.

30:18Things that involve the government that aren't national security urgent are going to get affected. let's um talk a little bit about the censorship issue this has come up multiple times it's a culture issue for sure but why are both sides so obsessed with this and how do we get this uh resolved between both sides and then there's another both sides issue which is political speech that's violent fight like hell trump is hitler the stuff that i don't hear you saying but that we'd steven miller is a fascist steven miller saying gavin newson's press the other day yeah tweeted it out he's he's gone full trump in terms of the dueling i wouldn't i wouldn't call it full trump i would just say it was just the trolling issue it was really over the line yeah yeah i mean look there's a way to to argue i've gone back and forth with steven miller and and he we we have exchanges i've gone back and forth with vice president vance i mean sometimes i think some of it is intemperable.

31:17The point is, it's within a balance. He's not saying, you know, deport Roe. And I'm not using the words of Hitler or other things in talking about him. I mean, you can have spirited debate in a way that isn't Pollyannish, is tough, but respects certain norms that the other person is a person of intelligence, whose views you disagree with. Is there no leadership though, Ro? Like where, when you're in DC, people come together and say, you know what, the people who have the most to lose here are us. So it's in our best interest in terms of self preservation for all of us to just speak in a more kind, civil way to each other, because there are a large number of mentally ill people out there.

32:09I believe that's like at the core of this is mentally ill people hear different things when you say fight like hell or this person's hitler etc and they may act on it and i can i can i say something i think this is an important point but i want to just push back on that it's too simple to sweep it under the rug as a mental illness issue like when you have somebody get assassinated where the bullet says hey catch this fascist and then less than 10 or 12 days later you have one of the if not the most visible, leaders of the Democratic Party in all caps screaming on X, Stephen Miller is a fascist.

32:42I think that that's just irresponsible. I think we can all admit that that is irresponsible. And that I think what happens is, as Rose said, the extremes have been amplified in an attention economy. But I think it's too simple to say that they have something that can just be swept under the rug. I think that this is a chronic issue. And you can both sides it, you know, when Trump said go fight like hell and they went and beat police officers you know at the capital i don't know if you were there roan what that was like it was you were there and like it's pretty scary and that thing could have gotten out of hand and the oath keepers and antifa these are both radical organizations that will murder people that will beat police they're they're very disturbed individuals in both of these groups so i think you can both sides and every time we see one of these crazy people, these extreme people, it's really the same profile.

33:35It's white men who are disconnected from reality. So I don't know how a sane person drives into a church, kills people and lights it on fire like we saw the other day. No, no, Jason, I understand, but I'm saying there's a broad group of people that are committing these actions that are not just deranged. They're being incited. They're being programmed. They're being pulled into behaving in ways that if they had other things, other attachments, They may not necessarily have done these things. I would agree with that. If there was religion and family and they weren't shut in and playing video games, I agree.

34:05Anyway, Ro, we want to hear you, Ro. No, no, it's good. I feel like I'm in a therapy session with an old married couple. This is the whole point of the podcast. This is great. He's at the poker table and here you are at the table. Go ahead. Tell us your take. Here's my view. Obviously, that kind of extreme rhetoric is leading in cases of political violence, But it's more than that. Right. It's not just the Charlie Kirk assassination or January 6th or the attack on Pelosi's home. It's also making us hate each other as Americans. It's making us incapable of coming together to say, you know what, I agree with Donald Trump selling pharmaceutical drugs at a cheap price because that's the direction that Bernie Sanders would go.

34:49Like we can't we're not able to do that. Why? Because we've created such anger and extremism and tribalism in our politics. And the reality is right now you're rewarded for it. If you grab the attention and you show that you've kind of got vengeance on the other side, your poll numbers go up in within your own base. You get more contributions. I mean, we just need to speak plainly about some of the incentives. And if the election was in November of 2025, the next presidential election, I think both sides would end up nominating the side that's going to take it to the other one. Own the libs from the Republicans and fight fire with fire with everything and own the MAGA folks from the Democrats.

35:41I am hoping, I don't know if that's true, I'm hoping that people will see that this is a spiral downwards, that fighting fire with fire leaves ashes for everyone. That's what Emanuel Cleaver says. And that we've got to find a different way of moving forward. By the way, even people who agree with Trump on policies, there have been a lot of presidents in our country's history. FDR, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama. not all of them were divisive. There's one guy who did that. And my view is, first of all, American politics disdains a copycat. You're probably not going to be successful just mimicking him.

36:20And secondly, why wouldn't you return? Why wouldn't you want this country to return to the aspirational, inspirational politics, whether your choice is Kennedy or Reagan? My sense is you're right, Ro. I think people are going to get burned out on it. So the other two issues I wanted to hear from you on is the censorship one and then the lawfare one. It was pretty clear that of the six or seven cases that were done against Trump during his time off and the Biden administration was in, you know, we're reaching, right? And maybe we're lawfare, would be fair to say, we're lawfare-esque. And now you're having the exact same thing Trump doing with Comey, where he's firing the attorney general in that district, putting a new one in.

37:04And so I'm wondering how you think about the censorship wars going back and forth and then now the lawfare ones, because we as moderates, and I think moderates are the ones who are swinging these elections right now. You guys are. We're getting very tired of it. I am exhausted with the fact that neither side will stand down on censorship or on the lawfare. What are your thoughts? Well, on censorship, I have a particularly strong record. When people say, what makes you a different kind of Democrat? I say free speech. And all these people who got outraged when Jimmy Kimmel was pulled down were silent often when Twitter was censoring the New York Post with Hunter Biden's laptop stories.

37:45And as you may remember, you've been very consistent. My email leaked where I said that, no, you shouldn't be pulling down that story and you shouldn't be having the New York Post take that down. And then I got criticized from my own side, even though I'm one of the strongest defenders of trans rights. And we may have disagreements over my stances because I said that comedian who was arrested at Heathrow Airport for a transphobic post should not be arrested, that you should not be arrested for that. I got criticized from from the left. So my point is, then when I speak out and say, OK, Jimmy Kimmel shouldn't be pulled down and we shouldn't be canceling speech or going after left wing groups, there is at least some credibility because I'm willing to say, look, our side is engaged in that kind of censorship as well.

38:33And it's wrong when either side has it. And I think our side would have a lot more credibility in going after Trump, even if they didn't do it back then, if we just acknowledged that we've got this speech problem on our side. It's easy to be for free speech when it's speech you like. Like, you know, it's hard to be for free speech. The test is not. Will you stand up for it when you like it? It's will you stand up for it when you don't like it? And that's OK. Now do that's fair because this is, you know, I didn't like it when they did it to Trump. There did seem to be like some situations where he was provocative or did some things that, you know, on the margins could have gotten you a ticket, let's say.

39:11But then you have, you know, these big judgments against him that I don't think would have been brought if he wasn't running for president again or they didn't want him to run for president again. And now we have the same thing happen with Comey and they're literally picking the attorney generals and firing them and putting people in who've never actually even been in front of a grand jury just to get this, you know, revenge. And so it's a pretty dark time, I think, on the law front. What do you think? Yeah, look, I don't want to relitigate Trump's action. I do think he did certain things like January 6th and others that were blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.

39:46But I will say this, that whoever going forward for the party should be make a firm commitment that they're going to follow the law and not engage in vengeance and not engage in retribution. And it's sad to me that that that we've gotten to the state. I understand Trump feels like, OK, he won a second term. He was spared from assassination. He had everyone against him and he's going to get the people who he feels he was wronged by. But it's a it's a horrible thing for the country. And we've got to we've got to make make it clear that that we're going to move past this chapter. Not that, OK, now we're going to Democrats are going to come in and we're going to go after everyone on their side.

40:30I mean, then we're no different than any other country. Jumping off tangentially from lawfare, let's talk about crime for a second. You know, you described your self-described progressive Democrat. One of the themes around that is social justice reform. And you're seeing some of the implications of that, the abuse of no bail, the abuses by DAs who are letting umpteen repeat offenders out on the street. You're now seeing how that manifests in crime, right? Everything from this young woman from Ukraine who was brutally murdered to this young woman, the 22-year-old who's killed as part of a home invasion.

41:09Her father gave this gripping testimony a few days ago. Where are the Democrats on this idea of keeping the streets safe and law and order through the lens of the social justice reforms you believe in as a progressive? So one of the things I say is that my district, and I don't say this to brag, I just say this to make a point, my district is actually one of the safest in America, right? When you look at Fremont, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose, they're all in the top 25 safe cities. And I say that's correlated with the fact that we have$5 trillion companies, Apple, Google, NVIDIA, Tesla, and Broadcom.

41:51You wouldn't have the economic prosperity of Silicon Valley if you didn't have the safety of Silicon Valley because you wouldn't have executives living there. You wouldn't have families living there. You wouldn't have people wanting to participate in the economy. So safety is essential if you believe in creating economic opportunity and economic mobility. And I think that there is a group of pragmatic mayors now, Dan Lurie, I would say, in San Francisco, Matt Mahan in San Jose, Raj Salwan in Fremont, who recognized that the pendulum had swung too far. That, you know, I supported that ballot initiative that was on the ballot last election that said, you know, if you are committing multiple crimes of smashing into Walgreens, then you're going to be charged.

42:38that you can't just say, OK, yeah, we can keep smashing into Walgreens, committing, taking under$1 ,000 and it's OK. I don't view that as being not progressive. I mean, progressives, I thought the whole point is you believe in the rule of law. Now, if you say, yeah, you shouldn't lock someone up for the rest of their life or a mandatory minimum is fine. But that doesn't mean you excuse behavior that is wrong. How does a 14-time Phanelan never end up being held accountable and then is on the streets and then just savagely murders somebody in broad deal? Yeah, no, it's totally unacceptable. How does that happen?

43:15It's totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. It happened with that Ukraine. I don't remember all the details, but I think it happened with that Ukrainian girl. It happened with this Indian-American who was beheaded in Texas where the person had all these arrests. And you know what the interesting thing is? I spoke out about those. And I didn't get that much pushback from a liberal base. So I don't what I don't understand is where the the pressure is coming from, from just saying, look, we got to be common sense in this country. Now, I don't think the answer to that is, you know, put federal troops like Trump is.

43:49But what the Democrats should realize, in my view, is like is that. why is the country letting him do that, which I don't think is constitutional or the right solution, because they're so frustrated with what's going on. And just citing statistics, you know, going out there and saying, well, the statistics are down. Yeah, it doesn't match people's reality. People are smart. And, you know, I think this is really a stupid strategy by the Democrats. If Trump says, I'm going to send in the National Guard, because you guys haven't done the job, the obvious Kung Fu move to redirect that energy and say, yes, here are the five places.

44:27These are hotspots where we need those troops. If you can put these troops on these five corners, on Turk Street, on 6th Street, that's where we need them. And how long can we get them for before you move them to the next hotspots? That would totally just take away what is an obvious play by the Republican Party to make the Democrats fall for the trap of we're pro-crime we don't care about people's safety which by the way is the it's just so dumb it's insane it's so dumb like why are democrats in this respect from these specific cities los angeles new york chicago san francisco why are they so dumb well these are hard cities to govern i mean it's but it's so dumb i mean they're not they're hard but and i i disagree you know, because I'm always honest, I disagree with you on the National Guard coming there, but I do agree with you.

45:19I agree with you, by the way, that it's not constitutional. But in a situation where people are suffering day in and day out, what happened in Washington, D.C. when they put those people, when they brought in the National Guard, which you didn't have the right to do? Everybody said, I love it. Jason, I think this comes down to leadership. When you look at these big cities, there are examples of when they have been governed well, and it takes a point of view and the balls to just say, this is how it's going to be. The last best example of this is Mike Bloomberg in New York. I remember the first thing Mike did was he said, soda, out.

45:52Second thing he did, smoking, done. It completely changed the way the world works. If you guys remember, you used to go to bars everywhere and you would smoke incessantly. And even if you didn't smoke, you were subject to all this disgusting secondhand smoke. But when Mike did that one thing, it cascaded throughout the world. And Bratton takes leadership for it. Bratton did Crime Stat under Giuliani. But anyway, Ro, explain to us what the right solution here is. I think Bloomberg had a good record. I think look at what Matt Mahan and Dan Lurie are doing closer to home. I mean, they're saying, look, we need more police.

46:25We need to understand that if people have mental health issues and that they're not getting off the street again and again and again, that you can go to a court and say they need treatment, that we need to be funding more temporary housing, not just permanent housing. Because, yeah, we want permanent housing long term, but that doesn't mean in the meantime we do nothing. And so I think that they are pragmatic. They've acknowledged it's a problem and they're working at it. What I don't think works is just denying people's feelings because partly it's like when I was growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, we used to leave our house doors unlocked.

47:11Unlocked. And that's the lived memory of a lot of people. And you know, the problem of doing denying it is if you embrace Trump's whole thing is, look, life used to be simpler in the 1960s and you could leave your doors unlocked. You had a good job. You worked in a manufacturing place. You supported your family. And you know But if you don't want to move backwards, because there's a lot of social progress we've made, there's a lot of great parts to our diversity and people from around the planet here, that we've got to make sure that everyone buys into the future. And safety is first in that. Stay on this local theme for a second.

47:48Tell us about Mamdani. What is he? It's$10 billion for bodegas. It's billions of dollars for this. It's billions of dollars for that. I think I heard recently he wants to charge a 2 % tax on people above a certain salary. He wants to charge any company that does business in New York City an extra tax. What is – And how does he come out of nowhere and just run the table on the establishment? Well, I'll tell you why. And I've campaigned in candor for three candidates on the elections. I haven't campaigned. I campaigned for Abigail Spanberger, who's going to win in Virginia, Mikey, Sherrill. And I've supported Mamdani because of the movement he's had.

48:28I think Mamdani's success was based on two things. One, the recognition that New York City was unaffordable and just speaking about that unaffordability. So there are certain things which are pretty practical. Most people don't pay for the buses anyway. They're on the buses without paying the ticket. And if he wants to make the buses free, that's a reasonable policy. But he was basically saying, look, you can't afford to live in New York. And none of the other candidates really spoke about that. They were speaking about crime and public safety and they weren't talking about the economy. And the other thing is, and, you know, I have differences on him on the Middle East.

49:09I'm for a two state solution. I've condemned globalized the intifada. But he was saying, look, there are too many people that are being killed in Gaza and whose policies are wrong. And that resonated with people in New York City. And so the challenge for our party is how do we recognize the – Is he the candidate of giveaways or is he the candidate of where we realistically need to be in order to have stability? I think he's a candidate that is sounding the five alarm fire on affordability and the loss of the American dream. How he governs is I think going to be a challenge and I hope that he – he's a very talented guy.

49:47I hope he says, OK, look, I'm going to sit down as I am with business leaders and other leaders and say, help me achieve my goals. Like, OK, I want to have a rent freeze on the apartments that are controlled by New York. But I also want to make sure we're doubling housing construction and building new housing. And how do we do that? I want to make sure that if I am increasing taxes, that there's not capital flight from New York City. What happens if he, which is pretty clear, if after winning, he's a complete, utter disaster in how he runs that city? What does that do to the Democratic Party? I don't think he will be, but that would hurt us, right?

50:22I mean, I don't think he can have a record that's a failure. I think he has – in fact, a lot of the progressives are invested in him succeeding and making sure that he has a pragmatic success record. But look, I think you would – people who just want to say, well, we should just reject Mondani, et cetera, they're not understanding the amount of people that he speaks for in the Democratic Party who feel like we need to tackle the economic inequality. He speaks to young people. He's clearly hit a note on those issues. And then the question is, can he execute? I remember when Dinkitz came into office.

51:00That was when we bottomed out in New York. I was a teenager. And then that's when we got Giuliani Bloomberg back to back and we cleaned up the city. I get Dinkins vibes. If he doesn't actually take on the safety of the issue in addition to these other issues, man. Ro, as we wrap, just one last question, which is there's a movement afoot to ban stock trading by people in Congress. And you've been supportive of that. And then I think that we saw something recently that said, I don't even know if you know this, but somebody that manages your money has traded like 30 ,000 times or something in some number.

51:33Do you want to just address what that is and where you stand on banning stock trading and whether it's just simpler to move everybody to ETFs and just call this a day? I am totally for a stock trading ban. I've led on that. I don't trade stocks. My wife's money was inherited in trust that I'm no say over, no control over. And it's in a trust. And the Trust Act would require actually every person to be in a trust and that eliminates conflict. So I've been very consistent about it and I've been one of the leaders on actually a ban on stocks. So what do you got? What tip? Any tips for us? What are you?

52:12No, but did you know that somebody related to you is trading 30 ,000 times a year? I have no idea. It's like a citadel inside of Roe Connick. I don't know if you know this, but it's - It has nothing to do with it, right? It's not my money. It's not, I mean, I have no, and frankly i have no uh no no uh involvement in it and so that's it's tiny amounts too that's really interesting like it's um small trades lots of small trades anyway whoever's working for you seems to be doing a good job for you not not for me working for the family uh listen ro kanna uh voice of reason moderate honest and uh just really excited for you to run for president Bro, last question, actually, last question.

52:55There's still a pretty open field for California governor. Have you thought about it? And if not, why not? No, because a lot of, you know, I think you've got to really have spent some time in Sacramento to deal with those issues. And a lot of my issues have been, how do we build economic prosperity in parts of the country that have been left out? How do we deal with our competitiveness with China and other nations. I'm on the China Select Committee. I'm on the House Armed Services Committee. I've been focused on economic patriotism. And I don't think you just run for a title. And so the type of person who should run is one who's going to focus on getting our utility costs down in California, who's going to focus on making our streets safer, who's going to focus on building more housing and being a YIMBY and saying that we need to do these things.

53:44And so I think there will be good candidates emerging with those skills in California. Ro, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Ro. Thank you. Awesome to have you guys. Good to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, sir.