6/26/26: Trump Dirt REVEALED: Iran, Zohran, Pardons, Deportations, Ro Calls Out Elon Lawsuit

24:29What can we do to make sure there's none of that the second time around? And they've been pretty effective at destroying any of the bounds or guardrails that existed. He had made some extraordinary comment like, well, the only limit is, I think he said, my own mind or my own morals, both of which are pretty scary. But there have been times when they've been forced to pull back, you know, on the tariffs. Maggie was talking earlier about the bond markets were a problem. We were just talking about how with the Iran war, he's like, oh, my God, I might be courting being Herbert Hoover here. So it seems like the markets are one piece.

25:00We're also seeing some significant, it seems like, at least public pullback on the most maximalist version of the immigration agenda. They're selling some of these warehouses that they had acquired. You've got Kristi Noam out, Mark Wayne Mullen in. So what are the things that have limited him over the course of the administration? I am particularly curious about the immigration agenda, since that's something that has been so core to Trump since he rode down the golden escalator. Totally. It's a great question. And the story is shifting a little bit in the last few months. But through 2025, it was pretty extraordinary.

25:39We haven't really seen an unbridled expression of executive power like that, certainly not in our lifetime. And in some respects, with some areas, we've never seen it. Congress essentially just ceded the field to Trump. I mean, when Bush went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we all know, all the problems with that lead up and the intelligence and everything, it still went through Congress, right? There was still a congressional debate and a congressional vote. Trump didn't even talk to Congress. He just went. He just did it. He just went in, sent Delta Force into Caracas and snatched a sovereign head of state out of his bedroom in his pajamas.

26:18He didn't talk to Congress. He determined himself in his own mind that fishing boats carrying cocaine were quote-unquote enemy combatants and they just blew them up you don't get a backseize on that one when you kill someone so you talk about you know an expression of power taking someone's life without any discussion with congress without any authorization for the use of military force it doesn't really get more profound than that and that's before i even get to you know uh using levers of government to coerce law firms and universities and all the rest of it so So let's acknowledge all of that.

26:53What is also true is that so far, at least, they have not disobeyed Supreme Court rulings. There is pretty extensive reporting that they have been, in many cases, either ignoring, disobeying or fudging around with lower court rulings, particularly on immigration. A lot of examples of that. And we have a lot of reporting in our book about how serious the discussions were inside the most senior level of the Trump administration about suspending habeas corpus. One of the most basic human rights you could have, the right if you get locked up by the government to challenge your detention. Stephen Miller absolutely was looking at wanting to, and Trump himself, suspend that right for illegal immigrants.

27:36The conversations were so serious, the staff secretary of the White House, Will Scharf, wrote confidential memos to the chief of staff, essentially outlining why this was a line the White House shouldn't cross. But they didn't cross that line. Supreme Court decisions on tariffs, they have obeyed. And then Congress now, you're starting to see in the Senate some signs of life. And that's, I think, the natural outgrowth of Donald Trump alienating a few key senators. You know, it turns out when you drive someone into retirement and you support their opponent, they feel somewhat liberated. But I don't think people who are you know i hear this sort of oh donald trump's it's the end of donald trump and his power whatever anyone who's opposed him in the republican party is basically out of a job i mean thomas massey mtg retired tillis is out cassidy you know go down the list in the republican party as unpopular as donald trump is nationally and with independence he's still an incredibly dominant figure so i do think there are limits i think on immigration he is not as hardcore as Stephen Miller, we have a thing in our book where Trump privately joked that if it was up to Stephen Miller, the country would only have 100 million people and they'd all look like Stephen Miller.

28:48So Trump on immigration is much more of a finger in the wind. It's not much of a joke, is it? It's just the truth. It is the truth. But Trump is much more of a finger in the wind on immigration. And when he sees bad press, he's much more willing to pull back. Whereas Stephen Miller, you know, has been obsessed with this issue since he was a child and is a passionate ideologue. So that's an example of where Trump, after he sees all the bad press after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretty, he pulls back. But there aren't that many guardrails. There are certainly no guardrails inside the executive branch.

29:20They've removed every pocket of independence. And the very quaint notion after Watergate that the president doesn't interfere with Justice Department investigations, that is obviously obliterated. He's ordering up investigations of named individuals. So, you know, that's the overall landscape. Can I add one point? I'm sorry, just very quickly, Ryan, just on the immigration point. We're recording this at a time when the Supreme Court has actually just granted the administration pretty sweeping hand to end temporary protective status for Haitian immigrants and other groups. I think that's going to affect at least 350 ,000 people, possibly more.

30:03And essentially, the court is saying, you know, we can't interfere with executive branch decisions that way. The TPS is entirely an executive branch choice. And so it is true that they did, as Jonathan said, they pulled back from these, you know, very, very splashy pushes into cities. But Tom Homan keeps saying they're going to do it in New York. They are selling these warehouses, but we have a bit in the book about how Stephen Miller was telling people he thought the warehouses were crazy and he didn't understand why they were being bought. And so you did have this fissure of the Nome run DHS, Nome slash Corey Lewandowski run DHS, and what Stephen Miller actually was pushing versus what he was tolerating in the name of having officials who would go along with what he wanted.

30:50they still have a deeply, deeply restrictionist immigration policy. And for the most part, it's working.

30:57Saagar Enjeti:Well, I wanted to ask you briefly about Stephen Miller. I remember Trump, when he was introducing him to, maybe it was MBZ in the UAE, he said, this is the guy who runs my government. I've heard he's jokingly referred to as the kind of prime minister. What is his relationship like with Trump now, but also more importantly, perhaps for us as we go on in the world when Trump is gone, what's his purchase in the Trump orbit kind of absent Trump? Like if we're in a post-Trump world, does he maintain this status or is he pretty connected to Trump's project? Stephen Miller did a pretty good job in the off years, you know, 21 through 24, of cultivating a wide range of relationships in the Republican Party.

31:45A lot of members of Congress consult him. You know, they see him as a big brain, sort of a policy luminary. We write in the book that he's arguably, maybe even objectively, the most powerful domestic policy staffer in recent White House memory. In term one, he was young, inexperienced, very valued, for sure, as a speechwriter, but he was pretty narrowly focused on immigration. He's got a much broader remit now. He's got this other title as Homeland Security Advisor, which gives him a much broader remit. Western Hemisphere, Mexico, he was heavily involved in the drug bombing, planning for the drug bombing campaign, the drug boats.

32:32So he's really got his hands in everything. He's often in the room for foreign leader phone calls and meetings. We have reporting in the book that he wanted to be National Security Advisor to succeed Mike Waltz. many people in there believe that he has designs on the chief of staff role eventually um trump values him because he gets things done he he he said and he and he also talks to trump in a way that instills a lot of confidence you know yes sir we can do it and don't worry like we'll bulldoze through anything we have a lot of reporting in the book about these phone calls that steven miller would have inside the government which became sort of legendary he would berate these staffers at DHS and ICE and the agencies and basically threatened to fire them if they didn't pick up the deportation pace.

33:20He just drives them relentlessly. So I think he's got a big future in the Republican Party almost no matter what happens because he sort of made himself indispensable as someone who has real experience in the executive branch, knows how to get things done, and has lots of relationships across the party. One of the key relationships, just to add to what Jonathan just said, and I don't think you said this, but I apologize, there was a siren outside, was Elon Musk in these off years. He developed a very close relationship with Musk, was advising him on political donations. That is a relationship that, as far as we know, continues and will be quite useful and durable for him going forward.

34:04Saagar Enjeti:Speaking of other close friendships, Zoran Mamdani has been to the White House now twice to visit Trump. It kind of shocked the world how much of a bromance it seemed that they now have. What was the reaction from the rest of the administration from such a positive experience? You know, the DSA now is a national topic and Trump is calling them these crazy communists, but he still has nice words for Zoran. Tell us a little bit about those Zoran trips to the White House. It's interesting. The Zoran Trump text messaging back and forth is like one of the lockboxes that I've certainly been trying to understand for a while.

34:49It certainly wasn't a surprise to us that Trump was so enthralled by Zoran Mamdani's presence because, A, Trump doesn't, he'll attack people online. But one-on-one interpersonal direct conflict is not always his thing. Zoran Mamdani is a really good political performer. And, like, he is a generational talent. And so that didn't really surprise us either. He has attracted crowds. He was briefed for that meeting. Apparently in their meeting, he talked about how there was overlap between some of his own rally attendees and Trump's or, you know, campaign event attendees and Trump's. And that is true.

35:30It was actually a little less than I thought it was going to be. it might get challenging for Trump because, as you say, not everyone in his government, by the way. I don't think, for instance, that the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, objects to having a good relationship with the mayor of New York. We certainly know that Trump, you know, we're at the Simon & Schuster offices right now, and Trump Tower is a few blocks away. So it's just a reminder that the Trumps have a business interest in this city, and maintaining a good relationship with the mayor is something they care about. But yes, it's going to be hard for Trump to use— everyone in the extended MAGA orbit who I speak to was very excited about the elections in New York the other day, as this will give fresh life to Trump's attacks on Democratic socialists.

36:18And it's true, except it's harder to maintain that when Trump is yucking it up with Zoran Mamdani. So there are many places where Trump is not always in lockstep with everyone around him in this one. Yeah, it became an immediate problem for Elise Stefanik. Yeah, but there's also an element of like, we don't need to overcomplicate too much. He also just likes handsome men. I mean, I don't know if you saw his reaction to Jelani over when I was traveling with Trump in the Middle East. I mean, it was almost like, yeah. So, you know, we've seen a parade of these, you know, handsome men. He likes Xi.

36:56He has a there's a there's a type. There's a type. He likes good looking men and women. But yes. Better look in the Tom Cruise. Big, strong guy. Exactly. Talks about the muscles. Well, I really appreciate you guys taking the time. And I just want to also applaud you for spending so much time in the book on Trump, the Trump family corruption, which, you know, is truly world historic, hard to wrap your head around and difficult to cover because there is just such an overwhelming flood of it. So we didn't get to dig into that part this morning. People will just have to go and buy the book and read it to see all of the reporting there.

37:31But Jonathan and Maggie, thank you both so much for joining us this morning. We really appreciate it. And congrats on the book. It's spectacular.

37:38Saagar Enjeti:Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks for having us, guys. Yes. And I like that it's gold. I like the book is gold. It'll fit nicely. We do, too. It's actually a beautiful thing, man. It's a gorgeous cover. Look at this freaking thing. It's beautiful. Look at it. It's all behind me. Look at this. It's great. I think it's great. Get Trump a copy. I think it'll be on the wall there. Thank you very much. I think he's aware of it. Thanks, guys. Does he like it, by the way? Gotta ask them. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having us. See ya. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

38:19Saagar Enjeti:It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Hi, it's Colin Coward from the Colin Coward podcast. All right. You know what deserves more attention? The assists. Everybody talks about the goal. A big moment that gets replayed on the highlight reels. But too often, we overlook all the contributions and collabs that happen along the way. That's true in soccer and honestly, true in life. Halion is shining a light on the assists.

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40:29Saagar Enjeti:Per serving, not a low-calorie food. Some products contain allulose. See nutrition info on Hero.co for sodium and sugar content. Joining us now both to talk about the political earthquake in New York City and potentially across the country, as well as his major fight and the threats coming from Elon Musk is Congressman Ro Khanna. Great to see you, sir. Great to see you. Thanks for having me back on. What do you think is the import of these elections this week? All of Zoran's candidates winning the rise of DSA, especially in the context of New York. But you obviously see candidates like Graham Plattner, Abdul Syed also rising in a way that would have been perhaps hard to imagine.

41:08previously, the base of the Democratic Party, supporting these candidates full heartedly or full throatedly, whatever the term is. What do you think is the political import of what we saw unfold this week? Well, Crystal, you were right about a year ago. And you said that any candidate who does not acknowledge that there was a genocide in Gaza is going to lose moral credibility with the base, that this is going to be sort of a moral test for a party. And I know people talk about affordability and it's important and they talk about a lot of other issues, but at its core, many of these elections came down to candidates who recognized what was happening on their phones and said, I'm not going to be beholden to anyone.

41:52I'm going to say it was a genocide and I'm going to be very clear we need a new moral direction versus those candidates who were at best obfuscating or at worst still getting support from APEC and other pro-Israel groups. That was the central issue in many of those New York races and in Abdul's race and Grand Platinum's race. And the other central issue is the massive economic inequality, not just worthing the mounts. I want a bottom-up economy. I want a middle-class economy. I want a working class economy. Are you for wealth tax on billionaires? Are you for Medicare for all? Are you for universal childcare at$10 a day?

42:30Do you actually stand for these policies? And you had in these candidates a clear willingness to take on extreme wealth and extreme power.

42:45Saagar Enjeti:And there's supposed to, speaking of support for Israel, there's supposed to be a vote, what is it, today, on a foreign ops appropriations measure where Massey is pushing an amendment to cut funding to Israel. There was some apparently there was some some real drama or tensions in the Democratic caucus meeting about it yesterday. Were you at that meeting? What if what have you heard about this? Like you're the reporting is that a lot of rank and file Democrats are now very kind of uncertain about how they should be approaching this issue, which a couple of years ago they were quite certain. It was just whatever Steny Hoyer and APAC told them to do.

43:22Saagar Enjeti:They did it. And now they're kind of at sea. What is this Massey vote and how are Democrats thinking about it? Were you in the meeting yesterday? I wasn't, but I heard about it. And there's been a sea change in the perception.

43:41Moderate Democrats are, to the extent that moderate Democrats are saying that we shouldn't ever vote for funding for Israel. That I don't want to vote for a bill that has funding for Israel. And a number of Democrats came up to me saying, we are going to vote for your and Massey effort when the NDAA comes up to strike Section 224. And we don't want to have a foreign appropriations bill passed that has Israel funding. So it'll be interesting to see how many Democratic knows they're going to be. But I would argue at this point, we're getting to at least half the caucus that is opposed to funding for Israel.

44:24How freaked were your colleagues this week? Because we're seeing some public signs of meltdown. You know, James Carville saying there should be a schism in the Democratic Party. A lot of hand-wringing going on. And I know there was some anonymous Democratic House member, perhaps rhymes with Rothheimer, who is saying maybe he's looking at switching parties because he can't he can't possibly coexist with someone like Daria Liza or with Claire Valdez or other candidates that would be supported by by the Zoran Mamdani wing of the party. So I wonder what you're hearing and seeing. And is this serving as a sort of wake up call?

45:00Because that's what the angst over this vote would indicate, that it's suddenly their eyes are open like, oh, we actually have a big problem here. People actually want us to signal some moral direction and are not going to just stand by and watch us run cover for a genocide. Suddenly they are seeing what we've been seeing for the past year. I mean, this New York election was a wake up call. It's in the epicenter of democratic power, right? I mean, you can't dismiss it as, oh, that's just one of Roe's districts in the West Coast. This is where all the media is. This is where Hillary Clinton came from.

45:37Truman comes from. Hakeem comes from. This is where the Clintons live near New York City. It's where all the funding is for the party. A lot of the funding comes out of there. And suddenly they're electing progressive Democrats in the epicenter of democratic power. So absolutely, it has been a wake up. But one of the things that drives me crazy is our inability to stand by progressive Democrats or Democrats, for that matter, because of some dumb thing or inaccurate thing they may have said in their past. Like, how about all of the collective idiocy of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance? Like, I don't want to ever hear a lecture from the Republicans about some statement that someone may have made.

46:22And yet we freak out about the mildest things that someone may have said in the past and drive and feed into Fox's narrative, as opposed to simply saying the Republican Party should never lecture us about any issue of morality, patriotism or normalcy ever for a generation. and anyone on our side has incredibly more patriotic and moral vision than anyone on their side who has been complicit with Donald Trump. And so, you know, this is not in good faith what they're doing. And it's because they fear that the progressive party winning. And I saw your tweet that the progressives have already won. I don't know if I'm ready to go that far.

47:06We still have a long battle and don't underestimate these folks, but we certainly have the momentum. Well, they've won the ideological war is what I meant by that. You know, if you look at the polling, you see the media talking about the divide on Israel with the Democrats. And there is no divide, you know, in terms of the Democratic base. Divide is between that base and the elected officials who are trying to figure out how to catch up real quick, or at least some of them are at least trying to figure that out. But there is no real divide with the base. My last question on this, and then I want to talk about your fight with Elon, is you've been willing to endorse against incumbents.

47:39You know, you endorsed Brad Lander against Dan Goldman, even though he is your colleague. I don't have the list in front of me, but I know you've in other instances, not that you do all of them, but you will selectively endorse against incumbents. It seems like people still like you. Like, it seems like you're still able to be effective in the Congress, that this doesn't just poison the well with everybody there. You know, how do you think about endorsing against your colleagues and the discomfort that that brings? Has there been have there been repercussions for you internally within the caucus?

48:08What does that look like? We've got to have lunch at the Capitol. I can introduce you to the people who hate my guts. Are you not allowed to sit with them anymore? You know, you're going to make some people upset. And, you know, I think if there's one thing I've done, it's I've been willing to take some risks and I'm willing to not be liked by some folks. Now, you can't make everyone upset. And that's where I've tried to have some balance. But, you know, I just after we've done this, I'm cutting an ad for Elijah Manning, who's running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz. That's another place I had uplifted.

48:45I haven't endorsed, but I lifted Milat, who's, by the way, an extraordinary candidate, has a great shot in Colorado. And there are other places where, I mean, Claire Valdez wasn't against an incumbent, but it might as well been against an incumbent because Nydia was basically acting like endorsing her was burning a bridge with Nydia. And I guess what I do is, one, I'm transparent. I will give leadership a heads up if I'm going to do it. I give them the rationale. They know that I don't do it gratuitously in every case. And in some cases, I'll endorse. In other cases, I'll lift people up on social media short of endorsement.

49:26In other cases, I'll help get some funding. And look, I beat Mike Honda. I ran against him twice. I ran against Tom Lantos against the war. And I promised myself that if I ever got there, I wouldn't close the drawbridge. And I would help other people. I remember what it was like running against the incumbent and seeing the entire party endorse the incumbent and walk away from me. And so I'm not perfect, but I've tried to do that. And you know what? When you do that and you're transparent and you have some strength, people often respect that. And you don't have to always toe the exact line. Of course, politics is an art more than a science.

50:06And you can go too far. And it's always a judgment.

50:08Saagar Enjeti:Congressman, you appeared on Jennifer Welch's show a while ago and created a storm that is still going, that is still ranging. I want to play a little bit of your comments from that interview. to come out in huge numbers. And I do believe that once we take power, there has to be accountability. There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk. They're celebrating that he created 4 ,400 millionaires, but they don't talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USA. He needs to answer for that. He needs to be subpoenaed. He needs to face investigation.

50:46He needs to answer for what he did with Doge, It's not just let's move on. And we will use the Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee to hold people accountable who violated the law on ICE and abused power with ICE, who violated the law on killing people on boats in the Caribbean, who violated the law when it came to Iran and some of the strikes, who violated the law with DOJ. There will be accountability. There needs to be accountability before reconciliation.

51:17Saagar Enjeti:Out of that, you've had Elon Musk say he wants to arrest you, say he's going to sue you. You responded with a decent amount of data and also an offer to kind of debate him publicly on this question. Has he any chance you think that that's going to happen? No. First of all, it shows the power of independent media. Right. I mean, I'm on a podcast with Jennifer Walsh and I say this and Musk goes crazy. He literally has I don't know if he still has it, but for until yesterday, he had a pinned tweet on his of Jennifer Walsh and me. like the guy who's a trillionaire doesn't have better things to do other than spending a week responding.

52:08But I think it goes to the core of what I believe about politics, which is it shouldn't just be performative. It should be effective, right? That the Epstein files, we actually got legislation done. There was just a lawsuit yesterday that succeeded with the Administrative Procedure Act that could get more of the files released. It was a coalition that was effective. And there are a lot of people who've tweeted out in Musk and who've tweeted out studies. Why was this effective in actually getting a response and driving a national conversation in USA? Because I talked about the subpoena power and he's not dumb.

52:42He knows that when I said we're I'm on the oversight committee and I'm with Garcia, we're going to subpoena you and we're going to have the votes and that it's criminal contempt to avoid the subpoena. Suddenly said, wow, these guys are serious. They're not just tweeting or going after me. They may actually hold me to Congress. And this is when people say they want to fight from the Democratic Party. I think what they want is not just tweets or speeches. They want things that are going to have an effect. And the reason that had an effect is the combination of independent media and the combination of the threat of the subpoena power.

53:19Saagar Enjeti:And Congressman, there's been, like you said, quite a bit of cope from Elon. Outside the pinned tweets, I wanted you to react to a video of his thoughts on Doge and USAID. Let's take a listen. Parts of USAID that we found to be even slightly useful were transferred to the State Department. They've not been deleted. They've certainly been transferred to the State Department. But many times over with USAID and other organizations, when they said, oh, well, this is going to help children or it's going to help some disease eradication or something like that. And then when we ask for any evidence whatsoever, I say, well, please connect us with this group of children so we can talk to them and understand more about their issue.

54:02Saagar Enjeti:We get nothing. We don't even try to come up with a show often, meaning like it's sort of like, well, can we at least see a few kids. Like, where are they? If they're in trouble, we'd like to talk to them and talk to their caregivers. And then we get something as a response because it's what we find is an enormous amount of fraud and graft. Let me put this example. Very little of it actually gets to the kids, if anything at all. Your reaction to that, Congressman? Most people know it's absurd. Basically, USAID is giving food and medicine to the world's poorest. And Elon Musk didn't go to Africa.

54:43He didn't go to South America. He didn't go to Asia where these programs were. He's sitting in Washington, D.C., and he ends 83 percent of these programs, 83 percent of the programs. It does so much damage that Congress, the Republican Congress, has to reauthorize some of these programs. So it's not as bad as what he did. Now it's maybe 20 or 30 percent cut. But he is just oblivious to what he has done. But he is afraid because he now knows that he's going to have to start explaining this. So this entire week, he's been out there trying to cover for Doge. But we've had this conversation before.

55:25There is a new generation, Robert Garcia, myself, others, who are not going to say, let's just kumbaya, move on, who are going to expect accountability, not just for Elon Musk, but for the Trump officials who engaged in inhumane conduct. And that is part of the healing and reconciliation of this country is to take on the people who have caused the divisions and the cruelty. Ro, you actually know Elon. I mean, he I guess he's not your constituent anymore, but was at one point, I presume. And you've spoken with him. You know, you've met him in person. Like, what is the deal with this guy? How do you view him?

56:05Why do you think this touched such a nerve? What do you think of his arc here to, you know, really hard right politics where now he's getting involved, like inciting race riots in Ireland? Well, that's why I feel like I have some objectivity because we were on friendly terms for, I would say, at least a decade. I mean, he blurbed my first book after the Obama administration on bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. We had a disagreement back then. I had pushed that we linked the Obama grant to labor neutrality, which I wish we did. Tesla would be unionized if we had done that. It was the biggest miss in the Obama administration.

56:46I was public as a deputy assistant secretary of commerce, low level person saying we should link it to labor neutrality. But Elon was begging Anna Eshoo, who was my neighboring member of Congress, for that loan. I mean, every week she would call Anna Eshoo. I need this loan to be able to get Tesla. After that, he blurred the book. We had an on and off conversation. He was very passionate about climate. He was a very strong supporter, at least of immigration and Silicon Valley. Uh, and, uh, I thought that the reason he initially was, uh, uh, upset was that we didn't invite him to the, uh, EV summit with Biden, even, uh, because, uh, people didn't want him there in union and that the union didn't want him there.

57:29And I thought, you know, uh, even though he should be unionized, we probably should have had him there and that, and we had conversations, but then he just has gone, we gets to doge. And, you know, I gave him initially the benefit of the doubt. We were going to have a meeting with him and Bernie and Warren on the defense budget and cutting the defense budget because that's something we've all wanted to do. He gets there and he does nothing with defense. He does nothing with any of these agencies. And he starts on an ideological agenda against USAID. And he goes on an ideological agenda on immigration, an ideological agenda on trans kids.

58:03And I think he's just been swept in to this right wing ecosystem. And that's how he governed. And even his responses to me aren't trying to convince the independent person. He's getting affirmation from this right-wing media ecosystem, and that's who he's playing to. It's very sad and very scary.

58:22Saagar Enjeti:And the problem that he has here, and I'll put this element up here, this is February 3rd, 2025. He said, we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties, did that instead. And so if you contrast that with what he's saying less than two weeks into Trump's term with the deliberative process that he claims that he engaged in where they went program by program and aid recipient by aid recipient asking to be connected with orphans or otherwise to get some validation for the program. And what actually happened is he did literally destroy it. And then when there were attempts to reach out to the aid recipients, they failed because he had shut down all the programs.

59:15Saagar Enjeti:Like the employees were literally like locked out of their out of their emails and otherwise couldn't couldn't communicate. He shut the entire thing down. And that's literally what happened. But I do want to get you to respond to some of the right wing counter arguments, some of which I'm sympathetic to, which is a lot of the good work that they do is in this direct giving. They also have a political and ideological element to them, although they'll fund kind of, quote unquote, pro-democracy organizations that will back like an opposition party that is actually just sympathetic with whatever the U.S.

59:49Saagar Enjeti:interests are, whatever the U.S. slash corporate interests are. And so Musk is able to accurately cite a decent number of foreign leaders in Central America or Africa who say, you know what, actually USAID is not helpful to us. We think that it's overly interventionist and undermines our internal politics. Obviously, you can, you know, both things can be true and you can protect the formula for infants while also addressing the political dimension. But what is your response to that critique that there are a lot of people in Africa and in South and Central America who are like, yeah, actually, we don't like USAID?

1:00:31Well, I acknowledge some of the critique. And if he had come in to reform it, he could have come to Congress and made those arguments. and maybe he would have gotten some support. And this is why I say that initially I was open-minded about Doge. Sometimes journalists ask me that as a gotcha. Oh, you were open-minded about Doge. I said, that's not a gotcha. Yeah, I was open-minded about it. I'm usually open-minded to working with people for constructive solutions. And he would have found an audience if he had said, look, Ro, I want to go after programs that are overly interventionist and undermining popular sovereignty in other nations.

1:01:08Maybe he would have gotten even Democrats, progressive Democrats, to do that. But he didn't do that. He basically took a sledgehammer with no one's input by fiat, as he himself says, and put it in a woodchopper. And that's why we have so many potential debts. Now, in the rebuilding, and this, I think, is a broader point, in the rebuilding of all of these agencies, these. We want to do it with human rights, with progressive values, with a sense of what the future is going to require and not just let's just, you know, get Samantha Power back in there and do exactly what we were doing in the past.

1:01:45And that's the opportunity why I think we can have a new deal for our time, that there could be really a rebuild of government around a progressive vision, around an effective vision for government. And that's the opportunity.

1:01:59Saagar Enjeti:uh ro i had a question about the future political relationships of all these tech billionaires now you mentioned that you and elon were friends a lot of these you know tech ceos were seen more as liberal democrats in but before the trump era but now we see zuckerberg we see these ai ceos you know cozying up to trump um where do you think they go post trump do you think that they will be sort of always now marked as more conservative tech CEOs, or will they flip back over and be good Democrats again if there's a Democrat in office? They're opportunists. I mean, some of them will play ball with whoever is in office, but you're going to lose 30 percent of them if we take a real platform issue, which is a wealth tax.

1:02:51If we're saying, look, we're going to tax these folks, then you're not going to get 30 percent of them. There'll be some who either aren't billionaires or who get that we don't want revolution, who will be fine with that coalition. But you will you have to lose some of those folks. And this is the basic fight we're having. I'm having with Gavin Newsom, where I've reported a five percent tax on 250 billionaires in California. So three million Californians don't lose health insurance. He then is opposed to it, is leading the charge against it. These 250 billionaires are important donors and political contributors.

1:03:28And he says, well, I'm for a national billionaire's tax, but he doesn't want to do what Bernie is talking about, or I 5 % tax on billionaires. He doesn't even want to do what Warren is talking about, 3 % tax. He wants to just say, OK, they can't borrow against assets and should be taxed on that, which is exactly what the tech billionaires are proposing. I mean, and would raise a fracture of the revenue. So at some point, you got to be choose. Are we going to be against the oligarchs or for the oligarchs? We can be against them, which is what Bernie and I and Warren are. And then some of them may come along in the new social contract.

1:04:03But what we can't do is pander to them. Hey, Ro, just to remind everybody, what percent of the vote did your billionaire backed primary opponent? What did he end up with? Six percent. They spent over a million dollars. And we didn't spend a dollar on it because I wanted to kind of see. I mean, we were doing town halls and they spent over a million dollars. He got six percent of the vote. We got 62 percent. And the Republicans got the rest. And he did worse than candidates who haven't spent a dollar against me. And I think it's that people really understood that, you know, he was the candidate of the tech holigarchs.

1:04:39Yeah. And I want people to understand you represent Silicon Valley and that is the level of popularity of those views. So just so people get out there in the Democratic elite world, how absolutely toxic and abhorrent pro-billionaire politics are to the Democratic to the population at large, but certainly in the Democratic Party or at this point. I think that's a very good example. But, you know, if I could actually answer a little bit of Griffin's question here, I don't think that Silicon Valley ever stopped playing both sides. You know, it's not like they abandoned giving money to the Democratic Party and Gavin Newsom's perfect example of that.

1:05:14But, you know, also the abundance movement is very much funded by these guys. And I think that's their entree into, OK, how do we keep our relevance and how do we make sure we've still got got a hand on what's going on with these people? So it's going to be a real choice, I think, going forward for party voters to understand the differences. And I think and you can tell me if you think this is true. Elon's mad about what you said about USAID. He's mad because it's true. He's mad because he knows how disgusting it is to people, the optics of the world's first trillionaire and world's richest man, you know, stealing literally like the life force of some of the poorest people in the world and ripping away from them some of the basic needs that they have.

1:05:54He understands that that doesn't look great. But he's also mad at you because you have been a leading voice in terms of saying, hey, maybe we should tax these guys. Hey, maybe we shouldn't have trillionaires. Maybe that doesn't maybe we can't have a democracy and actually have that level of wealth. And I think that's exactly what a lot of people are waking up to right now. Yeah.

1:06:13Saagar Enjeti:And on that point, if 2029 comes and Democrats have come back into power, are we on track to get to a place where they can actually implement a wealth tax? Is it getting enough energy within Democratic circles? Because if it's the push for it can't really start then. Like it's got to it's got to be happening now. So, yeah, I mean, that's why this fight in California is so important. As you know, California started the anti-tax movement with Prop 13 in 1978. That leads to Reagan winning in 1980. We can get the 5 percent tax in California in 2026. That could lead to that nationally in 2028. And you really have, you know, the SEIU, UnitedHealthcare Workers West supporting it.

1:07:03I'm one of the leading voices for it. And then you have the governor leading the opposition against it, not just saying, OK, I'm neutral and let this play out. He's literally out there trying to kill the ballot measures. So we need to win this fight and we need to start to get more people on board because then it's going to be a fight in the Supreme Court. I personally believe the 16th Amendment makes it constitutional, but we should not be naive that it won't be a fight in the Supreme Court. But the first thing we got to do is get the get our own party on board and not fall for these gimmicks.

1:07:40You know, OK, I'm for a billionaire tax, but it's not really a billionaire's tax. It's really just a tax on their borrowing, which is going to raise a fraction of the revenue. I mean, these people are really clever and they're trying every means to preserve their wealth. But, you know, Elon, that is his fundamental problem. It's not just that he cares about the wealth, though he does. He cares and control. He doesn't like the fact that I'm calling him out and calling these billionaires out as being sort of part of a broken social contract. But the reality of how you know it's broken is you go around the country and you say, OK, Elon Musk has become a trillionaire.

1:08:18And I hear boos, right, from the audience. It's not even I'm not even saying anything. I'm not saying he did anything wrong. And did you hear Elon Musk became a trillionaire? It's sort of the setup to what I'm going to say. And the audience starts booing. They started booing at the Teamsters, you know, Trump voters in there. And that should tell you something, right? I mean, I'm not sure there are other times, you know, in our history where people have done these things and they're just reflexively hated. And if there was much more shared prosperity in this country, you wouldn't have that same reaction.

1:08:47But you have all this wealth being accumulated while people can't buy a house, can't have child care, can't have health care. And this, to me, is going to be the central fight for the Democratic Party. Two central fights are Gaza and genocide. Are you going to really take it on? And are you really going to take on the billionaires and trillionaires? Or are you going to mouth the focus group tested stuff? Because we all know that it's affordability and we all know people want hard tax on the rich. And we all know that people don't like Israel. Are you going to mouth enough to get by? But then when you get in, you really haven't taken the actual fight.

1:09:22So there's no structural check. And that's really the question. One last thing that I would just add to that in terms of the billionaire's right wing turn. I think this is sort of inevitable because, you know, the moment of immense inequality that is only set to skyrocket more with the advances of AI. There's really two directions. One is that you do bring these oligarchs to heel so you can have a democratic society so that the abundance that we already enjoy, if it was even distributed, not evenly, but in some sort of a relatively equitable way where people are able to live and survive. you can either go in that direction of taxing the oligarchs or you can go in the scapegoat direction, which is, you know, the right wing fascist rise that we've seen here and around the world of it's the immigrants fault.

1:10:07It's the trans person fault. Right. It's, you know, pitting people against each other. And so in order for these billionaires to avoid scrutiny on themselves and the possibility of their own wealth being taxed at some reasonable level, the most obvious direction for them to go in is, you know, to start inciting race riots as Elon has become become want to do with the social media platform that he purchased. So in a sense, I think that this right wing turn is sort of inevitable. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, because they fundamentally are about protecting their their their capital. And they were fine with it when the Democratic Party was a party focused on women's rights, focused on immigrant rights, focused on voting rights.

1:10:57But now that the party is also focused fundamentally on economic inequality and going after the capital class, they are much more uncomfortable with the Democratic Party. I mean, they are not, they don't want it to be an FDR party. I mean, they want it to be a party like Clinton, focused on the social issues. which is not to discount the social issues. Those social issues matter, but it is the economic issues that they find threatened.

1:11:28Saagar Enjeti:All right, Congressman, thank you for your time. We hope Elon sees this interview and gets so triggered that we are the next pinned tweet on his Twitter account. You may get sued. Are you set up? Are you ready for that? We're hoping for just a pin before a lawsuit. Oh, sorry. Really quickly, just any sign that he's actually suing you, Ro? So any, are you, do you think that that's. He's made threats before with journalists and he hasn't followed through and he has followed through with the German government and others. So, you know, he's also, he also sued a lot of people at Media Matters and is continuing to sue them.

1:12:06So, you know, it could be either way. I mean, I, he is, it just depends on what mood he is in and, and, you know, but it wasn't just his, whether he sues me, of course, that matters to me personally. and how much a headache it'll be, though it'll also obviously give me the chance for discovery in Doge, which I don't know if he's fully realizing. Very interesting. But the bigger issue is he's sending a message to everyone on that oversight committee. Look, you come after me, I'm going to come after you. It's not just that I have more than one vote and I give millions of dollars and I can spend$5 million against your race.

1:12:43I can actually tie you up in court for years and spend unlimited money against you. So you know what? Why don't you just focus on 100 other things you have to do as a member of Congress and leave me alone? Like go refund USAID, but don't subpoena me. It's not worth your time, not worth your headache. Right, that's the message. The headline we need, Ro, is Ro Khanna to Elon Musk. Bring it on. That's what I said. I'm not going to be intimidated. You know, but that's what we need. That's where I think we've got to fight. I wish we had a Democratic Party where we've got other people saying, yeah, Yolan, bring it on.

1:13:20Sue me, too. Sue me, too. Right. I mean, we've got to show actual fight where there's where there's some risk, where there's some inconvenience. And that because that's what the activists are doing every day. Right. They're going out. They're getting arrested. They're putting their careers on at risk. And I think that's really where what they want to see from elected officials is some actual risk, some skin in the game. And we saw that with those candidates who won in New York. All right. Well, they can't sue us all.

1:13:55Saagar Enjeti:Congressman Ro Khanna, thank you much for your time and we'll see you soon. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. All right. Now time for a little bit of AMA. And of course, if you're a new subscriber, you can submit written questions for the Friday AMA at the link in every daily show email. With that, let's get to our first question. Some reactions to Ryan on the streets of NYC for the DSA elections here. Let's start with this one from Sabas 101. For Amazing BP, with the death cult nature of the Israel government, threats of using nuclear weapons in the U.S. and in the region, should we do what the older gentleman from Ryan's great interview at NYC said and bomb them, making the region a true nuclear weapons free zone and protecting ourselves from their threats?

1:14:42Saagar Enjeti:If you missed that clip, Ryan was around a group of Espyat voters up in Harlem, and he spoke to one older gentleman who I believe was reacting to pro-Palestine protesters and sort of sarcastically said, if you want to stop the genocide, bomb Israel. a funny a funny uh coda to that interaction is that the next day somebody was like by the way you know who that was that was larry seabrook and i looked up yes that was larry seabrook larry seabrook was a state representative state assemblyman and a city councilman in the city in new york who went who went to prison for prison yep because really because he was setting up all of these fake nonprofits in Harlem and then appropriating money from the city to those nonprofits.

1:15:37Saagar Enjeti:And then she's keeping the money for himself and his friends and family. So in like 2013, he got sentenced to like five years in a federal prison for corruption. I'd asked him, he's an ideas guy. He's got ideas. I was like, how do you know, uh, SBI? Like what's your history with him? He's like, I've known him for decades. I was like, what, any good stories? He's He's like, doesn't matter. What I've done doesn't really matter. It's about him. He's a fighter for the people. Ironically, in 2021, when Mom Donnie was in the assembly, they restored felon voter rights. So I believe he would be able to vote thanks to Mom Donnie.

1:16:12So the bomb Israel guy is pro-espiat?

1:16:16Saagar Enjeti:Hardcore. He's an espiat machine. Yeah. Nice. I don't know what kind of point he was making. Amazing. Yeah. Like, hopefully Israel will just listen to the United States and doesn't. Yeah, it's I don't think it's really necessary. How about we just try not funding their genocidal actions anymore, not sending them weapons to do their crimes and forcing them to act like a normal nation that has to live amongst their neighbors and not constantly wage war against everybody. You should try that first. And if not, then then I I wouldn't want the U.S. to do it alone. I think you would need a U.N. mandate.

1:16:53Saagar Enjeti:And then I think U.N. peacekeepers would, I think, be appropriate. A lot of tools in the toolkit here. Yeah. Sanctions regime. Like, I think all of that is before we get to going to war with them, in my opinion. Yes. So next question for Crystal here from Jasmine. Crystal, I'm genuinely curious as how you view slash withstand all the misogynist vitriol directed towards you on social media. While Ryan gets some hate online, the tenor of comments is on a totally different scale. Seems like the troll's biggest trigger is, okay, this is their words, a hot leftist woman with strong opinions and insightful analysis.

1:17:32Stay triggered. Honestly, I'm a little bit oblivious. I just don't really look that much at the replies in the comments. And I have developed a thicker skin, though, now where it just doesn't really bother me. You know, when you've done this for and sometimes I'll send things out that I that I know are like kind of going to stir the pot and get a big reaction. And one of my favorite things to do is just sort of like drop that bomb and then go away and not really pay attention to what happens in the aftermath. So that's how I handle it. It's it's it is what it is.

1:18:05Saagar Enjeti:OK, and one last quick fun one, because we're about to run out of time. This is from Matthew C. Ryan, how did you first meet Crystal and Sagar, and what surprised you the most about them after working together? How did we—I don't remember when we first met, Ryan. I don't think that we interacted when you ran for Congress. I covered the race, but I don't remember if I interviewed you or not. And then I remember when you launched the—I mean, I did the five or the cycle or whatever. The cycle. Yeah, so we definitely met in MSNBC context. But then I remember you reached out when you were launching the working class.

1:18:47Saagar Enjeti:The People's House Project. Yeah. And then, and there were several candidates that you, Jahana Hayes, I think you were working with, Richard Ojeda. Jahana Hayes. J.D. Schulten. You have such a good memory. She was such a cool, interesting candidate, J.D. Schulten. And I think you also flagged that the DCCC was actively working against a bunch of them. And that was so. And then we've basically been in touch since then. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that's that's my recollection as well. And then you met Sagar just through the context of Rising, right? Mm hmm. Right. Yeah. Same with Emily. Which is how I met Sagar, too.

1:19:27People who maybe don't know all the lore, Rising originally launched me and Buck Saxton and but they wouldn't let us have a YouTube channel. It was crazy. Anyway, it was kind of a mess. That whole Hill organization, total mess. That's like you could write a book about all the things that happened there. Anyway, Buck was going to was going to leave and Sagar had filled in for him a couple of times because they knew each other. And so Sagar was the person that I wanted to come in because I thought we had an interesting, an unusual dynamic in terms of where we agreed and where we disagreed. And my vision was always to have this like, OK, what's the best faith version of Trumpism?

1:20:07Like, what's the most honest, intellectual, like truth centric version of Trumpism? What if we had a show where you're like working with that and then you've got the Bernie Wing, which, of course, is completely unrepresented, continues to this day to be basically wholly unrepresented in mainstream press. What does that dialogue look like? Because it's not being modeled anywhere else. And I think the show's evolved a lot from that time, you know, as events have changed all of our political views and, you know, et cetera. But that was kind of the original conception of what we were going to do there.

1:20:38Saagar Enjeti:Very nice. Well, with that, that'll do it for this Friday show. And we will see you all on Monday. Stay tuned. Bye-bye. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales. and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system.

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