Rep. Ro Khanna on Progressive Capitalism, Gaza, and 2028

26:20Coleman Hughes:In a lot of scenarios, they'll start drinking, you know, and a whole town will hollow out. So I totally get that. One of the reasons, however, that we keep shipping these jobs overseas is that America Americans cannot compete on cost with Vietnam, with China, with places in the developing world where these workers aren't unionized. They don't have the kind of protections that in America would and Europe drive up costs, obviously cost of production. How do you square the tension between unions, which is a huge part of left-wing politics and supporting unions and wanting everyone to unionize and unions have as much protection as possible.

27:04Coleman Hughes:And the fact that that drives up the very costs that in part cause us to lose these industries to overseas. You know, I would entertain that argument, and I appreciate your empathy for these communities, but it's contradicted with some of the facts. You know, I was with the UAW president, Sean Fain, I may not remember the numbers exactly, but he said of the companies that UAW represents, there's been over the last X number of years about$630 billion of profits. And$600 billion of that has gone to shareholders and stock buybacks and dividends. Only$30 billion has gone to the workers. So you're telling me that with all that's being produced in profits, we can't have workers get more of the share?

27:51I believe we need employee ownership in this country. The great wealth has been created through the stock market, up 20 ,000 percent since the last few decades. And so how do we get workers to share in profits? How do we get workers to have a wage where they can afford a home? I mean, they're just asking for enough. They're not saying, you know, if you're a genius who started a company, you should get the same amount as me. They don't resent it. I'm not saying don't have billionaires in America. I'm just saying make sure that the workers get enough if they're working a 40-hour week to be able to afford a house and take a vacation and pay a reasonable tax.

28:27Now, you say how do we compete with these other countries? First of all, most of the cost differential isn't in labor. Labor is often 7 % to 10 % of cost, though in matters. We should insist in fair trade agreements to some kind of wage unionization in other countries. We should make sure that we don't have these investment dispute corporations and these trade deals that basically take the side of corporations and allow them to have less labor protection and less environmental protections overseas. We should provide patient capital in the United States. The biggest challenge is people overseas, they get the Chinese investment bank saying, I'll build your factory.

29:10I'll help build your employee work base. And we need to have a work base in this country that's not just four-year college degrees, that are trade schools, that are technology institutes. I believe if we took that approach, a modern-day version of FDR, I get that the economy is more globalized than he had it, that we could have that economic security again. Because there are parts of the economy that are working, right? America is producing more wealth than we've ever had before. Our wealth has just exploded,$20 trillion in my district. but most people feel that the economy isn't working for them like it used to work in the 50s and 60s.

29:48And my fear, what really motivates me is my fear is that Trump married kind of an economic nostalgia with a racial nostalgia. You know what? America kind of was working for you guys before Rose family got here. And if we want to embrace the Frederick Douglass vision of America, my inspiration, composite nation, that people can come from any background, any faith, and they're American because they believe in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We've got to show that the future economy is going to create economic independence for every family. And that, to me, is my North Star.

30:22In the past, the North Star was efficiency. It was lower prices. It was capital markets that ran smoothly. I studied that stuff at University of Chicago under Robert Lucas and Gary Becker, far smarter than me. I was an undergrad, but I got their points. But I just don't think that should be the North Star for American political leadership going forward. And my disappointment with Trump is he said that that shouldn't be the standard, that we should care for places like York County, Pennsylvania, where I just was. That's why I keep referring Pennsylvania. But he hasn't delivered there. I mean, it objectively hasn't delivered.

30:59And the question for progressive politics is, can we deliver? It's not, can we win? I think a progressive can win. It's once we get power, can we deliver? Can we really turn around life in black inner cities that face the industrialization in small towns and rural communities? I hope we can, but that's what we desperately need in this country.

31:19Coleman Hughes:One of the big critiques of left-wing economics is that it dampens innovation. And one of the areas that this critique gets lodged is pharmaceuticals. So like, obviously, everyone, no one, no one wants to defend big pharma. It's like, they're like the ultimate boogeyman. They're so rich. How could anyone ever think to defend them? Well, don't think of defending them, but just ask where almost every new drug comes from. Almost every new drug in the world is invented in America. Now, like, why is that? Is it because we're geniuses and everyone else in the world is stupid? Well, obviously not. There's brilliant scientists everywhere around the world, right?

31:59Coleman Hughes:But American pharmaceutical companies, because they can expect obscene, if you like, profits on certain drugs, can afford to blow potentially billions of dollars on the risky prospect of innovation. And so that's, you know, as you know, I don't have to tell you that there's a double-edged sword there. I know you've talked about, I think, getting rid of the monopoly, the drug monopoly that pharmaceutical companies get when they invent a new drug. How would you deal with pharma in a way that does not dampen innovation, which in the end benefits everyone? Well, first, Coleman, you may acknowledge that the story is more complex.

32:48Part of what makes America extraordinary is the funding of NIH. So many of the drugs are invented by NIH grants. One of the places I'm so disheartened with the administration is that the cuts of some of the funding to NIH and NSF and universities have led to a 15 percent decline of PhDs. Look, I'm all for trade schools and union workers and blue collar workers. We need PhDs in America. I want more PhDs to be building things and inventing things in this country. The other advantage we have, having taught at Stanford as a lecturer, not a professor, just want to make sure people don't think I'm inflating my title, but as a lecturer there in economics, I saw the technology transfer programs we have where unlike anywhere else in the world, our universities not only have these scientists, but then we allow them to build with private industry the startups.

33:44and most of the drug discovery doesn't happen at the big pharma companies. It happens in the small, medium-sized startups that then are gobbled up by these big companies. I don't have the statistics off the top of my head, but so many of these pharma companies spend so much of their money on stock buybacks. If we restricted the stock buybacks, I'd have some sympathy for the argument that, okay, maybe they're putting it all in innovation. But a lot of it is just going into stock buybacks and huge appreciation for shareholders. That said, Big Pharma does have a role. What is their role? It takes about a billion dollars, billion and a half dollars to see a drug through all the testing into markets.

34:26And our FDA is appropriately strict. And so, you know, I acknowledge that role. I just don't think it's working in terms of all the credit of people who have invented things. And it shouldn't be sticking the American people with the kind of bills that they've been paying. I mean if the federal government were negotiating, I think we would lower a lot of the drugs. And the patent shouldn't be like 100 patents on the same drug. I mean they play these games. They change the structure of the drug by a little bit and then they patent that. So it's a balance, and I think the balance is out of whack.

35:03Coleman Hughes:I want to tell you about a podcast I think you're going to appreciate. It's called Unpacking Israeli History. If you follow the news about Israel, you're just getting headlines. But headlines are just a tiny slice of a long, complicated, and genuinely fascinating story. One of the things I care about on this show is engaging seriously with complexity rather than flattening it. That's exactly what host Dr. Noam Weissman does on Unpacking Israeli History. He dives deep into the events, the people, and the moments that shaped Israel past and present, with genuine empathy and a willingness to explore multiple perspectives.

35:39Coleman Hughes:And when he brings in guests like philosopher Micah Goodman or journalist Haviv Retzig-Gor, they add real depth to the conversation. It's deeply researched storytelling for people who want to understand Israel rather than just confirm what they already think. In today's climate, that's rare, and it matters. Find Unpacking Israeli History on your favorite podcast app or YouTube and subscribe today.

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37:07Coleman Hughes:Okay, let's pivot back to foreign policy a little bit. You used to describe yourself as a pro-Israel progressive, but I think you've talked about how after the October 7th and the war in Gaza, you have changed your tone and become much more anti-Israel. And you could tell me if you think that's an unfair characterization. But my real question for you is given that your pivot on this issue has been tightly connected to October 7th and the war in Gaza, how do you think Israel should have responded to that massacre? It was a terrorist attack.

37:49Hamas is a terrorist organization. I mean, the slaughter of innocent Israelis was heart-rending. I met with John and Rachel Polin, who lost their son, Hirsch, in my office. And it was brutal what happened to them, brutal what happened to a lot of the hostages. I have zero sympathy for Hamas and I don't in any way justify what they did, nor do I think they should have any future in a Palestinian state. I supported initially Israel's right to go after those Hamas perpetrators. And I got criticized. I know people don't remember this on the left for the first few months because I did not rush right after October 7th to say there's a ceasefire.

38:41I said they should surgically go after the people who committed that atrocity. About two and a half months into it, and I think this information, I know this information is public now, they had destroyed a lot of the Hamas battalions. At that point, I did not think that militarily they could achieve anything more and they should have stopped and they should have engaged in a peace process with the Arab peace plan to try to actually have a non Hamas Palestinian state where they secure Israel. And they continued and they continued. And then they ended up killing 19 ,000 children in Gaza. You go to the Wall of Tears, their names are all there in Dearborn and ages.

39:28And they ended up destroying a lot of homes and property and caused the destruction of almost 70 ,000 lives. And I believe those were war crimes. The U.N. has called it a genocide. I know people don't like it when I say that, but that's, I said I would defer to what the UN findings were. And my view is that that Israeli government needs to have accountability for what they did.

39:51Coleman Hughes:Okay, we'll get to genocide in a moment, but I want to double click on your answer here, because you said after a few months, you felt that the IDF could no longer make serious military progress. And at that point, they should have pivoted to negotiating for a non-Hamas Palestinian state or non-Hamas Gaza at minimum. How do you negotiate for a non-Hamas Gaza when Hamas hasn't been destroyed at that point? No, Hamas still hasn't been destroyed. Hamas is still in charge in a large part of Gaza. What did they accomplish over the two years after around December? That's a totally legitimate critique that you're making now that Israelis share, but how do you start negotiating for a non-Hamas Gaza when, as a matter of fact, Hamas is still embedded everywhere and not going to leave?

40:46Coleman Hughes:That's not like a real... They did, right? Eventually they got there. I mean, they've negotiated now, right? They're trying this Board of Peace thing, which I have concerns about, but they are negotiating. And the question just was, when should they have started negotiating? My view is we could have saved a lot of lives and they could have saved a lot of their own public opinion had they started negotiating in a few months in. Now, I understand it's hard because Hamas still had hostages and they would have had to negotiate with those release of the hostages. And I'm not saying there were good choices.

41:19I believe had they taken an approach of working with the Arab League, working with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and other nations in the United States and said we're going to stop and we're going to negotiate for the release of these hostages and we're going to negotiate for a secure Israel and a Palestinian state along the Arab peace plan proposals, that it would have led to a better outcome for the region and certainly for people in Gaza, but I also believe for Israel. I mean, even Israel would acknowledge that they've become a pariah in the world from public opinion. They may be defiant about it.

42:01I had someone – I still meet with people from APEC. I don't take any of their money, but they're American citizens. They're in my district, and I sell it to everyone. If you want to have a conversation, I'm open to having a conversation. I'll disagree with you. I'm not going to question your patriotism or your sincerely held beliefs. And someone reached out and they said, wow, I didn't realize what really has happened until I saw some of these results in these primaries. Thomas Massey won 30 percent of voters under 50. Put aside where whether you agree with what I stand or not. I'm telling you it's a fact that Israel has lost the younger generation under 50 in this country.

42:42And I'm telling you it's a fact that they've lost a majority of Democrats in the way they have acted in this war. And they didn't need to do that, in my opinion.

42:53Coleman Hughes:Yeah, I mean, to me, it's one thing to say they didn't need to do that. It's another thing to propose an actually realistic alternative to what they did do, because simply saying they should have negotiated with the terrorist group that is never going to voluntarily give up its territorial claim on Gaza, and I mean, we know that, right? That's not a realistic alternative. That's a wishful thinking alternative. Like, we could have talked to them sooner and then got to this, you know, merry future where there's a Hamas-free Gaza. I mean, as for the genocide component, I understand you're deferring to the United Nations here.

43:37Coleman Hughes:You know, to me, that doesn't land as that lands as as the fallacy of an argument of an appeal to authority. And in this case, an authority I don't have all that much respect for. I mean, I think the U.N. does some good things. And but, you know, it's the U.N. also put Iran on the board of a like a women's rights group. Right. And so there's perverse incentives at the U.N. There's just there's a lot of folly going on there. And for me, you know, as you know, I don't have to tell you this, you know, you have a legal background. Genocide comes down to intent. It's not about how many people you kill.

44:17Coleman Hughes:We don't call what FDR, who you admire, did in Japan a genocide because of the death toll, which is obviously much higher than Gaza. We understand that the intent of the violence is what determines whether it's a war with a high casualty rate or genocide. And in this case, the ultimate test of Israel's intentions came down to when they were presented with the opportunity to get the hostages back, all of them, and get Hamas at least to nominally sign on to disarm. That's when the war stopped. Now, if they were actually intent on genocide, which means the destruction of a people, then it wouldn't matter whether they got the hostages back and Hamas agreed to disarm, because the point of the violence would be to kill Palestinians.

45:07Coleman Hughes:So to me, that's the ultimate test of whether it was a genocide, and it wasn't. Well, I believe that they took a deal that had been offered numerous times before by folks like Tony Blinken and Biden, but they rejected it. And ultimately, they took it when American public opinion really soured on what was happening. And I think they saw the writing on the wall and they saw that Trump wanted an end to the war as well. But those terms were offered more or less numerous times in those two years. And I don't think that the two years of fighting and killing all these people was justified. I believe that they could have gotten terms, if not identical, very similar a few months in after October 7th.

45:59The other thing is that when you look at Ben Gavir, when you look at Smokrich, when you look at Gallant, When you say, look, they all should be shoved into a small part of Gaza, that they are all animals and we're going to treat them that way, that there needs to be a response that is disproportionate to what happened. And then you see people in the government basically showing reckless indifference for Palestinian lives. And you see them having a concerted strategy to push a people into a small part of Gaza, which is part of the definition of genocide is the elimination of a group from their homeland.

46:46and do you believe, I mean I'll ask you, do you think Ben Gavir or Smokrich really want Palestinians living in the West Bank or in Gaza? They call it Judea-Samaria. I mean they don't even acknowledge Palestinians and I think they were part of this coalition that Netanyahu had to listen to to stay in power.

47:06Coleman Hughes:Yeah, I have no sympathy for Ben Gavir and Smokrich and all the the far-right hyper-nationalists and racists. I think they're terrible for Israel. They're terrible for the Palestinians. They are part and parcel of the problem with settler violence in the West Bank. One of the great mistakes, I think, of the Israeli center was not agreeing to, because recall, Netanyahu, as his first choice, wanted to partner in coalition with the Israeli center. They refused on principle, which drove him out of necessity to partner with the far right goons that were never a part of his coalition since since he came back to the prime ministership around 2010.

47:54Coleman Hughes:And, you know, for most of the war, the war decisions were being made by a war cabinet that consisted of Israeli centrists as well. And so on the one hand, I totally agree with your critiques of Benvir. I mean, Benvir, they're maniacs, they're outside of the mainstream. But I also understand that when you have a country the size of New Jersey, where I grew up, size and population of New Jersey, that where a thousand people get killed by terrorists on your border in a single day, over a thousand actually. the the the pressure to respond in a democracy and protect your citizens and get rid of the threat is overwhelming and any israeli politician left right or center would have been forced by the way any american president if we were in an analogous situation which we we never really are because we're just much more protected, would be forced to respond to eliminate the threat.

49:01Coleman Hughes:And I have a lot of sympathy for the population that is surrounded on all sides by terror in that scenario. And I think the narrow focus on the far right of Israel, while in some sense totally justified and abhorrent can obscure the larger situation of vulnerability that Israeli citizens left, right, and center are in vis-a-vis the terrorists and proxies of Iran that they're surrounded by. But we don't have to get all in on Israeli politics right now. What I really want to ask you is America's stance towards Israel, because that's more germane to ask someone that might be running for president.

49:48Coleman Hughes:Let's say we end aid to Israel, right? Let's say, you know, $4 billion a year by default, that's canceled, we're giving zero. Do you feel the progressive left would let go of this issue? And we'd say, okay, well, now it's just one of those conflicts out there in the world. It's like the Azerbaijanis and the Armenians hate each other. We're not involved. We're not funding either side. We're happy. We're no longer going to care about this issue? Or do you think that folks would want to go further and affirmatively be involved and support the Palestinian side of the issue? And more importantly, what would your end goal be for American policy?

50:31My end goal is a just peace. I understand the vulnerabilities you talked about, But I don't blame the Israeli people for the actions of the Israeli government. I said that the Israeli government, in my view, committed these war crimes and genocide. And I think if they had more enlightened leadership, they may have chosen a different path. I would have hoped that. But, you know, yes, there was emotional vulnerability. but that's leadership to take that situation and not have the kind of disproportionate response that not only led to huge destruction, but has made them a pariah in the world in terms of public opinion.

51:16What I would want is a Palestinian state, America to recognize a Palestinian state. It should not have Hamas. We need to have work with the other Arab nations on what that Palestinian state would look like. We should end the settler violence. Yanan Levi, one of the extremist settlers, were just arrested today. I don't want to go into my trip there, but it was his hulvams who had detained our van. And I don't think our making a fuss of it is what led to the arrest, but certainly we were part of a chorus of people saying, how do you have these extremist settlers who've killed people just walking free?

51:54And so a call for a Palestinian state that's not Hamas, a call for an end to the outposts, a call for an arrest of the extremist settlers, and ultimately a Palestinian state living with Israel as a secure Jewish democratic state. That is my hope for the region. And do I believe people will still be engaged? Yes, because many young people in particular and people on the left view the occupation as fundamentally unjust. And I view it as unjust, having been there. And until that situation resolves, it will be part of American politics. And it will be part of American politics because we've had a relationship with Israel for 75 years and have been part of a system where Palestinians have not had self-determination.

52:49Coleman Hughes:Okay, so that's the end of my time with you. I don't want to take up any more of your time than I agree to. Thank you so much for coming on my show. Last question. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you and selfishly take the opportunity to potentially break news. Are you officially running for president? I'm going to make that decision after Thanksgiving, but I'll tell you this, Coleman, we need more of these kind of conversations in our country. When you had reached out kindly, there were some on my team who said, you can't go on Free Press. They're just going to ask you gotcha questions about what you've been doing.

53:28And I had seen a number of your clips, and I know you're fair, and I know you're thoughtful. And, you know, I imagine your viewers will disagree with a number of positions that I've taken. But what I can say is this. I have a humility to the sense that I'm one person out of 330 million Americans, and I'm born in a country that had extraordinary sacrifices beyond anything I've sacrificed from defeating British colonialism to the Civil War to Nazism to communism and building America. And so I approach and will approach politics if I choose to run with a clear vision and saying that we need a new social contract.

54:12We can't have all the wealth piling up in a few hands in my places. We need to rebuild the places I grew up with, give kids like me a fair shot at economic success, have a more moral foreign policy. But I'll always approach it with humility, with an understanding of wanting to engage, with a sense that I may not always be right, and a sense that we need to really have conversation and true dialogue in this country and listen to one another. That's very different than the current president we have in office in just temperament. And I don't know if that's what the temperament the country wants. It's partly why I'm going around the country.

54:52But I sure believe whether it's president or something else, we need more thoughtful conversations in this country and an acknowledgement that we don't have a monopoly on the truth.

55:01Coleman Hughes:All right. Congressman Ro Khanna, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate you.