Dem Slams Failed Party Leadership, Demands Chuck Schumer Resign Immediately

0:04All right, welcome back to IHIP News special episode with Congressman Ro Khanna, our fearless warrior who is advocating for the Epstein survivors, advocating for democracy, but also advocating for a more progressive, more worker friendly, more reach more of the people Democratic Party, ditching corporate donors and having an actual political party that really is of the people, by the people, for the people, not for the corporations. We need a new moral vision in this country and for a party. And we need an FDR like moment for the Democratic Party. And we need to speak simply, plainly, and in truth.

0:46We need to say what happened in Gaza was a genocide. We need to say there are no more military sales to Israel. We need to say we need to tear down ICE, not just no masks and body cameras. We got to tear down the agency that is terrorizing Americans, terrorizing immigrants, and have a new agency like we had, by the way, since 1940 to 2003, that actually respects human rights. We need to be clearly for taxing billionaires more. We need to be for Medicare for all. We need to be for$10 a day childcare. We need to be for free public college and 1 ,000 trade schools. We need to be for a Marshall Plan for America.

1:26And we need to say things simply which are concrete. I'm sick of politicians saying, I'm for the American dream. I'm for renewing the American dream. I'm for standing for human rights. I'm for the American family. I'm for every kid having a shot. I'm for a high floor, low ceiling. I don't even know what the, what does it mean? Where do you stand? And that is the problem with the Democratic Party. People, Republicans come up to me and they say, look, well, I don't agree with half the things you just said, but at least you say what you believe. And you know, one of the only lesson we should learn from Donald Trump is like he's not afraid to say what he thinks.

2:04Like Donald Trump is out there saying crazy things like let's conquer Greenland. And then we're like poll testing whether we could be for Medicare for all. That is that's what drives me crazy about the Democrats, the crowdsourcing what their opinion is. So here's where I am and where a lot of my listeners are is we feel like the Democratic leadership is twofold right now. We need democratic leadership and we need ironclad resistance to the fascism. And it feels like the leadership is really corporate vested. And then there are progressive members of that, like yourself and others. And then you're seeing the base like myself.

2:48I was a pretty, you know, MSNBC liberal, voted blue no matter who, harm reduction. And I've really moved further to the left. And that's not happening in a vacuum. The polling is starting to fare that out. I thought you moved the whole base. That was my theory. But I think the real frustration is that we have to just name names a little bit. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer just do not seem equal to this task. We have a crazy psychopath, a dipshit of epic proportions who is crazier than a shithouse rat running the country. surrounded by people who will sit and pile effusive praise on him ad nauseum, bring him trophies.

3:34And it seems like it would be the easiest thing on the planet to say no. And what got my attention is like, why do they keep playing patty cake with this guy? Why are we even talking about funding ICE? I agree with Schumer. I've called for him to step down as minority leader. And I don't understand why we're even talking about no new funding, right? Like they were saying, oh, Ro, you may have to come to vote tomorrow back. I'm rushing back to D.C. And I'm like, why are we even talking about no new funding for ICE? They have$75 billion that was passed in the big, ugly bill. We should not fund an additional dime in two weeks, in two months, in two years, not in Donald Trump's presidency until they tear down this agency and they start anew.

4:19And they start with actually recognizing human rights. And they start with recognizing the human rights of actually Americans and immigrants. Now, I would say with Hakeem, I think there is a progressive energy and majority in the House that allows him to be bolder. I don't think he's going to say an additional dime on funding for ICE. He stood his ground on the health care fight when Schumer caved. He was very helpful in the Epstein fight in getting a coalition. So I but the difference is that there's a lot of progressive energy in the House. You've got Greg Cazar. You've got Pramila Jayapal. You've got Jamie Rask.

4:57I mean, I don't want to leave people out, but there are at least 20 people, Delia Ramirez, who are really the heart and soul of the fight. And I I love serving in the House because, you know, you go over to the Senate. It's like no one. It's a pin drop. Like you can't hear anyone. You can't talk. It's, you know, it's like, you know, and then it's like being in detention on the house. You know, everyone's screaming, everyone's, but it's much more the American people. And the house has the fight. The house gets the moment. The house gets that this is not a time for just going along. And people are tired of speeches.

5:33You know, everyone is looking for sort of the charisma and showmanship. I said courage is the new charisma. What people really want is action. They want principled action. They want actually to get things done, to stand up. And what we showed with Epstein is if you're creative and bold, you can do things, even if you're in the minority. Like we were in the minority. Right. And we got Donald Trump to sign the law. We've done, Massey and I, or others, we've tried a lot of things that don't work. We've tried war powers resolutions that don't work. But you've got to take shots on goal. You've got to be out there.

6:06You've got to be out there on the streets. You've got, you know, I went to Minneapolis after Alex Preddy was shot. and I stood there with third and fourth generation Minnesotans. It's not enough. A lot of these folks are well-meaning. They think, okay, you go to Congress, you vote, you're in a committee. I often joke, they've got all these comms people in committees. I was like, no one pays attention to what you're doing. No one in the country is watching these committee hearings. Get out there. Be with the people. Be bold. Take steps to understand the moment we're in. I feel like if we had a different speaker and I've had minority leader Jeffries on.

6:46Oh, you have? Yes. He's been on the podcast before. And I understand. I think he's good natured and wants goodness. I feel like there is what the people want right now and what would just be an electric lightning bolt that would make the turnout for the midterms too big to rig would be just some badass going, no, we're not giving you shit. You're killing Americans. You're building, buying warehouses to house people, a.k.a. concentration camps. that's what this budget this ice budget is going to do they want to put human beings in warehouses and grade people on legal illegal uh brown-skinned and then of course i read this article the other day there's a guy from ireland that has been in a he called it a concentration camp his words who had like a visa issue for four months and so when i think about that the maga movement you know we can say, oh, it's about white supremacy and it's only for rich white men.

7:49They wanted to kill Mike Pence. He was a Bible thumper, right wing, Republican, a good soldier. He just wouldn't break the law at the tail end. And they wanted to kill him for it. I just feel like this moment, I 100 % agree with you that Chuckles needs to go. He's not the man of the moment. He's completely compromised by Israel, in my opinion. And that is his first and foremost action as a senator. No, he's bragged about getting them support when you've got a genocide going on. And it's not me saying it's a genocide. That's what the UN finding is. Genocide scholars. Yeah, that's what the scholars say.

8:27And you're then bragging about getting them more funding. But I think we can get the House to a point of no new funding in the stand. I mean, for me, it's personal. I'm, you know, the son of immigrants. My grandfather was in jail for four years as part of Gandhi's independence movement in the 1940s, 1930s, 1940s. I'm of Hindu faith. I grew up, I was born in Philadelphia, Bucks County. To this day, when I go on overseas trips, even though if I'm going in the Air Force planes, my mom says, don't lose your passport. I was like, mom, the Air Force has the passport. It'll be fine. And so to see a country, and I grew up in a time in Bucks County where teachers believed in me, little league coaches believed in me.

9:08I was never told you can't do what you want just because you're a son of immigrants or have a different faith or look different. And now I go places and people are in lines and they're brown and they say, here's my passport. I'm carrying it in the United States of America. I went to the California City Detention Center and I met with these immigrants who were detained. By the way, they put me in a room with 47 people and the prison warden left. So they're obviously not a security risk. They wouldn't do that if they were murderers or rapists. And one person talked about, showed me his broken nose, no medical care.

9:43Someone talked about having blood in his urine. Can you get me a doctor's appointment? They can't get a doctor's appointment. People wanted to be voluntarily deported. They were that sort of mistreated. And they couldn't get voluntarily deported because there's no judge. It's all backlogged because Stephen Miller has a quota of$2 ,000 to$3 ,000. and let's just fill these places and their private detention centers so they don't want to spend the money on the food or the medical care or getting the legal processing. This is happening in the United States of America. And what the American people want to say, not just kids of immigrants, what third, fourth, fifth generation Americans want to see is a Democratic Party that says that's not America.

10:25That is we are going to stand up against that because it's a violation of our faith. It's a violation of human dignity. It's a violation of the Constitution. And people want strength. And they mistake, our party mistakes strength. Oh, let's just get the guy with the military uniform or law enforcement. No, strength comes from conviction. That's how Gandhi led. That's how Mandela led. That's why Bernie leads. Strength comes from moral conviction and standing on a moral ground. That's why Mamdani was so powerful in what he did in New York. People knew he believed what he was saying. And I just think if we had that kind of leadership, we would have a sweeping majority.

11:04We had a realignment in this country. For decades. I think for decades, we would have it, like you mentioned earlier, an FDR style. Rain, let's talk about the billionaire tax. I read an article on the way here that state legislatures, Democrats in states, were drafting bills to tax billionaires, and they're running into a problem, the governors, the Democratic governors. So these state legislators are now having to battle their democratic governors. Here's what pisses me off about the billionaires. Like the ones here in New York, you just mentioned Momdani. They spent more money trying to run ads against him, Islamophobic ads against him to terrorize everybody, than I think they would pay in billionaire taxes.

11:51You know, like these guys are so entitled that they're willing to buy J.D. Vance and spend all of this money, but cannot give it to the country that has a system that has made them this way. So there's two things. Number one, it's easy to villainize Jeff Bezos. It's easy to villainize. Oh God, it's so easy to villainize Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, but it's the system, the system that we're seeing right now, these governors in your home state, Newsom, put up a wall and advocate for billionaires. And they keep propagandizing us that, oh, this is going to be bad for business. And I think it's such a leadership failure and not reading the room right now, this eat the rich French revolution moment that the rest of us are kind of living in right now to not be able to stand up to the billionaires and say, no, we all need to chip in here.

12:47This is not sustainable. He's tearing down the DOJ. How are you going to take your contracts into court and have an economy? If he tears down the DOJ, we're going to go straight the way of Russia. And it feels like there's no moral clarity within upper echelons of the Democratic Party against billionaires and wealth tax. Yeah. And, you know, Newsom doesn't want to offend the donor base, but here's what they're missing. The younger progressives, they say to me when I talk about a tax on billionaires and 1 % a year or 2 % a year, they say, Ro, I don't think they realize you're being nice. Sure. Wait till we get into power.

13:24Like the reality, look, let's look at some just basic economic facts in this country. I represent a district in Silicon Valley that is a third of the national wealth. A third of the stock market is in my 50 mile radius. Apple, Google, NVIDIA, Tesla, Broadcom,$18 trillion of wealth. The entire national stock market is,$70 trillion. Income inequality in this country is at the highest it's been in 60 years. The worker share of income in this country is the lowest it's been in 75 years. Young people, even with college graduates, are having a hard time getting a job because AI is eliminating some of those entry-level jobs.

14:04And then you've had the tariffs, and you've had a slowing economy. And in all of this, you have billionaires in California having increased their wealth in the last three years, 158 percent, 158 percent. And what we're saying is we want some percent a year. Now, you could do the details, OK, don't tax voting shares, et cetera. But the broader point is we need everyone to have a stake in America. And you can't have a society, you can't have a nation half prosperous and half in decline. 70 % of Americans don't believe in the American dream. And if we're going to have a Democratic Party that just says, okay, we're going to stop Trump's craziness, and we're going to get back in there, and we're going to do business as usual, and yeah, we won't have the ICE raids, and we won't do dumb tariffs, and we're going to insult Mark Carney, but we're just going to allow the income inequality to continue, especially with AI, then you're going to have someone like Nick Fuentes come in 2032.

15:07We need to get in there and we need to tackle the fundamental economic divide that has ripped this country apart, that has fueled such an anger at the elites, at globalization, at the demographic change. And we need to say our highest mission is going to be the economic independence and security for people who haven't had a fair shot. And that to me, I call it a new economic patriotism. That to me should be our philosophy with a new moral vision. And I really believe we have a shot to, if we just looked at the energy that instead of dismissing them, Donnie and others, if we looked at the energy these young people have, we have it much easier than President Obama was a genius in terms of his oratory and all.

15:52He was going uphill in 2008. It was like, who is this guy? There weren't armies there. Now we've got the armies, but we've got our own party fighting the armies. Mobilize the armies. Lead the armies. You've got the armies there. Let me ask you this. Do you think this corporate Democratic centrist govern incrementally the way that the Democrats have been doing it, the way that the corporate Dems and leadership want to do it now? Do you think that incubates an electorate that's primed to vote for authoritarianism? or fascism? I think it does, because I think it makes people apathetic. I think people say, well, yeah, my life didn't change.

16:34I still have health care costs. I still have Medicare costs. The wealthy keep getting wealthier. What changed in my life? And so then someone like a demagogue comes in and says, well, I'm going to tear this whole system down because the system's not working. And they're like, yeah, how much worse can it get? Well, it can get a lot worse. We're seeing. You can have ICE raids. You can have social unrest. It obviously can get worse. But then we just promise them, okay, we'll undo the damage. Let's return to normalcy. No, let's recognize that Donald Trump fundamentally was a symptom of a broken system, that we are living in something worse than the Gilded Age, that we've got people who don't have healthcare.

17:12I mean, the famous actors from Dawson's Creek who couldn't afford cancer treatment, so now his wife has a GoFundMe page to keep her home? And we're producing more wealth than ever before. We can't give everyone health care that a beloved actor can't afford it in this country. What hope is there for a firefighter or a nurse if they get cancer? So people want a clear direction. And then they say, OK, Ro, but why not be pragmatic? Even if we win and if we don't have 60 votes in the Senate, then how are you going to get things done? How about we start with what our North Star is? How about we start with what the society we want to see is?

17:50And we fight like anything to get there. If I had started out with the attitude, well, we can't get the Epstein files released, Roe, how are we going to get the president to sign it? How are we going to get the Senate to pass it? How are you ever going to get the speaker to bring it up? I wouldn't have started in the first place. Now, have we gotten the whole files released? No. But when you fight, when you make it a tenacious goal, and when you have a North Star, you get progress. And that's where the Democratic Party needs to be. And I think we would inspire people if we had that. I completely agree.

18:21Do you think your centrist Democratic colleagues in the House understand the shift in the electorate, the shift in the blue and independent voters have, in my opinion, have really shifted away from corporate politics? Like a lot of people had no idea what AIPAC was a year, two years ago. I'm one of those people. I had no idea what it was. They're standing against me too. They're not happy. So now you have organizations like track APAC. And I have these friends in Oklahoma City that never been that political before. Like, oh, we're not voting for a politician that takes APAC. The electorate is getting savvier.

19:00They're off the corporate media tit. They're on to the independent media getting facts. Do your colleagues understand this shift in the American electorate, because it is everywhere. I don't think they fully get it yet. It's slowly. I mean, but what you have done and what you're describing, I think, is very important, because it used to be, I think, in Trump's first term, that there were a lot of resist liberals who said, okay, who's going to put up the fight against Trump and who's not? And there were people on the kind of centrist lane who said, as long as we fight against Trump, as long as we show that we've got the fight, we're taking him on.

19:41It doesn't really matter if we don't say genocide. It doesn't really matter if we don't tax billionaires. It doesn't really matter if we don't have national health insurance. So we don't have to take on these powerful interests. Why upset the billionaires? Why upset APEC? Why upset the private health insurance companies? Let's just win the vote by showing that we have got spine and are going after Trump. And I don't think that strategy works anymore because a lot of the resist liberals have also understood that to really defeat Trumpism, we have to change our society. That some of the anger that Trump voters had was anger at a broken system.

20:20And if that system stays broken, you're going to continue to have uglier and uglier populism. And, you know, my anger is not with people who voted with Trump. My anger is that Trump sold them a bill of goods and manipulated their legitimate anger. And my anger is with our party not recognizing for decades what we did. I mean, hollowed out towns, rural communities you go through. I'm sure you have into places in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. OK, steel left, aluminum left. What did we do? When a kid growing up in my district, the world's their oyster. What's happening to kids in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Warren, Ohio?

21:00And you're telling me, well, we can't get traditional manufacturing back. Yeah, we can have new industries, but what did we do there? Did we create child care jobs? Did we create elder care jobs? Did we create tech jobs? Did we have any plan for a Marshall Plan for America? So you're there and your life is worse off for your kids. And you're sitting there saying, well, shouldn't I vote for someone new who's going to tear it down? And then Trump has combined this with race. Well, your life used to be better before Roe's parents got here. His nostalgia, his economic nostalgia is combined with the racial nostalgia.

21:34Until we fix the economics, we're not going to build the kind of multiracial democracy that I believe is our country's destiny. And I think I agree with you, everything you say. I also think the Democrats need to develop a 50-state strategy. I think Democratic representatives like yourself and others should go to states that aren't in your district. Yeah. And let me tell you what happens in like super MAGA, super majority states like Oklahoma. You have only one party rule. And so then they start out crazying each other. So you literally have like we were MAGA before MAGA ever came down the escalator, before Trump ever descended.

22:14So you have no mediating voice anywhere. And so the electorate gets so confused and involved in this kind of propaganda psychosis. And if they were to hear Democrats come and say, look, I'm a Democrat. I am not a Satanist. Right. That's what they think. Yeah. And I think that the Democrats are going to have to invest in all 50 states and they might lose an election or cycle or two locally in Oklahoma or places. But it wasn't that long ago. Oklahoma had a Democratic governor in the 2000s. We were ranked. David Boren, right? No. Kylie, what was his name? Brad Henry. And in like 2009, Oklahoma is ranked 17th in education.

22:59Now we're 50th. Because they cut the funds. Republican supermajority. They have the House. They have the Senate. They have the Supreme Court. They have the governorship. And this is my whole thing with all of the MAGA bedwetters right now that are wound up about bad bunny. You have everything you wanted. You've got Trump. You've got a submissive little pipsqueak speaker of the House that will say, yes, sir, you want me to jump how high? You've got the Senate. You've even got the Senate minority leader that writes strongly worded letters. And you're still mad. You're still upset. Why are you upset?

23:34Because the system sucks. Because everybody's lied to you. Republicans have lied to you and Democrats have lied to you. And that type of messaging, you know, people can say, oh, they're liberal or they're progressive or they're leftist. And it's just it goes back to your North Star conviction, having conviction like we only have this one life and this is our country. And are we really, really going to give it up for this old queen, Donald Trump? I mean, that's just this cannot be the end. And we've had so much sacrifice, right? I mean, yes, the sacrifice of people in World War Two and on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and in the Civil War.

24:08And, you know, I fundamentally, because of my life story, people, when I was in law school, I was with, worked for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the daughter of Robert Kennedy. And one of the staffers said, Ro, you really have these great ideas and conviction. But, you know, as an Indian American of Hindu faith, you'll never get elected. So go work on this hill sometime. And I found this country to be amazing. I found that at any step where people said it's not possible, you know, the country is fundamentally decent and fair. And I have spent, since I got to Congress, I was going to factory towns, rural towns for 10 years, to places like Johnstown, to places like Warren, to places like Paintsville in Kentucky.

24:48I was going on podcasts of people like Sean Ryan and Flagrant and conservative podcasts. And my belief is if we're out there and we don't lie about what we believe, I don't go there and say, oh, I'm not for immigrant rights or I'm not for gay rights. You don't cede ground. You know, I don't cede ground. But I say, look, here's what we really, I understand the economic future. Let's talk about what's actually going to get your kids jobs in the 21st century. Let's talk about why the elite class betrayed so many communities. Let's talk about how we build a new national purpose. and you go there with respect and you go there with a vision and you go there with conviction, I believe most Americans, even if they don't vote for you, will say, yeah, okay, I see where he's coming from.

25:28And I think we need a belief in this country, a goodness of this country, decency of this country, which I have because of my life experience. And then we need to have a conviction. And by the way, if it doesn't work, you know, so what's the end of the deal? You won't be in Congress. You'll do something else. But that's how we make progress. That's how we move the country forward. The only thing that I will say, the survivors made Epstein happen. The only thing I think Massey and I had was a willingness to lose, a willingness to take risk. And I think anyone who wants to lead this party, in the House, in the leadership, in any place, needs to say, what are the things I'm willing to lose for?

26:08What are the things I'm willing to believe? Mamdani started like 1%. You think he thought he was going to be mayor? No, here's what he believes and let it be out there. And if it's not you, your time, fine. You've made a contribution to the country. I really think that would solve so much of this risk aversion of the Democratic Party, where people don't feel like we stand for something. I completely agree. I want to thank you so much. I know you have to get back to D.C. to keep fighting fascism. Tell Hakeem we want him to be a little tougher. I got it. We need it. Well, you're an important voice.

26:41You're such an important voice that in the week of Epstein, probably my busiest week of my 10-year career in Congress, I flew in this morning, and I'm flying back because what you're doing really matters. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. We'll see you later, listener.