Ro Khanna
Appearances
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I don't know if I'll be successful in breaking through. I often get criticized when I do reach across. But I'll tell you where the approach comes from, the two, my guiding principles. One is substantive. Right. So I think you need a whole of society approach to actually tackle change. economic inequality or the deindustrialization of places.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You need, of course, people who are gonna be activists and talk about the role of government. You need, in my view, community leaders, you need labor, you need business leaders, you need venture capitalists, you need technology leaders. And that's the only way you're gonna be able to build the new industry, the only way you're gonna be able to have economic revitalization.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And so that approach is not novel. It comes from a view that that's what FDR did in the New Deal. It's what Hamilton did. And so partly what some see as a contradiction, how is it that I'm advocating for a higher minimum wage and Medicare for all and yet want business leaders and technologists, I see as a coalition that is going to actually help achieve the goals of economic revitalization.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
The second thing in Prince William and I is humility. I don't think that I have all the right answers. I think, again, this idea of democratic experimentalism, that you try things, but you know that there are people who may push back. Sometimes I tweet things out. People say, oh, you tweeted it out and you were wrong. I was like, okay, I'm thinking out loud.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I probably shouldn't think out loud as much online, but not every idea I have is the truth. And I have a humility to say, you know, when you test your ideas out, maybe they'll get better.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Well, some of those statements are totally indefensible and atrocious. And he knows I think that. I think I've been quoted as saying sometimes his tweets were like a seventh grader and someone said that's being charitable to seventh graders.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So I have no problem with people who are criticizing Elon Musk legitimately, criticizing either the things he said, criticize the idea that he spent $200 billion on on an election, and they see that as a symbol of how broken the process is. I mean, I've said we shouldn't have super PACs, and he's kind of been the symbol of that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Criticized him saying that he should have financial disclosure and transparency. I think that's legitimate. But the biggest criticism, which I've had arguments with Musk about, is my view is that the two biggest successes he had was made possible by the Obama administration. Not just because I worked there, but literally the... President Obama, the Treasury gave him a loan that saved Tesla.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I mean, that was a Treasury loan. And Ash Carter, working for President Obama, allowed him to bid on Lockheed and Boeing's ULA project. It was the Obama administration that disrupted all of that and that allowed it to happen. And he never gives them credit. argued with him that you really were the beneficiary of a lot of government investment.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And why it matters is not for Elon to say it just for Elon, but it has this view that, oh, you can just be an entrepreneur and that's what's fueling America. No, what's fueled America is the combination of very strong, smart, effective government combined with entrepreneurship and unions and labor. And I think he misses that story. of that part. So there are a lot of places I disagree.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
My only point was that I think sometimes our party doesn't realize that there is a role also for entrepreneurs and technologists to play a part in economic revitalization. Now, I don't think that's Doge, it wouldn't be in my top five. If Kamala Harris had won, I would have said, have Elon Musk figure out how Intel can build factories here. But there is a role for business leaders.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
We have. I wrote an op-ed, and we're going to convene a number of Democrats probably in January to talk about what some of those cuts could look like. Let's start with the big buckets in government. The big bucket is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, which I don't think there should be a dime cut. And Trump says there shouldn't be a dime cut, OK?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So then you look at the domestic spending that's not mandatory. 56% of that is discretionary defense spending. It's defense that really, if you want to look at making a dent in the federal budget, it should be And there are plenty of places there that we can have reasonable cuts. The F-35 with Lockheed that's gone $200 billion over.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
The sole source contracts that lead to cost overruns by Boeing or others playing $150,000 for soap dispensers. The lack of competitive bidding. And you just have to watch 60 minutes in one of these documentaries or segments to realize what we can cut. And my hope is that we can start there. Now, people who say, well, you're legitimizing Doge.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I mean, Doge is going to exist whether Democrats participate or not. You know, what legitimized Doge was Donald Trump winning the election. And I rather that we focus the attention on places like defense rather than have Elon go try to cut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And if he tries to do that, I'll be the first person to blast him for that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And, you know, that's one other thing, I guess, with... with Mosk or others. I mean, sometimes just because you're working with someone doesn't mean that you can't criticize them. Just because you're going on their podcast doesn't mean you can't say, you know, that's a really dumb idea. I think we can do both. We don't have to kiss up to someone to engage them.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I think they will welcome our ideas genuinely on the Department of Defense. And there is an opportunity to get competitive bidding. There's an opportunity to disrupt the five primes. There's an opportunity to go after wasteful spending.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
What I'm not confident about is are they gonna listen to me why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is actually saving Americans money on credit card fees and mortgage fees, or are they just gonna say, oh, that's something that Elizabeth Warren put up and so we wanna cut it.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I mean, obviously I'm gonna push back, but I don't think I have more ability to convince Elon Musk that that's a bad idea than any other member of Congress or person in the public. The one thing, John, if I could say that I think that they're wrong about, I had breakfast with Pat Gelsinger, who just was asked to leave as Intel CEO.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And without revealing anything confidential, I said to him, Pat, if you were to rank what... in terms of re-industrialization in America, economic growth, overburdensome regulation had, where would you put it? He said, of course we need to streamline it, but it wouldn't be in my top three or four. I would talk about the need for capital formation.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I would talk about the need for having procurement, buying of the things we make. I would talk about having a talented workforce. I would talk about immigration. And what they have done with Doge is to somehow say that if we could just streamline permitting in America, streamline regulation, that suddenly we were going to have job growth across America. And that's just not true.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
It does worry me because under the Congressional Impoundment Act, if you do not fill a position that Congress has authorized, then you have to give Congress notice. And after 45 days, you have to basically fill that position. So repealing that would allow the executive branch to not spend money that Congress is appropriating. So- Let's just say, why does this matter to people?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Let's say they decide not to fund Department of Education folks who are giving Title I grants. So if you live in a school district where you have low-income, middle-income, working-class kids, you're not going to get money for the schools. Or you may not get money for your IEP program if your kid has special needs or a disability. You may not be able to get loans like I did to go to college.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So yes, it worries me. And that shouldn't be the president's power. It should be Congress's power.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I say the Republicans have made the entire Federalist Papers theory not work because the whole Federalist Papers were like, yeah, the Congress is going to look out for their own power. They would never give up power to the president. Why would they do that? And they weren't counting on the modern Republican Party. uh, in, in alliance to Trump. No, I can't say anything for, for sure.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I wish I could tell you that you're going to have enough members of Congress who wouldn't do that. But this is where I do think, uh, the agency of people watching your show matters when, when people mobilize, when they speak out and when they say that why this matters to their lives, uh, then members of Congress, uh, and senators do pay attention. And we blocked a lot of
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
overreach by Trump in the first administration, when he was trying to separate kids from their families, when he was trying to have a blanket Muslim ban, when he was trying to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And so if people start to say, look, we don't want our kids to lose education or whatever the issue is, and it's not just impoundment as an abstract, then that's our best chance of stopping it.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That they would put Jamie Raskin in jail or were absent that that they would have investigations of people like Raskin, that they will intimidate dissent in this country, that they would make people fearful of. criticizing the president. Can American democracy survive that? Absolutely. Can Democrats win in 2026 and 2028? Yes.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But will we have significantly degraded American democracy if that happens? Yes. And the cost is enormous.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I like to have faith that it would prevent the worst cases of miscarriage of justice. But you can do, as you know, John, a lot of harm to people in the process short of someone actually going to jail. You start an investigation, you make someone's life hard, you have them hire lawyers, you have them dragged in front of committees.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And then it's not just destroying a person's life or reputation, the chilling effect that that has to other people to pull punches. And you start to do that to the media. And you start to, you know, now they're thinking of suing Ann Seltzer for a mistake in a poll. I mean, come on, you know, it's so but you do that. And now are people going to say, well, maybe we shouldn't show Trump's
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
approval ratings to be negative. If you start to sue journalists like they did with ABC, well, maybe now we've got to be cautious in the words we use. And that, to me, is the irony for a party that believes in free speech. to be doing that is what's most chilling.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And then on a human level in my district, when I think of the undocumented, I think of someone in my district, without mentioning her name, who's been there 21 years. She's got a daughter who is going to medical school in Southern California. She's a dental hygienist in Northern California.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And she drives every morning once a month down to see her daughter and then drives back up at night because she can't afford a hotel. And the reason she can't afford this is because she's been underpaid because we haven't been able to have a legalized status. But to me, her life is the American dream. And now you're going to come and start to raid folks and deport folks like her.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
That's not the America my parents came to. That's not the America that I grew up in. And I don't think that's America. Is there a concern on the borders? Absolutely. Do we have to keep them secure? Yes. Do we want... Criminals not to be in this country? Yes. But people need to understand the sweeping way they're talking about going after the most vulnerable. And I don't care what the polls say.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Well, John, I actually saw a clip of yours on this that I thought was spot on. I mean, one can have the thought that murder is bad, that there doesn't have to be a but after that, that you can say that there's no justification for taking the life of a father of two people.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And you can also say that for 20 years, people in this country have been talking about a health care system that's broken and that we need to make progress on giving people real health care. And so to me, a lot of the commentary is sort of, is trying to pit one against the other and I don't understand why. Why can't you have both of those thoughts?
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Now you expressed it more succinctly than I did, but that is, I feel like that can be a consensus of Democrats across the spectrum in Congress and the Senate and our governors. And my view is that ultimately, the reason I support Medicare for all is because you're going to lower the administrative costs in the system. You have 2% administrative costs instead of 18%.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Today, you have 1.4 million people who deny claims or accept claims and only 1 million doctors. So a lot of those folks could be now working in other ways in health care to actually deliver health care services instead of denying or not denying claims. And you can negotiate the prices down if you had Medicare, as President Biden started to do with insulin. But you could do it on hospital fees.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You could do it with drugs. So that's the North Star. Now, how do you get there? I think you get there first by saying, in my view, that private insurance would cover what Medicare would cover if the doctor is prescribing it. Maybe we could get a consensus on that. Maybe we can get some consensus on capping out-of-pocket costs. Maybe we get some consensus on the rate of premium hikes.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But I think you can have a North Star and then work incrementally for progress towards it.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Well, yes, there's pain and anger, but I think you can say that pain and anger has to be channeled constructively. You know, my politics come from my grandfather. He spent four years in jail as part of Gandhi's independence movement.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
He had this view called Satyagraha, and it was basically that you organize in peaceful protest action that matters, but one that thinks the best of humanity, and that's how you make progress. And that influenced, in part, the Civil Rights Movement. And I think of the Civil Rights, the first Civil Rights Act that was introduced by Senator Humphrey
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And Paul Douglas, a great senator from Illinois in 1950. And you know, when it passes in 1964, it took years of organizing. And that fight, in my view, was a much harder fight than even getting health care for everyone. And that was a fight against vicious racism and segregation. And yet John Lewis wasn't out there saying, celebrating killings.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
In fact, when there would be someone who would be killed in the civil rights movement, the civil rights leaders were the first to say that is antithetical to who we are, because we just don't want to win. We want something better. We want a better civilization. And so my view, and maybe some will say it's naive, is it's fine for the left to be asymmetrically better.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
We're trying to build a better civilization. We're trying to build a better society. We don't have to get in the mud. When they curse, we don't have to curse back. When they are negative, we can say, no, we believe in a better vision for humanity. And we organize and we make progress. And ultimately, I think we're going to get there.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I think you're absolutely right. I mean, look, the people feel that The political class allowed jobs to be offshored. They allowed wealth to pile up in districts like mine, that $12 trillion in Silicon Valley. Their wages have stagnated. Their kids aren't being able to buy a car or a house. Then they see politicians. They say, look at this kind of guy and other ones.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
They're spending so much of their time fundraising. They're part of a system where if you're a lobbyist or someone, you're going to have more access. You've got these billionaires like Elon Musk, and we've got billionaires on our side too that are flooding people's screens. And we really don't matter. The system is broken. The economy is broken. We need real change.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And then I would say there are two There are two different ways you can go.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You can either go the Donald Trump way, which is just to express all of that grievance and provide what I believe are sloganeering that not only appeal to the worst of us, blame immigrants, blame the trans community, and aren't going to actually reform the political system or actually help create jobs in Galesburg or help someone get health care or help someone get a raise.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
And by the way, they can also appeal to the worst. When has it become fashionable for politicians to curse? Now it's like, oh, to prove our authenticity, you got to curse. You know why politicians didn't curse? It's not like previous presidents didn't curse. It's that they said that in public, they wanted to represent the best, that they wanted to appeal to the highest aspirations.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
So they weren't going to go and talk in public like they would talk at a sports bar. And there was something to that. And I believe that that still should be the Democratic vision, to appeal to something better in America, and only by doing that.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
This is, I think, the Democratic magic, that we can bring together labor and community organizers and business and technologists and actually provide real solutions. I guess that's who I am as a person. So for me, that is authentic. But I think that's also true of a lot of us in the Democratic Party. And we shouldn't force ourselves to be doing things that are mimicking in style the Republicans.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Sherrod was, other than losing the presidency, I was, I mean, saddest with Sherrod losing. Me too, me too. And what the crypto PACs, I mean, we had arguments with them because I've been relatively supportive of Bitcoin and crypto. But what they did in that state was awful, $40 million of spending. And I do think that that made the difference.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
You know, we had great candidates with Alyssa Slotkin and Tammy Bowler and Ruben Gallego. I don't think there's one magic formula, but I think what they would tell you is they really went into the communities. They listened. They showed up. They built trust. built a connection in those communities. And we need to do that in a 50-state strategy for the DNC.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
But I think that our best bet is economic. It's to say in Ohio, OK, look, your jobs have kept going offshore. There's no manufacturing in many of these places. Wages haven't gone up. You don't have health care. We have what I would say is a new economic deal, a real economic revitalization vision that is actually going to give economic opportunity to your kids. And this is you've tried the rest.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
Here's our real solution. And that that to me is our best bet going forward with candidates who are going to be grounded in their communities.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
I don't. I like Ken Martin. I like Ben Wickler. There may be others that emerge. I doubt I'm going to endorse in the process. I think they should play out. But what I'd like to see is their plans on how we're going to increase registration. I mean, the Republicans were out registering us in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Pod Save America
Is Biden Quiet Quitting?
in some of these other states, how they're going to make sure that they're discouraging super PAC money, at least in Democratic primaries, not in a general election, but in the Democratic primaries, and how we're going to get rid of corporate money coming into the DNC, because I don't think we need it. I think we can build without it.