Rep. Ro Khanna on Tech, Trump & Elon

Speaker 2 Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 2 Today, I'm talking to Representative Ro Conna from California, who I've known a long time.

Speaker 2 Conna represents a congressional district in Silicon Valley, and as a progressive populist and Bernie supporter, who's also close close to many tech titans, he's arguably one of the most unique voices in Congress.

Speaker 2 As I said, I've known him for years and we have a lot of, we have an up-and-down relationship,

Speaker 2 always friendly, always interesting, but we disagree on a lot of things. I text him a lot when I don't agree with him quite vociferously.

Speaker 2 He texts back, we argue about things, but I really do enjoy talking to him. He's a really smart guy, thinking very thoughtful things and not just in it for the power or the money or the fame.

Speaker 2 Despite representing one of the wealthier districts in the country, he's spent the past few years talking to working-class voters outside his district.

Speaker 2 I hung out with him in Kentucky when he was trying to create Silicon Holler, which didn't happen. And according to Steve Bannon, he's one of the few Democrats who can actually speak to their anger.

Speaker 2 Roe is also one of the more charismatic and openly ambitious politicians. There's no question about that on the Democratic side, which has won him lots of friends and also some skeptics.

Speaker 2 He really doesn't tamp down any of the chatter about the future presidential run. And I want to talk to him because a lot of the stuff he talks about, it's tech, tech power, AI,

Speaker 2 the Democratic Party, is really interesting and needs to be listened to because we do need new voices in the Democratic Party that are questioning old tropes.

Speaker 2 Our expert question today comes from Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. Now, let's get to it.

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Speaker 2 Representative Khana, thanks for being on on. I'm gonna call you Ro if you don't mind.

Speaker 3 Of course.

Speaker 2 Okay, so let's start talking about some recent headlines because you're all over the news lately for some reason.

Speaker 2 But last week you tweeted you're ready to work with the Doge Committee, the Department of Government Efficiency, no department.

Speaker 2 It's a task force that President-elect Trump has named Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswani to run.

Speaker 2 Elon singled out obscure Federal employees by name on X, apparently, because he doesn't like their job titles and they're being harassed by his followers, according to CNN.

Speaker 2 These workers are afraid for their lives, will be forever changed, including physically threatened as Musk makes behind-the-scenes bureaucrats into personal targets.

Speaker 2 I'd love for you to sort of square this circle, I guess.

Speaker 3 Well, I clearly am opposed to him singling out any Federal employee.

Speaker 3 And I have disagreements with his view that you can just take a sledgehammer to the Federal government.

Speaker 3 The vast, vast majority of Federal employees are doing honorable, good work to keep our food safe, to keep our water clean, to have the functioning of government with Social Security checks and Medicare.

Speaker 3 So I would strongly condemn any singling out of a particular individual or blanketly

Speaker 3 labeling the federal workforce lazy or

Speaker 3 denigrating them. That said, there are areas that the government could use significant reform, Department of Defense being one of them.

Speaker 3 You know the story better than I do of how SpaceX disrupted Boeing and Lockheed to launch satellites into the orbit with reusable

Speaker 3 rockets. And we need more competition in the Department of Defense.
If they can do that to save costs, that's one area that I think Democrats and Republicans should be willing to engage on.

Speaker 2 You know, you followed up your initial post on X regarding Doge, writing 23 million plus views is the most post of mine has ever seen in nine years in Congress.

Speaker 2 Millions of Americans want us to work with Doge. Jamel Bowie of the New York Times commented: this is equivalent of thinking that a magic eight ball is really talking to you, which made me laugh.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 meanwhile,

Speaker 2 I know he's really funny. That was a good line.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, former Republican Congressman Adam Kinziger wrote to the Dems that have warmed up the Doge idea with Musk and Vivek. This is going to come back to bite you.

Speaker 2 They're not really doing it for the right reason. It's for control.
Stop normalizing these clowns. So, what's your response?

Speaker 3 Jamal is good humor. Kissinger has been saying, stop normalizing, stop normalizing.
It's like a broken record, and then they keep winning.

Speaker 3 You know, Jamal always says humor and originality.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 the point is, this exists, that Trump won the presidency. I did everything I could to make sure that Harris won, first that Biden won, then Harris won.

Speaker 3 FDR, who had the New Deal, starts the case for the New Deal, saying we need to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.

Speaker 3 And one of the reasons you've seen progressives, I think, open to saying we need to cut wasteful spending is people like me are offering the biggest role for effective government.

Speaker 3 We want Medicare for all. We want government to be creating 100,000 new skilled trades investments.
We want free public college.

Speaker 3 Well, if you have that view, then you've got to say, I want an effective government. And there are areas.

Speaker 3 not just the Department of Defense, the way IT is administered in the federal government, the way we do tax filing without automatically populating them.

Speaker 3 I mean, there are ideas the Democrats have had to say, let's make government better. And just because there are folks there who we have strong disagreements on doesn't mean we don't engage them.

Speaker 3 Now, I have not joined the Doge caucus because I have said that there needs to be be a commitment of not cutting a dime from Social Security, Medicare, not cutting the CFPB.

Speaker 3 And the Magic 8 Bull hasn't made those tweets go viral yet. I'm waiting.
I tag Doge too and say I don't believe in cutting a dime from Social Security

Speaker 3 or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And

Speaker 3 when I do convene or meet with others, with Elon or Vivek, I'm going to make the case to them that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has saved people credit card fees, mortgage fees.

Speaker 3 So I guess it's not like I'm saying something to them in private that I'm not saying in public. They know exactly where I'm coming from, where I stand.

Speaker 3 And I thought that's the democratic process. Engage where you agree, strongly push back where you disagree.

Speaker 2 My only point is some of their language is quite hateful. There's always a good idea and it's wrapped in a shit sandwich, essentially,

Speaker 2 which is being aimed at lots of people's heads. But you did point out that wasteful spending at the Department of Defense is a target for cuts.

Speaker 2 Trump increased the Pentagon's budget 16 percent during his first term. He's actually had the highest deficit, too.
This is not a guy who wanted to save money in his first term.

Speaker 2 What makes you think he has intentions of cutting defense spending at this time, which is where the big, you know, whether it's fraud, waste, or just too many weapons, you know,

Speaker 2 that's where the money is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's all right. It's 56 percent of discretionary funding.
If, look, the Social Security and Medicare is about a third of the budget. I'm not for cutting that, and neither is Trump.

Speaker 3 And so then, okay, you look at the discretionary part of the Federal budget. The defense is the big portion of that.

Speaker 3 And if you're not going to cut Social Security and Medicare, you've got to be willing to have some defense cuts or raise taxes, both of which I'm willing to do, raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy and the wealthy.

Speaker 3 The

Speaker 3 point that's funny, I don't think Mike Rogers, who's the chair of the Armed Services Committee, will mind my sharing this. He said that Trump came in the first time and he said

Speaker 3 that he was for defense cuts. And Mike Rogers said, well, he was educatable.
And the Armed Services Committee talked him into not having defense cuts, but even had a defense increase.

Speaker 3 So we'll see this time. Is he going to just listen to the same

Speaker 3 infrastructure in Congress and in Washington? In that case, he's going to continue to put forth bloated defense budgets. The Senate already has a budget that's higher than what Biden is calling for.

Speaker 3 Or is he really going to follow through on making the process competitive and recommending cuts? I am often the lone vote in the Armed Services Committee against the Pentagon budget.

Speaker 3 There are clips online of me getting booed while I cast my loan vote. So you can understand why I'm hopeful that someone else can come in and help

Speaker 3 get some of the accountability that I've been pushing for. The one place that he has expertise, right? I mean, Elon doesn't know

Speaker 3 about the Department of Justice or about.

Speaker 2 But he does, Roe. He knows everything.
He's a genius. But go ahead, sorry.

Speaker 3 Well, look, I mean, I do think he's a genius

Speaker 3 as a business leader, but

Speaker 3 that doesn't mean

Speaker 2 that you know they try to pull expertise on everything, but go ahead.

Speaker 3 But the one place you could argue that he actually

Speaker 3 has expertise is

Speaker 3 in disrupting defense contracts. He did it with Boeing and Lockheed.

Speaker 2 He called me the minute he did it when we were speaking. The minute it happened.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, I mean,

Speaker 3 you're always fair. I mean, I know you give him a hard time, but you also recognize where he does things that are innovative.
That's correct. And

Speaker 3 so my sense is why not focus on the area, two areas where I think you actually could bring expertise. One is enterprise IT software,

Speaker 3 getting some rationality into how we do technology and government. And two is getting more competitive bidding, and whether it's DOD or in general in procurement.

Speaker 3 And those are areas that you actually have a track record of getting things done.

Speaker 2 Sure. Is there a problem with the conflict of interest here, given he

Speaker 2 has a lot of Federal contracts in the areas he's recommending cutting and obviously can then deal with competitors?

Speaker 3 Yeah, no. I mean,

Speaker 3 I think those are very legitimate concerns. And I would say, why not do financial disclosures like every member of Congress does? I mean, you know, in my case, you know,

Speaker 3 my wife inherited money. It's in a trust, but every month I have to report it, every single transaction in that, even though it has nothing to do with me.
And most members of Congress have to do that.

Speaker 3 Most

Speaker 3 executive branch officials have to do that. So I would think they should disclose

Speaker 3 their financial holdings and interests. And then if there are places where they should recuse themselves, they should.
But at least let there be transparency so people know where the interests are.

Speaker 2 All right, let's keep moving.

Speaker 2 Trump said on Sunday that the members of the January 6th Committee should go to jail and members of President Biden's inner circle debating preemptive pardons for Trump's perceived political enemies.

Speaker 2 When you asked about it, you said black and brown individuals incarcerated because of marijuana possession have faced and continue to face far more injustice than some of the most privileged individuals who have served in the Congress or Senate.

Speaker 2 I don't quite know what you're saying there.

Speaker 2 Putting aside the wisdom of preemptive pardons, what happens if Trump uses the FBI and Department of Justice to get his retribution against these members or anyone else?

Speaker 2 There doesn't seem to be any evidence they did anything wrong. And is there anything Democrats can do to stop him besides, say, for shame, which he doesn't seem to have much of?

Speaker 3 Well, there's no evidence they did anything wrong. They're protected by the speech and debate clause

Speaker 3 in the Congress. I would hope that there is some shred of integrity still in our judicial system where judges and even the Supreme Court will make sure that we're not a banana republic,

Speaker 3 which is what we would be if you literally started to jail people like Jamie Raskin or Zoe Lofgren.

Speaker 3 And you could say, well, it's a Republican Supreme Supreme Court and Republican appointed court, sure, but at least they held their ground when Trump was trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Speaker 3 So my hope is that they will, you ask, what is the recourse? It's one for us to be very loud, vocal,

Speaker 3 call it an abuse of power,

Speaker 3 and then have a litigation strategy that goes to the courts. Now, if we've lost the courts, then we've got a much bigger problem in American democracy.

Speaker 2 So what about preemptive pardons? Do you think think it's a good idea? I feel so squeezy about it, and yet I'm not as squeasy as I thought I'd be.

Speaker 3 Well, look, I had called for the curtailment of the pardon power from day one.

Speaker 3 So you can't take that position, say it's anarchic, it's a vestige of kings, and then suddenly when you think that the pardon power is convenient for your side, then say, okay, now I'm for the pardon power.

Speaker 3 So I still believe that. I still think at the very least there should be a process.
It shouldn't just be in the President's hand.

Speaker 3 Now, if you want to create an independent commission that goes through some process and then recommends certain pardon prerogatives, that's fine. But

Speaker 3 I believe there are a lot of other avenues short of just relying on preemptive pardons to make sure that Jamie Raskin doesn't go to jail.

Speaker 2 If that happened,

Speaker 2 do you entertain that happening? Because a lot of people are like, oh, it'll never happen. But he's done a lot of things that we've said would never happen, right?

Speaker 3 Do I entertain Jamie Raskin or people like him?

Speaker 2 Going to jail.

Speaker 3 I don't think it's a non-zero possibility,

Speaker 3 which is scary in America. I mean, I think the probability is very low.
But here's the thing: do I think he's actually going to end up going to jail if you ask me for a prediction? No. But

Speaker 3 is that the end-all and be-all? No. I mean, you could have harassment.
You could be investigated. You could have millions of dollars of legal fees.

Speaker 3 I mean, there are ways to silence and destroy people in this country short of putting them in jail. And this is really a moment, I hope, that our courts and the independence of the judiciary

Speaker 3 work because

Speaker 3 people talk about the independence of the military. I am very confident about the independence of the military.

Speaker 3 I'm more concerned about making sure the independence of the judiciary and the due process is upheld in these kind of cases.

Speaker 2 All right, I'm going to keep going. After the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed, you were asked about the gleeful celebrations that erupted on social media.

Speaker 2 We both agree that it's heinous and horrific to celebrate murder. In the discussion that followed, you said that Bernie Sanders is winning the debate around health care.

Speaker 2 Talk about why you think so and how does the progressive movement channel this anger, and in some cases, really disturbing anger, at the same time being justifiably furious about the behavior of healthcare companies and turn that into votes, because now it seems to be a ranging anger and sort of tasteless jokes, everything else.

Speaker 2 I get the tasteless jokes. That's the internet.

Speaker 2 Talk a little bit about this situation. And the shooter has been charged as this young man who seems to have had some,

Speaker 2 as wealthy as he looks to be, has had health care issues. Talk a little bit about this.

Speaker 3 Well, first, we need to say that the killing was totally horrific, outrageous, not just as throat clearing, but as a clear message to people.

Speaker 3 You have a father who has two kids who's gunned down at 50. There is no justification for violence.

Speaker 3 There's no

Speaker 3 sympathy for killing someone in cold blood.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, although a lot of people have it. Let me say.
I've been surprised by the reaction.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, look, I have had people tell me that if they were on a jury, they'd vote to acquit this person, and I just strongly disagree.

Speaker 3 I don't think, I mean, assuming that there are facts connecting him to the killing and that

Speaker 3 it's proven beyond a reasonable doubt, I think you have to face the consequences. We can't have a society where you just kill someone

Speaker 3 in cold blood, no matter what your cause is. That said, the killing has sparked a national conversation that

Speaker 3 finally has come to light.

Speaker 3 I think Bernie, people like me who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and then co-chaired his campaign in 2020, we knew this because at every Bernie Sanders town hall, Bernie Sanders rally, the first thing you'd have is people coming and telling their stories about how they had cancer and now have no life savings.

Speaker 3 42% of people with cancer within two years don't have any life savings because of out-of-pocket costs. How they got their health care denied for diabetes, for strokes.

Speaker 3 One woman I remember in Nevada telling me her mother has a $700,000 bill after having a stroke. And suddenly, now it's not just the Sanders or Progressive Left hearing it, it's America hearing it.

Speaker 3 And the issue is not just the 10 to 15 percent who may have very poor insurance. It turns out almost everyone with private insurance, many of them when they have serious issues, have denied claims.

Speaker 2 100 percent.

Speaker 2 I just had it almost happen to me, but I'm a screaming person and it ultimately got settled. But yes, it happens to everyone at every level.

Speaker 3 This is a moment where we should recognize that the private insurance industry is just broken. I tweeted out they made $1.4 trillion in revenue

Speaker 3 and $70 billion in profits, and people said, oh, that's only 5% profits. Yeah, fine.

Speaker 3 But it's sucking out $1.4 trillion that are going into executive pays, administrative fees, marketing fees that could be used to either giving people wage hikes in America if the employers weren't spending it on private insurance or to give people health care.

Speaker 3 And this is the central argument for Medicare for All. Right.

Speaker 2 So in the same interview, you also said, I believe we can make Medicare for All happen. Democrats are often accused of overpromising undelivering.
Republicans just won the governing trifecta.

Speaker 2 and they maybe have some friends in the insurance industry, as do Democrats, I assume.

Speaker 2 How do you make that happen given the power of this particular lobby, even though right now they may be a little more nervous?

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, well, the only thing that makes things happen in America are not politicians, it's social movements. That was the case with the

Speaker 3 progressive movement, with the labor movement, with the civil rights movement.

Speaker 3 And so my hope is that this will continue to be a movement that moves towards Medicare for all and moves for getting big money out of politics.

Speaker 3 I've called for no super PACs in Democratic primaries, for Democrats not taking corporate money, for overturning Citizens United, at least doing what Maine did, which was in a bipartisan way, the limited super PAC contributions, like you limit individual contributions.

Speaker 3 But short of getting Medicare for All, while we fight for that, there's some very common sense things we could do.

Speaker 3 We could require, for example, United Healthcare or Aetna to cover everything that Medicare would cover. I mean, that would be if a doctor prescribes it.
I mean, that would be one place to do it.

Speaker 3 Now, the challenge is you've got to still have Medicare negotiate more to get the costs down.

Speaker 3 And ultimately, in my view, you need a system where Medicare has more coverage to lower costs. But in an immediate thing, at least stop the denials of these claims.

Speaker 2 Is this going to be the key issue going forward for the Democratic Party, health care?

Speaker 3 I think health care and the economy, those have always been the two issues. I wish one person would ask Donald Trump.
You know, if I was a journalist, I got to ask Donald Trump one question.

Speaker 3 There was a book he wrote in 2000, well before he became president, and he said, I'm ordinarily a private sector guy, but when it comes to health care, I think the Canadians actually have it right, and we should have a single-payer health care system in this country.

Speaker 3 And people have asked Donald Trump 100,000 questions.

Speaker 3 I've never had someone ask him to just read his own words back to him and see if he'd be open to making some progress towards Medicare for all.

Speaker 3 But health care, to me, and the economy are the two issues which the Democratic Party should make as its pillars as we try to look towards 26 and 28.

Speaker 2 We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaker 2 Let's pivot and talk a little about the Democratic Party. As you said, you were a co-chair for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020.

Speaker 2 And back in 2022, you were reportedly pushed by the Sanders camp to consider running for the nomination. This was before Biden decided to run for re-election.

Speaker 2 Given what we know, do you wish you or another progressive populist had primaried Biden? And could you have beaten Trump?

Speaker 3 And I know there were some rumors I would never have run in 24. I think to run against Donald Trump, you had to be a brand name.
It's very different than running against someone else.

Speaker 3 But, you know,

Speaker 3 a candidacy coming up.

Speaker 2 You're not a brand name, Roe?

Speaker 3 I'm not a brand name. Kara, you may have been able to do it with your.

Speaker 2 No one's voting for the lesbian who's real mean to Elon Musk, so go ahead.

Speaker 3 No, but, you know, could there have been a brand name in 24?

Speaker 3 Obviously, I think Michelle Obama could have won. I think the coalescing around Harris was partly because she was the biggest name the Democrats had

Speaker 3 other than Biden, maybe Newsom or others.

Speaker 2 Well, there's AOC, there's Bernie, obviously. Yeah, no,

Speaker 3 no, I mean, look, could Bernie have done it? I mean, I do think Bernie would have stood a better chance in 24 had he run. And I guess

Speaker 3 that would have been the question. I mean, he was obviously nearly 80, but he's vigorous.
And,

Speaker 3 you know, in retrospect, should he have run in 24 in the primary? Perhaps.

Speaker 3 You know, that would have been something, that would have been a fascinating campaign because he would have run as a as a populist.

Speaker 3 He would have run on these issues of health care and changing the economy. He would have said what we've done with Biden is important.
But he would have pointed to FDR's 1936 speech.

Speaker 3 People don't realize this about the New Deal.

Speaker 3 You know, when we got a lot of the great things of the New Deal, the minimum wage, the overtime laws, the laws for a 40-hour workweek, that was all in Roosevelt's second term.

Speaker 3 It wasn't his first term. And Roosevelt, after his first term, said, we've got a lot more work to do and things aren't that great.
And Bernie was pleading with people, saying,

Speaker 3 take that approach. Don't just celebrate.
Talk about all of the challenges that are still here in this country.

Speaker 2 Yeah, one of the things, after Trump won in November, you wrote an hot bed, Democrats failed to present a compelling economic vision for the working class and we lost because of it.

Speaker 2 But unlike Bernie, you're not a Democratic socialist. You call yourself a progressive capitalist.
All these names.

Speaker 2 Explain what that means and then compare and contrast it to Bernie's democratic socialist vision.

Speaker 3 I'm a celebrator of entrepreneurship and building things. I believe that we

Speaker 3 should

Speaker 3 have an economy that allows people to build companies,

Speaker 3 to help build new industry, and that that's a good thing. But that

Speaker 3 everyone needs to have the health care, the education, the housing to have a decent free life and to have the shot to actually build things, and that we need the government involved when it comes to place-based policy.

Speaker 3 You can't just have all the wealth piling up in a few places and have other parts hollowed out. So, you know,

Speaker 3 I contrast that with democratic socialism in that democratic socialism technically

Speaker 3 understood as less of a belief that

Speaker 3 the markets in allocating capital to entrepreneurs

Speaker 3 are a good thing. And I think the markets can work if people have health care, housing, education, and there's place-based policy.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, you're not an eat the rich person, I guess.

Speaker 3 Like, I would say, Bernie. Well, I'm for tax the rich.

Speaker 2 I tax the rich.

Speaker 3 Clear difference.

Speaker 2 Don't eat them, tax them. You know, they taste delicious, but go ahead.

Speaker 3 Bernie would say, let's outlaw the billionaires, right? And

Speaker 3 I would say, let's tax them, but I wouldn't outlaw them. I mean, that's a very concrete difference.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, what do you make of all the billionaires in the Trump cabinet? These people are untouchable.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's one of the issues, of course, and therefore they're not going to tax themselves. Aaron Powell, yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, it's the lack of economic diversity. I have no problem with someone who's a billionaire.
I mean, FDR would have, or John F.

Speaker 3 Kennedy would have probably been a billionaire in today's real dollars.

Speaker 3 And if you have an actual vision of

Speaker 3 social justice or economic justice or moving the country, fine. But don't surround yourself with all other billionaires.
How about having, you know, you said you were for the working class.

Speaker 3 How about having Sean?

Speaker 3 You know what would be great? Sean O'Brien. Why not? I mean, I'm a fan of Sean O'Brien's.
I know it was controversial.

Speaker 3 Why did he speak at the Republican Convention? Why not put Sean O'Brien in your cabinet? Why not put

Speaker 2 because he wouldn't stop talking? But go ahead.

Speaker 3 Sorry.

Speaker 3 You know, but I think that the concern is people say, oh, you're demonizing wealth. No, I'm not demonizing wealth, but how about including those who don't have wealth in the decision-making?

Speaker 3 Of course, though, this is who Trump is, right? I mean,

Speaker 3 he has a view. Let me try to give it the best possible charitable view.

Speaker 3 His view is that if he's going to slap on tariffs and he's going to deregulate and he's going to give all his billionaire friends all these tax cuts and they know what they're doing and everyone is going to be better off and America is going to be great.

Speaker 3 And I just fundamentally disagree with that. I think it's going to explode income inequality.

Speaker 3 I think you're still going to have people without health care, people who are still going to have wages depressed.

Speaker 3 You're not going to get new factories built if the government isn't helping finance some of them and building a workforce. And so, you know, he's doubling down on what he ran on.
And

Speaker 3 my sense is people will have buyers' remorse.

Speaker 2 After Trump's election, you said, I'm still very hopeful about the party and our future.

Speaker 2 The GOP controls both houses of Congress, and the man your party said was a fascist, authoritarian threat to democracy is about to take office again. What makes you optimistic?

Speaker 2 If things aren't so bad, does that mean Democrats overstated the threat posed by Trump?

Speaker 3 Well, when it comes to becoming a cohesive... multiracial democracy, I often say America is making progress in spite of ourselves.

Speaker 3 And by that, I mean you have an Indian American, African-American woman who gets 48 to 49 percent in places like Pennsylvania, where I grew up and Wisconsin, Michigan.

Speaker 3 If you had told me that that was going to happen in the 1980s when I was growing up, I would have said, you're out of your mind. So, you know, the country is moving.

Speaker 3 You look at the new classes of Congress, freshman classes, sophomore classes, people from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life.

Speaker 3 And that's incredible. Now, we haven't crossed the threshold.
We've got to win in these national elections, but I believe we will.

Speaker 3 And I think ultimately the Democratic Party needed a wake-up call on being out of touch with places like Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Youngstown and Milwaukee.

Speaker 3 I mean, one of the most interesting stories in this whole election, it was a guy who I'm going to meet in Milwaukee, Chancy, 43-year-old African-American, works in Masterlock, shakes President Obama's hand in 2012 when Obama comes there and saying manufacturing is back.

Speaker 3 And in 2022, his Masterlock plant shuts down and

Speaker 3 300 jobs are lost. And I talked to Chansey a couple days ago.
He's now working instead of a $30 job, an $18 job. He's a driver who's delivering pharmaceutical pills

Speaker 3 to places. And he's totally heartbroken and frustrated at the system.
So what are, we didn't pay enough attention to people like him. It's not just a white men thing.

Speaker 3 It's across different races and different genders and different geographies.

Speaker 3 And if we can, if Trump's victory says, okay, we got to pay more attention to the Chanseys, then we'll have a better Democratic Party going forward.

Speaker 2 Did the Biden-Harris campaigns overstate the threat posed by the second Trump presidency?

Speaker 3 Well, look, people have called fascists, each other fascists and communists for as long as I can remember elections.

Speaker 3 I mean, Truman called Dewey a fascist, and every Democrat, it doesn't matter whether you run Bernie Sanders or you run Joe Manchin, the Republicans are going to call him a communist by the time the campaign ends.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's just American elections. But do I think Trump poses serious threats to American democracy

Speaker 3 beyond what Mitt Romney would? Of course. I mean, the fact that we're even having a conversation about whether Jamie Raskin is going to go to jail is evidence of that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you wouldn't have done that with Mitt. He wouldn't have dared.

Speaker 2 So as a lawyer who used to represent tech companies, you're one of the wealthiest members of Congress, someone who represents a district in Silicon Valley with a median income that's more than double the average in the country.

Speaker 2 You seem an unlikely voice for the working class. But according to Steve Bannon, you get it at a very deep level.

Speaker 2 He means you're one of the few Democrats who can't connect with non-college voters and speak to their anger.

Speaker 2 Talk about their initial skepticism, because I'm sure many working class voters assume you're an out-of-touch coastal elite when they first met you.

Speaker 2 I do know you were one of the first people to insist that I go to Kentucky with you to talk to people. I, of course, went and said, Trump is not going to help you at all.
He doesn't care for you.

Speaker 2 I don't know what you said different things. But talk a little bit about this dichotomy because you do represent

Speaker 2 exactly what the Steve Banners of the world rail against in many ways.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I think it's fair. I think if someone, when someone first Googles me, they're like, well, should I even show up to talk to this guy?

Speaker 3 And what I say is, first, I talk about my story. I'm a son of immigrants.
My parents came here with nothing. I went to public school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 I grew up on a street where, you know, there was one house where there was a vice president and he had the pool. And we all used to go to that house to swim.

Speaker 3 My dad was an engineer, was middle class upbringing, not working class, but on the street there were like kids of electricians and kids of nurses and kids of plumbers. And you know what?

Speaker 3 There was a thriving manufacturing economy. I mean my father worked at Roman Haas at the Bristol plant of a manufacturer of plexiglass.

Speaker 3 And so Part of what motivates me is this sense of the America that my parents came to. It was my father came into Michigan.
It was 1968. We were going to go to the moon.

Speaker 3 We were the leading manufacturer of the world. We were the leading technologists as a nation.
And there was economic vitality in different parts of America, including large parts of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 And I see that that has declined in so many parts of this country. And I do now represent a district that has extraordinary wealth, $12 trillion of value in my district.

Speaker 3 I was fortunate to marry someone who's extraordinary. extraordinary whose father started as an immigrant and auto transmission business in Ohio that succeeded.

Speaker 3 And in many ways, what I want is how does the story that I've lived, how is that possible for people across this country?

Speaker 3 And my view is that it's by mobilizing industry and technology leaders with government and unions to reindustrialize America and bring economic vitality everywhere.

Speaker 3 And ultimately, you know, people are pretty smart. They don't need you to go there and pretend that you're going to hunt.
I've never hunted. I don't go and say, hey, you know, watch me try to hunt.

Speaker 3 Or they don't, you know, you don't have to pretend to be something you're not. But you can say, look, here is why I care.
Here's why I think it's important to America.

Speaker 3 And here's what I can do about it. And people will give you an open hearing.

Speaker 2 Interesting. I'm a very good shot, Ro.
I can teach you.

Speaker 3 I really can. You know that clip's going to be all over one day.

Speaker 2 I know. I am.
I am. I am.
I mean, I only shoot at the targets. But how do you mobilize industry leaders and unions if industry leaders are trying to crush the unions, right?

Speaker 2 In other countries, there is a much more cooperative relationship. How do you bring those together?

Speaker 3 Well, first you got to put unions in the cabinet. This is why going back to why not have some strong personality like Sean O'Brien or others

Speaker 3 in charge. But you don't have to reinvent the model.
Look at what FDR did. He had a thing called dollar a year men because it was a sexist time, but you could have dollar a year people or women.

Speaker 3 And you could say, look, I want to call on America, all Americans, business leaders, business leaders, union leaders, to rebuild every community.

Speaker 3 And we're going to give you federal financing to do that, but you're going to have to work with some of the strong unions that have a great workforce.

Speaker 3 And we're going to build these things in communities that have been deindustrialized.

Speaker 3 You look at steel, I mean, one of the reasons I talked about steel is you've got the CEO of Cleveland Cliffs, Lorenzo, who has a great relationship with the United Steel Workers.

Speaker 3 And you could have a financing program that builds modern steel that actually will be cleaner than anything made in China.

Speaker 3 And we can build that steel in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Ohio. So it doesn't all have to be high-tech.

Speaker 3 We need all different types of business leaders to work with union leaders and government and should have different solutions for industrializing different parts of this country.

Speaker 3 And we hold our gun to saying, okay, if the federal government is going to finance this, then

Speaker 3 we need to make sure that it has high prevailing wages and is labor neutrality.

Speaker 2 So one of the people who was anti-union is Elon Musk, very vehemently so.

Speaker 2 He recently treated, though, that you're a sensible moderate.

Speaker 2 You've talked a lot about your relationship with him. You've known him for a decade.
He wrote a blurb for your first book, besides saying you'll work with him to slash government ways.

Speaker 2 You've also encouraged Democrats to stay on X, and you seem, I would say, generally positive. It's the one thing you and I argue about all the time, him and his minions, who I find repulsive.

Speaker 2 But a few days ago, you also treated there's an unholy alliance between soulless wealth and power that have stripped Americans of freedom.

Speaker 2 Our democracy is created for for hardworking citizens to have a say, not just be spectators.

Speaker 2 Elon spent $250 million to help get Trump elected, perhaps his best investment ever at this point, given he seems to be the vice president at this point, if not more.

Speaker 2 Where do you place him in the unholy alliance between wealth and power, given he is at every single meeting with the president right now?

Speaker 3 Not on the good side. I mean, obviously,

Speaker 3 it's a symbol of the problem. And

Speaker 3 I would say this directly to Elon. It's It's part of the problem that you got these billionaires pouring in the kind of money that they have.
And by the way, though, we've got to be honest.

Speaker 3 See, here's the problem. Our side will say, well, Elon's the problem.
Yeah, sure. It's a problem that he's pouring in hundreds of millions.
But how about the billionaires on our side?

Speaker 3 I mean, how about the fact that Kamala Harris had more billionaire money than

Speaker 3 Trump did and more

Speaker 3 wealthy money? That Larry Lessig and I had an op-ed on that. That I think that was part of the reason we weren't talking about transformative change on Medicare for all or standing up for unions.

Speaker 3 How often did Kamala Harris talk about inequality? And so, yes, let's get the super PAC funding out. Let's be a party that says no super PAC funding in primaries.

Speaker 3 But, you know, voters respect it more. It's not that I'm not going to call out Elon.
I'm just it. Don't, you know, that it's terrible to have that kind of spending.

Speaker 3 But voters respect you more if you're also willing to call out your own side so it doesn't just come off as hypocrisy.

Speaker 2 Well, does it or not? Because, you know, he certainly has a lot of interests,

Speaker 2 including electric cars, rockets, everything else, and a certain worldview that is somewhat disturbing, some of them, some of them good, many of them disturbing.

Speaker 2 But one of the, and is standing right next to the president at all times. He's bought his spot.
He has bought his spot.

Speaker 3 How long will that last, Kara? I don't know. I'm asking.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 He's being a beta right now, so that's interesting to watch him be a beta, but because he's not. But it's disturbing to have spent $250 million.

Speaker 2 And, you know, as as is with Elon, he took a bigger swing, right? So, but he's standing right next to him.

Speaker 2 He's bought this spot completely, shifting from someone who was, I wouldn't say progressive, but certainly not this,

Speaker 2 and is able to spew all kinds of nonsense on Twitter, which as I believe you think it's nonsense.

Speaker 2 The anti-immigrant stuff, the anti-trans stuff.

Speaker 2 But according to a recent magazine profile, some progressives see you as an ambitious politician cozing up to power brokers.

Speaker 2 Another profile said there are politicians who run to be the establishment and the politicians who run to topple the establishment. Kana, unusually, is both.

Speaker 2 That's probably the most common criticism. Yes, it's the one I have for you all the time.
I do this for people who don't know. I tweet Roe all the time and say, what the fuck are you doing?

Speaker 3 You're much easier on an interview. If you really want a tough treatment of Kara Swisher, you know,

Speaker 3 text. Text.

Speaker 3 And if you happen to know her, she'll be much harder on you. I mean, this is like softball compared to what I get on the text.

Speaker 2 All right, then, Roe, what the actual fuck is going on here?

Speaker 2 Well, look,

Speaker 3 I believe.

Speaker 2 You can be a friend to tech oligarchs and the common man. I think they're the elites.
I think they could give two fucks about common people.

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 you need to have transformative change. You need to bring and marshal the system

Speaker 3 on behalf of working people. And I'll give you two examples of leaders who I'm nowhere in the same league as, but I view just as models,

Speaker 3 and that's Lincoln and FDR. Lincoln wasn't a pure abolitionist.

Speaker 3 You could say he was establishment and anti-establishment. FDR wasn't a socialist.
He could say he was establishment and anti-establishment. He was a capitalist.

Speaker 3 But what they understood is that there was a need for fundamental transformative change, and they wanted to mobilize the resources of society to do that.

Speaker 3 So, yes, I've stood up to tech when it comes to the Kids Online Safety Act, when it comes to the privacy bill.

Speaker 3 Now, granted, we haven't been able to implement it, but that was not popular amongst many of them.

Speaker 3 When it comes to supporting Lena Khan, and I spoke out for Lena Khan, even when Cuban and others were saying

Speaker 3 to get

Speaker 3 rid of her.

Speaker 3 I've said that we need to tax these people. I mean, I don't know what could be more

Speaker 3 taking on

Speaker 3 wealth than saying, I'm going to raise

Speaker 3 your taxes.

Speaker 2 Well, they don't think you can. They don't think you can.
So they don't want to say that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but

Speaker 3 I also believe that if we are really going to

Speaker 3 bring new industry and new jobs and new economic vitality, just saying that, okay, I'm going to do it without engaging with the technology and business leaders of our time is naive.

Speaker 3 I mean, one of the programs I'm proud of.

Speaker 2 I get the fair point, but let's talk about tech, because it's hard to make transformative change when you're friendly with the tech oligarchs trying to buy elections. Like, look, I'm not naive.

Speaker 2 People have bought elections for centuries, right? This is not a new, fresh thing. They just do it less transparently, I guess.
I suppose there's a positive to that.

Speaker 2 He's made a trans, you know, Elon's being the major donor of this election cycle.

Speaker 2 But let's talk about the tech industry then, because my issue is they're very good on some things, but why are they over here? Why are they over in this area? Why are they in the Ukraine?

Speaker 2 Why are they, you know what I mean? They don't have to hear Mark Andreessen lecture about some topics he knows nothing about is exhausting

Speaker 2 and dangerous as far as I'm concerned. So let's talk about the tech industry.
You've been pretty vocal, the need to regulate regulate big tech. You and I have talked about this for a very long time.

Speaker 2 The last time I interviewed in 2022, I said that you and your fellow Congress members haven't done your job in regard to tech regulation.

Speaker 2 You and I talked many years ago. I wrote a column in the New York Times about the Internet Bill of Rights, which you had been trying to push.
I went and looked it over. None of it has passed.

Speaker 2 None of it.

Speaker 2 They were all great ideas.

Speaker 2 There were 10 or 12 ideas or something like that: privacy bill, antitrust

Speaker 2 reform, et cetera. Talk about what's happening here, because I think one of the things is you can say you should do something about it, but nothing gets done.

Speaker 2 Explain to me why

Speaker 2 it's about eight years ago when I wrote that column or five years ago at least. None of those things have been done that you were suggesting.

Speaker 3 Well, it's a fair criticism, and all of us at Congress need to do better. But I'd say both the pragmatic and the more philosophical of why it hasn't happened.

Speaker 3 On a a pragmatic basis, there's just a debate between having the California standard for these things be the floor or

Speaker 3 having it preempted by federal law where the standards are worse than California. And that's been

Speaker 2 California has been very aggressive in passing.

Speaker 3 California has been very aggressive. And there's a compromise bill that has passed that isn't as aggressive as California.

Speaker 3 And some of us in California have been pushing that the California standard should be the floor. Others are saying just take the federal standard.
It's 80% of California.

Speaker 3 I'm even open to making a compromise, even if it's slightly weaker than California, if we can get something done. But that's been the practical reason why nothing has gotten done.

Speaker 3 But the bigger philosophical reason, and I'm not

Speaker 3 criticizing President Biden or this, but he came in, he spent his capital on COVID, and he spent capital on the American Rescue Plan and on CHIPS and IRA, all very significant things.

Speaker 3 But you didn't have someone saying, this is going to be a top priority for me. And you didn't have the leadership at the time saying, I want to get this through.

Speaker 3 And without having a Schumer or Plusi or whoever the leader is, and the president saying, we have to get this through. It's one of my top four or five priorities.
It's not going to get done.

Speaker 3 And I think they thought, okay, this is a tech issue. But

Speaker 3 what you're recognizing, and I think more people are recognizing, is tech is now intertwined with so much of our lives that these issues really matter to average Americans.

Speaker 2 It's like the railroad monopolies. That's what it reminds me of.
It's like so integral to everything.

Speaker 2 So what needs to happen to get real legislation tech, say privacy, antitrust, AI, social media and kids, which seems to have more traction.

Speaker 2 I've never seen an industry with so little, like, can you imagine the pharmaceutical industry without any regulation or the car industry, et cetera, et cetera?

Speaker 3 The railroads are a perfect analogy because the railroads, of course, did an extraordinary amount of good for America.

Speaker 3 In some sense, they were bringing America together, defining America as America, the America we know today. On the other hand, they had way too much power.

Speaker 3 In fact, Lincoln used to be attacked for being a lawyer for the railroads. I mean, that was one of the attacks on Lincoln.
But the point is that

Speaker 3 one of the sobering meetings I had, one of the worst meetings I had in

Speaker 3 my time in Congress was seven mothers. They came in, very polite, very respectful.
I actually didn't know the details of what they were going to talk about.

Speaker 3 And one after another, they started talking about how they lost their daughter or their son because of a choking challenge online, because their daughter or son was being bullied online, because they were being given information

Speaker 3 that made them feel no self-esteem and made them commit suicide. It's outrageous.
It's outrageous.

Speaker 2 Now it's bots doing it. Now it's bots doing the same thing, but go ahead.

Speaker 3 And, you know, Jonathan Haidt has written a whole book on this, Anxious Generation, that I think 90% I agree with and basically says, let's start to regulate it.

Speaker 3 The Kids Online Safety Act is the first basic thing that could regulate it that says that there has to be a standard of harm that you can't have when

Speaker 3 having content going to kids, that there need to be some safety standards. You could use that for AI generated chat GPT as well.
And

Speaker 3 we've got 68 senators who are for it. I've come out for it on the House side and we're not being able to move it.

Speaker 2 It's not going anywhere. He's not moving it.
Johnson's not moving it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 in fact, you know, someone had said to me when Holly in that dramatic way had Zuckerberg stand up and apologize to the parents that you should probably have had all of Congress stand up and apologize.

Speaker 2 I was the one who said that to you.

Speaker 3 Maybe you did.

Speaker 2 I said it a little differently. I said, Holly, you fucker, maybe you should apologize.
I think that's what I said exactly.

Speaker 2 We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaker 2 So you've spoken about the need to protect kids online. As you said, you support the Kids Online Safety Act or COSA, although you're against an Australia-style ban on kids under 16 using social media.

Speaker 2 I am for that.

Speaker 3 You're for a ban. I am.

Speaker 2 At this point,

Speaker 2 I'm done with compromise, I have to say. COSA passed the Senate, but a watered-down version installed in the House, as you said.
Unlikely to pass. Unlikely.
COSA is a bipartisan bill.

Speaker 2 Why is the tech industry fighting so hard against what is

Speaker 2 a relatively innocuous bill compared to the others?

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, because it it says the state should change their business model.

Speaker 3 Now, suddenly, if Facebook and Instagram have to care about what algorithms they are using to target kids and that they could be liable for causing harm to kids, you can see further legislation that starts to hold their algorithms accountable.

Speaker 3 And it increases their liability because I'm sure they know, I know they know from the whistleblowers that their product

Speaker 3 harms kids. Now,

Speaker 3 you have, of course, meta and other interests that are pouring money into these think tanks and groups and lobbyists that are trying to undermine it.

Speaker 3 But you also have the LGBTQ plus community with some legitimate concerns.

Speaker 3 And the legitimate concern is that you can't define the power so broadly for attorney generals in a state like Texas to go after any content that may be talking about trans issuers or gay issues.

Speaker 2 Well, because one of the senators said it explicitly, Senator Marcia Blackburn said it pretty explicitly in that regard.

Speaker 2 So, any chance it's going to go through?

Speaker 3 I think what would be helpful is for

Speaker 3 the progressive communities to come on board and to discuss where their bright lines are.

Speaker 3 Some of them have, with me and others, and to say, look, if the language is narrowly defined enough so we know that attorney generals aren't going to abuse it, then we can get on board.

Speaker 3 And then we need to start to call out

Speaker 3 the moneyed interests of who's blocking this. But, you know, I'm not hopeful for this.

Speaker 3 Again, this gets to the need for presidential and leadership and the Speaker of the House matters. I mean, Johnson or Trump would have to make this a priority for it to go.

Speaker 2 But it isn't. He's very clearly said that.

Speaker 2 So Trump also announced venture capitalists and let's move to AI very briefly.

Speaker 2 Venture capitalists and Elon Musk minion David Sachs to be his crypto and AI czar. I'm not sure it has much power, but I have to mention Sachs hosted a fundraiser for you at his house in 2023.

Speaker 2 I think I texted you about that. You responded, I sent you an article I wrote about him.

Speaker 2 You responded to criticism by saying, having core convictions, but engaging with those who see the world differently is so needed in our nation. Probably you needed the money too.

Speaker 2 But having said all that, what do you make of it? I don't mind you raising money. I don't care.
Of course.

Speaker 3 Yes, by the way, I take no PAC money, no super pack, don't have a super peg, no PAC money, and get contributions of $3,300.

Speaker 3 Otherwise, I'm not, you know, I'm not Gandhi, but I'm relatively, and I'm not Bernie Sanders, but I'm relatively clean, cleaner than 95% of those in Congress.

Speaker 2 So having said that, what do you make of this pick? What do you imagine happening? Because this is an area that is going to affect your constituency.

Speaker 2 And you've written that federal policy should require public companies to have active worker participation, making decisions about how we'll change jobs and the functions be automated.

Speaker 2 This is not what he has talked about, for sure. How do you imagine this appointment is going to go, or is it just another thank you for the money kind of thing that Trump is doing here?

Speaker 3 Well, look, here's where I'm going to try to see if there's any possible common ground. There's been a bipartisan commission that has recommended two things.

Speaker 3 One, we need more compute power in America at public universities.

Speaker 3 You can't have all the compute power just sitting there with Google and Microsoft, or you're never going to have independent research. And will David be willing to support

Speaker 3 $10, $20 billion of investment, which a bipartisan commission has recommended, on AI compute power so that we can stay ahead of China and have research

Speaker 3 in AI that isn't just consumer-focused to shareholders at Google and Microsoft.

Speaker 3 Second area is, you know, the open source of AI models makes it such that Lama, which is, as you know, the Facebook open source, is only about 12 months behind the latest chat GPT

Speaker 3 iteration or the latest Gemini iteration. And so you've got a real danger around the world.

Speaker 3 Like we can have export restrictions on the open AI, Microsoft, Google things, but if you're going to have an open source that is about 12 months behind, and by the way, if you talk to experts, they'll tell you that that open source is pretty good for military applications and most applications of AI, then we have a bigger problem in how to secure AI.

Speaker 3 And we need to look at things like securing the physical infrastructure infrastructure and material for bioweapons and

Speaker 3 other ways of securing the most sensitive information. That's not a very partisan thing.
And I'll try to engage David on that and then try to engage him on unique safety regulations for AI.

Speaker 2 So every show, we get a question from an outside expert. Yours comes from Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
Let's hear it.

Speaker 1 Hey, Roe.

Speaker 14 Given everything that we're seeing in terms of AI harms, like the recent product liability cases against AI companions like character.ai, it seems obvious that we should have some sort of legislation in the US that allows us to incentivize much more responsible innovations.

Speaker 14 And we all know that one of the biggest pushbacks against AI guardrails are concerns about losing to China. But from one vantage point, we beat China to social media.

Speaker 14 And did that make us stronger or weaker? And I worry that we're in a similar situation here where we're not racing towards AI that makes us a better society, but a worse one.

Speaker 14 So my question for you is, what path forward do you see for Democrats and Republicans to work together to ensure that AI is being built in a way that strengthens American society?

Speaker 2 See, that's a nice one.

Speaker 3 He's also so eloquent.

Speaker 3 Here's what I say. I still am optimistic about the uses of AI to develop new drugs, to help to tackle educational inequities, to help build new manufacturing.

Speaker 3 But he's absolutely right that we need to develop AI

Speaker 3 with

Speaker 3 appropriate guardrails.

Speaker 3 And the whole explanation I gave about the development of open source and the vulnerability anyway with China developing those models means that we should be leading to have humanistic values

Speaker 3 in these AI and

Speaker 3 in these guardrails. And I don't think that there's a tension between doing that and staying ahead of China.
I mean, we need to have our own values in this technology.

Speaker 2 Aaron Ross Powell, but no guardrails yet. Again, no guardrails yet.

Speaker 3 But this is an area. Look, I don't know if he wants to change his view, but he did a ex-chat with Mike Gallagher and me where he called for an AI regulatory agency.

Speaker 3 And he was on the other side of sort of Andreessen and things on this, on AI regulation. I don't know.
I haven't talked to him about it.

Speaker 2 Well, now he has an AI company, though.

Speaker 3 So I don't know.

Speaker 2 Like, again, these conflicts are so intertwined.

Speaker 2 It's really, and I don't mean to say these people shouldn't have a say in things because they certainly know what they're talking about and what's needed.

Speaker 2 But it often comes at the expense of their businesses, right?

Speaker 2 They have their own interests, which is problematic.

Speaker 3 I think what would be helpful with Tristan, I mean, I know he's done it, but okay, what are the top three things we can do?

Speaker 3 My view is very simply, one of them is to label AI-generated content as AI-generated content to require human decision-making and not AI decision-making.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, I get that Tristan folks get frustrated because they probably are asked for these lists 100 times and then nothing happens. But we've got to keep at it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, protect children would be mine.

Speaker 2 I have two more quick questions of facts.

Speaker 2 Very quickly, antitrust enforcement. You supported Senator Klobuchar's tech antitrust bill in the Senate, not a similar bill in the House.
How come?

Speaker 2 And Trump is expected to stop the Department of Justice from breaking up Google and generally pull back, although it's in a court right now, so I don't know how much effect he will have, and pull back from the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement.

Speaker 2 That said, their designee is an interesting person who has a lot of respect across the antitrust community. What do you think is going to happen here with these breakups?

Speaker 3 Look, I supported Lena Kahn. I support the president keeping her on.
But I've heard this other person, I don't know her, but I've heard Gina Slater.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I've heard that she has a fair amount of respect from people who want antitrust enforcement. I'm all for the enforcement.

Speaker 3 I mean, the things that Lena Khan went after, I mean, Google shouldn't be allowed to pay Apple to make Google the default browser. I mean, this is obvious that

Speaker 2 Google was in the Justice Department under John Cantor. That's the case that they won.
The Justice Department won against Google in the breakup. Right.

Speaker 3 I mean, I think it's on this exclusive agreements with

Speaker 3 Apple. And so they should, you know, the remedy, there are different ways on the remedy, but they certainly shouldn't be.

Speaker 3 privileging their own products and they shouldn't have exclusive agreements and they there's something that needs to be done on their monopoly when it uh on search and that they should

Speaker 3 there should be open competition there. And so I'll leave it to the judicial process to figure out the exact remedy.

Speaker 2 But I think that would you want a breakup? Would you think that's a good solution?

Speaker 3 You know, I would see is: are there other remedies first that would work? If the judge said, no, the only thing that's going to have fair competition is a breakup, fine.

Speaker 3 But that's, you know, you don't start with that. You have a process.

Speaker 3 But what I will support is someone like Lena Kahn or someone strong antitrust to take aggressive action and to then let the consequences go where they may be.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's not keeping Lena Khan, just FY.

Speaker 3 He's just not.

Speaker 3 But on the other side, you know, and then I get, you know, I think some people say this is why they say, oh, is he established or not?

Speaker 3 I mean, you can recognize that Google had two Nobel laureates out of DeepMine and still believe that they're violating the law when it comes to

Speaker 3 open

Speaker 3 exclusive contracts with Apple. But the world isn't, in my view, on tech, black and white.
I think we had an overly positive view of them, and now sometimes we have an overly negative view.

Speaker 3 And the question is, how do you have the right guardrail so that technology is for the good?

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, stop being complex, Roe. Please stop.
Would you stop? That said, they have no laws against them, so maybe one.

Speaker 2 The Federal Appeals Court, last thing, and then I have one last quick question, obviously, about you running for president.

Speaker 2 A federal appeals court is denied Bitnam's attempts to overturn the TikTok ban. You voted against the ban.
I know that we've had some interesting discussions about it.

Speaker 2 You're skeptical if it's constitutional, but it looks like so far it is. And they have decided that national security trumps the issues around the First Amendment.

Speaker 2 And you've pointed out without a privacy bill, the Chinese Communist Party could buy American data legally from data brokers.

Speaker 2 It is not the solution, but as long as ByteDance possibly answers to Beijing, they could possibly tweak the algorithm, which is, I think, the worry, or other issues.

Speaker 2 There's all kinds of surveillance issues, tweaking algorithms. We're not likely to get a privacy bill anytime soon.
So, where do you imagine the TikTok situation going?

Speaker 2 Trump has flip-flopped his opinion on it. He was for it before he was against it.
Follower account.

Speaker 3 If they keep going up, then it's not going to get banned. If it starts dipping, then it'll get banned.
I don't know. That's right.

Speaker 2 Well, there's not a lot he can do necessarily. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well,

Speaker 3 it's got to be negotiated with China because would I rather have a sale to an American company? Absolutely. But apparently, Xi Jinping needs to sign off on that sale.

Speaker 3 He has no incentive to sign off on that sale unless the Americans put pressure.

Speaker 3 And so my guess is it's going to be between Rubio and whoever Xi Jinping's foreign policy is to try to resolve it if the courts don't strike it down. I'm always for having an American company own it.

Speaker 3 I just thought the law was overbroad by literally shutting down the app and 175 million Americans if we couldn't get a sale.

Speaker 3 And there are other things we could have done, like criminalizing algorithmic interference or criminalizing the transference of data to the CCP.

Speaker 2 It's difficult to enforce that, obviously. By the way, you have a big follower count yourself, Roe, on the TikTok, just so you know.
You do.

Speaker 3 I'm growing. I mean, if it goes further, I'm not complaining.
I mean,

Speaker 3 here's the irony of it. Everyone, China is

Speaker 3 corrupting our youth, and they're interfering with our citizens. And then they all go and revote for the TikTok ban.
And you know what one week later they do?

Speaker 3 They all go tell their staffers, I don't have enough TikTok followers. How do I increase my TikTok followers? And you got Kamala Harris and Donald Trump out competing themselves on TikTok.

Speaker 3 So there is a little bit of hypocrisy in this whole thing, don't you think?

Speaker 2 It's called drug addiction, is what it is. It's a version of drug addiction.
Of course course it is. That's the whole point is

Speaker 2 it's so integral to your life that you can't avoid it. And at the same time, it is then running your life, right?

Speaker 2 That's the whole honeypot of it all.

Speaker 3 I actually think that is, and Tristan is very thoughtful, as of you have been about the time spent on all of this,

Speaker 3 social media and the internet. We all get sucked into it and what that's doing to society.
Now, people said the same thing about television, but this strikes me as

Speaker 3 worse unless it's properly managed.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's more deleterious than anything. And you can't get away from it.
You can't eat it for your work. It's addictive and everything else.

Speaker 2 All right, speaking of your follower count, I have my magic eight ball here, Ro.

Speaker 3 Oh, look at that.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to ask you if you're running for president, but you haven't done anything to tamp down that speculation.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to have you answer whether you're running. I'm going to see what the eight ball says.
Reply hazy. Try again.
Interesting. Let's try again.
Outlook good. So let's say you run and win.

Speaker 2 If you run and you win, what's your single most important legislative priority, the one bill that you're willing to spend that political capital on?

Speaker 3 How we get Chancy and people like him good-paying jobs. I mean,

Speaker 3 that would be my North Star, whether I win or whether, you know, hopefully it's not J.D. Vance or whether it's Gavin Newsome or, you know, Gretchen Whitmer.

Speaker 3 You know, what can we do to people like Chancy

Speaker 3 to get them high-paying jobs?

Speaker 2 And what would that be?

Speaker 3 Well, my view is that it's got to be an industrialization and economic mobilization strategy like FDR had, where you get federal financing in all these deindustrialized towns.

Speaker 3 You're looking at not just semiconductors or electric vehicles. You have a whole different range of types of industry and jobs that you could have.

Speaker 3 You announce a program for 100,000 new electricians, beauticians,

Speaker 3 tradespeople that the Jobs Corps would do. But you really create a White House Economic Development Council that thinks about all the places that have been de-industrialized.

Speaker 3 And then you say, okay, it's not all going to be manufacturing. There could be other types of high-paying jobs, but what are we going to do to have the economic development?

Speaker 3 It's what saddens me about Trump, because ultimately, I think he diagnosed a lot of anger in this country. And I'm skeptical that Chansey's life is going to be better four years from now.

Speaker 3 If it is, more power to him. I'm not, I mean that sincerely.
Because you know what deep down, and maybe I'll end with this, Carol.

Speaker 3 What's the core of the question?

Speaker 2 I was going to ask you, what is your hope for the Trump administration? What is your biggest worry? Go ahead.

Speaker 3 You know, I'll answer it by saying what motivated deep down my interest in politics. And it's my grandfather.

Speaker 3 He spent four years in jail alongside Gandhi's independence movement fighting for Indian independence.

Speaker 3 And I thought in America, growing up, Indian American of Hindu faith in Bucks County, if we became a cohesive, multiracial democracy, that we'd have a more just world, that you wouldn't have the colonizers' model of the world that my father and grandfather had to struggle against, and that a multiracial America would be a more just America, whether in the Middle East or around the world.

Speaker 3 That was my calling into politics.

Speaker 3 And so if what I realized is that Obama, who is the most inspirational figure, that he could only get us so far because so many people had economic resentment, there were other resentments, but also economic resentments.

Speaker 3 And if Trump does anything that can help in towns that have been deindustrialized to improve life, that's going to get us closer to that North Star being this cohesive multiracial democracy.

Speaker 3 And if there are things he does on that, I will support them.

Speaker 3 But ultimately, you know, whether it's Chansey or five or ten people like that in parts of this country, that should be where politicians are thinking, what can we do to change their prospects?

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, and what's your greatest worry for his administration?

Speaker 3 Probably that he'd put someone like Jamie Raskin in jail because of what that would would mean for our democratic norms. I mean, what a terrible precedent that would be.

Speaker 3 And I don't think he's going to have mass arrests, but even if he did a few high-profile folks and what that would mean in stifling debate and criticism.

Speaker 3 And second to that, that we're going to have mass raids of businesses where we're going to be asked, everyone will be asked for their papers, and people that look like me will be asked for their papers whether they were born here or not.

Speaker 3 So those are probably the two biggest places of fear.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's never good when you're asked for your papers.

Speaker 3 It's never good. It never ends up.
My mom, so you know, when I travel, and now I travel as a member of Congress, my mom, until recently, she says,

Speaker 3 do you have your passport? Can you make sure you don't lose your passport? And at first I didn't understand it. Then I realized when you come as an immigrant, those papers have such meaning.

Speaker 2 They do. You don't need your papers, Roe.

Speaker 3 I don't need it. Not today.

Speaker 2 Not today. All right.
Well, I'll be texting you tonight if you do something I don't like, okay?

Speaker 3 I always appreciate that.

Speaker 2 I'll text you something nice. Scott Galloway complains of the same thing.
I will text you something nice sometime when you do something I like. How about that? I'll make a deal with you.
All right.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
You're an incredibly thoughtful legislator. And I do hope you run for president.
I like a lot of various and different people.

Speaker 2 So American people get a choice. Anyway, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Always fun.

Speaker 2 On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Rousselle, Kateri Yoakum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to Kate Gallagher. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics.
If you're already following the show, you get a free Magic 8 ball.

Speaker 2 If not, you are part of an unholy alliance of wealth and power. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On With Kara Swisher, and hit follow.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

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