Rep. Ro Khanna Discusses Fighting Back against Trump and MAGA

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Speaker 5 Magna Mike looked off. He looked scared.
His voice was cracking. And it was a day where, you know, he would think that maybe he'd be spiking the football.

Speaker 5 I don't know, but he refused to answer questions from the press. He like ran away when they were asking basic questions like, what are you going to do on the Affordable Care Act?

Speaker 5 Are you going to extend? Are you going to do a vote to extend the subsidies? Just watch for yourself. Magna Mike behaving even more odd than normal, if you can believe that.
Here, play this clip.

Speaker 10 And finally, do the right thing and help us to bring an end to the pain of the American people. This has gone on too long, too many people have suffered, and it's long overdue.

Speaker 10 That's the update I wanted to give you this morning. There are probably lots of questions, but I'm going to get a lot of my own questions answered later today.
So stay tuned for more. Thanks so much.

Speaker 5 I mean, you're the speaker of the house, man.

Speaker 5 What do you mean, you're going to get some of your own questions answered later in the day? Like, aren't you supposed to be like the guy?

Speaker 5 Like, aren't you the guy who answers the questions for other people? So, then Manu Raju from CNN tried to catch up for him as he was walking to his office. And again, very odd here.
Play this clip.

Speaker 9 As you know, I do not guarantee the not coming legislation or dates or deadlines or anything.

Speaker 9 I actually

Speaker 9 never said that what we will do. But it's not a problem.

Speaker 5 In other words, Magamike, the Speaker of the House, is saying that they will not basically put up a vote on extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies in the House of Representatives.

Speaker 5 So I'm not really sure what the Democrats in the Senate, those eight Democrats, were thinking he was going to do. Of course, he's taking orders from Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 But he was asked on Greta Van Sustran, you know, so

Speaker 5 do you guys have a plan? Are the Republicans going to come up with a solution before December 31st because people's premiums are about to spike? Watch how Megan Mike responds. Let's play this clip.

Speaker 13 Well, is the Republican idea or solution going to go into effect at midnight on December 31st? Because people are going to get sticker shock on this insurance.

Speaker 13 I mean, this is really sort of an urgent matter for a lot of people.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's an urgent matter for us, and it has been, which is why we put it into the bill that we passed in the early summer, and the Democrats fought to take it out.

Speaker 10 So we're reintroducing some of of these ideas. There's a lot of ideas on how to drive the cost down and we have November and December to work on that.

Speaker 10 We're going to have to get a bipartisan consensus on some of this and so we'll be presenting our ideas and putting them on the table.

Speaker 5 Okay, so they have concepts of an idea, concepts of a plan. Maybe, I don't know, he's got,

Speaker 5 he tries this again, he goes on Fox and he says, we've got notebooks full of ideas. You want to share them? Here, play this clip.

Speaker 10 Subsidizing the insurance companies is not the answer because it just drives the cost up even further. So, we need to look at the root causes.

Speaker 10 The Republican Party is the party that is working on that, has been working on it, and has more ideas going forward. We've got to bring down the costs.

Speaker 10 And you can do that in a responsible way that also increases access and quality of care. And we've got notebooks full of ideas on how to do that.
We've got to build consensus around it.

Speaker 5 Notebooks full of ideas that nobody has seen.

Speaker 5 Fake votes that aren't going to happen in the future. The hell is going on here? I want to bring in Democratic Congressmember Roe Khanna to try to make sense of this.

Speaker 5 Congressman Khan, it's great to see again.

Speaker 5 So you had these eight Democrats in the Senate saying, woohoo, we got the Republicans to agree to a vote in the Senate, not that they'll agree to extend the subsidies.

Speaker 5 And like the whole time, we've been saying, well, even if they did that, they're going to vote against it. And they're not even going to bring it up in the House.

Speaker 5 And then you hear MAGA Mike just doing the same shtick over and over again. What do you make of it, Congressman?

Speaker 14 That was quite a collection of clips, and it would be laughable if it weren't so sad. I mean, I was talking to someone whose father is a taxi driver in Arizona.
That father has cancer.

Speaker 14 His premium is going to go up from $44 a month to $2,600 a month. This is life and death for folks.
And, you know, Johnson keeps saying I've got notebooks full of plans.

Speaker 14 Do you notice it never says what the plan is, not even like one sentence? The reality is the plan is basically allow these premiums to spike for 20 million Americans.

Speaker 14 For some, it's going to be a death sentence. For others, it's going to mean medical bankruptcy.
And look, the eight senators knew that. Come on.

Speaker 14 Dick Durban has been in the Senate for, I don't know, 50 years. You don't think he knows that the House was never going to take it up? Give me a break.

Speaker 14 And then it's awfully convenient that those eight senators happen to be the senators that are not up in 2026, and they're all consulting Schumer. I mean, people are sick of this.

Speaker 14 That's why I called on Schumer to step down.

Speaker 5 Congressman,

Speaker 5 this whole thing is so strange because we had this incredible Tuesday.

Speaker 5 People were animated, excited. There was a blue tsunami.
You had all of these areas that were Democrats lost voters. They come back.

Speaker 5 to the Democrats. Finally, it's like, we're fighting.
We feel good. Every data point is like people want Democrats to fight.

Speaker 5 And then all of a sudden, on Sunday, you know, it almost in a way felt to me like these senators were almost like annoyed that the results reflected the Democratic Party going in, like, like a kid who you take away their candy almost.

Speaker 5 It almost felt like they were upset that this was going in and that the Democratic Party was kind of generationally shifting and going back to a lot of its roots.

Speaker 5 And they were like, one final trick for you. Here's what we're going to do.
And I'm like,

Speaker 5 I was in a plane and fortunately, it was able to take off decently on time. And

Speaker 5 as this is going on, I'm like thinking to myself, like,

Speaker 5 what the hell just happened? We had the greatest thing. Why are we acting like losers when we won big and the American people are fighting with us?

Speaker 14 It's totally mind-boggling, but you know what? The one thing we had in common on the day we won, we had new voices, fresh, young, bold voices.

Speaker 14 There are a bunch of folks who've been there 30, 40 years. They proclaim themselves the adult in the rooms.
Well, guess what?

Speaker 14 The adult in the rooms have screwed over a lot of the American people for the last 30 or 40 years. They've seen wage inequality rise.
They've seen rents become unaffordable.

Speaker 14 They've seen homes be priced out of their ability to buy it. They've seen childcare costs skyrocket.
They've seen medical bankruptcies happen.

Speaker 14 70% don't believe in the American dream, and they think this governing class needs to go. We need new voices.
We need new leaders.

Speaker 14 If you've been in office for over 20 years, you shouldn't be leading the future of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 14 This is a time for people like Abigail and Zoran and Mikey and new voices from all parts of our party. We've got a lot of talent.
You know, someone said to me in a joking way, or perhaps

Speaker 14 serious, perhaps, they're like, well, this backbencher from the House is calling for Schumer to step down. And all my supporters started coming to my defense, saying, Khanna's not a backbencher.

Speaker 14 He talks to Ben. He goes, he goes on the media.
I said, no, no, no.

Speaker 14 You know, I don't care. The point is the backbenchers need to come to the front.
Those of us in the back, we need to move to the front. And a new generation of leadership needs to emerge.

Speaker 5 Look, when I was in basketball camp at Lutheran basketball camp, I was Mr. Hustle, six-man off the bench.
That six-man role, Mr. Hustle, summer after summer is a good field.

Speaker 5 But the reality is, is that we do need Mr. Hustle.
We do need the person off the bench who can hit the threes. We do need new starters, you know, for this team and to look fresh.

Speaker 5 And by the way, I don't view that as an insult to the old guy at all, actually.

Speaker 5 And I think that's where people personalize this. I think there's a way to say, you know, we...

Speaker 5 tribute and salute the work that was done in the past at a certain period in history and different times in history call for different things.

Speaker 5 And I think that's sometimes what leadership is all about. You know, I'll tell you this.
So, what my dad told me growing up is he goes, and this is like a leadership lesson.

Speaker 5 He says, any good head coach wants to promote their assistant coach to become a great head coach. A bad head coach wants to be the keep their assistant coaches as assistants for their life.

Speaker 5 And I think that there's a parallel here. At some point, part of a legacy is bringing up the new generation to lead in a way that's helpful in this moment.

Speaker 5 And I don't think it's insulting to the older leadership. I just think we got to recognize new moments call for new times.
What do you think about that?

Speaker 14 I love that. I love the analogy of the bad coach because I think that's unfortunately what we've had in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 14 Some people have done great, but they haven't cultivated and made way for a new generation.

Speaker 14 Look, on Senator Schumer, I have given him credit publicly and privately for the chipset, for the infrastructure bill, for IRA, for the American Rescue Plan. Let's not kid ourselves.

Speaker 14 Most of that stuff would not have passed if it weren't for his leadership. But that doesn't mean that he's the right person to lead now.

Speaker 14 And I think some of these folks need to, with grace, continue to serve. They just don't have to be out in front.

Speaker 14 And what we need out in front is that new energy that excited 100,000 volunteers in New York, that excited folks in rural Virginia for Abigail.

Speaker 14 They got people in suburbs, in Mikey Sherill's case, turning away from Donald Trump and voting for her in one year, flipped communities.

Speaker 14 That's who we need out there in front speaking for the Democratic Party. The country is telling us that.
They keep telling us just get new leadership.

Speaker 14 And we, I don't know what we're doing, but I hope now this is a wake-up call. You know, unfortunately, I've never had a more viral tweet in my career.

Speaker 14 I wish they were listening to my economic policy or my childcare policy with the amount that they are listening to my call for new leadership in the Senate, but it shows it struck a nerve.

Speaker 5 Well, I do think that the reality is, is I do think that they listened to that. And I think that's why it went viral.

Speaker 5 I mean, there's lots of people who make posts about a lot of different topics, but I think that people know that what it's backed up with is these economic policies, these healthcare policies that are concrete.

Speaker 5 You list specifics. You're unapologetic.
You go into red territories and you speak with all different types of people.

Speaker 5 You show up in some podcast that I tell my crew, I'm like, why is Roe going on that podcast? That's Roque. That's what you do.

Speaker 5 That's what you do.

Speaker 5 Because you're trying to engage with

Speaker 5 lots of audiences. But it seems also, Congressman, that there's a lot of stuff that's even in this legislation that people are like, what? What? What?

Speaker 5 That's in there.

Speaker 5 Like in one of these bills, the Republican senators put in a provision where they'll each be able to like write themselves checks from the Department of Justice for subpoenaing phone records in connection with the January 6th insurrection for $500,000 each.

Speaker 5 And there's like their own group of eight is a group of eight that they want to pay themselves 500K and settle with themselves the way Trump wants to settle with themselves from the DOJ.

Speaker 5 They built in a provision specifically for senators. If you are a senator and this happens, it's the great craziest thing.
What are we

Speaker 14 It's crazy. I mean,

Speaker 14 it's corruption in your face. It's sort of like they don't even want to hide it anymore.

Speaker 14 It's just sort of, what are you going to do about it? We're the senators. We have the power.
We can do what we want. But you know what? The American people have had it.

Speaker 14 They've had it with the kind of self-dealing, the enrichment. And that's why they keep voting for change.
And

Speaker 14 I think we just, we were on a good note on Tuesday. That to me is the way forward.

Speaker 5 Finally, just when you see kind of MAGA Mike, Donald Trump saying that, you know, look, everything's great. There's no inflation.
They lie about bringing in $22 trillion,

Speaker 5 you know, all of that, you know, and by the way, you see even people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are like,

Speaker 5 what the hell is this? Like, this isn't America first.

Speaker 5 There does seem to be something changing in this country, though.

Speaker 5 Notwithstanding this kind of gut punch by what took place, there does seem to be hope and optimism if we can harness it in the right way. I want to give you the final word there.

Speaker 14 Absolutely. Look, here's their problem.
They're now in power. When you're out of power, you can spin.

Speaker 14 You can put out a viral video. You can attack others and you can do propaganda and you have an army of influencers.

Speaker 14 You know what you can spin when someone walks into the store and they're paying more for coffee, they're paying more for their burgers,

Speaker 14 they're paying more for their electricity bill, suddenly their premiums go up.

Speaker 14 And I don't care how effective you are and how many influencers you are and how many podcasts you do and whatever your army is, you're not going to convince people that their bills are going down.

Speaker 14 And so that's the problem. They've got reality staring at them.
And the American people are done with them. And that's the opportunity.

Speaker 14 I hope folks who were disappointed with these eight senators don't get discouraged. Make it your motivation to run for office.
Make it your motivation to support someone for office.

Speaker 14 Make it your motivation to help take back our party.

Speaker 14 My view is that Tuesday was a harbinger of bigger victories in 2026, bigger victories in 2028, and we're going to have a political realignment of the likes we haven't seen probably since Barack Obama in 2008.

Speaker 14 So this should be the fuel for us, not sort of, okay, let's go back and bashing the Democratic Party and all in terms of doomerism. Let's just say, look, we've got a lot going for us.

Speaker 14 We've got to have some folks make way so we can have an energetic midterm election.

Speaker 5 Congressman,

Speaker 5 as a fake final question, my producer is saying I have to ask you a question about the discharge petition because if there is something that may move along if the shutdown ends, is the discharge petition that you and Congressmember Massey put forward to release the Epstein files.

Speaker 5 Lots of people are still saying after Adelita Grahalva sworn in that MAGA Mike's going to try to pull something to block the discharge petition by using some procedural maneuver.

Speaker 5 While I have Jan, I got to ask you about that.

Speaker 14 It's going to be huge. I mean, Adelaide Grajalva is probably going to get sworn in Wednesday.
Seven days after that, we will get a vote on the Epstein file. Now, that's seven legislative days.

Speaker 14 I believe we are going to get that. I'll break some news.
We're talking with Mike Massey now of getting another major press conference with the survivors early next week at the Capitol.

Speaker 14 There's going to be so much momentum left and right to say out with the Epstein class, rich and powerful people who abused young girls, who think they live by a different set of rules.

Speaker 14 America is done with you. We're done with that kind of elite impunity and corruption.

Speaker 14 And I believe we will get this vote. 60 votes, probably 60 Republicans, will line up and vote for it.

Speaker 14 It's going to be the first day that Donald Trump will be a lame duck when he has 60 Republicans voting against him. So I am committed to this.

Speaker 14 And that is one silver lining at the House opening back as it takes up this terrible bill as Adelina Grahalva does get sworn in and we will get that vote on the Epstein files.

Speaker 5 That was the real final question. Thank you, Congressman Cona.
We appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 5 Everybody, hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers.
Thanks so much.

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