All-In Summit: Ro Khanna on China, political reform, major challenges facing the US and more
Chapters
0:0 Besties welcome US Rep. Ro Khanna to AIS!0:52 Washington's view on China
4:59 Business leaders working with China
7:24 Diplomacy
10:2 Steel
16:48 Political reform
21:30 Age of politicians
29:9 Shadow governments
32:29 Social Security
00:00:00.000 | Join me in welcoming Congressman Ro Khanna to the stage, please.
00:00:03.200 | [APPLAUSE]
00:00:05.200 | Hey, Ro, how are you?
00:00:06.200 | Good to see you.
00:00:07.200 | Thank you.
00:00:07.700 | Good to see you.
00:00:08.700 | Good to see you.
00:00:09.700 | Good to see you.
00:00:10.700 | [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:00:13.700 | Don't let your winners hide.
00:00:16.200 | Rain Man, David Sackett.
00:00:18.700 | I'm going all in.
00:00:20.700 | And it said--
00:00:21.700 | We open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy.
00:00:24.700 | Love you, guys.
00:00:25.700 | Queen, you can rock.
00:00:26.700 | I'm going all in.
00:00:30.400 | So I think you guys know Ro Khanna.
00:00:33.400 | He's in his fourth term representing California's 17th district, which is Silicon Valley.
00:00:38.400 | And he's been a leading voice in Congress to restore American manufacturing and technology leadership.
00:00:44.400 | And so I think we want to talk to you about the CHIPS bill and domestic politics.
00:00:51.400 | But we just finished a great conversation with Graham Allison about China.
00:00:55.400 | Yeah, it was brilliant.
00:00:56.400 | And I think you're also on a subcommittee on China.
00:01:00.400 | And so I think it'd be great just to maybe start with just maybe an update from you on where is the thinking in Washington on China.
00:01:08.400 | It feels like, in general, other countries have hawks and doves, whereas in the United States, we have hawks and lunatics.
00:01:17.400 | [LAUGHTER]
00:01:19.400 | Like, I don't know of any doves in Washington.
00:01:23.400 | And that's a little bit concerning.
00:01:24.900 | I think there was a readout, I think, from the last time that I think we sent.
00:01:30.400 | I think Blinken might have gone to China.
00:01:32.400 | And the readout from the Chinese side is they said relations with the U.S. were the worst they've ever been since diplomatic contacts were reestablished in the 1970s.
00:01:40.400 | So like Graham said, the relationship is going from, you know, worst to worst.
00:01:46.400 | You know, I guess describe to us what you're seeing in Washington.
00:01:51.400 | How should we -- how worried should we be about this relationship?
00:01:54.900 | We should be concerned.
00:01:56.900 | Let me focus on three areas.
00:02:00.900 | One where I agree with the bipartisan consensus.
00:02:04.900 | And that is that we should have never allowed China to accumulate the trade deficit that they have, the advantage with the United States.
00:02:13.900 | I mean, we have a trade deficit with China.
00:02:16.900 | India has a trade deficit with China.
00:02:18.900 | Japan has a trade deficit with China.
00:02:20.900 | South Korea has a trade deficit with China.
00:02:22.900 | I don't understand how the entire world said let's have all our production go to China.
00:02:26.900 | Let me ask you this.
00:02:28.900 | If we had said, you know, who needs Wall Street?
00:02:31.900 | Who needs a finance industry?
00:02:32.900 | Let London just do it.
00:02:34.900 | Or who needs a tech industry?
00:02:35.900 | Let Europe just do it.
00:02:37.900 | Or who needs Hollywood?
00:02:38.900 | Let Bollywood make all the movies.
00:02:40.900 | People would have laughed.
00:02:42.900 | And yet that's what we did with manufacturing.
00:02:44.900 | It's not that we need manufacturing as the penultimate industry.
00:02:48.900 | It's that we need it to be part of a well-balanced economy.
00:02:51.900 | And so the push to rebalance the economy with China to bring production back, which by the way is in China's own interest because they have over-indexed for an export production economy at the expense of their own consumers and at the expense of real wealth generation, which happens also in the finance and tech sectors.
00:03:08.900 | That I think there's a bipartisan push for in consensus and is the right policy.
00:03:13.900 | And that's I think actually what people in Pennsylvania and Ohio care the most about.
00:03:16.900 | Give us our jobs that went to China.
00:03:19.900 | In terms of the defense on Taiwan, there is a difference of approaches.
00:03:26.900 | I am clearly of the belief that we should continue with the strategic ambiguity in one China policy.
00:03:32.900 | It was a policy that Kissinger had and we had three communique after that.
00:03:37.900 | Now what does that mean?
00:03:39.900 | It means simply that we can do everything possible to assist Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act to make sure that China is deterred from a military invasion of Taiwan.
00:03:51.900 | And we should.
00:03:52.900 | We should provide them long-range weapons.
00:03:54.900 | We should provide them harpoons.
00:03:55.900 | We should provide them HIMARS.
00:03:57.900 | But we should recognize that the future of China and Taiwan is to be determined by China and Taiwan in peaceful dialogue.
00:04:07.900 | But if China does anything to be coercive, the United States will do everything to assist Taiwan with the defense.
00:04:15.900 | That is the policy that has stood us well for 50 years and I believe can continue to stand us well.
00:04:20.900 | Some people have demagogued this issue, I'm not going to name names, saying, well, we're not prepared.
00:04:25.900 | We are prepared.
00:04:26.900 | I mean we have the enabled superiority in the Pacific.
00:04:30.900 | We have our 7th Fleet deployed.
00:04:33.900 | We have nuclear-powered submarines in the area.
00:04:36.900 | We will make sure that China is deterred.
00:04:40.900 | And then the final policy is do we want to talk to them?
00:04:44.900 | I think we should talk to them.
00:04:46.900 | Like I don't understand why you wouldn't have people having dialogue or communication with China.
00:04:51.900 | We had that at the height of the Cold War.
00:04:54.900 | [Applause]
00:04:57.900 | Do they want to talk to us?
00:04:59.900 | It seems like they're not so talkative right now.
00:05:01.900 | We keep sending people over there and trying to start a dialogue.
00:05:05.900 | Well, they talk to Elon.
00:05:07.900 | Elon showed up there I think before our Secretary of State.
00:05:11.900 | And I'm being half serious, but our business leaders have more access into China than our military, political, or government leaders.
00:05:22.900 | That's a problem.
00:05:24.900 | Like how is it that Bob Iger, Tim Cook, and Elon Musk are doing the diplomacy with China and get more meetings and more conversations?
00:05:32.900 | Well, they're in business together is the answer.
00:05:35.900 | Well, yeah, but then we need to have a policy where we're meeting them and helping determine what that policy is.
00:05:42.900 | Why not have to do something with the person?
00:05:44.900 | See the other half of it.
00:05:46.900 | What is happening or what is our political class saying that is short-circuiting the ability to go over there and actually have a meeting?
00:05:52.900 | They've invited me to come over.
00:05:55.900 | And I've said I'm on the Democratic side of the House.
00:05:57.900 | And I've said I've got to go on a bipartisan basis.
00:05:59.900 | I'm trying to get a Republican to go over with me and to get senators.
00:06:03.900 | And I've said I don't understand how we're not going over to have a conversation.
00:06:06.900 | You want to lecture them about the Uyghurs?
00:06:08.900 | Let's go over and lecture them about the Uyghurs.
00:06:10.900 | You want to make sure that they're not engaged in spying?
00:06:13.900 | Let's talk about that.
00:06:14.900 | But let's talk.
00:06:15.900 | There has not been a bipartisan congressional delegation to China since before COVID.
00:06:22.900 | This is not in the interest.
00:06:25.900 | I don't care whether you're a hawk or a dove.
00:06:26.900 | You have to engage.
00:06:27.900 | But why?
00:06:28.900 | Because people are afraid of being seen as weak.
00:06:31.900 | Which group of people?
00:06:32.900 | Are you saying Republicans are afraid to?
00:06:35.900 | I think they're probably--
00:06:37.900 | Let me just say it if that's what you mean.
00:06:40.900 | David's sitting right there.
00:06:44.900 | Not all Republicans.
00:06:45.900 | Let him answer.
00:06:46.900 | Look, Jake, there are a lot of crazy hawks in the GOP establishment.
00:06:51.900 | As I think about the biggest lunatics in foreign policy in Washington, someone like Lindsey Graham comes to mind.
00:06:57.900 | I'm not a defender of the GOP establishment on foreign policy.
00:07:01.900 | I'd like to see some changes there.
00:07:02.900 | But I think, Roe, you brought up a great point about the unwillingness to engage in diplomacy.
00:07:07.900 | One of the ways that you first really came to my attention, I became a fan of yours, is when you and the progressive caucus wrote a letter to the Biden administration
00:07:20.900 | encouraging there to be a diplomatic track on this Ukraine war.
00:07:24.900 | Even as you were still saying, "Listen, we're going to provide Ukraine with everything it needs.
00:07:29.900 | But in addition, we simply want to have a diplomatic track with Russia."
00:07:34.900 | And the amazing thing was even suggesting that was so transgressive that I think virtually every member of the progressive caucus, except for you, retracted the letter.
00:07:46.900 | And so I really applaud you for sticking to your guns on that.
00:07:51.900 | And that's when after –
00:07:54.900 | [Applause]
00:07:57.900 | And then there was also the episode in the Twitter files where you were encouraging the old Twitter management to realize that the censorship they were doing was backfiring.
00:08:06.900 | So after those two things, I was like, "This is a Democrat I can support."
00:08:10.900 | And we did a very successful fundraiser for you.
00:08:13.900 | I appreciate it.
00:08:14.900 | So in any event, I've been a fan of Roe's for a while.
00:08:17.900 | But I think this unwillingness to engage in diplomacy and talking to the other side because somehow it's weak or somehow it will give the other side –
00:08:27.900 | Or is it anti-patriotic?
00:08:29.900 | Because that's the tone I've seen change in Silicon Valley in the last three years.
00:08:33.900 | This summer I pointed out some friends, we went to this thing, and suddenly everyone was anti-China.
00:08:38.900 | I couldn't believe it.
00:08:39.900 | Because two summers ago, three summers ago, I was like, "Maybe it will be a couple years.
00:08:43.900 | Maybe it will be a decade.
00:08:44.900 | Something will happen.
00:08:45.900 | Something's a-brewing."
00:08:46.900 | This summer, it was like, "You're talking to China.
00:08:49.900 | You're not a patriot.
00:08:51.900 | You are with us or against us.
00:08:53.900 | And if you start to suggest anything otherwise, any sort of coopetition or cooperation, you are un-American."
00:08:59.900 | Is that a sense you're getting that the tone has changed in Washington, that that's sort of blanketed now?
00:09:06.900 | Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who assume that we are in a Cold War.
00:09:11.900 | Whereas I want to try to prevent the 21st century from defaulting to the same paradigms of the last one.
00:09:17.900 | But you know what's unpatriotic?
00:09:19.900 | The hollowing out of this country.
00:09:21.900 | Where were these voices for the past 40 years?
00:09:24.900 | Where you had corporations say, "We want to go to the cheapest labor.
00:09:27.900 | We want to go to the lowest environmental standards.
00:09:29.900 | We want to build profits.
00:09:31.900 | And we don't care what happens to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and Warren, Ohio, and Downriver, Michigan.
00:09:37.900 | We're going to hollow out the industry.
00:09:39.900 | The working class is going to fall behind.
00:09:41.900 | We're going to let wealth concentrate in a few areas."
00:09:43.900 | Do you think people who are growing up in these areas are saying, "You know what I really, really care about is the defense of Taiwan?"
00:09:50.900 | No, they care about their jobs.
00:09:52.900 | They care about access to the American dream.
00:09:54.900 | They're wondering why this country let them down for the past 40 years.
00:09:57.900 | Patriotic would be to rebuild that.
00:09:59.900 | [Applause]
00:10:01.900 | Let's shift to domestic policy.
00:10:03.900 | You represent a district in Silicon Valley.
00:10:05.900 | And a lot of this has been driven by the leverage we've gotten from technology and a lot of the beneficiaries of what you're saying are the shareholders, the employees, the executives of Silicon Valley technology companies.
00:10:18.900 | When they say to you, "This is what the consumer market wants.
00:10:21.900 | They want an iPhone for $400, not for $2,000."
00:10:25.900 | How do we respond to the conversation about what market and what technology and what economic progress is demanding of them as representatives for their shareholders?
00:10:34.900 | I'm not a believer in autarky.
00:10:39.900 | I'm a believer in having enough self-sufficiency.
00:10:43.900 | Why can't we build the modern steel plants in the United States?
00:10:46.900 | We went from the largest exporter of steel to the largest importer of steel.
00:10:52.900 | The carbon footprint of steel is three times higher in China.
00:10:56.900 | Nine out of the 15 top steel companies are in China.
00:11:00.900 | We don't have a single one.
00:11:01.900 | Why can't we have the government work with the private sector to build modern steel plants in this country?
00:11:07.900 | Why don't we do that with aluminum and a number of areas?
00:11:10.900 | Go ahead.
00:11:11.900 | Might the answer to that question be that we have the lowest unemployment in the history of our lifetimes and we're not allowing people into the country and we don't have people to work in steel factories?
00:11:20.900 | I don't think that's what --
00:11:21.900 | I know.
00:11:22.900 | I'm asking him.
00:11:23.900 | Look, I'm for immigration policy.
00:11:25.900 | But when people talk about the 3.5 unemployment rate, what they're not talking about is the lives of people who went from $30 jobs to $15 to $17 jobs who don't have the same economic security, who've seen health care costs increase, who've seen child care costs increase, who've seen college costs increase and aren't being able to buy houses.
00:11:46.900 | And so we're going around the governing class saying 3.5% unemployment, inflation's at 3%.
00:11:51.900 | And people are saying I'm paying $5 for gas, my kids don't have a future, and to the middle class.
00:11:56.900 | And we've lost the productive capacity in many parts of this country.
00:12:00.900 | I heard some of what Ray Dalio talked about.
00:12:02.900 | [Applause]
00:12:03.900 | And here's where I think -- and I think, look, I think Ray Dalio is a -- is what makes America exceptional.
00:12:10.900 | Because Dalio would have been -- and I'm taking a little bit of liberty here -- the person who would have been writing the article in the 1980s saying Japan and Germany are going to be the dominant post-Cold War economies, not the United States, like Paul Samuelson predicted incorrectly.
00:12:24.900 | But that's precisely what makes us great, because we actually have voices who are skeptical and somewhat pessimistic to recharge us.
00:12:31.900 | The debt-to-GDP ratio matters if you can't increase the GDP.
00:12:36.900 | We need debt which is productive investment, which is actually going to grow the GDP.
00:12:41.900 | And to the extent that we have investments that are going to rebuild the productive base, that's going to leverage all of this technology in the United States to help grow the economy, that actually is what's going to allow us to be and continue to lead.
00:12:55.900 | And I think Chamath's question is to the point.
00:12:57.900 | I mean, where are we -- people aren't going to put the money in India or China.
00:13:00.900 | The issue is not immigration.
00:13:02.900 | The issue is that regulatory corrosion has taken simple decision-making hostage in America.
00:13:10.900 | I'll give you a simple example.
00:13:12.900 | If you're a pro-climate change, it is easier today to go into India and build a rare earth mine because it can get permitted within months than it is to even go to a red state like Nevada, because for five years, an effort to build the largest lithium reserve and to develop it has been held up because the BLM has been stuck in a lawsuit with some folks, environmentalists, who want to protect the upper land grouse.
00:13:41.900 | Now, I'm not going to debate the value of the upper land grouse except to say that's been a five-year slog through hell, and this other one took 18 months, and it's starting to ship.
00:13:51.900 | And I know this because I'm involved in both.
00:13:54.900 | And so the reason why it's problematic is when somebody like Manchin tries to actually put in permitting reform, simple things, and he has to hold up or, you know, kill another bill to try to get these things in.
00:14:08.900 | Somehow, the blob just comes in, and then nothing changes.
00:14:12.900 | That's actually why nothing really productive can happen sometimes.
00:14:15.900 | If you want to build the right thing, it's just not possible.
00:14:18.900 | And what I want to understand is how much of that regulatory creep has just been independent of Democrats and Republicans, and what do you do to pull it back?
00:14:30.900 | >> Break the slog.
00:14:33.900 | >> Look, I am for a version of permitting reform.
00:14:39.900 | I don't agree with all of Manchin.
00:14:41.900 | I didn't agree with the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Willow oil drilling projects.
00:14:44.900 | I want to be transparent and not just say to you what you may want to hear.
00:14:49.900 | But I do think we need permitting reform.
00:14:51.900 | We need permitting reform on the semiconductor bill, the CHIPS bill, to make sure that those factories actually are getting built for nationally important projects.
00:14:59.900 | We need it for solar, wind, and for clean infrastructure.
00:15:04.900 | But I think it is a red hair -- we need it for housing in this state.
00:15:08.900 | I mean, talk about one of the biggest regulatory captures is that we aren't building enough housing in California because of restrictive zoning laws.
00:15:16.900 | But I think it's not sufficient to just say we lost our industry because we didn't have permitting.
00:15:24.900 | I mean, like, that's not why we lost steel.
00:15:26.900 | We lost steel.
00:15:27.900 | We lost aluminum.
00:15:28.900 | We lost paper.
00:15:29.900 | We lost textile because we didn't care.
00:15:31.900 | We said, let those jobs go to where it would be cheaper.
00:15:34.900 | It doesn't matter.
00:15:35.900 | People can go get other jobs.
00:15:37.900 | And the government has to finance, and this is where I am a Democrat.
00:15:41.900 | If you look at what built America, it was Hamilton and it was Roosevelt.
00:15:45.900 | And it was Roosevelt after -- during World War II.
00:15:49.900 | It wasn't just the New Deal.
00:15:50.900 | Unemployment until 1940 was at about 15%.
00:15:54.900 | And then Roosevelt goes to corporations and he says we're going to finance the production in this country.
00:15:59.900 | Unemployment falls to 4%.
00:16:00.900 | That sets up modern industry.
00:16:02.900 | And we need to have an effort to rebuild America with government partnering with the private sector and labor to do that.
00:16:11.900 | Across the industrial Midwest, I have a bill with Rubio, actually, to do that, to create a permanent economic development council.
00:16:17.900 | Marco Rubio.
00:16:18.900 | And that, by the way, that's a common mission for this country that we can get behind.
00:16:23.900 | We need something that's going -- when my father came here in the 1960s, this was a country that went to the moon.
00:16:29.900 | This was where the energy was.
00:16:31.900 | This is where we were building things.
00:16:33.900 | We need to recapture that to have a common purpose in this country.
00:16:36.900 | And one place to do that is to be able to rebuild industry.
00:16:40.900 | Permitting is part of it, but we need a comprehensive strategy.
00:16:43.900 | [Applause]
00:16:46.900 | Can we talk about your proposal last week?
00:16:50.900 | I think it was a political reform proposal.
00:16:52.900 | Can you share some of the details of the announcement you made and why you --
00:16:56.900 | I was surprised.
00:16:57.900 | I thought it was relatively -- I've never been able to predict which tweet goes viral.
00:17:03.900 | You know, there are times like Elon has retweeted me, it doesn't go viral.
00:17:06.900 | None of us can.
00:17:07.900 | You know?
00:17:08.900 | Only when Saks retweets me, maybe it goes viral.
00:17:11.900 | It's a slot machine.
00:17:12.900 | So there are only two tweets that I've ever done that have, like, gone viral this year.
00:17:16.900 | One was when I said the obvious, which is that Senator Feinstein should step aside.
00:17:21.900 | And then the second one was --
00:17:23.900 | [Applause]
00:17:26.900 | The second one was this political reform proposal, where I said, you know,
00:17:31.900 | let's have term limits for members of Congress and senators.
00:17:34.900 | Let's not have any corporate PAC money or any PAC money, any lobbyists.
00:17:40.900 | Let's have term limits for Supreme Court justices.
00:17:42.900 | Let's ban stock trading and also ban members of Congress -- ban it for members of Congress.
00:17:47.900 | And also ban members of Congress from becoming lobbyists.
00:17:51.900 | This was common sense things.
00:17:53.900 | And I think people are so starved for restoring trust.
00:17:56.900 | Now, here is the honest truth in my view.
00:17:59.900 | Most members of Congress -- you may not disagree with this, but of the 435, at least 300 to 350 have good motives going in.
00:18:06.900 | They want to do the right thing.
00:18:07.900 | They may disagree.
00:18:08.900 | But we're in a situation where we have lost the trust of the American people.
00:18:12.900 | Most Americans think members of Congress are lying.
00:18:15.900 | They think they're corrupt.
00:18:16.900 | They think they're self-serving.
00:18:18.900 | I don't care that we have good intentions.
00:18:19.900 | That's the perception.
00:18:21.900 | So, in that void stems the place for demagoguery because people are cynical about the process.
00:18:28.900 | We've got to take some bold steps to clean up the system so that people can --
00:18:32.900 | so we can do these big projects of rebuilding the country.
00:18:35.900 | How did your coworkers take your position?
00:18:39.900 | Your lunchtime suggestion.
00:18:41.900 | How did your coworkers react?
00:18:42.900 | Well, they haven't been retweeting it, so they -- you know, we'll see how many folks --
00:18:45.900 | Oh, okay, so just their constituents retweeted it.
00:18:48.900 | Can you talk about politics of the career in answering that question?
00:18:51.900 | I've always had this bias against politics as a career, you know, kind of thinking about the intention of the founding fathers,
00:18:57.900 | that the citizenry should serve -- they should serve the people, they should go to government, they should do their civic duty --
00:19:03.900 | Do their tour.
00:19:04.900 | Do their tour and then leave, and that building a career in politics --
00:19:07.900 | and I don't mean this in any negative kind of light on your choice, but that there is a career that is built in politics,
00:19:15.900 | that there is a return on that investment, that that becomes, you know, a career that some of these politicians have made a lot of money pursuing.
00:19:24.900 | Is that the right thing, and how do you think about how we should have politicians elected
00:19:29.900 | and what the intention should be on who should be in that role for how long?
00:19:33.900 | Well, there's obviously a problem in our country, and I don't say this with any person in mind,
00:19:38.900 | because I don't want to get into too much trouble, but look at people -- look at Silicon Valley.
00:19:44.900 | It's one of the most dynamic places in the world, and you have people who are elected there and still elected there before AOL and Yahoo,
00:19:53.900 | and we've had Facebook and Google, and these are being disrupted by AI.
00:19:56.900 | We have dial-up politicians.
00:19:58.900 | And you think, how is it that Silicon Valley isn't just producing more and different voices?
00:20:07.900 | I mean, and there's something broken.
00:20:10.900 | The turnover rate of U.S. members of Congress was less, according to the economists,
00:20:17.900 | than certain aristocratic and monarchies in Europe.
00:20:22.900 | What's broken, fundraising or --
00:20:24.900 | Well, there are a couple of things.
00:20:26.900 | Democracy or the way we do democracy.
00:20:28.900 | If you're an incumbent, you have a huge name ID advantage.
00:20:32.900 | I would never have -- I mean, you're going to have Vinod on next time,
00:20:36.900 | and I had people like him and others when I was at 3% in the polls going up against someone at 60% saying,
00:20:43.900 | "Sure, this seems like a great plan."
00:20:45.900 | That's because in Silicon Valley you can get that.
00:20:47.900 | And then when I lost, people were like, "Yeah, let's double down because you've got to have a couple of failures,"
00:20:51.900 | but that's so unusual.
00:20:53.900 | You don't have that in most places.
00:20:55.900 | So, going up against an incumbent, it's very, very hard.
00:20:58.900 | You have a huge disadvantage in fundraising.
00:21:02.900 | So, term limits solve that.
00:21:03.900 | Term limits solve that.
00:21:04.900 | People say, "Well, we should have the voters have the real choice."
00:21:08.900 | Well, the voters aren't having real choice.
00:21:10.900 | I mean, let's be real.
00:21:11.900 | There are only about 30, 40 actual congressional seats that are contested.
00:21:15.900 | So, it's not like you have real choice in the matter because of the fundraising and the incumbency advantage.
00:21:21.900 | I don't have a problem with people who want to dedicate themselves to public service,
00:21:24.900 | but you don't have to do it in one position.
00:21:26.900 | You can do it in a lot of other ways.
00:21:28.900 | Let's talk about age limits because it's front and center after what we saw with Mitch McConnell and everybody else.
00:21:35.900 | I don't want to single anybody out, but this feels like it's--I mean, Biden, obviously.
00:21:43.900 | Go ahead and fax fans, cheer.
00:21:47.900 | I know it just feels crazy that we have people this old running the country,
00:21:54.900 | and they're obviously glitching, and there's a problem here.
00:21:58.900 | We all see it.
00:22:00.900 | Why can't we just have an age limit and let people retire and enjoy their lives?
00:22:05.900 | I mean--or do you think we should have a cognitive test?
00:22:07.900 | I'm being a little funny here, but I'm dead serious.
00:22:10.900 | Why don't we have a cognitive test for the presidency, for these positions, and would you be in favor of that?
00:22:16.900 | I think the cognitive test should be the American public,
00:22:19.900 | but I think if you have the reforms that I'm talking about of term limits,
00:22:24.900 | of getting the PAC money out, of getting the lobbyist money out,
00:22:28.900 | of having a fairer political system, then you'd give new voices an opportunity.
00:22:35.900 | You wouldn't be stuck with people just because they have name ID and fundraising running for these positions.
00:22:40.900 | But I will be a little bit philosophical about why we have a situation where we have so many people who are older in all these positions.
00:22:48.900 | And I think we're not going to see the dam break in '24, but I do think we'll see the dam break in the next cycle.
00:22:56.900 | And the reason is, look, this country is going through incredible change.
00:23:00.900 | The people who are down on America, I think, forget how exceptional it is what we're trying to do.
00:23:07.900 | We are 60 percent white, non-Hispanic. Canada, 87 percent white.
00:23:12.900 | Britain, 87 percent white. Australia, 87 percent white.
00:23:16.900 | We are trying to become the first cohesive, multiracial, multiethnic democracy in the history of the world.
00:23:23.900 | And to think that there was going to be a linear line from Obama to that was, I think, naive.
00:23:30.900 | And some of what is happening is people feel challenged, that the country is changing.
00:23:36.900 | The country they knew was changing.
00:23:37.900 | And so people who are familiar, who have a familiarity, have an advantage in having that trust factor with the American public.
00:23:45.900 | But we have to at some point be willing to say, look, we need new leadership,
00:23:50.900 | but we need new leadership that's going to speak to people's concerns and the past.
00:23:56.900 | And that's why I talked about steel, because at least that's a job that people can relate to.
00:24:00.900 | We have to be empathetic to their narratives.
00:24:03.900 | Why has Vivek and RFK, which we had on the program, resonated with the American public to such an amazing extent?
00:24:12.900 | And what do you think of each of those individuals?
00:24:16.900 | You can be candid. This is all in.
00:24:18.900 | Yeah, this is all on the Internet. You can go candid.
00:24:22.900 | Thanks.
00:24:23.900 | You know, I mean, obviously I'm supporting President Biden, but I've said people should run and they should bring things in.
00:24:29.900 | You know, let me -- there are a lot of places I disagree with Robert Kennedy,
00:24:33.900 | but one place that I think he has raised important issues is why do we have so many overseas bases?
00:24:39.900 | Why do we have a defense budget that's approaching a trillion dollars?
00:24:43.900 | Why do we have so many handouts for pharmaceuticals?
00:24:47.900 | So my hope is that the places where he is raising some of those points will become part of our democratic platform.
00:24:53.900 | They're large places.
00:24:54.900 | I don't think, you know, he's ready to be president of the United States, and I think I support President Biden,
00:24:59.900 | and I disagree with him on some of the --
00:25:01.900 | [Laughter]
00:25:04.900 | At least I'm candid. At least I'm candid.
00:25:08.900 | But for that --
00:25:10.900 | You just got brigadudes by Sachs and Keaton.
00:25:13.900 | Now you know what it's like to be me in the YouTube comments.
00:25:17.900 | Let's do Vivek.
00:25:19.900 | What do you think of Vivek?
00:25:21.900 | Here's the thing, though, with politicians, that one of the problems.
00:25:24.900 | They go to a -- you think I don't know that people in this audience like Robert Kennedy, Jr.,
00:25:30.900 | but they go and they tell one audience one thing, another audience anything, something else.
00:25:34.900 | When I was at Sachs' house or if I go to a progressive group, I tell the same thing to every audience.
00:25:38.900 | And I think ultimately people want that.
00:25:40.900 | [Applause]
00:25:41.900 | Let's talk about Vivek because he's 38 years old.
00:25:44.900 | It's becoming a bit of a sensation getting to double digits in the polls.
00:25:47.900 | There's nothing to, you know, shake up.
00:25:50.900 | It's pretty insignificant.
00:25:51.900 | What do you think of him?
00:25:53.900 | I think people wanted -- there's an underlying hunger for the next generation.
00:25:59.900 | But my sense is, well, what are the proposals?
00:26:02.900 | I mean, I disagreed with him when he was, in my view, demagoguing the Silicon Valley bank issue.
00:26:07.900 | I don't think he has -- you know, to describe the January 6th insurrectionists or people who broke into the Capitol
00:26:18.900 | as nonviolent peaceful protest, which is what Gandhi talked about with Satyagraha,
00:26:23.900 | is a real distortion of what that movement was about.
00:26:27.900 | To say that the civil rights movement would have been better if you had people armed, like, did he read Dr. King?
00:26:33.900 | I don't think that there were guns.
00:26:35.900 | I think it speaks to our democracy.
00:26:38.900 | Look, why did I defend free speech?
00:26:40.900 | Because that's what I love about America, that anyone can have an opinion in this country,
00:26:44.900 | and that's part of the messy democracy.
00:26:46.900 | And to that extent, I'm glad we have all these candidates.
00:26:49.900 | But I have profound disagreements with him.
00:26:52.900 | Do you think President Biden is intent on running because he has the energy and desire to be president?
00:27:02.900 | Or is that just the -- is that just more the expectation when you're the incumbent,
00:27:10.900 | and it's the opposite that's worse than, you know, the idea that then ceding power to the other side keeps him there to run?
00:27:19.900 | Well, this is someone who ran for president three times.
00:27:22.900 | You know, you don't want to underestimate a person's ambition and their resolve.
00:27:27.900 | I think people have underestimated Biden, both in the primary and against Trump.
00:27:33.900 | My sense is he probably thinks that he has the best chance to win against Donald Trump, who I think will be the nominee.
00:27:39.900 | And the reason is because until other people in the Democratic Party can speak to folks in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio,
00:27:48.900 | about the loss that they have felt in industry and can connect and have a real vision there,
00:27:54.900 | they're not going to be able to win those states.
00:27:56.900 | And my sense is he probably thinks that he has the best chance to win those states against Donald Trump.
00:28:01.900 | Let me ask a question that's not Biden, because I think it applies to Biden and Trump.
00:28:05.900 | When Reagan left the presidency, we learned that he had early onset Alzheimer's and that he had Alzheimer's, I think,
00:28:13.900 | like it started showing symptoms in the last two years of office, which is a very scary idea, again,
00:28:18.900 | and I think Reagan did a lot of great things, but the reality is it creates a risk of a shadow government, right,
00:28:23.900 | of people that were unelected, people that we don't necessarily know.
00:28:26.900 | Where do they stand? What are they about? In charge of very critical aspects of the presidency.
00:28:32.900 | When you have two older individuals in that age spectrum now, either one could be president, definitely will be in the 80s,
00:28:40.900 | what do we do as a democracy to make sure that there is this check and balance?
00:28:45.900 | How does that happen when there could be people that are sort of in the shadows directing things of an 85-year-old
00:28:54.900 | that is less probabilistically likely of a 55-year-old, let's say?
00:28:59.900 | Well, the answer to that is active democracy. I don't want to embarrass the audience,
00:29:04.900 | but how many people here have knocked on more than 500 doors on a political campaign?
00:29:11.900 | How many people here have hosted events for candidates?
00:29:16.900 | How many people here have encouraged friends to run for office?
00:29:22.900 | You know, I just think that a large part of the group of Americans who are upset or dissatisfied
00:29:29.900 | are not engaged in the political process, and you know, to be,
00:29:33.900 | Plato said the price of not being engaged in politics, you'll be ruled by worse people.
00:29:38.900 | And so the reality is that if you want to have younger people engaged, if you want to have new voices,
00:29:46.900 | you've got to realize there's a huge power establishment, and we've got to get active and be much more involved,
00:29:53.900 | and then be strategic. The amount of people, it's mind-boggling to me,
00:29:57.900 | you have like the most brilliant business leaders who will obsess about every part of a business plan
00:30:02.900 | and think about like what it takes to make a successful company,
00:30:05.900 | and then they'll be like, oh, let's just run this guy for president, and he's going to connect.
00:30:09.900 | What about the infrastructure in Iowa and New Hampshire and what it takes to win?
00:30:13.900 | There's no business plan. Like, being in politics, to lead the free world,
00:30:18.900 | is the hardest possible job to get in the world.
00:30:22.900 | Requiring a winning presidential campaign is no joke,
00:30:26.900 | and I think people have to take it seriously, political activism, if they want change.
00:30:31.900 | [Applause]
00:30:34.900 | Let me just flip the conversation from external politics to the internal administration of our federal government.
00:30:40.900 | We heard from Graham Allison about the challenges of the Department of Defense.
00:30:45.900 | What's your view and what's the conversation on the ground about accountability,
00:30:51.900 | Department of Defense and elsewhere in the federal government?
00:30:54.900 | What are the measures that you think we should be taking and prioritizing to addressing these concerns?
00:31:01.900 | I always reference the John Stewart interview with the Undersecretary of Defense for Comptroller,
00:31:06.900 | or whatever her title was, and it kind of says you couldn't pass an audit.
00:31:09.900 | It's like hundreds of billions of dollars MIA.
00:31:12.900 | And meanwhile, you know, we are ill-equipped for the conflicts ahead, potentially,
00:31:18.900 | the threatened conflicts ahead.
00:31:20.900 | What's the solution and what's the conversation on the ground in D.C. on this matter,
00:31:24.900 | and is it a priority for folks?
00:31:26.900 | It's not a priority. It should be a priority.
00:31:28.900 | Everyone who watched 60 Minutes should know it's a priority.
00:31:30.900 | I was the only person in the entire Armed Services Committee, 56 to 1,
00:31:34.900 | to vote no against the defense budget going to a trillion dollars,
00:31:37.900 | not because I don't believe in a strong defense,
00:31:40.900 | but because we are paying $10,000 for an oil pressure switch that NASA is paying $328 for.
00:31:49.900 | I didn't realize I was giving you such a softball.
00:31:52.900 | Raytheon in the Patriot defense missile is making 40 percent profits,
00:31:58.900 | 50 percent profits that they admit you have a situation,
00:32:02.900 | $300 to $400 billion of defense contractors, and no one is holding them accountable
00:32:06.900 | because they're giving money to people's campaigns,
00:32:10.900 | and no one wants to be seen as weak on defense.
00:32:13.900 | Well, look, Harry Truman became president of the United States
00:32:15.900 | just by holding defense accountable in World War II.
00:32:19.900 | This should be a bipartisan issue,
00:32:21.900 | and we should hold the Defense Department accountable
00:32:24.900 | to actually having real defense for the country's defense.
00:32:27.900 | [Applause]
00:32:29.900 | Now do Social Security and Medicare.
00:32:32.900 | [Laughter]
00:32:34.900 | You'll disagree with my plan on Social Security,
00:32:36.900 | but my view is that you should scrap the payroll tax cap,
00:32:39.900 | and that would make Social Security solvent.
00:32:41.900 | But here is what I'll end with.
00:32:46.900 | Look, I think that there is two things that have divided this country deeply.
00:32:53.900 | One is the hollowing out in the working class, middle class across this country
00:32:57.900 | and what we need to do to have a common mission to rebuild it,
00:33:00.900 | and the other thing is kind of a moral smugness,
00:33:03.900 | a sense that we know and have the monopoly on the truth.
00:33:08.900 | The amount of criticism that I have gotten for going on Fox News
00:33:12.900 | or even coming to the All In podcast--
00:33:15.900 | I mean, look, try inviting some of my Democratic colleagues--
00:33:18.900 | is staggering.
00:33:20.900 | We have got to--
00:33:22.900 | [Laughter]
00:33:24.900 | We've got to have more humility to have conversations.
00:33:27.900 | We've got to have those conversations with empathy, not just judgment,
00:33:30.900 | and think about where other people are coming from and their stories,
00:33:33.900 | and we've got to figure out how we're going to bring this country together.
00:33:36.900 | Ro Khanna. Well done.
00:33:38.900 | [Applause]
00:33:40.900 | That was great.
00:33:41.900 | I really appreciate it.
00:33:43.900 | Great job.
00:33:44.900 | Thank you.
00:33:45.900 | [Music]
00:34:11.900 | [Laughter]
00:34:20.900 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy
00:34:23.900 | because they're all just--it's like sexual tension
00:34:25.900 | that we just need to release somehow.
00:34:28.900 | [Music]
00:34:46.900 | You