The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 3 episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch this interview here.
Perry Bacon: Good morning everybody. I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of The New Republic’s Right Now. I’m honored to be joined by Ro Khanna, a congressman from California, who I’m sure lots of folks know. He is been a strong progressive on a lot of issues. He’s also somebody who is really trying to get out there. The Democratic Party, I think, has a problem of not meeting people where they are. And I know Ro is traveling the country and really trying to understand why Trump won and what the party can do about this. Congressman, thanks for coming here.
Ro Khanna: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Congrats on your new role at The New Republic.
Bacon: Thank you. I appreciate that. Let’s talk about this press conference you’re having today and what the importance of it is.
Khanna: It’s about principle. It’s about restoring trust in government. It’s not partisan, it’s patriotic. We have Thomas Massie. We have Marjorie Taylor Greene. We’ll have 10 of the survivors. They have never told their stories before.
Bacon: Survivors of Epstein, just to be clear to the audience.
Khanna: Yeah. Survivors of Epstein. And they’re going to speak for the first time. And by the way, this goes well before Trump. These women have been silenced when Epstein first got his plea agreement and slap on the wrist. No one talked to them. They have not been able to tell their story. And I imagine it’s going to be very harrowing and heartbreaking for many, many Americans to hear what happened to them. And all they’re asking for is full disclosure, for the full release of the Epstein files. All they’re asking for is closure for them. And so I am hopeful that when the American people hear these incredibly courageous women that they will demand that their members of Congress sign the Massie-Khanna’s Epstein discharge petition to force a vote. We’ve got 212 Democrats who will sign it. Four Republicans have signed it: Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. We need two more to force the vote.
Bacon: OK. So we’re going to talk about foreign policy mainly in this conversation because I think that’s an issue that hasn’t been explored as much in these last few months as we focus on what Trump’s done domestically. I want to start by talking about what’s happening in Gaza right now. Whether we call it a genocide or not, there are civilians that have been killed in a mass way for months now. Do you agree this is not just a partisan issue, this did not just start with Donald Trump, that the Biden administration should feel some account for what’s happening there too?
Khanna: Yes. There is moral complicity that we have. We’ve given Netanyahu a blank check. I supported Israel’s right after October 7 to kill the perpetrators of that horrific incident. But within months they had done that. They had destroyed Hamas’s battalions. It’s been two years—and they have gotten funding from the United States. I voted about a year ago against the $14 billion. It was a difficult vote, probably the hardest vote I’ve cast in U.S. Congress. I got enormous criticism at the time, but I didn’t think that we should be funding the killing of children and civilians in Gaza. Over 60,000 killed—even if some percentage of those are enemy combatants, it’s still three times the civilian casualty in Ukraine, just to put it in perspective; 500,000 facing famine.
I get attacked by AIPAC every other day these days because I’m leading a letter to call for the U.S. to recognize a Palestinian state—demilitarized, not Hamas, a Palestinian state that recognizes Israel as a Jewish democratic homeland, something that 147 other countries have done. France is doing, Canada is doing, Britain is doing, Australia is doing, and yet somehow that position—a common sense, human rights position—is considered out of the mainstream by some of these groups. And so I believe that the Democratic Party needs to stand for moral clarity and human rights in Gaza.
Bacon: And right now you think we should stop funding or stop supporting Israel’s military?
Khanna: I do. I supported both of Sanders’s amendments. I’m on Delia Ramirez’s Block the Bombs Act. We should not be providing military weapons that are being used today by Netanyahu to kill civilians. The two things that I think every Democrat should be for—the basic moral test—is [first], to support Sanders and Dalia Ramirez’s resolution that says no military weapons currently to Netanyahu that are being used to kill these civilians, the war could come to an end, and second, to make sure that we are calling to the recognition of a Palestinian state at a time that Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Netanyahu are literally trying to erase Palestinian identity by pushing people out of Gaza, by settling more lands in the West Bank.
Bacon: And you’re saying it’s a moral test. You said two conditions here: a Palestinian state and ending the military funding for right now. Those are the moral tests in your view among Democrats.
Khanna: They are because they’re the moral tests for the world. They’re the moral tests that Macron is talking about, that Starmer is talking about, that Mark Carney is talking about. These are not just the nations of the global south. These are not just nations that face colonialism or were victims of imperialism. These are now western democracies that are saying this is the moment we have to recognize and see Palestinian humanity and Palestinian national aspirations. This is the time we have to stop the mass killing in Gaza.
Bacon: Broadening out a little bit, I’m going to tell the audience, I hope you don’t mind, that my understanding is Congressman Khanna is maybe considering putting his hat in the ring for 2028 and he’s thinking about the issues broadly. So in that context, talk about foreign policy generally. Moving beyond Israel-Palestine, talk about how you see where we should be going in our foreign policy.
Khanna: I was very inspired by hearing President Carter give a sermon in the later part of his life in Plains, Georgia. I had the honor of interning for the Carter Center in 1996. I didn’t have the wisdom of knowing that President Carter is this great statesman. I just wanted to see the Atlanta Olympics, and I thought, What internship can I get? And later, it turned out that President Carter supported me when I ran for Congress in 2016—and I was so honored. But President Carter said, We are the most important nation in the world. We’re a superpower. We are the richest country. We have the strongest military. And that’s a good thing to have the strongest military and to be the richest country. But wouldn’t it be incredible if we were a superpower that other nations wanted to consult to bring peace? Wouldn’t it be incredible if we were the superpower that world leaders look to to stand up for human rights?
I believe that the Democratic Party should stand for a human rights–based moral foreign policy—one that says that we will model what cohesive, multiracial democracy with economic opportunity for all looks like in the U.S., what pluralistic liberal democracy looks like. And we will support the human rights of nations around the world. We will support the move toward democracies around the world not by military intervention but through alliances, through leadership, through diplomacy, through statesmanship. And of course, we will have the military necessary to defend American interests, but not to overreach.
Bacon: OK, so moral foreign policy. Put that in some specifics. What could that mean for our policy in Europe right now? Define a [policy] in a region of the world.
Khanna: Well, what it would mean, for example, in Europe would be that when you’re standing next to Putin, you say, Mr. Putin, give back Ukraine its land, that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was wrong. You can’t just invade another nation. But it also would mean that we do the painstaking work of diplomacy and statesmanship to try to bring that war to an end with a just peace. It means that we support NATO in preventing aggression. It means we pay attention to situations like the Congo. As you know, Perry, ’cause you’re a student of history, the Belgian colonialism in the Congo was worse than the colonialism my grandfather faced as part of Gandhi’s independence moment in India. Literally, King Leopold cut off limbs cut of people who weren’t mining. Well, right now in the Congo, there is still a conflict between Rwanda’s M23 and the current Congolese government, and it’s over minerals. We have tech companies in my district that are benefiting from those minerals, from that cobalt, from the lithium that’s being mined there. We, as the U.S., need to have a moral role in ending that conflict and have accountability for the iPhones we use for the technology we use that is being done at the expense still of the Congolese. We need to be involved in the economic development of other nations. I could go on, but those are a few—
Bacon: Let me ask, George W. Bush had a foreign policy very focused on democracy. I think Biden, to some extend, talked about democracies versus autocracies. Is promoting democracy everywhere something you think is important or fundamental? Or is that part of a moral foreign policy?
Khanna: It is. I don’t think we do it through military invasions, but I do think that it’s a good thing to be for democracy. But it can’t just be democracy saying, Let’s have elections. It has to be democracy with economic development. It has to be democracy with recognizing pluralism and understanding the importance of respecting different faiths. It has to be democracy that understands that the U.S. should be involved in appreciating the economic aspirations of other countries. Let me give you Mexico, a great example. I just met with President Sheinbaum. We have a tariff currently on tomatoes coming from Mexico. Not only is that hurting the U.S. and making tomato prices a lot more, we are really devastating Sinaloa, the region that grows tomatoes in Mexico.
Now, why does this matter? By devastating Sinaloa, the drug cartels are basically recruiting young people—young men—[to] instead of going into tomato farming to come and work for them. That is not a thoughtful moral foreign policy. It is basically hurting American consumers and at the same time not helping Mexico become the successful democracy that it can be.
Bacon: About a year ago—I hate to be too critical, but a year ago I heard a speech in which then-nominee Harris pledged we would have the most lethal military in the world. I think we probably should have a lethal military, but I worry that was emphasizing the wrong thing. When we talk about the military, do you want a smaller military? How do you view what our armed forces’ role should be?
Khanna: Well, I voted against every military budget since I’ve been to Congress because I don’t think we should be spending 56 percent of our federal budget in on the military, especially when a lot of that money is not going to the troops. It’s not going for our national security. It’s going to defense contractors that have CEOs making $5 million on average a year. It’s going to defense contractors that have monopolies. I led the investigation into TransDigm and exposed just one of the companies that was fleecing the taxpayers, charging a thousand percent more than they should have, and they refunded $16 million. That was a small sum of money comparatively, but it was the principle. We don’t need a bloated trillion dollar defense budget. Do we need a smart defense budget that has modern technology of trainable drones and AI and understands the way modern warfare will be fought? Absolutely. We need that to keep us safe, but it can be done for a lot less money.
The other thing, and what I would emphasize, is I want America to be known for helping the economic development. Larry Summers, who I don’t agree with everything, says, “What we get from China is an airport. What we get from the United States is a lecture.” We need to be part of making sure that we’re helping build alliances on economic cooperation. I want our ideas to go out there. I want our culture to be exported. I want our values to be exported, [so that] all the people know about the U.S. is [not just] that someone in their country saw a bomb or a missile that was still there from some prior war.
Bacon: Talk about the foreign policy the last six months. You’ve hinted at tariffs, you’ve hinted at Putin. But if you were asked, “Donald Trump’s foreign policy is bad, here’s why,” what’s your response to that?
Khanna: Donald Trump’s foreign policy is the foreign policy that we used to have of kings. And I’m not saying Donald Trump was a king, but it’s basically his whim. He wakes up and he says, OK, punish the people who offended me and help the people who praised me. That’s literally his foreign policy. When President Sheinbaum is more gracious, the tariffs go down. When Modi refuses to nominate him for a Nobel Prize, the tariffs go up. When Xi Jinping says something favorable, the tariffs go down. When Xi Jinping insults him, the tariffs go up. When Putin flatters him and says that the war wouldn’t have happened if Donald Trump was president, nothing happens in terms of standing up to Putin. When Putin offends him, then he says, OK, I’m with Zelenskiy. It is literally a foreign policy of whim.
Bacon: I know you’ve been traveling the country a little bit. Trump just won this election. People care about gas prices, they care about food prices. That’s what the scene of this election was about: the more pocketbook things. In New York City, Mamdani runs on affordability. That helps him win. Is there a connection between foreign policy and these day-to-day concerns? I think foreign policy’s important in terms of winning elections. How do you make foreign policy matter to the average person in Louisville or Lexington or what have you?
Khanna: Well, I think there are two different issues. The voter in Louisville may not care about the details of the border skirmish between India and Pakistan or may not even be following how much of the Donbas Russia has taken over and what a just peace looks like. But the voter in Louisville certainly sees kids dying in Gaza and says, I want my country on the side of protecting kids, and I want my country on the side of morality because that’s who we are as a people. Foreign policy matters in the sense of America’s conception of our own selves. This goes all the way back to Henry David Thoreau, and this goes back to Woodrow Wilson or FDR or Ronald Reagan. We want, as Americans, to be the good guys. We want to be the people that are standing up for human rights and good values. And in that way, I do think people vote in a fundamental way—because when you vote for president, it’s a sacred vote. You’re voting for who embodies American values, both at home and abroad.
On a more basic level, the tariffs have had extraordinary effects. I was up with Senator Sanders; we did some rallies in Concord, New Hampshire, and Manchester, New Hampshire. And I did a few hours with coffee shops. And I’ve called for the repeal of the coffee tariffs—we don’t grow coffee in the U.S. other than 1 percent in Hawaii—and I’m doing this with Don Bacon. I talk to some of those small business owners in places like New Hampshire. They’ve had their costs up 20 to 30 percent. They’re going out of business if these tariffs aren’t repealed. One of the people showed me a board of the menu of all the coffee prices, and they had no prices. I said, How much are the costs? They said, We have to change it every day, so we have a board that we can change the prices every day. This is devastating to folks.
Bacon: Last question. I don’t love Hakeem Jeffries’s comments about the National Guard coming to D.C. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of urgency there. When a Democrat goes on TV and says, The National Guard coming to D.C. is a distraction from gas prices, I want to throw something. That is bothersome to me. I think the military being deployed in cities is bad. I think some of the authoritarian theater stuff Trump does is still bad. Talk about how you view [that]. Maybe I’m misunderstanding. I don’t get what the distraction message is supposed to say. Help me understand. I think the National Guard being deployed is bad. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to hear about you from that.
Khanna: We used to say it very simply: We didn’t fight a revolution in this country to have militarized streets. No one wants soldiers on our streets. It’s the biggest invasion of American freedom. When you think of a free country, when you think of taking your kids to school, going to work, do you envision a neighborhood with military patrolling the streets? That’s not who we are. That’s why we fought a revolution. That’s why we’re a country of freedom. And we should be talking not in language that is jargon-filled, National Guard or crime. We should just say, Who wants the military on their streets? Do you really want that? The whole Fourth Amendment was saying, Don’t have the military in people’s homes. It’s not a far stretch from saying they’re in your streets to they’re in your homes. And I think that this is so fundamental to the Democratic Party.
Here’s the challenge. People say we can’t just be anti-Trump. I agree. The problem is that what we have to do is have a vision—and we have to have a vision that we’re willing to fight for. Part of that vision should be no militarized streets. So when Trump militarize the streets, we say, We’re not anti-Trump. We’re standing for freedom of people to live without the military suppressing their liberty. We should be for a country that believes that immigrants work hard and contribute so that when Trump engages in deportation without due process and proposes things like the Laken Riley Act, we shouldn’t have one-third of the Democrats go and vote for that kind of thing. We should say that the compromise of human rights for some is the compromise of human rights for all, so when Donald Trump says, Let’s throw the trans community under the bus, we shouldn’t have a parade of Democrats saying, Yes, yes. Let’s join them. In the swing states, they don’t care as much about the specifics of every position, they care about whether they sense you have any soul, any conviction, any ability to stand for things that you actually believe in.
And then we should stand for an economic vision. I call it an economic patriotism. People often say to me, Ro, we don’t know what the Democratic Party stands for. I can answer very simply: The Democratic Party should stand for tackling the economic divides and economic inequality that is tearing this country apart. Our highest mission should be the economic independence and success of every family and every community. That should be our mission and positive vision. We don’t have to be anti-Trump to fight for our values that Trump has destroyed.
Bacon: I’m going to end there. I think that was a great answer, and I was inspired to hear it. Congressman, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it.
Khanna: Thank you. Appreciate it, Perry.