Rep. Ro Khanna on Tech, Trump & Elon

On with Kara Swisher

New York Magazine

News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.2 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Representative Ro Khanna represents the wealthiest congressional district in the country, but he wants to show Democrats how to speak to the working class. And perhaps surprisingly, he’s pretty good at it. But although Khanna was one of Bernie Sanders’ co-chairs in 2020, the “progressive capitalist” from Silicon Valley (don’t call him a democratic socialist) also hobnobs with tech titans. Because according to Khanna, the way to reindustrialize and revitalize the economy is by mobilizing both union leaders and tech and industry leaders — and he thinks he can be the one to bring them together. Kara and Ro discuss everything from the DOGE committee, the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and Trump’s threats to jail members of the January 6 committee, AI policy, KOSA, and tech antitrust. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
0:18.2	Today, I'm talking to Representative Roe Kana from California, who I've known a long time.
0:23.9	Connor represents a congressional district in Silicon Valley and as a progressive populist and Bernie supporter, who's also close to many tech titans.
0:31.5	He's arguably one of the most unique voices in Congress. As I said, I've known him for years, and we have a lot of, we have an up-and-down
0:38.2	relationship, always, always friendly, always interesting, but we disagree on a lot of things. I text
0:43.1	him a lot when I don't agree with him quite vociferously. He texts back, we argue about things,
0:48.7	but I really do enjoy talking to him. He's a really smart guy thinking very thoughtful things
0:52.9	and not just in it for the power,
0:54.4	the money, or the fame. Despite representing one of the wealthier districts in the country,
0:59.5	he spent the past few years talking to working class voters outside his district. I hung out with him
1:04.0	in Kentucky when he was trying to create Silicon Holler, which didn't happen. And according to Steve
1:09.9	Bannon, he's one of the few Democrats who
1:11.9	can actually speak to their anger. Roe is also one of the more charismatic and openly ambitious politicians.
1:17.5	There's no question about that on the Democratic side, which has won him lots of friends and also
1:21.0	some skeptics. He really doesn't tamp down any of the chatter about the future presidential run,
1:26.0	and I want to talk to him because a lot of the
1:28.9	stuff he talks about, whether it's tech, tech power, AI, the Democratic Party is really interesting
1:35.3	and needs to be listened to because we do need new voices in the Democratic Party that are
1:40.1	questioning old tropes. Our expert question today comes from Tristan Harris,
1:45.2	the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
1:48.1	Now let's get to it.
2:09.1	Support for this episode comes from the current report from data privacy to the future of tv tv retail media and beyond the world of digital marketing is constantly in flux so how can you
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