Ro Khanna had some BBB advice for the president. Biden called it ‘homicide.’
The Conversation with Dasha Burns
POLITICO
4.0 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2022
⏱️ 33 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | So last year, Joe Biden was sitting in the Oval Office with some members of Congress, |
| 0:08.0 | strategizing over how to get build back better past. |
| 0:12.0 | Biden is a great sense of humor. I don't think he'd mind sharing this. |
| 0:16.0 | Or a sense of humor putting you at ease. |
| 0:19.0 | Congressman Rokana, who was the co-chair of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, had an idea. |
| 0:25.0 | I said, Mr. President, why don't you just get Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin in the room and hammer this out? |
| 0:33.0 | Kana's argument? You don't need all these conversations. |
| 0:37.0 | You could just cut the deal and whatever those two agree with with you, that will be the roadmap. |
| 0:43.0 | And he looks at Peter Welch as the congressman for Vermont and he says, you know, Rowe thinks he knows Bernie because he was the co-chair. |
| 0:50.0 | But Peter, you and I know Bernie, right? And he says, well, Rowe is asking for his homicide to put them in a room. |
| 0:58.0 | And he says, it'd be like, Rowe, you and me boxing. I beat the hell out of you, but why would we want to say it? |
| 1:04.0 | So, you know, it's a disarming humor and it was a good faith. |
| 1:09.0 | One of the things we'd like to do on this show is introduce you to political insiders who you may not know much about, |
| 1:15.0 | but who you need to know about. And you need to know about Rowe Kana. |
| 1:20.0 | And not just because he tells a lot of great stories like the one about how Biden thought Manchin and Sanders might kill each other. |
| 1:27.0 | You need to know about Kana for three big reasons. |
| 1:30.0 | One, he's one of the most influential progressives inside the House Democratic Caucus. |
| 1:36.0 | I support Medicare for all Bernie Sanders is Bill. |
| 1:39.0 | I support free public college and free vocational education. I support a $15 wage and living wage. I support collective bargaining rights. |
| 1:47.0 | And two, he's the kind of congressman who isn't just concerned about his own district, though he is. |
| 1:54.0 | He also thinks a lot about the Democratic Party writ large, where it's gone wrong and what it needs to do to fix itself. |
| 2:02.0 | If you start listening to Democratic speeches, you would think that everything is falling apart in this country. |
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