I have a weird relationship with Congressman Ro Khanna.
There are days when I'm very angry with him, and
then there are days where I love him.
And today is one of those days where he has proposed something that I
absolutely love.
So let's talk about it.
Recently, Representative Ro Khanna introduced what he's calling his five
point comprehensive political reform.
It's part of his platform, and he's encouraging Biden and the Democrats
to embrace this anticorruption policy in their campaigning.
Now, whether they do that or not remains to be seen, but nonetheless,
what does this platform entail?
Well, Khanna proposes banning candidates for federal office from receiving
donations from lobbyists or political action committees of any kind,
banning members of Congress from trading stocks.
My personal favorite, limiting Supreme Court appointees to 18 year terms.
Still pretty lengthy, but I'm in favor of that.
Imposing 12 year term limits on members of Congress?
Definitely in favor of that.
And requiring federal judges and
Supreme Court Justices to adhere to a new and more robust code of ethics.
Now, just to elaborate on that last part a little further,
the reporting requirements for Supreme Court Justices are pretty porous,
which allows for justices like Clarence Thomas to essentially
receive these massive lucrative goodies and
gifts from billionaires and avoid having to report on it.
Now, he was held accountable and recently had to disclose some of those gifts, but
I love that he thought about the Supreme Court as part of this comprehensive plan.
Now, most of those policies have been proposed before with absolutely
no success.
But Khanna says that he's introducing the slate of reforms now as a package to
essentially inspire Biden and other Democrats to take action.
And here's what he explains.
There's a sense on both the left and the right of a crisis of confidence in
institutions, whether that is the Congress or the executive branch or the Court.
That level of anger has led to a rejection of politics,
an anti politics, which has created an opening for
all kinds of demagoguery and sensationalism to fill the void.
Unless the Democrats offer a bold vision of reform that we campaign on and
deliver on when we win, it's going to become harder and harder to prevent
sensational and demagogue type figures from filling that void.
And I think he's absolutely right about that.
[LAUGH] 100% right about that.
I think that the lack of trust in our institutions really paved the way for
Donald Trump and his faux populist rhetoric to resonate with a lot of voters.
>> Speaker 2: So there's two parts of this story.
One is the substance itself.
Anticorruption message, terrific, okay?
So the message is right, the substance is right, they shouldn't just campaign on it,
they should actually try to pass it.
I remember them campaigning on voting rights and
then dropping it like a bad habit the minute they got into office.
But I mean, campaigning on it is the bare minimum, and
they're not even bothering to do that.
That's political negligence, total malpractice on Biden's part.
I mean, even if he doesn't mean it, he should pretend to meet it cuz this is so
obviously the correct path politically, right?
But God, wouldn't it be amazing if we had a Democrat who actually believed it?
And Ro Khanna does.
And so that gets to why I really like Ro Khanna,
even when sometimes we disagree on a vote, etc.
Why?
One, he actually does what he says he's gonna do and
he doesn't run on any PAC money.
He doesn't take any corporate PACs.
He doesn't do any of the things that are on here, okay?
So he's true in that sense.
So he's not just saying it theoretically and it's not just window dressing,
it's real, okay?
And Democrats say, well, you can't win without corporate back money.
Well, he's winning in Silicon Valley, one of the richest places on Earth,
without any corporate backed money.
So it's not true that you can't win with it, and he's proving it.
Number two, he's honest.
Whether you agree or disagree with him, he comes on and says, this is what I think,
period, okay?
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, he's willing to defend his views rather than hide from people
who disagree with him, including us, time to time, which I respect.
I really do respect that.
>> 100%.
>> Speaker 1: He's come on the show before, I've interviewed him, Cenk,
on a day when you weren't here and I was not friendly with him and
he's still willing to come on the show.
He might be the only politician who is that way, to be honest.
>> Speaker 2: 100% guys, we've been doing the interns for over 21 years now, okay?
And I've interviewed 100s of politicians and he's the only one that doesn't hide.
Like the minute you disagree with someone, if you have one interview, that's it,
they're gone.
You can even watch our Ro Khanna interviews and you will see massive
disagreement from time to time and massive agreement on other times.
But either way, he stands his ground.
Okay, but the other reason why I like him is because he's a super rare
politician in DC that actually tries to get anything done.
So him and Bernie worked on getting $15 minimum wage to Amazon workers and
guess what happened?
Corporate media said [LAUGH] they don't know what they're doing,
these silly progressives.
That's not how it works.
And then it totally worked.
And the pressure that they created forced Amazon to go to $15 minimum wage for
all their workers.
And then, this is really smart since they were already paying $15.
Amazon then lobbied to have everyone else pay $15 minimum wage.
They returned Amazon on that issue from an enemy to an ally,
strategic, and won't give up and keeps fighting for the right things.
So I'm not saying he's perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but
show me a politician that's working harder, more right and more effective.
You won't be able to find one.
>> Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Now, in regard to the threat he sees in the Democrats failing to
carry out these types of reforms, he cites Donald Trump.
He says, what we cannot allow to happen is for a former president twice impeached and
four times indicted, to position himself as an outsider in the race.
And he also says he's open to incremental steps toward achieving the anti corruption
platform.
Here's what he said according to HuffPost,
he wants the Democratic National Committee to forswear corporate
PAC donations ahead of the 2024 election and for Democratic candidates not
to accept the support of super PACs during the Democratic primaries.
Now, that is unlikely to happen.
I mean, look, the Democrats in recent election cycles,
if I'm not mistaken, have been outraising the Republican Party.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
>> Yeah. >> Speaker 2: And so
the Republicans had a huge lead for a long time cuz they're the party of rich and
party of corporations.
But now because of Donald Trump is being so unstable, the markets are this guy
could blow everything up, and I don't want to lose all my money.
So a lot of them have gone over to the Democrats and
the Democrats are now outraising them.
So there's no way they're going to foreswear that overall, although they can
and I explained how they got corrupted in my book Justice is Coming.
You can check that out, okay?
But there is a thing that they could easily do and that they're not doing.
There's a proposed rule by Bernie Sanders wing of the party,
that the DNC say no corporate PAC money or super PAC money in primaries.
So that way you don't have to worry about losing the Republicans.
It's just in primaries, okay?
And the corrupt Democrats, which is 90% of them, are like, no way.
Well, then how would we be progressives?
Progressives are so
much more popular than us without an unfair advantage we can't possibly win.
And guess who's crushing that rule?
Joe Biden.
Joe Biden keeps saying, do not vote on that rule and do not vote yes.
We want that corporate PAC money, especially in primaries,
so we can beat these progressives who are actually popular.
>> Speaker 1: And by the way, he is absolutely right in terms of public
opinion in regard to our institutions and the lack of support for them.
Let's take a look at this graph.
So this is from Gallup.
I'll explain what it indicates.
So confidence in the Supreme Court is at a record low.
Gallup first asked Americans to rate the job the Supreme Court was doing in
September of 2000.
At that point, about 62% approved.
On average, 51% have approved of the Supreme Court over the past 23 years.
Today that number is down to just 40% and it's not just SCOTUS.
So let's go to other concerns that American voters have.
In the United States, concerns about political corruption
are especially widespread, with two in three Americans agreeing that
the phrase most politicians are corrupt describes their country well.
So this is one of the other issues that voters across the political spectrum
agree on.
While we keep hearing about how polarized we are,
it is incredible that on a lot of these important institutional questions,
economic issues, there is a lot of agreement.
You always hear two thirds of the country agree on this policy or
agree that we need to do something about corruption.
And according to a 2022 poll, overall, 68% of registered voters said the government
mainly works to benefit powerful elites rather than ordinary people.
>> Speaker 2: So you never see that in corporate media, why?
Cuz they're corporate media.
And they don't want you to find out that two thirds of you are united against them,
against corporate politicians and corporate media and
the corruption that they commit together.
So they never tell you that we are united on that issue.
They also don't tell you we're united on raising taxes on the rich,
raising taxes on corporations, paid family leave,
child tax credit, higher minimum wage, public option.
You go these all poll at two thirds or higher, every single one of them.
And yet, magically, not only is Fox News against them, so is MSNBC, and so is CNN.
And they never talk about how we're united.
All they ever do is social issues where we're divided, hate each other,
hate each other based on race, sex, gender, etc., and
so here's one guy, at least in Washington who's saying, I can read a poll.
And if you wanna win, I mean, if all you wanna do was win,
you should be with two thirds of the country.
That's a relatively easy way to win.
But the infinite greed of the Republicans and the Democrats says, no,
we will not do what two thirds of the country wants.
Instead, we will continue our corporate corruption.