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Unknown A
It's great to welcome back to the program Democratic Congressman Rohana representing California's 17th district, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. You know, it's so great to have you on and right now, because my sense was that in the lead up to the inauguration, you were maybe sounding a little more cautiously, I don't even want to say necessarily optimistic, but maybe cautiously less pessimistic about what might be an opportunity to get rid of some corruption, some ways. Maybe there would be something that could be done with this Trump administration that would be to the greater benefit. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as the worst predictions were predicting. I have been stunned by how it has exceeded my expectations in how bad it has been. And I mean incompetence, I mean naked nepotism and et cetera. Give us your sense. We're now, you know, almost five weeks into this thing.
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Unknown A
How is it comparing with your expectations?
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Unknown B
I think that's a very fair characterization, David. You know, initially I thought maybe we could actually get some of the defense budget cut. I mean, Trump is still floating These things about 10% cut in the Pentagon. And, you know, I voted against almost every defense budget headed to a trillion dollars. And I thought maybe they would actually look at these monopoly contractors that are gouging the American people or look at Medicare Advantage, which has committed systematic fraud on the American people. But the reality is, it quickly became clear five to 10 days in, that this was a sledgehammer approach to firing public servants, that this was a sledgehammer approach to dismantling federal agencies with important services for the American public. And most offensively, it was un blatantly unconstitutional with no regard for Congress's authority. And I started to speak out about that, and, you know, I've known elon Musk for 15 years, and he obviously was not happy.
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Unknown B
He unfollowed me on X and insulted me. But what I said to him, or anyone, is, you have to follow the Constitution.
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Unknown A
And it's that that's the number one area where you don't believe that at the end of the day, this approach that they are carrying out with Elon Musk as this unelected bureaucrat, something which he previously criticized the entire way they're going about it, the executive orders increasing presidential power despite decades of Republicans claiming they want to limit presidential power, you think this is going above and beyond and outside of the Constitution?
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Unknown B
Well, it clearly is. The reality is there are problems with it, even if it was constitutional, the way they're just having a lottery bul firing of federal workers, many of them doing important work. And tomorrow we're actually getting 15 of these workers, some of them Trump voters, to tell their stories about how they were fired without any notice, without any consideration of their performance in a totally random process. But if you were going to do that, you need Congress. You need Congress before you're eliminating agencies. The evidence of this was Bill Clinton and Al Gore actually eliminated 351,000 federal jobs. It's controversial. Some people say, okay, make government more efficient. Someone people say, no, it just outsourced these jobs to private contractors. But they did it. And they did it by coming to Congress and passing a restructuring Federal Workforce act of 1994. Mus can't just be making these decisions himself when Congress is explicitly authorize those agencies.
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Unknown B
And one cause I know you're a detailed person, Dav, but if Congress just said, look, here's $100,000 for a program, musk hands discretion on how that's going to be used. But what he doesn't have discretion over is when Congress is mandating what the programs must be spent on. And he's clearly not listening to Congress.
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Unknown A
Speake. One of the things you've been doing, which I also do, is you've been appearing on some right wing shows. Patrick Bet David. I saw some others. I like doing that in some general sense, just to kind of see what are they talking about, what are their arguments, how do they react to my perspective. I also worry about how sometimes, you know, they do the whole the left has gone crazy but you're one of the good ones routine, which I feel is kind of counterproductive sometimes to our cause. How do you manage that when you do these shows?
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Unknown B
Speake. So disheartening. Because I do these shows, I feel like we've had actually a fairly constructive conversation for three hours. And then the 30 second clip will be my answer. Defending transgender rights, of transgender rights should be, you know, people should have dignity. And it's literally like five minutes of this three hour conversation. But that's the clip. And that's the clip that generates all the intention. Y you know, what I do is goingng on as a progressive Democratic and defending progressive values, not just saying, okay, I'm only gonna talk you about the economy. I think what I'm doing is creating a model that you don't have to be kind of quote, unquote, one of the good ones or one of the people who is unwilling to speak about cultural values, that we should be having these conversations in this country that it's important to be having these conversations and it's important to be saying the same thing on those shows, as I say here.
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Unknown B
But why do I do it? It's not so much persuasion, though. That's part of it. It's also so I understand where they're coming from. And I'll give you a concrete case of where I got this. Look, I was totally opposed, and still am, to the pardons of January, six folks who committed violence and tore down the Capitol building and hit police officers. But it's interesting when they talk about it. They talk about the few cases where there were misdemeanors charged for people who didn't commit any violence, didn't commit any property damage, just were swept in, in the crowds. And this is where we're not talking to each other, right? We're focused on the violence and the horrific acts. They're focused on these stories that are more sympathetic in my criticism in Garland as he did too many of the misdemeanor charges and not the Realil charges.
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Unknown B
So those are places where which is why I think it's important to go on to see what is the other side saying, is there any place where you can actually have a conversation that advances common ground?
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Unknown A
Speake one, you wrote this very interesting op ed in the New York Times in which you outline potentially some of the elements of a path forward for Democrats in what's looking like a sort of pretty grim scenario, at least for the next couple of years. I recently interviewed on the program Senators Booker, Warren, Klobuchar and Schiff, and my audience was feeling as though some of the vision as to exactly how do we fix the problems that we are up against. My audience universally the response was for people who mostly have their heads on and, you know, their heads in the right place, they've identified part of the problem at least. But we're not really feeling that there's a solution here. You know, generically talking about we've got to meet voters where they are. OK, yeah, fine. I mean, that's a 50 year old phrase that gets recycled over and over again.
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Unknown A
What does it really mean? Can you talk about as specifically as possible the steps that your party needs to take to address? There was dissatisfaction to some degree with elements of the platform in 2024, what was seen as maybe a dismissal of concerns about crime and immigration. Even if you and I would agree, the facts don't point us to there's a crime search. I don't believe that there is. I've looked at the data, but many voters felt that the Harris campaign didn't take seriously enough that many voters came to believe that that was a problem. That's just one example. What are the steps you believe need to be taken here?
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Unknown B
Well, I hope people will read my piece. I call for a new economic patriotism and then we can see. You'll let me know if they feel that I have a adequate vision or not. Here's what I think we have to start with. People are very, very angry and there's a righteous anger at the status quo and there's a feeling that they're losing control. They're losing control because of globalization. They're losing control because of the changing demographics and culture in the country. They're losing control because of the technology revolution. There's just this feeling that they don't think their life, their kids life is going to be as successful in the American dream. It's a feeling that white voters, Latino voters, black voters, many of them share across the country. We have to start out by recognizing that anger, recognizing the anger against institutions. But then we need to have very concrete policies of how we're going to change that.
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Unknown B
We've got to say look, I get the tariff policy on certain things is maybe one part of it. But if you really want to reind industrialize this country in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, war in Ohio, downriver, Michigan, Milwaukee, we need the federal government making investments with local communities in new steel, in new aluminum, in new shipbuilding, in new manuacturing to make us the manufacturing superpower. And have that not just happen in Houston or Columbus, but to actually look at communities that have been hard hit. And to do that we need to make sure that this technology revolution that's happening, we have 100,000 new digital jobs, many of themm won't require a college degree. And those jobs shouldn't just be in the coast. We need to have 100,000 new through the jobs program. Electricians, plumbers and skilled trade. So that in high school we actually have a pathway for people who don't have a college degree to have high paying jobs.
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Unknown B
And we need to make sure this is in every part of the country. And then we need to make sure that people have economic independence and economic security. That means Medicare for all, that means free public college or vocational education. That means people should have a living wage and they should be have some stocks ownership. So every American family deserves that. Now you could say, oh, does this sound like a longer list? No, what I'm talking about is concrete economic transformation. To understand that the staggering economic inequality both by place and by the working class and the elite is the problem of a lot of this anger. And then secondly, to have also common sense, public safety and border security. But my view is that that is being exacerbated in. In concern, understand it. For people who feel no control over.
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Unknown A
Their livesake, see that all of that makes perfect sense to me. And also I think where some of the disconnect is, is that that does not have the same emotional cache as when Trump gets up there and tells a lurid story of one crime committed by an undocumented immigrant and gets everybody foaming at the mouth with these, you know, bloodthirsty mass deportation ideas. There's an emotional cache to that, even if it's contrived and not speaking to the economic problems. Even the stuff about we're going to get the men out of women's sports. You know, as crazy as a lot of this stuff is in terms of its salience with large portions of the population, I think maybe what my audience is connecting with is that everything you said sounds great and it just lacks the emotional salience, maybe to motivate voters. What would you say to that?
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Unknown B
I disagree. I'd say, here's how I think we provide emotional resonance. I was born in Philadelphia in 1976. My the bicentenary of this country. My parents came here in the 1960s after John F. Kennedy, where everyone wanted to come to America because America was the place which was sending someone to the moon. America was the place where we had massive industry. America was a place that would welcome people of all different backgrounds to do incredible economic things. And we've lost that sense of America. But the reality is that this country allowed someone in Indian American of Hindu faith to come represent Silicon Valley, the most financially successful place in the world. And the question we have as Americans is, are we going to rebuild this country with the talent and the background of all of us, regardless of our faith, regardless of our sexual orientation, to rebuild this country into a cohesive multiracial democracy that is going to lead the world?
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Unknown B
Or are we going to succumb to Donald Trump's division and blame and anger and I believe inspiration, I believe vision, I believe aspiration will overcome the Trump dystopian vision. The problem is Democrats have been too afraid to stand up for the value of immigration. We sort of wa want toa be Republican lights. The problem is that when Donald Trump curses, all our politicians think, now, let's go curse as opposed to allow. Let's be eloquent. The problem is that we are Arguing on Donald Trump's register. We need to argue on a different register, a visionary register, which also has a fabric in American history. Trump has a fabric in American history, Andrew Jackson that do nothing but our vision. Lincoln, fdr, Kennedy, Obama also has a register and the democracy to find that register. And that has emotional resonance too.
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Unknown A
And I think, I wonder if you would agree that a part of that is finding candidates who can do that simply by being who they genuinely are, rather than, as sometimes seems to be the case, that the Democratic Party will sometimes try to make a candidate something they aren't really. And it seems as though that sometimes is noticeable to voters to some degree. Do you think also the candidate choice has to work and be genuine?
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Unknown B
I think the candidate I said one simple thing. What is their vision for America? How are their families going to fit into that vision? And do they really believe that vision and can they convey that with vision? What I totally disagree with is this view. Wow. Now Democrats need a villain. Let's check the box of a villain. Really? You think Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or starteding to think let's think of who the villain is. They said here is where America needs to go, here's what's happening, here's my vision for where this country needs to go. And I think that has to be the and people can sense it out. That has to be the calling card of anyone running. It's not about let's run someone who's wealthy or not. Let's run someone who's a PhD or working class. Let's run someone who's of this chec.
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Unknown B
This box. It's do they have a compelling vision for the country? And I think it's really that simple.
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Unknown A
We've been speaking with Democratic Congressman Rohana. Always appreciate your time. Thank you, Sper.
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Unknown B
Thank you, David.