The Congressman Who Unlocked the Epstein Files

He's got Silicon Valley billionaires up in his mentions. He got Trump to release more Epstein files — and forecasts "a bombshell month" ahead from Rape Island. But now Rep. Ro Khanna wants to fend off nothing less than a populist revolution, with a moral reckoning for unaccountable people who occupy their own islands of prosperity. The rising Democratic star joins Pablo in-studio for a look inside the Venezuela attack, a preview of post-Trump politics, a contract for the post-truck-driver America... and a hot take on Bronny James. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  And that's why I say this is one of the greatest scandals in American history. It's because the moral reckoning that we're gonna face that we allowed our elite to do this.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Right after this ad.

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• 0:47Speaker 03

  Hey, man. I have a question. Okay, tell me. Can you count to one? Can I count to one? What are you talking about? Is this a trick? No. One is the number of local law enforcement officials who have endorsed Shannon Taylor for Congress. One? It's one. The sheriffs in our district endorse Rob Whitman instead. They know Shannon Taylor calls herself a progressive prosecutor. Progressive prosecutor? What's that even mean? She founded a group that backed a bunch of nutty, soft-on-crime stuff here in Virginia, like ending cash bail. Yeah, man, that is nuts. Taylor's group also opposed harsher penalties for assaulting cops and backed "defund the police" candidates.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Now it makes sense. Shannon Taylor is with criminals, not cops. That's why the sheriffs in our district are for Rob Whitman. Yep, Rob Whitman all the way. I'm Rob Whitman, candidate for Congress, and I approve this message. Paid for by Rob Whitman for Congress.

• 1:49Speaker 00

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• 2:57Pablo Torre?

  We booked you over like the holidays, and I want to get to the Epstein files, obviously. I want to get to Silicon Valley, which you represent. That is in your district as well. But I need to ask you how you found out that the United States invaded Venezuela and captured President Nicolas Maduro?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  The truth?

• 3:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  On X. I saw a tweet linking to the New York Times saying we had gone in and captured Maduro and are at war with Venezuela.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  Breaking news this morning. President Trump says the US carried out large-scale strikes on Venezuela overnight.

• 3:34Speaker 06

  The capture and apprehension of the president of Venezuela, as well as his wife.

• 3:41Speaker 07

  The US, as you say, has carried out a series of airstrikes in Venezuela, capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. As you say, President Trump did confirm that in a social media post overnight.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Now, it didn't come as a surprise to me because I am on the Armed Services Committee. I had been through a number of classified briefings with the military, and I had sounded the alarm weeks ago on the House floor, saying we're building up all of these... Personnel and troops in Florida, in Puerto Rico, were increasing our destroyers and our ships in the Caribbean. You don't do this if your goal is just to strike boats in the Caribbean. We are gearing up for a regime change war. And the reality is that Marco Rubio lied to the country and Hagseth lied to the country. But anyone who was in those briefings and a senior person on the Armed Services Committee

• 4:34Speaker 01

  and who understands military strategy knew that we were preparing for a major operation.

• 4:40Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so two things are true, though. One is that, in retrospect, of course, this is all how the weather vane was pointing. But on [bleep] Twitter?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  That's how we learned. People have this hyped up sense of what it means to be a member of Congress. And a senior member of Congress on the Armed Services Committee, you would think, oh, someone from the White House is going to give you a call, or the Defense Secretary is going to give you a call. No, I got the news like any of my colleagues are being honest on Twitter, or some may have read the New York Times.

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  But just the idea, so again, like, it's just remarkable and also unsurprising to me that an operation that involves, per the New York Times, more than 150 military drones, fighter planes, bombers, all of that stuff. Of course, we know now, at this point in the week, Congress generally gets notified of those things.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:32Pablo Torre?

  Of course, in this case, I want to discuss that. You guys were not. What's unsurprising, as remarkable as it is, though, is that this is the Congress that doesn't get told. Because this Congress, Rokana, just happens to feel more generally impotent than any other Congress, certainly in my lifetime.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Well, I would say that's right. I mean, this Congress needs to wake up. We did wake up on the Epstein issue, where Thomas Massey and I forced a vote and Donald Trump to sign the bill. It was the single biggest Democratic bill, my bill, the Epstein Transparency Act, that was signed by Donald Trump in 2025, and where he is bowing to Congress, where they already are under pressure to release now five million files, where we've gotten documents of him being on the Epstein plane and having lied about that in 2024.

• 6:23Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Where we've found out that they're co-conspirators who were not tried. But on War and Peace, we've been absent. I mean, it is shameful to me. That we don't have more people saying you can't just use our awesome military to go in and invade a weaker and poorer country. That's not how we do things in America. And Donald Trump is out there saying we want to take their oil. Like, we're not Britain, we're not Rome. We don't march in with gunboat diplomacy in 21st century America and invade other countries. It's offensive to me. As someone whose grandfather, Amrath Thielankar, was in jail for four years alongside Gandhi, fighting against colonialism, to have an American president invoking McKinley when we conquered Puerto Rico, when we conquered

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Guam, saying that that's 21st century America, it is morally offensive to me. And then you see all these weak statements from some of my friends, saying, wow, they should have notified Congress. No, that's not the problem. They shouldn't have gone in guns blazing and taken another country's oil. It's a moral issue. It's not like, hey, maybe you should have called Congress next time before doing something morally terrible. That is the issue. That's how Putin acts. That's how Xi Jinping threatens to act. That's not how the United States of America acts. It's an issue about who we are as a people, our ideals.

• 7:44Pablo Torre?

  You mentioned the oil stuff, and I don't even know economically, right, if the strategy that he has, that he's explicated on Air Force One, for instance, is coherent. But I'm watching this video in which he's talking on Air Force One this week. He says he told oil companies before the operation took place. He notified them.

• 8:01Speaker 08

  Good care of, yes, sir.

• 8:02Speaker 09

  ...with the oil companies about going into Venezuela.

• 8:05Speaker 08

  I have.

• 8:05Speaker 09

  Which ones? Have you ever seen Venezuela?

• 8:07Speaker 08

  All of them, yes.

• 8:08Speaker 09

  The oil companies?

• 8:10Speaker 08

  They want to go in so badly. Did you speak to them before the operation took place? Yes. Did you maybe tip them off about? Before and after. And they want to go in. And they're going to do a great job for the people of Venezuela. And they're going to represent us well.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:25Pablo Torre?

  Procedurally.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  He didn't notify Congress, whose job it is to vote on matters of war and peace, but he told the oil companies, "Hey, look, you can go make money there." And who's gonna pay for these oil companies being there? Our troops, your and my tax dollars? Who's gonna pay if something goes wrong, if there's violence? How long are we gonna be in Venezuela? None of these questions are answered. By the way, the closest to this is when Bush Senior was president, and he got Noriega in Panama. And he went in and he captured Noriega, and Noriega was tried. But in that case even, Bush came to Congress after the fact, and he got bipartisan approval by Congress. Here, you don't even have the president saying, "Let me come to Congress now." He just views Congress as totally dispensable.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And in that case, we did not say we're gonna run Panama, and we didn't say that we're gonna plunder Panama. And that was a legally dubious case now. But this is just the presidency on steroids as an imperial presidency. Congress has been absent when it comes to matters of war and peace, and Donald Trump is showing our weakness as Article One of the Constitution.

• 9:30Pablo Torre?

  The reason you're here in studio on this weird show that we do, you have managed to puncture what has been a pretty impervious and clearly intimidating political force, which is Trump just bullying people into doing nothing. And the Epstein Transparency Act is one example that I will get into great depth with you on.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  I thought I was here to share my insights on Brock Purdy and why the Eagles aren't as good as they were last year. But my knowledge is like 30 seconds deep. And so like, on question number three, they're gonna be like, "All right, this guy, you know, he watches a game here and there, he watches the box scores, but he can't hold his own."

• 10:14Pablo Torre?

  You know what I will tell you? The compliment I will pay you up top here is that you are not, unlike Brock Purdy, you are not a system quarterback.

• 10:42Pablo Torre?

  So when we first booked Congressman Ro Khanna, whose district contains Silicon Valley, which helps explain why he is so extremely online, the scope was pretty narrow. I just wanted to talk about the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law which he co-authored with Thomas Massey, which put thousands of documents, from emails to flight logs, on the internet. And several of those documents, turns out, mentioned the name of another former Democratic congressman and fellow PTOFO guest, Tom McMillan, the 6'11" former NBA player and Clinton appointee.

• 11:24Speaker 10

  Please, can we move on? I mean, this is just... I thought we were talking about sports and stuff. This is stuff 35 years ago. I don't have any relationships here.

• 11:33Pablo Torre?

  McMillan was the guy right next to Epstein greeting Trump in that infamous viral video at Mar-a-Lago in 1992. That's how we first discovered him. But McMillan told us, "I never had a close relationship or what I would characterize as a friendship with Epstein. We've known President Trump for about 40 years, since he donated to my first congressional campaign." End quote. But after that episode we did with McMillan in December, I not only found two donations from Jeffrey Epstein to McMillan's congressional campaigns, I also found a fascinating piece of audio, Glenn Maxwell's interview with the Department of Justice from July 2025. This is where you can hear the DOJ telling Maxwell, who is, of course, Epstein's in-prison

• 12:18Pablo Torre?

  former girlfriend and associate, that you mentioned President Trump and President Clinton. And then the DOJ asks another question.

• 12:27Speaker 11

  Who were other famous politicians? Who were other individuals in Mr. Epstein's life during that time period? So the early 90s?

• 12:37Speaker 12

  The 90s. Let's... Should we just?

• 12:40Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 12:40Speaker 12

  Okay. Congressman McMillan.

• 12:42Speaker 11

  Say it again.

• 12:42Speaker 12

  McMillan.

• 12:44Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 12:45Speaker 12

  And Henry Rosowski, who was a professor at Harvard. Hang on, can I?

• 12:51Speaker 11

  Sure. You're looking at your notes. Go ahead.

• 12:54Speaker 12

  Um...

• 12:57Pablo Torre?

  But as we consulted our notes here and then proceeded to sit down with Congressman Ro Khanna, it also became clear that the Epstein files are even more than the story of the most infamous pedophile in American history and his more than 1,000 alleged victims. It is also the story of this historically unaccountable class of people in both parties who occupy their own islands of prosperity and who have crippled public trust in government itself.

• 13:34Pablo Torre?

  The Silicon Valley aspect of this, and by the way, like what a [bleep] month you've had, right? You're now, I believe, I want to get the title right, because now you're the ranking member of the House Select Committee on China.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:44Pablo Torre?

  So when you mention Xi Jinping, like this is not abstract, that's also now one of your responsibilities, I want to talk about that. You represent Silicon Valley, you're having to deal with Venezuela and the Armed Forces Committee capacity, the Epstein files are also on your plate, and in all of this, I'm also scrolling on X and I'm seeing that on Calci, the prediction markets, somebody made a ton of money betting whether or not Maduro would be out of power. It climbed shortly before 10:00 PM Eastern on Friday, it was in the low single digits for weeks, as according to the Wall Street Journal, and then a new account invest $30,000 on Friday, and after Maduro goes into custody here in New York City on Saturday morning, the same investor made almost half a million dollars.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  That's crazy. I mean, that's gotta be illegal. We can't gamify every aspect of life, and you've got these prediction markets basically trying to gamify every single part of our existence, and of course, in cases of inside information, that should be illegal.

• 14:43Pablo Torre?

  I use the word investor, by the way, almost generously. I don't know who this person is, I don't know how sophisticated or how professional their approach was, but it does seem like the whole prediction market concept is premised on inside information being profitable.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  One thing we could rule out is probably not a member of Congress.

• 15:01Pablo Torre?

  Never, never.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Given the Congress wasn't told about the...

• 15:08Pablo Torre?

  On that, on that point, on that, for once, I'm like, oh yeah, it's a fair point Congressman. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  But, but look, it's a problem in, in terms of the lack of trust in government, right? When, one of the things that Massey and I have seen across the country and why there's been such a reaction is not just we're just standing up for survivors, but we're standing up for restoring trust in government. That trust is broken. It's the most precious commodity these days for a politician to say, you know, how do we have accountability? How do we have transparency? How do we not just have government enriching people's families and an elite? And to me, that is what the whole Epstein class issue represented. This, this idea you've got rich and powerful men, many in New York, going to a rape island,

• 15:54Speaker 01

  being on a rape plane and facing no consequence, telling these working class girls, you can't call the FBI, you can't call the police because they're not going to do anything because we know the politicians who can stop it. It's outrageous. And it's a symbol for people feeling helpless, feeling that, you know, they go, they work hard, they watch Sunday football, but they're working 40 hours weeks, 50 hour weeks. They just want to have a decent life and they're struggling to pay the bills. They can't afford rent or their mortgage. They can't support their kid who wants to go to trade school or college. And yet they read in the papers, these elite making all this money and the rules don't apply to them. And they resent them. They do resent them and they want people to hold them accountable.

• 16:36Pablo Torre?

  Well, one of the things that I find very interesting is that you're also seeing, I think, the timeline clearly, which is that at some point, again, it's currently up for grabs, I suppose, Trump will be out of office. And the issues that I mentioned to you, whether it's Silicon Valley and prediction markets and also AI, which I want to touch on, war and peace, certainly the Epstein files, this is about stuff that's bigger definitively, definitionally than just Donald Trump.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 17:04Pablo Torre?

  And so, by the way, I should note that Thomas Massey is a Republican. And you are a Democrat.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:11Pablo Torre?

  And so the reconfiguring here of what are the aisles? And what cooperation exists? What is the Venn diagram that speaks to a post-Trump version of American politics? You've been as loud, louder, I think, than anybody else in terms of saying, we should be running on these things. And the Epstein issue, I just find it to be so persuasive and also indefensible in terms of how this administration has been trying to bury it.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Well, you're absolutely right to see that there's a big realignment in American politics. And what is that realignment? That there are many Americans who feel abandoned, shafted, let down, betrayed by the governing elite. So the Epstein issue is not just standing up for young girls in America. It's not just standing up for girls who came from working-class families or immigrant families. It's about saying, we're going to hold the elite accountable. We're not afraid of the fact that there are billionaires that are attacking Massey and me. We're not afraid of the fact that we're going to get attacked by the President of the United States or by the Justice Department. And in doing that, we are starting the process of re-earning the trust of the American public.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And then we can have an agenda of how we make sure that people actually have good jobs and low costs, and we're ending these dumb overseas wars. But we first have got to restore trust.

• 18:34Pablo Torre?

  The word elite, or I want to clarify this in terms of your origin story, because, I mean, we both went to fancy schools, right? Like, you went to Chicago and Yale Law School.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  I'm proud of it. I studied very hard. I was a son of immigrants. Was born in Philadelphia in 1976. Indian-American parents. When I got 90% on my exams, my dad said, where's the other 10%? So I worked really, really hard. And I, and I... And proud that I got such an incredible education. I had to go into a lot of debt to do it. But I've been fortunate in life. I've been able to succeed. But what elite to me means is not aspiration. Of course, people want to work hard. Of course, they want to get a good education or go to a good trade school. Of course, they want to be able to build wealth. I have no problem with that. What elite means is you don't get to play by a different set of rules.

• 19:24Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  You don't get to ignore the community you grew up in. And you don't get to say that it's OK for me to have my success, but to hell with the rest of the country.

• 19:35Pablo Torre?

  Well, the thing about the Epstein files that is so mind blowing to just, I think, the average person is that it turns out that something that felt like a crazy conspiracy actually was true. And I mean that in the broadest sense that you're outlining, which is that there is, in fact, a social network of people who are, by any reasonable standard, elite. And they have been hiding an apparently criminal conspiracy involving caricatures of crimes and real victims, hundreds upon hundreds of victims. And they have been operating in the shadows and successfully operating in the shadows until, basically, you come along and set a deadline. And so just how this deadline got set,

• 20:20Pablo Torre?

  how the Epstein Files Transparency Act came to be like the birth of it. How did this happen? And why was it so hard in retrospect?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  It was hard because no one cared. And this goes before Donald Trump. None of us cared enough. There was maybe one journalist in the Miami Herald.

• 20:40Pablo Torre?

  Julie Kay Brown.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Julie Kay Brown. It was incredible. But other than her and a few journalists, no one was paying attention. And what was taking place is over 1,000 young girls were being sent to either this rape island or trafficked to rich and powerful men. And these are powerful finance figures, powerful politicians. And they're showing up and socializing with Epstein, even though they know that Epstein is doing incredibly disgusting things. In some cases, these powerful men didn't actually rape or abuse the underage girls, but they were part of the parties where 14 or 15 year olds were being paraded naked. And they didn't think to say anything.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And these are people at the highest levels of finance, highest levels of politics, highest levels of universities. And they basically thought this is normal. And that's totally acceptable in American society. And they did this for decades. And that's why I say this is one of the greatest scandals in American history. It's because the moral reckoning that we're going to face that we allowed our elite to do this. So how did we, what was the turning point? When, when Trump made this an issue, we didn't say anything. And it was actually, we thought to his credit that he was going to finally do something on it. And then when he's, Pam Bondi comes out with that ridiculous statement, there's nothing to see. Massey and I initially think, maybe Trump will support our effort. We want these files released. We're surprised that he basically stone walls. He doesn't want these files to be released.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  But the turning point was that when we called the survivors to the Capitol, and when they first got to tell their story for the first time in years, and the American people heard them, and they said, this is disgusting. There needs to be justice and accountability. And now this story is not going away because we need to figure out who these people were, and they need to be held accountable.

• 22:30Pablo Torre?

  So I ask all of this to also ask, when something like the operation in Venezuela happens, of course, the collective attention of the country, of the media, of everybody turns towards that because it's war.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:45Pablo Torre?

  How long does it take you to think about the clock and the deadline that had been set for more files to be released, which spoiler alert, also? Was not met.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, coincidentally, and I'm not saying this as a conspiracy statement, but just it was perhaps coincidence that the day of the Venezuela invasion was also the day that the Justice Department owed Congress an explanation for what they had redacted.

• 23:11Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  And you have now publicly information that there are 5 million files that they have to still release. They have thought that they can just get away with the minimal release and the American people will forget, that they'll go on to talking about Venezuela or healthcare. But the reality is this is not going away because it gets to who we are as a people. Do we believe in protecting young girls? Do we believe in standing up for survivors? Do we believe in holding the elites accountable and believing that you can't have an Epstein class, a group of rich and powerful men who think they can get away with anything? And so they have underestimated the courage of survivors and the staying power of this story.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I believe January is going to be a bombshell month because in these documents, we're going to find out more of the co-conspirators, we're going to find out more of the men who visited the rape island. What we really need to get is the survivors' statements where they name who these people are. That's what people want to know. Who were these people? And we know there are more people involved because I've talked to the survivors. They don't tell me the specific names, but they give me in a sense of, well, it's a powerful person at a bank, it's a powerful politician. And by the way, I don't need to tell you that, bro, because I told the FBI that, and if those files come out, people will see it for their own eyes.

• 24:28Pablo Torre?

  What's it like to be a Democrat who is doing this and pushing, potentially, for certainly some of the most powerful and celebrated figures in the Democratic Party to also be held to account? Right? Like President Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, people on the side of the aisle that you reside on, both politically, culturally, and elsewhere. What's it like to be that guy who is being this insistent about it?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's why it took a new generation of Massey and me to come along and say, "We want to hold this class accountable, and it doesn't matter where the ball drops. It doesn't matter who it is going to be named. We just want full transparency." And it turns out, the first person who lost his job over this was a British ambassador, who was a liberal, who helped architect Gordon Brown and Tony Blair's victory. Larry Summers is someone who I knew, who I consulted for economic advice. And he was exposed as corresponding inappropriately with Epstein. So I have said, "I want all the names out." Now, it shouldn't be partisan. It shouldn't just be, "Let's get the Democrats out, or let's use this as a witch hunt to score political points." But Massey and I are committed to this being transparent and letting the facts come out wherever they lead.

• 25:45Pablo Torre?

  So just broadly speaking, then, when it comes to aiming in terms of, "What are we going to focus on?" up, instead of laterally, right? Why has it taken so long? Why has it taken so long for someone on, I would say, the left with a mainstream platform?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  It takes a risk to do this, because you offend a lot of people. You offend powerful people, billionaires, and people with a lot of money and resources. You offend people in your own party. Hakeem Jeffries was quick to embrace me and come on board, but there were people in my party saying, "Oh, Rose is distracting. He should be talking about healthcare. He should have been talking about childcare. This is engage in conspiratorial thinking."

• 26:31Pablo Torre?

  Right. "He's too online."

• 26:32Speaker 01

  "He's too online. He's not serious." They dismiss. That's how they dismiss you. That, you know, "Oh, he's not a serious person. He's not a substantive person." So the economics are against it, because you offend a lot of rich and powerful people. The chances of success are low. I mean, when Massey and I started this, we didn't think that we would be able to get a discharge petition passed and a bill passed in the House and the Senate and the President signing it. And that's why I think people stayed away. But what this shows is, when you're committed to something, if you build an unusual alliance, and if you're persistent, then you can actually get something done in American politics.

• 27:20Pablo Torre?

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• 28:22Speaker 14

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• 29:00Pablo Torre?

  The idea of being very online, of course. You represent Silicon Valley. And your relationship with them is fascinating to me because I'm also watching you on X over the holiday break.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  I feel sorry for you.

• 29:12Pablo Torre?

  I feel, I feel. I didn't feel better.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I was going back and forth, back and forth.

• 29:16Pablo Torre?

  Oh, but you're, you're, you're replying. You're in your mentions as billionaires. Billionaires are very mad that you would dare propose...

• 29:25Speaker 01

  A higher tax on them.

• 29:27Pablo Torre?

  That they be taxed in ways that horrify them.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Well, look, I'm, I spent Christmas through New Year's dealing with that.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  And I'm a huge champion of technology and entrepreneurship and builders and people like Steve Jobs or people who create extraordinary advances for society. I mean, they're building cures for disease, they're building new communication networks, they're expanding knowledge. But I believe in a tech social contract. I believe that to those who much is given, much is expected. And yes, builders did this through hard work and initiative and drive, but they also benefited from a country which has invested deeply in places like Stanford and DARPA and NSF that helped to create the original AI. And

• 30:18Speaker 01

  so all I said is that if you have succeeded with all this extraordinary wealth, $18 trillion of wealth generated in my district, one-third of the United States stock market is in my 50-mile radius, one-fifth of the global value is in my district, then if you've created all this value, shouldn't we have some shared prosperity? Can't we make sure that everyone has healthcare? Can't we make sure that everyone has an education? Can't we make sure that everyone has childcare? And I was not disparaging the people who build all this wealth. I was just saying that we need to make sure that that prosperity is shared if we want to not have a populist revolt in this country.

• 30:54Pablo Torre?

  What's very funny, as I listen to you say these things, is that you're very practiced at being able to say and rattle off, here are these things we should accomplish. And I can sense, of course, your political polish. And yet, the reason I keep on wanting to ask you for these things is because they're radical, despite the fact that they also can be presented in such a way that's like, yeah, this is a platform, but also like, it takes balls to say the things that you just said and to argue with these people in Silicon Valley and to understand their psychology, right? So I want to actually go back to the demographics that you represent, both as a politician and also come from, right? So you know these people.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  I do. Know them well, known them for 10 years in some cases, 15 years, maybe well before I was in Congress. Elon Musk, he blurred my first book in 2011 or 2012 on manufacturing. He was an Obama supporter.

• 31:52Pablo Torre?

  So I think the shorthand for what happened to Silicon Valley in terms of, why did they pivot further right?

• 32:00Pablo Torre?

  The phrase that I often find myself using is that their brains got eaten by the internet. And I don't know if that's sufficient to describe what's really the psychology here. Because you and I both know, these are men with cognitive processing power.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:17Pablo Torre?

  And in fact, part of the issue here seems to be that they believe themselves to be the great men of their time, and insofar as they can accomplish the things that great men historically aspired to accomplish. They're also perhaps blind in ways that they themselves cannot recognize. And so how do you think about this contradiction?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  It's interesting you said that, because then a lot of the X replies, one person said, "Well, you have to understand, these builders and founders would be the conquerors in a different time. And today, it's that they're the billionaires, and it's better that they be billionaires than conquerors." And so, yes, they view themselves as these incredible folks who they see carrying civilization, carrying us forward. And in many ways, they're doing incredible things in developing AI and companies and wealth. The sad part of our country is that we used to have that sense of public spiritedness, that you could be part of the democratic project, to go to the moon, to win the Cold War, to do incredible things in curing cancer.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  And there used to be that energy for democratic excellence, for democratic greatness. And now, there's this sense that many people have that that's only possible in the private sector, that government has lost trust, that government is slow, that government isn't capable of doing big things. And that has led, in part, to the valley moving to the libertarian right. It's a loss of faith in the democratic project. And so the answer to this is deeper than just saying, "Okay, you know, we've got to engage them, and we've got to convince them that they've got to support healthcare and education." We have got to convince people that the democratic project in this country is capable of working. Trump invoked that. He said, "Let's make America great."

• 34:03Speaker 01

  But then there was no collective democratic aspiration.

• 34:07Pablo Torre?

  Look, the question here is like, what does it mean to be plausibly? Populist.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:12Pablo Torre?

  Right? Like, that was the whole Trump project. Of course, we see how that has revealed itself at this point. But when it comes to Silicon Valley, you know, there's a term that I've heard you use before, the aristocracy of talent.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Pablo Torre?

  And there is something that is appealing. Again, I'm a first-generation American, parents from the Philippines, was at Harvard when Zuckerberg founded Facebook, and Larry Summers was the president of the university, actually.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:32Pablo Torre?

  I was in awe at times of this very social network.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:36Pablo Torre?

  And yet, as much as I want this country to be the meritocracy that also made me feel like a B+ was an F, there is something about unintended consequences that I find Silicon Valley to be horrific at actually waiting and considering. Like, there are blind spots and those impacts that follow that, I think, might be their undoing when it comes to, will a nation support such people and such inequality?

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Crystal Ball, who's on Breaking Points.

• 35:07Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  That these folks don't realize that Roe is trying to do him a favor. I'm actually trying to say, if we don't want the revolt of people across this country.

• 35:18Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  If we, if we don't want a revolution that takes down tech and is anti-immigrant and calls for the disengagement with the world, that we have to recognize a country cannot survive half-prosperous and half-in decline, that you can't have islands of prosperity and 70% of Americans believing the American dream is dead, and that there has to be a public excellence, a public spiritedness that says, we want, in every community, in every town across this country, some sense of economic independence in a modern age. And that's what I call a new economic patriotism. It's why I've said that people who are ultra-wealthy can pay a bit more tax, and we can have Medicare for all, we can have $10 a day childcare, we can have 1,000 new trade schools, we can have free public college. One of the pushbacks

• 36:02Speaker 01

  I got is, yeah, but there's so much waste, and there's so much inefficiency.

• 36:05Pablo Torre?

  Sure.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  There's so much fraud. And there is, of course, waste, but we need to then collectively figure out how to do that, not just throw our hands up and say, well, government doesn't work, and so we're just gonna have the private sector, and we're just gonna go down this road where the few have a tremendous amount of wealth and everyone else fends for themselves.

• 36:23Pablo Torre?

  As I was watching you reply to all these people, again, many of them founders, CEOs, billionaires, in your mentions, who are furious at you, I'm thinking to myself, and again, you are... Conflicted because Silicon Valley is literally the district you represent. But broadly speaking, running against all of these people is clearly a lane that is open to the Democratic Party. Just like actually saying, you know how you're sad all the time as an American because you have this carpal tunnel in your wrist because you're holding your phone all the time? And you know how you just lost your job because a robot just took it? And you know how these people are, at this point, almost literally trillionaires and you're struggling to pay your bills?

• 37:07Pablo Torre?

  Those people are a problem. And what you seem to be doing is, yes, offering a way to keep them included in this coalition. And at the same time, I don't know if they're down for the compromise.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  I don't think it's as simplistic, in my view, as just saying, okay, because we have billionaires and trillionaires, that's why the person in Johnstown, Pennsylvania is screwed. But what I do think is true is that we've had a country that has prioritized the capital class and economic growth at the expense of the working and middle class, that it has not worked for so many people. And that if we do not have a more inclusive economic vision and a vision that asks more of the ultra wealthy in terms of dealing with healthcare and childcare, we will see an incredible populist anger. And so, standing up for my values of the people I grew up in, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, seems to me the right direction for the Democratic Party.

• 38:05Pablo Torre?

  Well, I want to be specific to your point. I don't want to be overbroad in my characterization of the political opportunities in our country right now. But artificial intelligence.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:14Pablo Torre?

  If you're to reckon with it seriously and you're to actually look into your crystal ball again, I wonder about just the job of truck driver.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:21Pablo Torre?

  And I'm not saying that, gosh, we got to preserve the human truck driver for all time. But I just see, anyone can see, the ways in which artificial intelligence and robots are, again, on one hand... Caricatures of sci fi concepts. And yet, the actual thing that our country has to deal with.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Well, put simply, AI needs to work for us, not just for them. It can't just work for tech billionaires. Truck drivers, there are 2.5 to 3 million truck driving jobs. Commercial driving is the single biggest job for someone who is a man who does not have a college degree. You can't just go in and say, in a year, two years, three years, we're going to eliminate all truck driving jobs. And that's why I have stood for state legislation, saying that you need to have a human being in the loop on these trucks. Now, you can think about the role of that person. Maybe it's easier for them to be driving, and they won't have as much strain, and they can be aided with self-driving technology, and they can be focused more on the loading and the unloading and the difficult cases.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  But what we need is technology that augments human capability, not eliminates human beings. That increases what is called total factor productivity. And this is what Daron Acemoglu, who's the MIT Nobel laureate, has called for. He said, look, in the Industrial Revolution, for the first 60 years, Britain became really wealthy, but the working class got poorer. And that's because technology was basically taking their jobs. And then what happened is that technology started to improve workers' productivity, and workers tended to benefit from it with higher wages and labor protection. You had the Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, where he said, you need to have a just wage, and you need to actually have unions and collective bargaining, and workers thrived.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  And that same thinking that Pope Leo had, the social movement and the Industrial Revolution had, we need to apply to the AI revolution, which is even going to be more rapid. How do we make sure workers are not just displaced, but actually thrive?

• 40:21Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I mean, look, the unintended consequences of AI, right? That's the thing that is glowing in my brain. You also have a background. You formerly specialized in intellectual property law. And I was wondering how you think about AI through that lens? Because AI is, of course, hoovering up

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:37Pablo Torre?

  intellectual property perpetually. Data centers are enabling that, obviously. How does one begin to form a system that can regulate that?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  There needs to be some compensation to the authors, to the songwriters. You know, if you're gonna take all of people's movies and books and creative content and you put it in an AI machine and then it spits out a new movie or a new script, you have to have some compensation for the books and the movies that were put into that machine. And that, I think, framework needs to be worked out. A similar framework for data centers. You're gonna put up data centers. Of course, we need data centers. I mean, we can't not have AI develop in the United States. But you've got to have a sense that the electricity bill doesn't go up for those local residents, that the companies putting up those data centers bear those costs. You've got to have a sense that you have renewable energy powering them. You've got to have, like Singapore does, standards for water efficiency.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  So you use dry cooling or new technology that isn't going to be using huge amounts of water. You need public compute so that some of the compute power benefits that local community. And investment in local jobs beyond the electricians building the data centers, but the people who are gonna go into new technology jobs in that community. So all of this is to say, we need a new tech social contract, a sense that says, we've got to be innovative. We've got to have entrepreneurship. We've got to celebrate builders. We can't say, okay, let's just stop all of that and let all of the economic innovation happen in China or elsewhere. But we need to understand that that prosperity has got to involve every community and every American. Other countries have a sovereign wealth fund that does this with oil or other incredible natural resources.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Tech is a natural resource. It's what's propping up our entire economy. A third of it is in my district. But how do we make sure that every American is benefiting from that and not just a few? It seems pretty common sense. It seems pretty reasonable. And yet it generated, obviously, touched an emotional nerve.

• 42:32Pablo Torre?

  Well, a lot of it redounds to the bottom line of, if you make it harder for us to be great, this country will suffer. If we are not in charge, if we are not untrammelled in our ability to innovate and explicitly compete with China, to bring us back to your new gig as the ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, America will lose. And so trust us to know what's best for America.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  I don't know if you spend time there. Maybe you're spending more time with the tech billionaires than Brock Purdy, but the reality is you've nailed sort of their worldview, which is sincere for how they see the world, because you have to understand where people are coming from. They think that they're better allocators of capital, that they are better understanding what civilization needs to do, and that they are carrying America on their shoulders. And part of my sense is what about the people who fought and scaled the cliffs of Normandy? What about the people who were beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge? What about the people who build the steel and the industry, taking care of the sick, and who are educating their

• 43:40Speaker 01

  kids? America is an enormous, enormous story, and have a humility to recognize that you are an important part of it, but not the entire part of it, and that the democratic process and democratic excellence is actually what's going to lead us ahead of China, not just an excellence of a few. And that's the debate.

• 44:03Pablo Torre?

  Well, that's why the lane seems so disturbingly, at this point, open, for you. I'm just like, it's something to run on a platform of American populism, as Trump has done, and then simultaneously and covetously align yourself with all of the people who represent, in I think a reasonable contrast, as you just put it, the billionaires who are saying, "Don't trust the rank and file of this country. We know what's best for them. Let us be the ones to tell them what they deserve."

• 44:35Speaker 01

  I agree with you that what we need is a real populism, not a rhetorical populism that then just says, "Let the billionaires run things." But I think one of the things I always find amusing on Twitter, there are a lot of criticisms of me, but the one that never is going to land, there are a lot that may land, but what won't land is, "Well, Ro Khanna, the socialist." Like, I'm an Indian-American guy who's representing the wealthiest district in the world. People aren't going to think, "Hey, this guy doesn't understand technology. I taught at Stanford. I was educated at these elite universities. I know these people." And I think Americans get the sense, "Look, this guy gets it. He understands." How modern wealth is being generated. And what he's saying is not anti-wealth generation. What he's saying is not anti-technology.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  What he's saying is, I want the kids that he grew up with in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to have a part in the economic success of the 21st century. And in this, FDR was a model. He was seen as a traitor to his class. But people said, look, FDR got the economy of the time. But he was saying that that capitalist system couldn't just work for the few. They'd have to work for all of America. And so that theme, that we need a modern economy, a technology economy that is working for all of us, for all Americans, whether it's a lane, I don't know, but it's certainly substantively correct in dealing with the fundamental divides in this country.

• 46:07Speaker 02

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• 46:37Speaker 15

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• 47:15Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's hard to talk about this without talking about campaign finance. And, look, one of the statistics, of course, that got thrown in the face of anything resembling liberalism during the last election was, in fact, more billionaires supported Kamala Harris than supported Donald Trump. Which is all to say, much like the Epstein files, there are Democrats all over the part of this story that we are talking about being a problem. And so, you have a particular view on what money you can and shouldn't take. Can you explain what your position is?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Well, I don't take any PAC money. I'm one of 10 members of Congress who doesn't. I don't take any lobbyist money. I don't have a super PAC. And I don't mind taking positions where the billionaires criticize me. If you look at just my feed over the last few weeks, you'll see that. And so, why do politicians not do that? Because in today's day, if you offend one person who happens to be a billionaire or a multi-centimillionaire, they can pour millions of dollars against you and run against you in a super PAC. And that has really strangled our democracy. People fear the defense contractors, so we have a bloated defense budget. They fear Big Pharma, so we don't have lower prescription drugs.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  They fear a billionaire class, so that we don't have higher taxes in this country. The special interest oil companies, so we have fossil fuel subsidies for oil. The question in our politics, I say courage is the modern charisma. Do you have the guts to stand up to a capital class that will come after you? Like they're coming after Massey, like they came after me, like they come after Bernie. Do you have the guts to do that and say you're on the side of the people? And you can't just say it rhetorically. People get a sense of, are you willing to take on that fight?

• 49:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I mean, look, the way that I would describe my personal, at this point, my personal political philosophy, insofar as I am developing one, is I also want people to make tons of money.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:23Pablo Torre?

  I would love that. That's why my parents came to this country, for great success and for whatever. Yes, have the life that you dreamed of. But I also think that that shouldn't come. If it means that America turns into like this casino that gets rigged, where only a select number of elites actually get to do that, actually get to win. And competition is the word I think about. Again, I come from sports, right? And the premise of competition, as in, you need to be regulated by a rulebook that forces fair play and that proves that meritocracy is defended not just by shame, which has been ineffective, certainly the last decade,

• 50:08Pablo Torre?

  but by rule of law. That's the only plausible way that I can imagine that game being played.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  And that's what I think people love about sports, right? I mean, think about the controversy, and I'm not gonna venture an opinion with LeBron James and his son, right? It got to the sense of, is there nepotism or is there not? And whether you think there is or not is sort of besides the point. The point is, we so hate that in sports. We want this sense that it doesn't matter who your family was, whether you happen to know the owner or not. It's all about just how good you are. And that's, I think, why so many Americans are drawn to sports. And yet they feel, and I know there's always a sense of, were the refs rigged? And did they get the team in the bigger market in or something? But by and large, Americans believe that sports work. They trust it. And they don't believe that the current political and economic system works.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  They feel that it's rigged against them.

• 51:03Pablo Torre?

  Well, even more than that, sports is a place where lots of very normal people who are not politically active or politically self-identified as conscious, they really care about the rules being enforced.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right.

• 51:17Pablo Torre?

  They're not following the bills you're passing, unfortunately.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:20Pablo Torre?

  But they know, wait a minute, this looks like it's rigged against my team. And my whole thing with like, why do I care about sports? Why are you on this show? That's a sports show that's talking entirely now about the rule of law. It's because we can't let our actual system of rules, our government, be so inherently disrespected that it is as impotent as the Congress you serve in has lately been. It just seems like the opportunity to convince people like, you're pro-competition, you're anti-corruption, you're pro-not-having-a-robot-take-your-dad's-job. I don't know, that seems like it could be popular.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  And it's so desperately needed. And if we don't turn around, you know, the greatest threat to our country, in my view, is not even the current president. It's despair and cynicism. It's the sense that people just give up. Okay, this thing doesn't work. We've been told, every politician comes around, they say they're gonna turn things around, they're gonna stand up for us, and then they betray their promises. We're just gonna tune out. You know, we'll do what we can, we'll watch sports, we'll go to some movies, we'll do the best we can with our families, but we're just gonna give up on politics. And if we do that, we're basically handing the decision-making to a group of elites who want nothing more than that, because that's what they think.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  They think they should be making the decisions, that the democratic project is not working. And so the task for our generation of politicians is a difficult one. It's not just to convince people of the substance of what we're trying to achieve. Medicare for all, or higher taxes on the wealthy, or making sure truck drivers don't lose their jobs. It's being able to convince them that we can actually do this, that the democratic system can work, that we can achieve the kind of public excellence that inspired this country during the New Deal, or during Kennedy's New Frontier. And I obviously believe we do, that's why I'm in politics, but it's a big lift.

• 53:21Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Did you think that the Epstein files were gonna be maybe the greatest lever on convincing apolitical people that actually the government might be able to hold incredibly wealthy and powerful people to account?

• 53:35Speaker 01

  I did not. I mean, I thought that this was kind of a side project, Nancy and I would be doing, tilting at windmills. I didn't think it would end up, because of the survivors, because of the outcry, actually breaking through and achieving the success of getting documents released. But one person, a very wise person in politics, came up to me and he said, "Well, you've got the most important commodity in American politics right now: trust. Don't screw it up."

• 54:04Pablo Torre?

  We're talking at a time near the end here when one of my classmates, Vivek Ramaswamy, your buddy.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Were you in class with him?

• 54:13Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, we took Moral Reasoning 22: Justice together.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Now, who was that with?

• 54:17Pablo Torre?

  Michael Sandel.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Sandel, yeah, Sandel's a thing. He's a thoughtful, thoughtful person.

• 54:23Pablo Torre?

  Oh, and Vivek, as we've discussed on my show previously, was the very useful and very proud, verbose libertarian.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Even back then.

• 54:33Pablo Torre?

  Of course, we got to debate with Sandel and he was, by the way, insufferable but fascinating and a guy that I continue to think about as I watch him log off.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:43Pablo Torre?

  So he has decided, we were talking in the same week, when he has decided to log off Twitter. He's off Instagram, he's off X. His campaign staff, I guess, will monitor those accounts, but he's saying, actually, we gotta get off this thing. And that is the opposite of the approach that you continue to take. And so what did you think when you saw that?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  I was a bit disappointed because there are times I've actually defended him when he was being attacked for being Hindu-American. I'm a Hindu-American. And I said, you can't attack Vivek because of his faith. And when he was being called out by Nick Fuentes saying, well, we can't have an Indian-American govern Ohio, I came to his defense. And I understand, look, every, every day, there's someone who's saying deport Kana, even though I was born in Philadelphia in 1976, our bicentenary. But you can't take stuff in the public square that personally. Yes, we've got to clean up these platforms, not for politicians like me, for our kids and making sure that they don't have the junk and the algorithmic junk. But when you're in politics, I think you've got to have a sense

• 55:45Speaker 01

  that you'll go anywhere and talk to anyone to make your case and persuade people. And you'll take the slings and arrows, the verbal slings and arrows, and engage. And that, to me, is the essence of American democracy. And I never take that for granted. And that's why I love the debate. I love participating. I love coming on podcasts. I love on Twitter. I love the exhilaration of democratic debate.

• 56:10Pablo Torre?

  It is darkly ironic, I suppose, that we are talking about the problems wrought by someone like Elon Musk while both of us continue to be on X.

• 56:23Pablo Torre?

  Engaging and fueling a platform that he has bought to control the debate. And so I guess what I'm left thinking about here at the end is I think it's probably healthy for most, if not all of our nation's children, our young people to like get the [bleep] off Twitter.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:39Pablo Torre?

  But I do think your curse, your responsibility is that you gotta fight for the issues that matter on that same battlefield.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  You can't just disengage. You've gotta go into on Fox News. You've gotta go on these platforms. And I, I personally believe you engage with strength, but civility. You know, there's some people who think just curse out folks. It's easy to curse out folks. It's much harder to say, I want to raise taxes on folks, or I want to take on the Epstein class. Lead with the substance. You can be civil in conversation if you have the strength of your convictions. And I, I do believe ultimately that will prevail in American politics.

• 57:19Pablo Torre?

  But I gotta say, the visual of you learning that we just invaded Venezuela on your phone.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  I mean, that's probably the tagline of this interview.

• 57:27Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Ro Khanna, I, I pray for the carpal tunnel syndrome that I assume you are nursing in your phone hand, but I'm glad that you continue. I'm glad that you continue to log on.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, my mom was lecturing me about that this past weekend.

• 57:41Pablo Torre?

  I can only imagine you over the holidays, you're a congressman and just the pathetic sight of your neck being craned like all of ours are, like scrolling to find out what your government is doing to you.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you'll be, have a busy January, not just because of the, not just because of the playoffs, but the Epstein files. It's gonna, you know, you're gonna have a lot of hundreds of thousands of documents released.

• 58:05Pablo Torre?

  The ultimate second screen experience for the NFL postseason is watching the Epstein Transparency Act come to fruition.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  There you go. You brought it all together on a sports podcast.

• 58:22Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 58:28Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 58:49Speaker 15

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.