Democrat Ro Khanna’s 2028 pitch: tax the rich, regulate tech | NPR's Newsmakers

I tell people all the time, I'm 49 years old, I'm about to turn 50, I'm the nice guy. I just want a new social contract. Have you met these folks in their 30s? They want pitchforks and torches. They want your scalp. Should Democrats nominate a more progressive candidate in 2028 than they have in the past? Yes. I'm tired of the platitudes, affordability, renew the American Dream, have a good job. Like branding is not an agenda. And if you don't have enemies, people who dislike you, you probably aren't saying anything substantive. Hey, this is Steve Innski with a special episode, a conversation from our sister's show Newsmakers, Home of NPR's biggest interviews, including a familiar voice. Me. I have a conversation with Congressman Rokana. For more interviews like this, follow or subscribe to Newsmakers on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you watch or listen. You can also find us on the NPR app. Many Democrats are considering a run for President in 2028. And one of them is Rokana, California Congressman, best known for his efforts to disclose the Epstein files for his progressive economics. And for representing Silicon Valley, the richest part of the U.S. economy. We sat down here at NPR at a moment when Kana's Democratic Party is trying to decide what it stands for. Rokana, welcome to NPR. Thank you for having me. I want to begin with the kind of question I might normally have asked at the end. It's about your ambitions. What are you thinking about when you think about 2028? Well, you know, they said Lincoln had an engine of ambition that knew no rest. So I don't apologize for ambition. The question is, is it ambition for a public purpose? And for me, the two central questions in our country are the economy. Right now, it's working for my district, $20 trillion. One-third of the nation's wealth in my district, but it's not working for the people I grew up with in places like Bucks County, Pennsylvania, especially Lower Bucks, where the steel factory is shut down. And do I have an economic roadmap, an economic vision that can deliver prosperity, not just for the billionaires, but for every American? Okay, do you? I'm going around the country, and we were just in Pennsylvania, five days in Pennsylvania, Erie County, Washington County, Philadelphia, and testing out some of the ideas. Just to note, you were born there, though they're also presidential swing state. So you're thinking seriously about this? Yes, I'm thinking seriously about it. I was born in Philadelphia, and I grew up in Bucks County, which is a swing county. But beyond Bucks, it was in counties where there was de-industrialization. And I saw it in my hometown, a fearless work shut down, steel shut down. My father was an engineer. He would go to Bristol, and of course, more of the state was impacted. And the problem is we didn't do anything. We urge these folks to go to financial centers, get technology jobs. Gunstown still hollowed out, feral hollowed out. I believe we need a next new deal for America, an industrial investment bank, a thousand trade schools, tech centers, care economy, childcare, elder care. China has $1.5 trillion of an investment bank that they're investing on industries and sector after sector. You know how much we put in an industrial bank? We don't have one. I mean, so we have never had a strategy for economic development in this country since FDR's New Year. The Biden administration had what was called an industrial policy. It sounds like you would have that, or maybe even more so. I would have that. I think they took some good steps towards that, but they're broader things I would do. First, they didn't target de-industrialized communities. It was a broad-based tax credits and the CHIPS Act, which I helped write. But I would actually target places like Warren, Ohio, Johnstown, Down River, Michigan. Your naming places where there were steel mills, auto plants that went away. Second, I would ask them what they want. Do we ever ask them what they want? I get wrote the CHIPS Act. You can't put a semi-conductor plant in Johnstown, do you know what they want? They want a modern steel plant because I was just there. They want a tech center for young people to get technology jobs. Let's listen to them and ask them what they want. Third, we need to involve the private sector as well. FDR before he did the new deal actually mobilized a lot of the business leaders to be investing in communities. Bill Nutsson, the CEO of General Motors, led the industrialization of America. So I would get faith leaders, business leaders, community leaders saying, "This is our mission. Economic patriotism. How are we going to invest in these communities?" Would Democrats nominate a more progressive candidate in 2028 than they have in the past? Yes. But what does that mean? It means we need America's next new deal. I believe we need an economic realignment in this country. What does that look like specifically? Tax billionaire wealth. You could raise $4 trillion if you taxed the billionaires. You know, say we have 900 billionaires in this country. There were 22% of the economy, GDP, 900 people. We're not talking about the 1%, we're not talking about the 0.01%, we're talking about the 0.001%, 19 billionaires, I know many of them, they're in my district, are worth 12% of the GDP. That is three times the wealth concentration of the gilded age. We're in a second gilded age. We can tax them. We tax them. We raise $4 trillion over 10 years. Let me tell you what that would get us. It would get us free child care. It would get us free public college and free trade schools. It would get us a sizable industrial investment bank that can start a manufacturing renaissance in this country. It would get us 1,000 new trade schools. It would be able to extend Medicare to 50. It's $180 billion a year to be able to extend Medicare to 50. I'm for Medicare for all, free universal health care, but you can at least start just by this tax and the billionaires. And we should end these foreign wars, you know, $200 billion that we are putting in a foreign war, an increased Pentagon budget, could get health care for everyone over 50. Don't you think billionaires would be able to evade any tax you passed the way that they avoid many taxes now? They have the money. It's mobile. Can move around the world. Here's the reason. First of all, they'd have to renounce American citizenship. That's like giving a Roman citizenship. If they're dumb enough to do that, they deserve their fate. Secondly, they still get in a state tax at that point. If they renounce their citizenship, they'd be taxed at 40%, we tax if you leave American citizenship. Third, wealth taxes haven't met work in other countries for two reasons. One, that most other countries don't tax based on nationality. They tax based on territory. So you can leave France. You can leave other places and you can avoid the tax. We chase you down. If you're leaving and you keep your American citizenship, you still have to pay tax. Finally, where are they going to invest? America is still the best place for capital and investment. You know how I know this in California, when we came out with a 5% wealth tax, which there's a difference to the governor and I. I support it. He doesn't. There's a ballot measure telling about that. 5% tax. They said, "Oh, this is going to be capital flight in California." You know how much venture capital is coming to California? Things that has been proposed, 85% of venture capital is still coming to California. There hasn't been capital flight. Anyone who thinks that Silicon Valley is not going to produce trillions of dollars doesn't know what they're talking about. Maybe they don't think it's going to pass. Well, they do because some of the billionaires themselves are leaving. They are leaving. But their money is not leaving. And that's because the AI revolution is enriching these technology companies and billionaires. But the question is, is that the country we want, that one third of the nation's wealth is in my district? So if the proposition on the table is that a more progressive candidate should be nominated by Democrats in 2028, do we have a test case this fall in 2026? Abdul Al Sayyad, who has seen his more progressive than other Democrats, is the Democratic nominee in a swing state, Michigan. Is that a test for your idea? If he wins, that means a progressive can win a swing state. If he loses, it would mean something else. I love Abdul's candidacy. I've endorsed him. I don't think any statewide race is a test on national prospects. By that logic, we would have had President Jeb Bush for President DeSantis. What matters? But it's a state that Democrats must win. Yes. If he can't carry it, that might say something. Well, but, you know, I do think he's going to win. What I believe what we need is Abdul's clarity on Medicare for All, Abdul's clarity on not having foreign wars, but also what I call economic patriotism, a strategy of industrial economic development, a strategy of new trade schools. Those are things, frankly, that Hayley Stevens worked on in the Obama administration. Oh, the candidate that he won't be able to beat. So a broad economic patriotism agenda I am confident will win in Michigan. And I do believe that Abdul will win that race. But even if he wins that race, that doesn't mean okay, a progressive is going to be the nominee. The American people will look at a number of great candidates. And they'll say, who can lead this country for the future? Who's going to deliver economic prosperity? Who can lead us around the world? And that's a very personal, deep bar that someone has to cross that is not a chat GPT calculus of what swing states someone is winning. You also endorsed Graham Platter, another left candidate who flamed out in the end to say the least and it scandals. What did you learn from that experience? I should have listened to my wife. She's almost never made me do it interview. She said, "You make it clear on the record that I was opposed to you endorsing him, but on a deeper level, there were signs of toxicity that other groups had picked up and I needed to be more sensitive to it. I said I got that call wrong, I made a mistake, and it means being more reflective." There's been an interesting evolution in President Trump's rhetoric about his opposition. For a while, he was calling Democrats socialists, which in some cases is literally true, but recently he's moved on to calling you all communists, which may sound absurd to you, but Republicans have often picked out a label like that and repeated it and repeated it and repeated it and then it turned out to stick. Are you concerned about that? Labels usually don't matter in American politics in my view. Are you kidding me? We've been calling the guy a fascist for 10 years and he's won two terms. You know, having communist fascists, well, here's what people care about. What are you going to do for them? Are you going to help them with their healthcare bills? Are you going to help them with their jobs? Are you going to help them with child care? Do you get with or are you on their side? I mean, yeah, people throw out all kinds of labels in American politics. I think what matters is how compelling your vision is and whether people fundamentally think is this person on our side and then secondly, does this person have a real affirmative agenda to change our views? Let me, our lives. Let me push back with a specific story about labels. I think about the 2024 election. Several years before that election, Republicans started talking about trans people. Democrats dismissed this as a minor issue that doesn't actually affect that many people. Republicans repeated their message, repeated it and repeated it and I recall in the fall of 2024, interviewing voters in Pennsylvania, a state that matters a lot to you and sitting with a gentleman, he was a person of color, he was generally liberal, he's a steel worker, and he was talking about things that bothered him and the trans issue came up in this conversation. He brought it up and it was a thing that bothered him. And I realized this message that Republicans repeated again and again and again and that Democrats had dismissed had really resonated with people who might otherwise be with him. And that is why I ask why you would dismiss the idea that calling everyone a communist might not work in the end. Well, I would distinguish between your example and just calling someone communist. Calling someone a communist is not believable, especially in my case, where I represent a district that's $20 trillion and literally one-third of the nation's wealth. A lot of things you could call me, but colleague, I'd be a communist, is it going to stay -- Well, to find some aid to mom Donnie or Sanders or someone who said something that sounded communist and not OK. But it's just not believable to voters. I think on the trans issue, there were two things. Some people thought we weren't prioritizing their economic needs. The famous ad, she's for they/them, he's for us. It will not work, in my view, if a American politician, political leader is talking about jobs and tell you about health care and saying their first priority is going to be the economic renewal of the country. Didn't Kamala Harris say those things? I don't think the economic message came out as her core reason for being and running is that she was going to revitalize these communities, that she was going to bring a modern economic prosperity. I don't think that's what people saw her reason for running as. So one is that, secondly, and I have supported -- and I'm a supporter of trans rights -- but to have a conversation with people based on respect on that issue. So that is a issue like abortion or gay rights where people have a moral view on it, a particular philosophy on it. And it's not wrong if they want to vote against me because I'm a supporter of trans rights and they don't support that, fine, that's their right. It would be wrong and foolish for someone to vote against me if they thought I was a communist, right? And I think voters are smart enough to make that distinction. So the communism stuff just isn't going to fly. Whether or values are aligned with Americans' values, I think is a case we have to make. And voters have to judge whether they're comfortable with my defense of trans rights and LGBT rights. And I'll say, look, I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where people were pretty decent and accepting about it. But if they reject me on that ground, that's fine, that's a democracy. If they reject me in my district or other places because they think I'm a communist, that's just silly and I don't think it will work. I want to understand something of the story of Silicon Valley, a good part of which you represent. And you know so many of the leading figures in Silicon Valley. Ten years ago, 20 years ago, it would have been taken as a given that it was an overwhelmingly democratic place, an overwhelmingly liberal or socially conscious place. And that has changed in the last few years. And then turns out there's a substantial part of Silicon Valley leadership who are more conservative. You might even say reactionary, even anti-democratic. And I'd like to hear what you think happened. Why did it change or was it always that and we didn't realize it? Well, first of all, I won my election in the primary 63 percent to 6 percent. I came out for a billionaire tax of 5 percent on these billionaires. There are more billionaires living in and around my district than anywhere in the world. They poured a million dollars into a candidate who was running against me. And a candidate got less votes than candidates who run against me in the past with no money. So I showed that you can stand up to these billionaires in the heart of Silicon Valley. And win. Now some of the loudest voices and the wealthiest voices have gone to the extreme right. There are a number of reasons for that. First, they want no regulation on AI. They want no regulation on cryptocurrencies. They want to be seen as the founders of civilization, carrying civilization on their back where they're trying for immortality and think of themselves almost as demigods. The Peter Teals and the Elon Musk. It's an arrogance. And Musk is threatening to sue me because I pointed out that he was unconstitutional and a doge and it could have led to the debts of millions of children according to the Lancet study. But those folks are not the broad range of Silicon Valley. Obviously, the voters voted for me. Turns out a lot of the tech employees who live in my district don't like the billionaires and how they're acting. And there are a lot of thoughtful people like Jensen Wong and Jeff Dean. And so it's a broader brush than the media paints it. If you think about someone like Mark Zuckerberg or some other tech executives who showed up with the president's inauguration, do you think they're just blowing with the wind? Yes. I think there's opportunism. Meaning if the wind blows differently, they will be different for the next president. Yes. Whether the next president wants them or not is a different question. But my view is what we should mobilize these technology leaders to do is to invest in America. What we should mobilize is to have actual federal regulation on AI. And three things I'll tell you very briefly. Let's have a tax on a gentick AI. If you want to hire someone at NPR, you're assistant and you hire a human being. You got to pay health insurance and you've got to pay a payroll tax. You want a gentick AI to do it. You don't have to pay a tax. We're actually incentivizing AI. Second, let's make sure that we have a federal jobs program. If you're a young person graduating high school or college and you're having a difficulty getting a job, why don't we hire people for four years to rebuild communities, rebuild this country, build not just the physical infrastructure from America, but the social infrastructure from America. It's a derivative idea from FDR. And when I proposed it, someone said, well, bro, FDR did the works progress administration when there was 30% unemployment. Hired a bunch of people to do public works. You got all over America. And that's where the boondoggle, by the way, comes from because they said it was a boondoggle wasn't a real job. But I said, look, the transformation we're going is very similar. Talk to a young person. They're afraid of whether they can get a good job. They can't buy a house. So have a federal jobs program. So tax AI, federal jobs program, and then defend employee jobs with bargaining. We need truck drivers on trucks. The idea of just having self-driving trucks with no truck drivers or planes without pilots is the wrong way to develop an economy. We want to be improving worker productivity, not displacing it. Is there any Silicon Valley leader or billionaire who's moved to the right, actually surprised you? You were genuinely shocked that they were willing to go as far as they did. Elon. I mean, Elon Musk learned my first book. When I came out of the Obama administration, I'm known them for years. And we always disagreed because I thought the grant to Tesla should have been linked to labor neutrality and unionization. And I always would talk to Elon about unionization. But he praised me when the Twitter files came out. I don't want to go into all of that. But basically I had defended the New York Post's first Amendment rights on the Hunter Biden story and had a private email to Twitter saying, don't censor the New York Post. That came out. He said, kind of, it's great on free speech. We had a relationship on he was very four student visas and he had defended some of the immigration. But the extent to which he was radicalized his anti-immigration views, his actions and doge that were totally unconstitutional. He's now unleashing and saying, he's going to sue me because I said to subpoena him. That's the extent of it, surprise. What do you think happened to him? One, I think the power got to his head. I mean, he was basically helped Trump buy the election and then Trump gave him the keys to do whatever he wanted for a year. He was treated as a celebrity on the right. And he got radicalized on the right. I know that some people say his trans child had some impact on him. But seeing how extreme he's gone on immigration is deeply upsetting, especially because his companies are filled with immigrants. Do you think it's just the incentives of social media, of attention, that drew him in a direction? Maybe he always had some feelings, but it drew them out. I would say it's the affirmation of the MAGA base. I mean, they upheld him. He felt a sense of belonging. He felt a sense of celebration. In its dislike of social obligation. I was in New York. I saw the Rockefeller Center, whatever else you'd think of about Rockefeller. He funded the university I went to, University of Chicago. He funded all of these public libraries in museums. So did Carnegie. The believed in giving something like 6% of his income to charity from an early age. I know that. And you look at his plaque that was in the sort of Rockefeller Center, and he talks about how he's just a custodian of the money. And he really will be judged by his public impact. And you don't have today's founders creating libraries and universities. I mean, they're trying for their own immortality. They're trying to get to Mars. There's not a sense that they need to care about what happens in Lortz town, Ohio. Elon Musk has actively said, there is no effective way for me to give away my money for the public good. He doesn't think that that's really practical. Well, he doesn't think that it's necessary. In other words, these people-- someone said to me, which was such an insight, they said, these folks would have been the conquerors in a different era. They kind of think of themselves as above you and I. And they think they're better allocators of capital. They think that Elon Musk having this money, Zuckerberg having this money, Peter Teal having this money, that they're going to carry American civilization on their backs. And it's dangerous. And when I actually most inclined to run, I think I know these people. I understand the economic future. And I will have the guts to stand up to them in the direction to make sure that this future economy works for everyone in America. Because if it continues to go the way it is, we will have the biggest wealth divide this country has ever had. As we're talking, you have just proposed a data center bill of rights. There's a lot in it. I have a couple of questions. But first of all, what is the one or two sentence definition of what you're going for? No community should have a data center shoved down their throat. Right now, you have all these states that are basically expediting data centers and local communities like Climate, Pennsylvania have no say. Six data centers coming there near Kanchahakin and King of Prussia Mall, where I grew up. And they have no say. They should have the right to say no. And there should be no data centers in residential communities or in farmland. If you are going to have a data center, why not put it in a brown field? The reason they don't want to do it there is because it costs a lot more. Brown field, meaning a former industrial site that may have already been included. There are other things you'd have to do. I read the proposal and there were some things that raised questions for me. For example, you very early on raised the concern about data centers using water, which is a thing that progresses in liberals believe and are really concerned about the use of water by data centers, except as you may know, a lot of the information about the use of water by data centers turns out to have been overblown. There's a popular book that turned out to have a factual error. It turns out that a lot of the water that they use is just recycled by the plant and it's still water. Should you still be raising that concern when it doesn't seem to be that real? - Yes, you should have to disclose what the water use is. You should have to get the communities by it. I mean, it's not for me or you to say whether a climate township believes that their water is going to be impacted, right? The local community should have to decide. And are they using recycled water? Is it going to drive up local water rates? And if not, they can make the case to local community. I'm not saying don't have these data centers at all. - So you're acknowledging they may not overuse water. You're saying you just want to know. - Transparency and local control. So you make the case. You tell people what the water usage is, how you're going to use it. Is it going to impact local rates? And then if you don't have anything to hide, the local community wouldn't support it. - This is another question that I have. You push for provisions allowing a local community to reject a data center if they don't want it. You don't want to have a statewide mandate on data centers. You want to make it easy for the community through a transparent process to reject data centers. Which all sounds really good as we're sitting here in this interview. But I'm aware as I'm sure you are that a lot of liberals and progressives have grown concerned about how easy it is for someone to stop a project in their backyard. That they're actually, that we set up the government in such a way that people can prevent the government from doing anything, prevent the economy from growing. Because it's too easy to protest against a project. I think you're concerned about that, aren't you? - It's a great question and a good point. I mean, the nimbyism on housing has really hurt in my view. - Well, that's what this is, isn't it? - Wow, but I think there's a huge difference between building affordable housing so young kids can have a home or building an industrial plan. So someone in the building trades, it can get a good job in building data centers. You know, I talked to a guy in Pennsylvania. The reason I keep mentioning Pennsylvania is I was just there for a week. And he also happens to be a swing state, we'll just mention it again. But please, continue to know about it. It's all on the top of my mind. - Sure, yeah. - And he was an electrician. He said, I feel kind of guilty about it 'cause data centers give me a long term job and that's something that I want. But all these, my neighbors are upset about it. And I'm conflicted, but what I don't understand is why is that my only option? Why can't we be building steel? Why can't we building automobile plants? Why can't we be building chips plants? Other parts of industry, and so, yes, we need to have reform on permitting in ways that are environmentally sustainable. But data centers aren't the first thing that comes to mind. I would be focused on housing. I would be focused on a critical industrial plants. - I don't think the steel mill is going to employ that many people anymore, either it's going to be highly automated. - Well, it won't. It will employ, we have about 12 million people in manufacturing and maybe able to employ a thousand people, but a thousand person direct reduction iron steel plan in Johnstown with the multiplier effect would make a big difference. And but I don't, I don't have a view. Let's just build four to eight steel plants and suddenly we're going to solve America's problem. - You don't want to have a five year plan like China does, I assume. - But if we do cross-sector steel, ships, auto parts, machine tools, drones, robotics, if we have a policy that if you're a manufacturer that are making something that we're currently importing, we're going to help you the small and medium-sized manufacturers and we're targeting de-industrialized areas, that's one part of it. Second, we're going to invest in the care economy, childcare jobs, home care jobs, elder care jobs. Third, we're going to have trade schools, a thousand new trade schools across America. It's such a small investment from 1.7 billion to 5 billion and we would have construction jobs, trade jobs. Fourth, we're going to have these tech institutes. So people can actually do some of the new technology jobs, not just maintain a data center, actually six figure jobs, about 10 million of them. And five, we're going to have capital. So it's not sitting all in my district, but capital for Main Street and Small Businesses. I want an economic development strategy for America. We've done it with Hamilton, we've done it with Lincoln, we've done it with F.D. Ork, it's time to do it now. And that's what Trump promised, but never filled in the details. I want to ask about corruption. Yes. You have, if I'm not mistaken, proposed that members of Congress, like yourself, should be banned from trading stocks. Correct. How would that work? It would, members of Congress would be required under the trust act to be in a trust and they would not be able to trade any stocks. Does it mean a blind trust, meaning they don't even know where their own investments are? It's a trust that is either a blind trust or a diversified trust means it has to be over-- Oh, like an index fund, or over 30 different percent or so of different sectors. And I led, it was a co-sponsor, the trust act, and led on that, and have led the calls. But it's not just about banning stock trading. And by the way, Donald Trump has traded more stocks than the entire Congress combined. And his remarks move the market up and down almost daily, sure. It is about not having PAC and lobbyist money, overturning citizens united, having turnlimits for members of Congress, banning members of Congress from ever becoming a lobbyist, making sure that we are getting money out of politics. That's the corrupting influence. I mean, you basically have PACs spending millions of dollars so we can't get Medicare for all. So we can't get free child care. So we can't have tax on billionaires. And to me, that is the biggest issue. And I believe we need a constitutional convention, have the states do it. They're already 25 states that have an amendment saying to regulate private money. And if you can get to two thirds, you can have an article five convention. We've never done that before, but for the direct election of senators, we got to about 30 states and then Congress moved. And my view is if we can get to about 30, 31 states, we could force an amendment to end PAC money. To end PAC money to limit the influence of money in politics, which the Supreme Court has made impossible almost. I don't know how you basically have people being bought. I mean, you've got literally millions of dollars coming in into these house and Senate races. And they don't need to buy everyone. They can just buy one or two people and the regular committees to prevent consequential reform. I am less concerned about can a progressive win? And I'm more concerned about once a progressive wins. Can they actually enact an American next new deal? Do your personal investments conform to the legislation on stock trading that you propose? Absolutely. Yes. It's under the trust act. You have a family trust, if I'm not mistaken, with tens of millions of dollars, or I don't know what the amount of money is. I don't know the amount, but okay. And you have no knowledge of where that money is? No. It's not. No. I mean, I grew up in it. Is it a blind trust? Is it set up and so far? It's diversified. It's diversified. Yes. Meaning you could go find out. But if you went and found out there would be no overwhelming percentage and this or that stock. Correct. And I found out when we disclosed it. So you believe you yourself would not have to change anything if you, if that became correct. I mean, obviously there would be rules under the interpretation of that. And I've complied with every rule since I've been in Congress. Are you prepared for that moment? You're running for president. It's 2028. It's maybe even just the primaries, not even the general. And someone goes through your entire family investment and finds the embarrassing stock that you want. Have you actually done the research yourself to see that there's so much out there. But I think what people ultimately care about is where do you stand? And when they look at my record, they will see that I have stood up to billionaires and a 5% tax. I have been a consistent voice for Medicare for all. I have been a consistent voice in standing up to the defense contractors and voting against a defense budget, often the only person on the armed services committee. I stood up for truck drivers and teamsters over big tech. I proposed legislation to break up monopolies for an internet bill of rights. So I think people will see that I have been willing to actually take on structures of power. I grew up middle class. I took out a lot of loans. Obviously, there's no secret that I've done well. My family's done well. But I don't hide that. But what I say is that I am willing and have shown a guts to take on the economic class to make sure it's working for every American. You have also proposed further legislation relating to Jeffrey Epstein, which I'd like to summarize as a follow-up on the previous legislation saying that the first legislation having to do with disclosure should actually be enacted. What do you think is still out there that we don't know that is not disclosed? We don't have 3 million of these files still in the Epstein files. And those are large numbers of survivors talking to FBI agents and telling them who the men were, who raped them, or abused them. Those were scrubbed by the FBI and they've been redacted and we still don't have them released. Obviously, I'm asking you here to make assumptions about things that we don't know. But there seems to be a couple of categories of what might be out there. One might be more information like we already know. More victims, a few more offenders, the same pattern that we've already seen. But there's also the idea that there is an even deeper conspiracy that someone as yet unnamed in the US government was protecting Epstein, working with Epstein, using Epstein, that there may have been a foreign government involved with Epstein. Do you assume that there is some bigger conspiracy out there? I have been very careful not to speculate because one of the reasons we've been so successful is we've stuck to the facts. And what I say is I don't know, but I do know there are a lot of unanswered questions. Julia Brown, who is one of the best reporters on this, believes that there are important questions about whether Epstein did have connections to our intelligence agencies or foreign intelligence agencies. You don't rule it out. I don't rule it out, but I don't speculate about it. And what I do know is that the American president should issue a report about who Epstein was and what his connections were, either by declassifying that information or having a commission that looks at the classified information and puts out a public report. And I don't understand why JD Vance isn't calling for that. I mean, he's the one who was speaking all the time out of the Epstein files, Epstein files. He still says, oh, I think that there are important questions about Jeffrey Epstein. Well, if you think that you're vice president, you're not a pundit. Well, for a report, it takes plain to the American people. Have you seen any evidence or facts that we do know that would point toward US intelligence agencies or to a specific foreign intelligence agency? I have not seen some specific evidence. I have just seen the things in the files where there are questions about who was paying Epstein. Why did he have access to so many powerful people? How had he built this network? But I don't, there's no smoking gun where I've seen something in the files that says, okay, this person was meeting with the CIA or a foreign intelligence agency. I was thinking about this scandal. It's obviously monstrous and huge. And yet there's also the reality that it would be hard to prove to many people that we've ever gotten to the bottom of it. Some people will just never trust or believe that the government has disclosed everything. And then I realized if you run for president, if you become president in 2029, suddenly you'll be the guy that people assume is not telling all the truth. Are you, have you thought about that possibility? What would you do about it? I actually have thought about the possibility that the next president is going to have a huge burden on this. And what I would say is that the anger is that wealthy and powerful people did not get justice that they were above the law, that you and I have to get justice if we run a traffic light. But these folks were part of a network where they were either engaged in sexual abuse or covering it up and they skated. And so the next administration needs to do three things. First, they need to release the remaining files in consultation with the survivors. I would have the president appoint someone from the survivor community, a lawyer representing them to take charge of that, so that they have credibility. Here, they are even meeting with the survivors. But if you would go to the survivors and say, who should I appoint? Who would be at least as a co-equal or someone from the survivor community, someone like a Bradley Edwards, etc, to co-lead this process. So you have trust in the process. Back in, I would have a review of that evidence by people, again, who have connections with survivors to see where investigations need to happen and prosecutions need to happen. I believe in due process. So I don't believe that an American president should just be saying, okay, go prosecute someone. But there needs to be a look at where there should be investigations and prosecutions. And that should come from people who really have a sympathy with survivors. And third, I would have this report on Epstein. Now, I'm not saying that's me. I'm saying whoever the next president is. You represent part of the country that has a huge economic growth, as you mentioned, that also terrifies a lot of people. And I think even including some people in the tech world themselves, wonder about the end of humanity or the end of democracy, the end of human autonomy. I don't know if you have those fears or not, but I'd like to ask in the biggest way possible, what terrifies you, what keeps you up at night? That we're at a breaking point in America, and that if we don't do something dramatically different, we may break. The American revolution was not the French or Russian revolution. It was a revolution on political liberty, not of massive economic transformation. And I tell people all the time, I'm 49 years old, I'm about to turn 50, I'm the nice guy. They want pitchforks, isn't it? torches. They want your scalps in terms of politically. And my fear is that if we don't have a ambitious transformative agenda that gets this country working again for people who feel they don't have health care, they don't have jobs, they don't have a home, then we really could break as a nation. We could break this greatest nation to be a multiracial democracy. And while some tech folks are worried about terminators and AI messing things up, I'm not saying that we don't discount, we discount that. Of course, we need AI regulation. I'm worried about the American political project breaking apart at the seams. And ultimately, someone had asked who are the great presidents that someone are interviewing. And it's like so obvious to me, it's Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. But ultimately I'm motivated by Lincoln's fundamental sentiment to preserve the union. We're not going to preserve the union if we do not have economic transformation. Are you saying you want to be something like Franklin Roosevelt, who was hated by capitalist, but said he was saving capitalism? Well, it would be highly arrogant for a member of Congress who said one or two percent of the polls to be comparing themselves in any way. And yet you would not be the only one to do that. Please, please do to do to be comparing themselves to the greatest, the modern president. I would say this. I would say FDR as agenda. He was someone who was from a wealth. Of course, I was a middle class and working class, but I've come from a place of success in Silicon Valley. And he was willing to toy on that capital class to make the economy work for everyone is a model for a time with an important correction. He excluded a lot of the black south, where domestic workers, agricultural workers didn't get a chance. He purposely set social security at 65, knowing that black life expectancy was 59. That was the only way he was going to get southern support for that social reform. He excluded, of course, Japanese Americans and turned them. But a multi-racial new deal, in my view, is what is needed. And it will probably be one of America's greatest moments because what we can do and will do in America, I don't know if it'll be my generation or the next generation, we will become the world's first cohesive multi-racial democracy. We are 60 percent white and non-Hispanic. Canada's 87 percent. Britain's 87 percent. Australia's 87 percent. We're trying to do something extraordinary. And if we can create the economic conditions across America to give people what I had, a fair shot to have a good job, to be able to buy a home, to make a life, then we can start to heal the wounds of this country and be a multi-racial democracy that is a civilizational achievement. We're not one now? We're, we've done, we are a multi-racial democracy, we're not a cohesive multi-racial democracy. We're a multi-racial democracy that is breaking apart and that is angry. But, you know, who would have thought that you could just have a glide path to doing something that's never been done in the history of the world? So we have, this is our challenge as a, as a, as a generation. Our challenge is as severe as FDR's challenge. We have people who are left out of an economy who don't feel seen, who don't feel heard. They're left out based on factory towns, rural America, based on race, and if we can solve that and offer a vision forward with massive transformative change, then, then we can achieve something that no civilid nation has ever achieved in history. The one thing I will say is we need to be specific. I'm tired of the platitudes. Affordability. Renew the American dream. Have a good job. Like, you know, branding is not an agenda. Boldness cannot just be branding. We need to say we're going to tax billionaire wealth. We're going to say we're going to have free health care with Medicare for all, free child care. We're going to increase the living wage. We're going to increase union density by linking federal contracts to that. And we're going to going to stop the foreign wars. I've got a lot of people who dislike me, not just Elon Musk and these tech billionaires, APEC, a lot of people who say, hey, kind of wants transformation. Because I do. Because I think that that's what's going to really get people to shine in this country. Rokana, thanks. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you. Enjoyed it. Thanks for listening. New episodes of Newsmakers drop as soon as they're available and we share them right here on up first when we can. But the best way to stay caught up is to follow or subscribe to the show on Spotify on YouTube or anywhere. Of course, you can also find it in the NPR app. And remember, Newsmakers like up first relies on supporters who value independent journalism and a free press. Join NPR Plus. Today, if you can, to support our work and get perks from the podcasts you trust, go to plus.npr.org. I'm Steve Inskeven. Thanks for listening to what first from NPR News.