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Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna delivers a fiery speech targeting Donald Trump, billionaires and Washington’s political elite, declaring “working class over Epstein class.”

Khanna argues that Democrats need to return to an economic agenda focused on working Americans, calling for Medicare for All, free childcare, higher taxes on billionaires, stronger unions, new jobs, trade schools and affordable homeownership.

He also takes aim at the Democratic establishment, arguing that those who lost elections to Trump should not decide which ideas are “too radical” for the next generation of Democrats.

Watch the full speech as Ro Khanna lays out his vision for a new Democratic economic agenda and takes sharp aim at Trump, billionaires and political elites.

#RoKhanna #DonaldTrump #Trump #Epstein #EpsteinClass #Democrats #USPolitics #AmericanPolitics #Billionaires #WorkingClass #DemocraticParty #TrumpNews #PoliticalNews #Congress #BreakingNews

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Transcript
00:00Over the Epstein class, our vision for this party is to deliver America's next new deal.
00:07What does that mean?
00:08It means Medicare for all.
00:09No more excuses, no more half measures, free universal health care for every American now.
00:18Well, thank you, Ken, for your leadership.
00:22Let's give Ken Martin a round of applause for the extraordinary job that he's been doing.
00:28And thank you to Lloyd Doggett, a towering intellect in our Congress.
00:34Let's give Lloyd a round of applause.
00:39I'm a proud Democrat, but I did not come here today just to celebrate the Democratic Party.
00:48I came here to speak from my heart about what it means to live up to our values.
00:53Our strongest tradition is the fight for economic democracy.
01:00It runs from Thomas Jefferson's distrust of concentrated financial power through William Jennings Bryan's defense of producers against eastern capital
01:11to FDR's New Deal.
01:13It lives in Johnson's Medicare and Medicaid, and it lives in Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.
01:22This is the tradition that says our party fights for an economy that works for people who work, not just
01:31for the capital class.
01:32In the 1960s, this tradition still had force, A. Philip Randolph, Baird Rustin, and Dr. King built on FDR's four
01:42freedoms with the Freedom Budget, a plan for full employment, decent wages, health care, and for housing.
01:52That was Dr. King.
01:54But here's the reality.
01:56The Freedom Budget was never enacted.
02:00Civil rights advanced.
02:02Economic rights were postponed.
02:06Our party began losing its way in the 1970s, right around the time I was born.
02:12Stagflation fueled an anti-government fervor, and too many of us decided that the only way to survive politically was
02:20to accommodate it, to accept the ideological overcorrection that government itself was the problem.
02:28And accommodate we did.
02:30We supported financial deregulation and backed free trade deals that led to deindustrialization.
02:38We urged people to leave their hometowns for financial and technology sectors.
02:44We stopped being the party of Main Street and became the party of Wall Street.
02:51We kept the language of justice while abandoning the project of economic democracy that Randolph and King
02:59had put on the table.
03:02A lot of people now say that our party needs to be bold again.
03:07I agree.
03:09But calling for boldness without an agenda is just branding.
03:17I'm tired of the platitudes.
03:20I'm tired of consultant crafted focus group language saying we need to be about affordability.
03:27Or renewing the American dream delivered without the specific policies to make them real that FDR or King fought for.
03:38I did not come to Washington to do messaging.
03:41I came to fight for a real agenda.
03:45Medicare for all.
03:48Tax the billionaires.
03:49No foreign wars.
03:52When we fight instead of platitudes, Trump's coalition can crack.
03:57We saw it with the Epstein Files Act.
03:59I stood with survivors and worked with Thomas Passy to pass the most consequential legislation
04:05a Democrat has in Trump's second term.
04:08It is the moment when Trump's presidency began to unravel.
04:12That is the kind of substantive politics I believe in.
04:16I come from the economic patriotism wing of the Democratic Party, the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party.
04:23We believe a national economic project is our path back from the wilderness.
04:30We see that America is at a breaking point.
04:33And that if we do not offer a new economic bargain, well, we will break.
04:39We understand, and I mean this with no offense, we understand that those who have lost two
04:45elections to Trump are no experts on electability and have no standing to tell a new generation
04:51of Democrats that their ideas for justice are too radical.
04:56We are for the working class over the Epstein class.
05:01Our vision for this party is to deliver America's next New Deal.
05:05What does that mean?
05:07It means Medicare for all.
05:08No more excuses.
05:09No more half measures.
05:11Free universal health care for every American now.
05:16It means free child care for America.
05:19For 80 billion that we spent in Iran, we could do that today.
05:24A decent life requires good jobs in communities that people actually live in.
05:29That is why we need a national industrial development bank that rebuilds places hollowed out, whether
05:35it's in North Country, New Hampshire, Johnstown, Milwaukee, Bessemer, towns across this country.
05:41If China can invest $1.5 trillion in a national industrial bank, why can't we?
05:47It means a thousand new trade schools across America, a thousand new trade schools and tech
05:54centers to have next generation of jobs.
05:57Here's another simple idea.
05:59Hardworking Americans should be able to buy a home.
06:02How about we do this?
06:03A home by 35.
06:05If you work seven years and you earn the right to buy a home with zero down payment and low
06:12interest loans, it's the same deal we give our veterans.
06:14Put young people in homes again.
06:18Now here's what the Republicans will say, by the way, they called FDR a communist too.
06:23They called him a communist in disguise and they called that Dr. King that too, two of the
06:27greatest leaders of the 20th century.
06:28But here they'll say, how are you going to pay for it?
06:31How are you going to pay for it?
06:32Now take it from the guy from Silicon Valley.
06:34I've got a clear idea, tax the billionaires, all 989 of them.
06:42That's not the 1%.
06:45That's not the 0.1%.
06:47It's not the 0.01%.
06:49It's the 0.001% and you tax them at 5%, you raise $4 trillion.
06:58Some say, Roe, you're calling for taxing the billionaires, it's class warfare.
07:05I've got news for them.
07:07The billionaires have already been waging a class war.
07:11They are decimating unions.
07:14They are outsourcing jobs.
07:16They are putting costs of homes out of reach.
07:20America has been in a five decades class war since the 1970s.
07:25It's time to get off the sidelines and show whose side we are on.
07:30Nearly 100 billionaires live in my district.
07:33They didn't like me because I was for the 5% California tax because I believe we should
07:37pay for poor kids' health care instead of them.
07:40Well, they ran a million-dollar candidate against me because I supported the tax.
07:45I won 63 to 6.
07:48So here's my question.
07:50If the guy representing a third of the nation's wealth in Silicon Valley can be taxing the
07:55billionaires, how is this a hard vote for 434 other members of Congress?
08:01The same class fight is now playing out with AI.
08:05This is not complicated.
08:07We must be on the side of the workers.
08:09A party against oligarchy must stand with Teamsters over Tesla, truck drivers over big trucks.
08:16Just like planes have pilots, trucks should have drivers.
08:21Tax agentic AI and robots more than human workers.
08:25Stop data centers in residential communities.
08:28Protect workers from being fired with collective bargaining rights so that they have union rights.
08:35Democrats.
08:36Democrats must put workers first in an AI age.
08:40And when I say we stand with workers, that includes our friends and neighbors who prepare
08:45our food, build our homes, and care for our children.
08:49That is why we must abolish ICE.
08:52It is a cruel rogue agency.
09:00It is an agency, and you know this, that murdered Lorenzo Salgado, replaced ICE with an immigration
09:09agency like we had from the New Deal until George W. Bush that works under justice.
09:14Here's what I want to say about this.
09:16When they shot Lorenzo, and I don't know if you saw his kids, well-educated, polite kids.
09:22When they shot Lorenzo, a construction worker, a 52-year-old father with three polite, well-raised
09:28children, they shot the American Dream.
09:32That's what they shot, those ICE officers.
09:35I'm almost done.
09:36I've got my 10 minutes.
09:37I'm just not giving Ken a heart attack here.
09:39The skeptics will say we cannot blast this agenda because of money in politics.
09:44They have a point.
09:46Our party must lead the fight to get money out of politics.
09:49That's why I support Ken Martin.
09:51No super PAC spending in Democratic parties, primaries, none, not now, not in 2028.
09:58There is no reconciliation in America without accountability.
10:02The bankers who caused the great financial crash in 2008, they belong in jail.
10:07The officials who lied us into the Iraq war, they need investigation.
10:13The Justice Department should never have delayed the January 6th cases that led Trump back into
10:18power.
10:21And so here's what I can say.
10:23When we take back the House, when we take back the Senate, we subpoena, we investigate,
10:29and we prosecute.
10:31We hold accountable.
10:34We hold accountable the powerful who stole from this nation, who doged this nation, and
10:40who kill innocent people on the streets in this nation.
10:44Accountability doesn't just stop at our borders.
10:48October 7th was a horrific terrorist attack, and it must be condemned unequivocally.
10:58But Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, and we should have the courage to say so.
11:04I saw the apartheid system in the West Bank when I was detained there.
11:11Zero aid to Israel.
11:13No military sales of weapons used to kill civilians.
11:17And let me be clear, if our party cannot stand for these principles, it will never convince
11:22a generation that watched the horrors of Gaza on their iPhones that we mean what we say
11:28about justice.
11:31Fortunately, America has a remarkable capacity for self-correction.
11:37Look, like all of you, I believe in this country.
11:41My grandfather fought for justice, and he went to jail twice as part of Gandhi's independence
11:48movement.
11:50Today his grandson serves in the Congress, representing arguably the most economically consequential
11:56district in the world.
11:58I never thought I would get there.
12:00I was born in Philadelphia, our bicentennial year.
12:04Teachers and Little League coaches believed in me.
12:07My mother believed in me so much, and believed in America, that she would stay up late into
12:12the night with note cards of big English words, sure that if I learned every English word, maybe
12:19I would just have a shot in this country.
12:22My father would rise before dawn to go to work and still be present at every Little League
12:28game, even though I couldn't hit the ball for anything.
12:33All they asked of me was hard work and that I show up.
12:39This country gave me and my family a chance to succeed.
12:43I want a country where every American has the same chances that I had growing up.
12:50That's all.
12:52That requires a Democratic Party ready to reclaim its moral purpose and to stand for economic
12:58democracy against oligarchy.
13:00A party ready to lead the future with America's next New Deal.
13:05Let us be the party that calls on America to be bigger.
13:09Let us build an agenda that heals the divides between those who own capital and those who
13:17work with their labor, between the coasts and the factory towns, between the America that
13:24feels forgotten and the America that feels seen.
13:28Democrats, this is our generation's time to answer history's call.
13:33Well, you and I have our moment to write this next chapter.
13:37So one day they will say about us that we saved this country and did our part to build
13:43a more perfect union.
13:44Thank you for having me.
13:45Thank you for being in the fight.
13:49Subscribe to One India and never miss an update.
13:54Download the One India app now.
13:57Don't forget to subscribe to our channel off.
13:58Thanks for
13:58Love the One598.
13:58Bye-bye.
13:58teams up on America's website.
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