David Leonhardt interviewed U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna on the NYT opinion podcast yesterday under the headline, "The Democrat Who Split MAGA Over the Epstein Files." Khanna styles himself an economic populist, and he has paid a lot of attention recent years to spatial inequality and the ways in which rural and rural-ish communities have been hurt by U.S. trade policies of recent years. In this interview, Khanna talks about his collaboration with Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie to push for the release of the Epstein files. The quotes below, all from Khanna, link rural and working class agitation that drew them to Trump to their discontent with the so-called "Epstein class."
Khanna: I have been going on podcasts to argue for my economic patriotism agenda — an agenda that says we’ve got to focus on factory towns that have been hollowed out in rural communities. I was going and visiting these communities, and so I was on Theo Von’s podcast and I was on the “Flagrant” podcast and I was going to places like Johnstown, Pa., and going to places like Warren, Ohio. When I was there, the issue would come up about the “Epstein class” — that’s what they called it. They said, well, are you on the side of the forgotten Americans or on the side of the Epstein class?
I realized how much the abuse by rich and powerful men of young girls and the sense of a rape island that Epstein had set up for people embodied the corruption of government. And then many of them saw Donald Trump as fighting this corrupt government and standing up for forgotten Americans. And this was the symbol for the most disgusting abuse and corruption of our government. And so when the issue came up that Pam Bondi said that there was nothing to release, I knew that this was a betrayal of the core promise that Trump had made to MAGA voters.
I said, we should push for the release. And I put out some tweet initially and then we introduced a bill. Then Massie and I have worked together for years; we have a real friendship. He called me and he said: Well, why don’t we try to collaborate on this instead of just doing something partisan? And I think we can reshape the coalition.
In the process, I then met the survivors and when I met the survivors, then it became personal. I mean, these are women who are talking about being raped at the age of 14 and being told to recruit other junior high and high school students. I think I had the same experience that Marjorie Taylor Greene or Nancy Mace or Thomas Massie had — once you meet these survivors, I mean, it’s just one of the most horrific crimes in our country’s history.* * *
And once these files are released, people can judge for themselves the abusive conditions of those young girls. But one of the survivors really struck me and said, “Ro, I don’t remember what happened to me, and I want to see the files to understand the trauma I went through.” And for these survivors, some of them voted for Trump. It’s not personal. In fact, we’re having a press conference and one of the asks of the survivors will be to meet with Donald Trump to have these files released. But anyone who meets them realizes that, look, there were over a thousand victims. The idea that only two people would be doing this with a thousand victims just doesn’t make sense. I mean, it’s more than Epstein and Maxwell. It’s a symbol for the recklessness of an elite that could do things without impunity.* * *
It gave me a sense of how deep it went. I didn’t really follow the details. Now, there is a whole island of people with a thousand-plus victims abused so that the scale of it, it resonated. And it occurred to me how many people view this as the central example of the corruption of their own government. And many of them had said — look, they thought that there were more Democrats than Republicans involved. I think that’s probably because of Trump’s messaging. And I don’t believe that to be the case, I think it’s widespread, but that was the sentiment. And so the emotional power of it is something that I grasped only because I was in these communities. I was on these podcasts and I was talking to people in the MAGA base.* * *
And I would often say to people, after I go into these communities, when I was in Aliquippa or Johnstown, I said, if I was in one of those communities, I’d vote everyone out too. Why wouldn’t you? Those towns have been abandoned for 40 years and it’s not just the working class.
I think this is one of the places that Democrats make a mistake — it’s not just the person who’s making $13 an hour who should be making $15 or $17 or $20 an hour. It’s people who are doctors or who are lawyers or who are small-business owners who think their entire communities have been hollowed out. The pride is gone. Their jobs were shipped overseas. They see districts like mine that are succeeding. They think they built America and a governing class has abandoned them. And Trump evoked that sentiment and he said, I’m going to tear down this corrupt system. I would often say, well, what we need to do is build things up. But they said, well, your party is not even understanding what needs to be torn down.
The Epstein class often became Exhibit 1 in what they thought that the status quo had protected, and didn’t care enough about. So I think it’s deeper than just the economics. It was this sense that these people feel and felt they were losing their country.
* * *
I did not know, in full honesty, where the MAGA base would go because one of the things — having just been to so many small towns, rural communities, factory towns for the past nine years — that I think we don’t understand is the emotional connection that Trump built with these communities because he was one of the first people to say, you got shafted, you got screwed and I’m going to bring back your pride.
And so they give him a lot of latitude because they think he was the first to emotionally speak to their ambition and their pain and their hopes. But what started to happen is, as we built momentum for this, I started to see commentators first in the MAGA base say: “You know what? This is really important. This is core to what Trump ran on.”
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