Name: Ro Khanna | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #591
Uploaded: 2025-06-20T06:37:39.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ro Khanna | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #591' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ro Khanna | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #591' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-20. Transcript available.

Ro Khanna | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #591

california we've got some new tour dates for you i'll be in los angeles on august
14th
at the dolby theater anaheim on the august 16th at the honda center and oceanside
on august 17th
at front wave arena get your tickets early this thursday june 19th with code
rat king
10 a.m local time general on sale begins friday june 20th get your tickets only
at
theovon.com slash t-o-u-r uh please avoid any scalper sites and thank you so
much this is the
return of the rat tour almost over i promise it's almost over and thank you
guys so much for all the
support today's guest is a united states congressman from california's 17th
district that is silicon
valley he's from philadelphia his parents immigrated from india he worked with
bernie sanders he was his
co-chair on sanders presidential campaign in 2020. i'm grateful for his time he's
a member of the
the democratic party today's guest is congressman roe connor
uh roe connor is that right that's right perfect nice thank you for coming in
today man thanks for uh
thanks for meeting up and just um being willing to come and chat um you are indian
your family is indian
indian heritage yeah okay my parents uh immigrated from india uh my grandfather
actually uh amranath
video lunkar spent years in jail fighting for india's independence as part of gandhi's
independence
movement and then uh my parents uh came and settled in philadelphia that's
where i was born do a lot of indian
people is that is that you know some places in america are certain like kind of
spots where people
start to come is that a is that a popular place that a lot of indian people
have gone to over the
years you know where i grew up in bucks county pennsylvania there were a few
indian families but it
was 99 white uh the bigger places are new jersey have you ever been to uh edison
new jersey i don't
think so uh edison it's got a lot of indian food have you eaten indian food oh
yeah i've had some
good indian food what's your favorite uh dish um i think it's like the one it's
like uh where you all
sit in a circle and everybody kind of like catches a cold together or whatever
whatever that's just a
cold no i just mean like everybody's like kind of sharing off of this yeah it
is a very sure thing
you got to come to fremont sometime in california that's the best indian food
in the in the country
but fremont silicon valley a lot of indian families new york new jersey you
know but my upbringing was
interesting because i was one of the few indian kids growing up in uh pennsylvania
and uh you know i
grew up though with a lot of people who teachers who believed in me little
league coaches who believed
in me uh and uh at times i would get teased being indian but by and large it
made me very hopeful
about the country yeah man well thanks um i know we wanted to talk about i'm
trying to think i actually
wrote some questions down today because i feel like oh wow i feel like this is
this is like meet the
press you got you got you're you're you're on on a different level i i thought
you know the thing i
love about your show is it's kind of uh just you talking like a regular person
maybe you're right
should i put these away you think i mean no you you can give it a try i mean i
think you guys you
know why i think this is what i realized i was like man i have sometimes i have
conversations with
people that i want to be able to get more information from and i can't remember
everything right but you
know what the thing about you is i'm not saying this to flattery a lot of times
you'll ask questions
and they're like deeper and smarter than some of the sunday talk show hosts and
i think it's because
you actually talk to real people and it's sort of like well how does this
affect my buddy how does
this affect real people so well you could give it a try when they well let me
we'll do a mix how about
this you we um i know how we got in touch is you and i had like similar
thoughts on different topics
online yeah um well let's just start with iran or iran people say it
differently but or do you think
we're headed into world war three here what do you think is going on i'm really
concerned i'm fearful
we have a possibility where we're going to blunder into another war in the
middle east and just today
actually to make some news thomas massey who's a principled republican and
myself introduced a war powers
resolution saying that the president should not get into a war with iran
without coming to congress
uh you know the president to his credit ran against the war in iraq he ran
saying i don't want
uh any wars and the reality is that if we strike iran they start hitting us
back and hitting our troops
in the middle east terrorist activity that's going to cost this country a lot
of money that should be
being spent here at home it's going to mean people could die who are serving
the country oh yeah
well let's take a look at this at the bill that you guys were thinking about
what is it called
it's called uh the war powers resolution to stop a war in iran which basically
says
before the president does anything to go into war uh with iran he's got to get
a vote in congress
and how long does that take though like usually to get a vote in congress
because there's a certain
period of time like can they do it in 24 hours it takes weeks or what they
could it's the
decision of the speaker of the house to when he can bring it he has to bring it
within 15 days but
what we want is today but by the way you know there are a lot of trump
supporters who are telling
him don't go into this war uh tucker carlson uh marjorie taylor green oh dave
smith was talking
about it he's a uh political he's a comedian who also talks a lot about
politics you know um oh i think
it's this is a horrible idea you know you know and yeah people say well you don't
know a ton about the
middle east well like that's fine i don't want people i know my friends getting
called up i don't
want seriously uh the children of my friends getting called over to die um it i
don't even understand
how it's an option the only reason i even kind of want it to be possible is to
give is that if israel
like goes to war with iran then it'll it'll at least stop killing palestinian
people for a day or
two right you know what i'm saying like that's like my own it's like at least
point the guns that
way you know kind of that's where some of my thoughts are well you've been such
a courageous
voice on on gaza i mean you look at what's going on there right 55 000 people
killed now israel says
some terrorists and they're right some terrorists but most of them women and
children yeah you've got a
130 000 people injured you've got over 600 000 kids who are not in school there
you've got the entire
population of gaza being forced into a corner southern corner of gaza and then
you've got
over 400 000 people who are starving who don't have enough food to live a
decent life yeah and the saddest
part i feel like is you see this and you're like somebody should come help them
that's my first
thought a lot of times and then the saddest thought for me after that is we
should come out
like it feels like america is the group that would go to help that situation
usually that's we're the
good guys right i mean we were the good guys in world war ii we saved the world
from nazism we were
the good guys in the cold war we stood up the soviet union people want to think
that we are the good
guys why are we helping netanyahu in the killing of children women and so many
palestinian civilians
now look israel was hard hit october 7th i'm sure like many people you thought
that was horrific the
october 7th attack oh yeah and neither of us have any sympathy for hamas they're
a terrorist group but
what happened is i supported initially israel saying go get those terrorists
who committed those horrific
attacks on october 7th but by within three months they had destroyed a lot of
hamas what
now is happening over two years later they're still going and bombing and they're
bombing because ben
gavir and smoltledge two of the people in netanyahu's cabinet are saying don't
stop the war even though
they know that they can't you can't bomb and eradicate hamas they haven't been
able to do it
and what's the only thing that's happening is that civilians are getting killed
and israel actually is
becoming less popular in that region i mean i was in saudi arabia and jordan
they're losing support yeah so why is
netanyahu trying to drag us into it what do you think that relationship is like
between him and donald trump
so i think donald trump actually initially stood up to netanyahu because he
wanted to bring this war
to a close and he didn't want to get dragged in initially to a war in iran i
mean you know what
trump's courage was why he became president in 2016 do you remember the
republican stage and they all asked
are you for the iraq war and jeb bush who was george bush's brother wasn't
willing to say that his
brother made a mistake oh yeah he's a little oil bunny you know and donald
trump to his credit
stood up on a republican stage and said the iraq war was a disaster i think
that's how he became
president and he ran saying i want to be a president who ends these wars i
really believe that's what he
thought at the time oh well sure well i think recently you know um how we're
doing okay without
the note so far huh you're doing great okay i wish i wish people had more
common sense like you than
the people who are making this foreign policy stuff actually my recommendation
is that before donald trump
makes a decision he needs to have a conversation with you oh god no well to
remind him because i you
know i watched your actually clip with him during the presidential campaign and
i said you made him
the most uh human that i've actually seen him i mean your conversation with him
about his brother and
alcoholism and then he asks you what is it what was it like for you to have
cocaine and your addiction
and i thought well this is like him having a normal conversation yeah felt
pretty normal and so you
know but i think do you know anyone theo in your life who's like yeah we should
go out and go go to war
with iran like any of the no the folks you nobody nobody even like even like
hardhead you know like
even guys who i like navy former navy no none of them nobody is saying yes and
i felt like
the biggest thing that's i mean there's so many things right now and it's like
that i feel like
in the world that are kind of stressing people and making people nervous um but
one of the things
is i felt like it was supposed to be america first like we're focusing on like
what are we doing to
get things back into america right to like increase like the purpose of being
an american to refill like
our hearts with blood and like and and and and make us feel something again
here and make us be excited
about being an american right yeah and i felt like that was what a lot of the
energy was for and then
now that we're caught up here and it feels like we are just working for israel
uh i think to a lot of
people it's i don't know you you just really start to feel very disillusioned
uh pretty quickly and
and i don't mean disillusioned in people i don't mean disillusioned in like the
human beings
um but this disillusioned in our leaders right you start to feel like i don't
know at one point
neither one of these parties is helping us well they both seem like parties
that have gotten us into war
i mean six trillion dollars it cost us into iraq and afghanistan and we need
now an anti-war
movement in this country and i don't think it has to be democrat republican i
think
americans are sick of war uh here are the two things i think we could do look
on how do you end
the war in gaza yeah that's a great question how do you yeah what would you do
do to curtail things
right now in gaza do you think they're really going to aim for like a two-party
state over there
to me it looks like they're just going to try to sweep these people into the
ocean you kno