Transcript: Ro Khanna’s Vision For A “Moral” Democratic Foreign Policy
Khanna: Donald Trump’s foreign policy is the foreign policy that we used to have of kings. And I’m not saying Donald Trump was a king, but it’s basically his whim. He wakes up and he says, OK, punish the people who offended me and help the people who praised me. That’s literally his foreign policy. When President Sheinbaum is more gracious, the tariffs go down. When Modi refuses to nominate him for a Nobel Prize, the tariffs go up. When Xi Jinping says something favorable, the tariffs go down. When Xi Jinping insults him, the tariffs go up. When Putin flatters him and says that the war wouldn’t have happened if Donald Trump was president, nothing happens in terms of standing up to Putin. When Putin offends him, then he says, OK, I’m with Zelenskiy. It is literally a foreign policy of whim.
Bacon: I know you’ve been traveling the country a little bit. Trump just won this election. People care about gas prices, they care about food prices. That’s what the scene of this election was about: the more pocketbook things. In New York City, Mamdani runs on affordability. That helps him win. Is there a connection between foreign policy and these day-to-day concerns? I think foreign policy’s important in terms of winning elections. How do you make foreign policy matter to the average person in Louisville or Lexington or what have you?
Khanna: Well, I think there are two different issues. The voter in Louisville may not care about the details of the border skirmish between India and Pakistan or may not even be following how much of the Donbas Russia has taken over and what a just peace looks like. But the voter in Louisville certainly sees kids dying in Gaza and says, I want my country on the side of protecting kids, and I want my country on the side of morality because that’s who we are as a people. Foreign policy matters in the sense of America’s conception of our own selves. This goes all the way back to Henry David Thoreau, and this goes back to Woodrow Wilson or FDR or Ronald Reagan. We want, as Americans, to be the good guys. We want to be the people that are standing up for human rights and good values. And in that way, I do think people vote in a fundamental way—because when you vote for president, it’s a sacred vote. You’re voting for who embodies American values, both at home and abroad.
