NPR Morning Edition anchor Steve Inskeep should be best known for a series of softball interviews with Barack Obama, so it might not be surprising he'd do a softball interview with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). The online headline for the Thursday segment was "Rep. Ro Khanna shares why he thinks Democrats should nominate a progressive in 2028."
Inskeep explained "Khanna represents Silicon Valley, home of trillion-dollar companies. He says he's for the Valley's enterprise and against its inequality." The NPR host began by wondering ever so gently about the electability of the socialist types: "I suggested to Khanna that Michigan's election might reveal if a progressive could win the presidential swing state of Michigan in 2028. He disagreed." Khanna said Abdul el-Sayed is going to win.
Then came the Red Scare portion -- devoid of the actual evidence that Hasan Piker and a large chuck of the "Democratic Socialists" identify with communism:
INSKEEP: There's been an interesting evolution in President Trump's rhetoric. Recently, he's moved on to calling you all communists.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The communists want to take their ruinous and deadly ideology of misery and squalor to every state in America...
INSKEEP: 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?
Does it "sound absurd" if you're told Piker thinks Chinese communist Mao Zedong was one of the "greatest" world leaders ever? Or that a big chunk of the DSA comrades identify as communists? Khanna just said labels, schmabels:
KHANNA: Labels usually don't matter in American politics, in my view. We've been...
INSKEEP: Are you kidding me?
KHANNA: We've been calling the guy a fascist for 10 years, and he's won two terms. I mean, you know, I mean, communist, fascist. Well, here's what people care about. What are you going to do for them?
The difference is that the liberal elitist media never find it "absurd" to call Trump a fascist. The people crying "fascist" have zero fear of the Fact Checkers. But they all can't stand anyone talking about communists communing with the Democrats.
It ended on a weird note. Economic growth is terrifying?
INSKEEP: 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. 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?
KHANNA: That we're at a breaking point in America, and that if we don't do something dramatically different, we may break. And 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.
A new "social contract" sounds like socialism, if not communism, installed with the "pitchforks and torches." Which party is the one threatening Democracy again? The radio interview cut out Khanna's next sentence: "They want your scalp." That implies violence. This passage is placed at the top of the YouTube interview, but not on the radio.
