This is really disappointing because something clicked in Ro Khanna to make him go left, way left. I remember watching him over the years, and he presented himself as a moderate Democrat and talked common-sense stuff, but from a left perspective. He made a lot of sense on some of his points.
Then one day I noticed a slight change, where his comments were going more left, and today we have the new and improved Ro Khanna, a socialist uncovered. The question is: was he a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or did someone, most likely a powerful rich person, push him left? I don’t know, but Ro Khanna is not what he used to be, just like the Democratic Party. All IMO.
https://www.thefp.com/p/ro-khanna-race-hustler-racism-suicide-lynching
“These days, Representative Ro Khanna seems to swing from one political stunt to the next without stopping to catch his breath. In the past few months, the California Democrat and 2028 presidential hopeful has revived discredited theories surrounding the Epstein files and tried to spin a clash with Israeli settlers into a full-blown international incident. His latest trick touches the oldest, most sensitive spot in political culture—and shows the depths to which unscrupulous pols are willing to drop to chase the next viral moment.
Khanna posted a video on X Monday, announcing his dismay with a supposed dark trend. “Across the country, black families are sounding the alarm about the unexplained deaths of their loved ones, including a disturbing number of black Americans found hanging from trees.” He listed a pair of deceased victims he said fit the bill: Juliana Nzita, who was found hanging from a tree in a North Carolina churchyard in May, and Tasia Fortune, discovered in August outside an abandoned house in Jackson, Mississippi. He also included Nolan Wells, who drowned in July in uncertain circumstances after a boat outing with three white friends on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.
Khanna approaches these deaths with the same two-step maneuver he used with the Epstein files. The first step is to present himself as a responsible, concerned statesman who’s only asking questions. He notes that civil rights organizations are reviewing the cases in the belief that they haven’t been investigated adequately. “Each of these families deserves answers,” he said in the video.
But in the next step, he answers his own questions, using stark language to insinuate a moral injustice without offering any evidence of it. “Black bodies hanging from trees have a very specific and brutal meaning in American history,” he pronounced in the text accompanying the video, deploying a term—black bodies—plucked from Billie Holiday’s anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit,” and which has become a watchword of left-wing race essentialists. He suggested that the murders should be viewed as hate crimes, each one evidence of a revival of anti-black lynching. “We all have a responsibility to speak up and fight to end the brutality that continues to kill and hurt black people in this country,” he concluded.
These remarks would be irresponsible even if they were merely Khanna’s best interpretation of what had taken place. While investigations continue and the details of the tragedies are murky, lawmakers best serve the public by expressing their grief but reserving their judgment.
But in this case, Khanna did worse than jump the gun. He also failed to mention any of the evidence that casts doubt on whether the deaths he invokes were caused by racism.
Ro Khanna’s latest trick touches the oldest, most sensitive spot in political culture—and shows the depths to which unscrupulous pols are willing to drop to chase the next viral moment.
Take the case of Fortune, 29, who died in Jackson. Khanna noted that her family doubts she died by her own hand, but he omitted that a local coroner found no injuries or other signs of struggle on her body. He also didn’t mention that the only person of interest who’s been questioned in the case is Fortune’s ex–romantic partner, a black man. The police who recovered Nzita’s body similarly recorded no sign of any struggle, and they defended their determination of a suicide before a community board.
And though Wells’s case has become a celebrated cause among the social justice left, touted as a scandal by Al Sharpton and Colin Kaepernick, the evidence of racism is equally thin. The three young white men who were with Wells before he died—whom Khanna convicts as “so-called friends”—claim that Wells asked to remain behind when they returned to the shore, and no evidence has turned up to contradict their account.
These details were public well before Khanna released his video. By releasing it, he attempted to engineer a viral moment he likely believed would endear him to black voters and left-wing activists, two constituencies that could help bolster his likely presidential run. As so often in today’s politics and media, the chance to cut through the buzz and draw attention was the only thing that mattered. Weighing the evidence gets barely a thought.”