“The incongruities between Khanna’s political platform and his lifestyle are among the most striking contradictions of any sitting member of Congress.”
If a published report is accurate, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna appears to be just another inauthentic, left-wing populist like his buddy Graham Platner, but the Khanna hypocrisy appears to be more glaring.
One thing is for sure: As America celebrates its 250th birthday, the California “moderate” Democrat should be throwing a huge party for the American Dream rather than instead embracing socialism or quasi-socialism which has taken hold in his political party.
That’s because an exposé by the Washington Free Beacon details how the vocal foe of the ultra-rich is himself apparently ultra-rich, primarily through marriage — rather than by building a business.
The news outlet continues to produce solid journalism about how Democrats try to conceal their privilege while pointing the finger at others.
The article authored by Andrew Kerr was headlined as follows: “‘Ro’ Me the Money! How Progressive Class Warrior Ro Khanna Lives Like the Oligarchs He ‘Fights,’ With In-Home Elevator, $190K Range Rover, and Family-Owned Golf Courses.”
The Beacon article unfolds as follows:
“Khanna…has emerged as a potential contender for the Democratic presidential nomination while denouncing the ultra-rich who ‘hoard wealth and engage in financial speculation.’ But the progressive, Silicon Valley congressman and his family live a life of staggering luxury, fueled by dynastic wealth they did not earn and protected by the same thicket of trusts, anonymous corporations, and foundations that Khanna condemns…”
Further from the Beacon about the politician who, as alluded to above, seems to be angling for higher office particularly given his many media appearances:
“A Washington Free Beacon investigation into Khanna’s finances finds that the progressive truthteller’s lifestyle is funded by his wife, Ritu Ahuja Khanna, an heiress to her father’s Cleveland auto parts fortune. An analysis of Khanna’s financial disclosures reveals his gilded life is enriched by the same sort of investment vehicles that Khanna has said he has a ‘moral’ duty to oppose and that Khanna’s family is a beneficiary of the ‘New Gilded Age’ he condemns.”
While opposing insider trading by members of Congress, he is allegedly “the most prolific stock trader in Congress,” but insists the stock buying and selling is handled autonomously by his wife’s trust. He also criticizes hedge funds while apparently investing in hedge funds.
Ro Khanna has lamented Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts, but there is no indication that Rep. Khanna has dipped into his own bank account to make voluntary payments to the U.S. Treasury to help fund those programs.
Of course, he supports the billionaires’ tax proposal in California, with a catch, as the Beacon explains:
“The incongruities between Khanna’s political platform and his lifestyle are among the most striking contradictions of any sitting member of Congress. He’s a vocal supporter of the California ballot initiative to impose a wealth tax on billionaires, saying the ultra-wealthy have a duty to give back some of their ‘unprecedented wealth’ in the spirit of ‘shared prosperity’ ‘for the middle class….
“An analysis of Khanna’s public statements about wealth inequality and the sins of the rich shows that Khanna is careful to single out ‘billionaires’ for criticism, rather than centimillionaires like his father in law Monte Ahuja.
“But while Ahuja is not a billionaire (there are fewer than 1,000 billionaires in the United States, and no billionaires in Congress), Khanna’s enormous family wealth is structured and managed in the very fashion he criticizes. Irrevocable trusts, such as the ones owned by Khanna’s children, shield beneficiaries from paying inheritance taxes, experts say.”
In a segment captioned “Fat-cat Democrats Waging War on Wealthy” during a recent episode of Fox News Channel’s The Five, co-host Jesse Watters asserted, among other things, that “if all of [Khanna’s] ‘commie’ allies had their way, [the father in law] would have never made a fortune, because they’re trying to ban the internal combustion engine.”
During the same broadcast, Dana Perino, also a Five co-host on the ensemble show, admitted that prior to the Beacon story, she had no idea that Ro Khanna was so rich, and that “it’s not your money, but you want to take other people’s money, and I find it to be right in line with where champagne socialism, or limousine liberalism, has been around for a long time…” She also pointed out that pro-growth policies are fundamental to a thriving economy in contrast to the Democrats’ anti-growth policies.
Limousine liberals, silver-spoon socialists (or champagne socialists, to use the U.K. terminology) use their wealth and connections to insulate themselves from the polices, or what can include luxury beliefs, that they impose on everyone else.
In general, no one will shed any tears if, e.g., the billionaires tax gets approved in California, or elsewhere, and fat cats end up having to shell out more cash to the taxman.
At least not initially.
And some billionaires are hardly the personality types or the ethical or moral paragons that you would want to invite to a holiday barbecue.
The difficulty occurs when the super-rich move their operations to another state (or another country), resulting in the systemic loss of middle-class jobs as well as the disappearance of ongoing tax collections. And it can happen fast.
Most hard-working Americans obviously will never achieve billionaire status. But the electorate need to be cognizant that the Democrats’ insatiable thirst for revenue and spending, and associated confiscatory policies, would never be limited to just raising taxes on such a small, elite group.
Parenthetically, Khanna and his family are in the process of selling their elevator-equipped $6 million mansion in Northwest D.C. to move to a $10 million palace in Northern Virginia.
And Khanna’s minor kids “have large ownership shares in three private golf clubs.”
Within the same discussion as above, The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld quipped that “this guy is so greedy, they should enforce the luxury beliefs that he pushes on other people on himself. He should open up those golf courses for the homeless…”
Later in the segment, Gutfeld got a bit more serious:
“…the bottom line is none of us here cares about what Ro Khanna makes. Nobody cares what [Ill. Gov./billionaire JB] Pritzker makes. Nobody cares how wealthy they are. They care about our wealth. They want control over our money. I never knew about Ro Khanna…but he somehow wants to know what we do. There’s something really wrong about it.”
As with any member of Congress, Khanna – who represents California’s 17th Congressional District — is required to submit income information, the Beacon noted:
“In 2024, Khanna’s financial disclosures clocked in at 333 pages of non-text-searchable tables, listing over 3,000 individual assets owned by him, his wife, and his children, with each asset having ticked one of 13 available boxes corresponding to an asset valuation range. Put together, those assets are worth anywhere from $103 million to more than $340 million, according to a Free Beacon review. It’s possible that the net worth of Khanna’s nuclear family could far exceed $340 million…”
Readers can review the entire Free Beacon article and draw their own conclusions.
On his eponymous FNC show, Gutfeld said of Khanna, “…he seems to relish attacking people who built their wealth from the ground up, which he didn’t do. He didn’t scrape by with a second job, skip meals, or lose sleep over rent like the working families he claims to fight for…”
In an article about how power-hungry establishment Democrats have capitulated to the Democratic socialists, historian Victor Davis Hanson further delved into the hypocrisy:
“Ro Khanna, now a fellow traveler, is a multimillionaire many times over thanks to family trusts…Graham Platner’s affluent parents subsidized both his home purchase and his business. Socialists claim to despise billionaires—except when they are happily taking millions from their financial patrons: speculator George Soros, billionaire Neville Roy Singham (who relocated to Communist China), or onetime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, Reid Hoffman.
Original article“In sum, Democratic socialism is a top-down movement run by insulated elites who have little understanding of—or genuine interest in—the lives of millions of ordinary Americans living outside the walls of their parochial cloisters.”
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