Over the past week, California Congressman Ro Khanna (D) has engaged in a Twitter feud with Vice President JD Vance that has generated significant buzz surrounding the Democratic darkhorse who has been generally consigned to tier three among the potential 2028 Democratic nominees for president.
It all began when The Wall Street Journal reported that a DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, who famously gained access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, had posted to a social media account that “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” “Normalize Indian hate,” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
Elez wasn’t just some random guy within the DOGE operation. There were only two members of DOGE allowed access to the Treasury Department, and Elez was one. That proximity raised considerable alarm.
He promptly resigned.
But then something happened. JD Vance stood up for Elez, and promptly got 66.8 million views on X for doing so.
Vance posted on X that, while he disagreed with some of Elez’s posts, “I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.”
Then he called on Elez to come back to DOGE.
Here’s my view:
— JD Vance (@JDVance) February 7, 2025
I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.
We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.
So I say bring him back.
If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of… https://t.co/OgG6Z3hKPE
Considering the fact that JD Vance’s own wife is Indian, the comments were particularly surprising.
When asked about the controversy, President Donald Trump deferred to Vance, saying, “I’m with the vice president.”
Enter Ro Khanna, who is Indian himself and was obviously one of the scores of folks who were incensed by both Vance’s defense of Elez and call to rehire him.
Khanna, who hasn’t yet generated the kind of top tier buzz of other potential 2028 Democratic candidates, generated 18 million views on X when he called out Vance’s position on Elez and referred to the latter’s “Normalize Indian hate” post, which you’d think might resonate more acutely with Vance, considering the vice president’s own wife is Indian.
Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying "Normalize Indian hate" before this rehire? Just asking for the sake of both of our kids. https://t.co/7NY8m93hJa
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) February 7, 2025
Vance responded on X that his kids weren’t threatened by Elez’s racist comments on Indians, and then claimed that the only threatening thing to his kids was “a culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children.”
Khanna then took umbrage at the “whiny” comment and appealed to a higher-minded kind of debate (Lincoln/Douglas), but not without taking a shot at Vance’s history of flip-flopping on Trump.
Saying I am "whiny" & "you disgust me" maybe your way of showing strength. Personally, I don't think you have to hurl insults or be mean-spirited to have a free exchange ideas. Our country, at its, best (Lincoln/Douglass) was not like that and you at your best JD were not either. https://t.co/Ng9oie3xnv
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) February 7, 2025
It’s at that point that the X feud over Elez ended.
But it scored Khanna an appearance on CNN, in which he noted that he knew Vance and respected his wife but went on to further criticize Elez and Vance’s call for him to be rehired (and, incidentally, raised Khanna’s own national profile).
“If you have someone who’s 25 years old, who’s made deeply offensive comments…. is he going to apologize? Is he going to have any accountability?
No one is saying cancel him, but you can’t just rehire him and say ‘Okay, everything is fine, and he’s going to represent the United States government’.”
Khanna then questioned the ferocity of Vance’s response to the idea that Elez should be removed and what Vance failed to do.
“Here’s what I didn’t understand. He [Vance] was so emotional about this and such an outburst. I’m not saying that he is not condemning the racism, but why can’t he just say, ‘Yes, the person should apologize before being reconsidered. What is the hesitancy?”
Okay, so a few things to note here.
First, regarding Vance:
Regardless of your feelings on Vance’s response, his decision to continue the feud demonstrated two things.
First, by engaging in the lengthy X feud, the sitting vice president raised Khanna’s profile, as the California congressman’s ethnic heritage proved him the ideal messenger to protest the phrase, “Normalize Indian hate.” (More on that later).
Second, it demonstrated a weakness I’ve chronicled in Vance’s own political development.
His boss, Donald Trump, has turned brawling into something of a political positive. Trump’s political rise coincided with his elevation of the birther movement, and he became a famous master of the political troll to the point that it’s one of the reasons he defied the odds to become the GOP nominee in 2016.
But Trump-apers like Ron DeSantis and others never quite managed to turn the politics of insult into a net positive the way Donald did, and while Vance certainly seems to have tried (most famously, by promoting the Haitian immigrant conspiracy in the 2024 election), it doesn’t appear to have worked, as Vance has consistently garnered lower favorability ratings than his boss (take a look at Vance’s, over time, via 538 and Trump’s).
No one can Trump Insult like Trump, and if Vance wants to succeed by becoming a brawler in the fashion of Donald Trump, he’d do well to look at the numerous Trump copycats who simply couldn’t pull off the art of the insult like Trump (Ron DeSantis, being the most prominent example).
As far as Khanna goes, the X feud did nothing but help him for a potential 2028 primary.
First, coming into it, he was generally seen as having presidential ambition, but as a fairly recently elected member of the House (2016) had yet to make much of a national impression beyond serving as a case point among Washington pundits on how the Democratic party could be progressive but in a pragmatic way.
In fact, at this stage of the cycle (very early primary jockeying), playing the role of outrage is the more reliable way to garner national exposure and earn a following.
Khanna’s calm demeanor and political pragmatism don’t lend itself to making a name, at this point.
Yet in taking on Vance over a controversial program (DOGE) and indefensible racist comments about, among others, Indians, Khanna picked his battle wisely, generated national buzz, vaulted himself into tier two in the 2028 sweepstakes and enabled him to now settle back into his preferred role of pragmatist who doesn’t seem interested in perpetuating the outrage cycle for immediate political gain.
In other words, he chose his battle wisely.
And not just that battle, but his escalating feud with another less popular figure associated with Donald Trump: Elon Musk.
[Photo: Ro Khanna, Public Domain]
