Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) posted a video on Thursday evening that landed him in fierce controversy.
The video, shared to X, showed Ian Carroll, an independent journalist with a long history of antisemitic conspiracy theories, praising Khanna for not taking money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.
"93 out of 100 U.S. senators are taking money from a group that represents a foreign government, and foreign interests, in order to operate our government on behalf of someone else. And they all work here in this building. This is Representative Ro Khanna from California, and he does not take AIPAC money according to the website Track AIPAC." The video then cuts to Khanna saying, "It's too much, I mean, all these super PACs are too much. I don't take a dime of PAC money, lobbyist money, since I've been in Congress."
Carroll, who has moderated a campaign event by now-Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and has gone on Joe Rogan's podcast, has previously claimed that “our country is controlled by an international criminal organization that grew out of the Jewish mob," and has claimed Holocaust denial is a false flag spread by Israel to discredit its critics.
Some commenters gave Khanna, a longtime progressive who has often carved out maverick views independent from his party, the benefit of the doubt that he didn't know this, but still criticized his poor judgment.
"This wasn’t your finest moment dude," wrote conservative analyst Jonah Goldberg.
"You just shared a Holocaust revisionist, conspiracy theorist, and a neo-Nazi, @RoKhanna. What are you even doing here?" wrote Nevada attorney and policy advocate Elliot Malin.
"I do not believe that Ro Khanna is an antisemite," wrote Last Word on Sports analyst and political commentator Yesh Ginsburg. "He is certainly the most reasonable progressive in Congress. This is an *excellent* example of how allowing unthinking anti-Israel sentiment to be a driving motivation makes it so easy to slip into antisemitism."