US lawmaker Ro Khanna defends calling witness ‘racist’ in explosive China committee clash

Representative Ro Khanna has defended his strong reaction to a witness during a US House committee hearing on China, stating that he called the witness "racist" because the individual made discriminatory remarks about Chinese-Americans.

During a June 25 hearing focused on economic espionage and Chinese influence, Khanna confronted Michael Lucci, founder of the State Armor non-profit. Lucci had previously posted on social media that two Chinese-Americans, implicated in separate incidents, had obtained US citizenship through birthright and were "not loyal to the USA."

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It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.

Lucci further argued that approximately 1.5 million people were "essentially born in Saipan and raised in Communist China" through birth tourism and called for them to be denaturalized. Khanna, the ranking member of the committee, dismissed these claims as "the most absurd thing I've ever heard."

Speaking on Monday, Khanna emphasized that there is a clear distinction between criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and targeting Chinese-Americans. He asserted that individuals born in the United States are citizens and cannot be denaturalized based on their ethnicity. "It was a terrible, terrible comment," Khanna said, referring to Lucci's remarks.

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If you’re born in the United States, you can’t be denaturalised. You can’t just say, ‘OK, if you’re Chinese-American, we’re going to start denaturalising you’. It was a terrible, terrible comment.