Megan Romer, one of two national co-chairs of the Democratic Socialists of America, failed to explain what "taxing the rich" actually means when pressed by a sympathetic interviewer, and couldn't recall basic facts about the Camp David peace talks, either.
David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and no conservative inquisitor, put a straightforward question to Romer during an episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour titled "How Socialist Is the DSA? Megan Romer Explains." He wanted to know what the DSA's signature economic slogan, "taxing the h*** out of" the wealthy, means in practice. Romer, who holds one of the organization's two highest national leadership posts, had no answer ready.
Remnick asked directly: "Well, what does 'taxing the h*** out of them' mean?" Romer responded with a verbal stumble. "Uh, yeah, you know, again, I don't have like a solid..." she said, trailing off. Remnick pushed, as the New York Post reported:
"But shouldn't you? If you're the co-chair of the DSA, shouldn't you be more specific than 'taxing the hell' out of something? What exactly do you mean?"
Romer offered no rate, no bracket, no revenue target, no policy framework. Instead she fell back on abstraction, telling Remnick:
"So again, it's democracy, right? And we have to look at what we have to spend and what we need. We don't want to depend on the existence of millionaires because that means people are still getting exploited."
That answer, from the national co-chair of an organization whose central economic demand is higher taxes on the wealthy, amounted to a confession that the DSA's most prominent slogan has no policy behind it. The phrase "taxing the h*** out of them" was often used by Mayor Mamdani during his campaign, yet the leader of the organization backing that agenda could not put a single number to it.
The interview's second revealing moment came on foreign policy. Romer stated that the DSA's position is "a free Palestine with a capital in Jerusalem," adding, "I think that could be safely read as a one state solution." Remnick then asked about the Camp David Summit, the landmark 2000 effort in which former President Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to the Maryland retreat to negotiate a two-state solution. The talks ultimately failed, but they remain one of the most significant diplomatic episodes in modern Middle East history.
Romer's response: "Good question. I need to look at what the actual specifics there were, I don't know them off the top of my head."
She advocates a one-state position that would displace the two-state framework Clinton pursued at Camp David, but she could not discuss the summit she was effectively rejecting. The DSA's stated position would affect roughly 10 million people living in Israel, a point Romer did not address.
The interview clip quickly went viral on social media. Media commentator Stephen L. Miller posted his reaction on X:
"When you realize you took $60,000 out in student loans and can't answer a single friendly polite question."
Miller continued: "They have never been challenged on any of this for their entire life, by anyone. An entire generation of privileged idiots."
Miller's broader point, that DSA leadership has operated for years without facing basic scrutiny, is hard to dismiss after watching Romer's performance. Remnick is not a hostile interviewer. He did not set traps or ask trick questions. He asked a national political leader to define her organization's flagship policy. She could not.
The DSA has positioned itself as a rising force in American left-wing politics, backing candidates and pushing policy from city councils to Congress. Its leaders use phrases like "tax the rich" and "free Palestine" as organizing tools. But when the co-chair of the entire organization sits down for a friendly interview and cannot attach a single concrete proposal to those phrases, voters are entitled to ask whether the movement is built on conviction or on bumper stickers.
Romer's inability to discuss the Camp David Summit compounds the problem. Foreign policy positions that would reshape the Middle East deserve more than "good question, I'll look into it." If you are going to reject a two-state solution in favor of a one-state outcome, you should at minimum know the history of the negotiations you are discarding.
The episode also raises a question the DSA's allies in elected office should have to answer: Do they share these positions? And can they explain them any better than their national co-chair did?
When the friendliest possible interviewer exposes that an organization's leaders cannot define their own platform, the problem isn't the questions, it's the answers.
