Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - How Democrats Can Win Back Young Men (feat. Rep. Pat Ryan)

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Jessica sits down with Congressman Pat Ryan, the Hudson Valley native representing New York’s 18th District. They discuss everything from his recent viral moment calling Elon Musk a "villain" to how the Democratic Party can better connect with young men and working-class voters. Congressman Ryan shares his thoughts on national service, what Democrats need to focus on to win in the future, and why leadership matters more than ever. Plus, find out what makes him want to rage—and what he thinks we should all calm down about. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Congressman Ryan, @RepPatRyanNY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now there are a lot of concerns with some experts saying this procedure really just serves as another way for companies to make money from stoking women's anxieties. Egg freezing has been presented as a kind of girl boss panacea, but what's the reality? That's this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes every week wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm your host, Jessica Tarlov. Today we have Congressman Pat Ryan, the Hudson Valley native representing the 18th district of New York. His main focus in Congress is providing relief for Hudson Valley families, improving transportation for folks in his district, and investing in the United States Military Academy, where he hopes to provide for the next generation of military leaders. The Congressman recently

made headlines for calling Elon Musk a villain on CNN, which I loved, and for discussing how he believes young men can benefit from the Democratic Party. Congressman Ryan, welcome to the show. It's great to have you on. Thanks for having me, Jess. I'm sorry. I'm choking on my coffee here.

I apologize. That's okay. I'm choking on my own voice, which is very millennial of me. That's how excited I am to be on the show. I'm just like chugging coffee and got too excited. So I'm a huge fan of yours and appreciate the good fight that you continue to fight to actually say things that are truthful and authentic and honest

on an important news channel that we all know is out there. I appreciate that. I was thinking to myself as I was walking down here, that it's nice to actually meet you in person because I use you as an example all the time because my colleagues on The Five will say, the Democratic Party is so crazy and you don't have anyone normal. And I'm like, have you met Congressman Pat Ryan? And now I have you here. Super excited to have you here. I want to get to the meta stuff, but start with a news of the day topic.

Everyone is talking about Elon Musk and Doge and the quote unquote forensic audit they're doing of the government. You made, as I already referenced, a comment about him being a villain. Can you talk a little bit about what you think is going on with the Trump administration and also what you're hearing from your constituents

as we're just a few weeks into Trump 2.0? Yeah. And I think it's really important to center the American people in my constituents and also what you're hearing from your constituents as we're just a few weeks into Trump 2.0. Yeah, and I think it's really important to center the American people and my constituents and what they're hearing and feeling, which is an unprecedented, we've got an unprecedented level of calls, emails, texts. Honestly, friends, I haven't talked to like a decade

or texting me like, dude, what is going on? What can we do? And people are rightly deeply concerned about an unprecedented encroachment on our privacy on at least one, if not multiple amendments, uh, in the bill of rights. And, uh, I think that it calls for appropriate aggressive action. And I've tried to give all the new administration the benefit of the doubt, but it's very clear to me, Elon Musk is a villain and we have to talk in our, the moment

we're in, we have to have heroes and villains in our story as Democrats. And Musk has now certainly earned that title and we should hold him accountable, not only for getting all up in everybody's private data at Treasury and these other agencies, but also I'm going to start shining a light through my role in the Armed Services Committee in the potential, if not certain, corruption around all his defense contracts, where he stands to personally make an incredible billions of dollars with access to privilege, access to information and connections based on how much money his companies have already been paid before he was in this position, forget about now.

So I think we're in a moment right now, more broadly, maybe talk about this more later, where we have to be in just constant communication with, in my case, 800,000 constituents with the American people and without judgment, and certainly without any condescension, just describing what the real harmful impacts of this is and will be the harmful impacts of a funding freeze, whether

that's head starts in my district that still don't have funding to feed and care for kids or 20 veteran inpatient beds at my local VA that I go to in the Hudson Valley of New York State that had to close because of Trump's hiring freeze on personnel. This is hurting people deeply and we have to get back on our front foot and start talking about the impacts of these decisions. Even if you voted for President Trump, you should at least know and be an informed citizen about what the impacts are.

Well, that seems like the important lane that Democrats can go down, which is to make this about Elon Musk and what's happening writ large in the administration without going after Donald Trump, who is still enjoying a 53% approval rating. We tried just making it all about Trump for years, and it didn't really get us very far, certainly in the last election.

So how do you think that Democrats can effectively do this? I know Jared Golden, who represents also a swing district, voted for Trump. He's a Democrat, though, has said, this is all about Musk for me. You can't sit up there just railing about Trump. How are you going to be approaching it?

Well, I think we should certainly start with the most egregious violator of our Constitution, which is Elon Musk. Everything he's doing and increasingly things he stands for and says are just directly contrary to the oath that I took as an army officer, the oath I've taken as a member of Congress, the oath that all my colleagues, by the way,

have taken, regardless of party, and the oath that even the president himself took. And Elon didn't take that oath. He is an unelected, unaccountable guy who, as I think you said recently, wasn't even an American until not that long ago. We love immigrants, but fact check true. Well, these are just facts.

I mean, we just have to share the facts. And I think not getting in the place of I told you so, or condescension or judgment, we just have to inform people. And my goal is to speak less myself and more highlight the voices of my constituents, whether that's veterans in my district that now don't have a place to go if they're at a crisis of a drug overdose, for example, or parents who don't know where to drop off their FIDRA because their Head Start might close Or farmers who just learned that a bunch of USDA payments

are still frozen and all screwed up. So we need to elevate those voices of the American people, center the American people as the heroes, and make clear that Musk is the villain. And there are others too, but he's certainly number one. Definitely seems like the head of the bunch. I want to get into some other themes because I know that your time is limited. Specifically, I want to talk about your service and also how that plays a role in how you

lead and represent your constituents, your West Point grad, army vet. There was a great splashy feature in GQ, which I saw even before your press person sent to me, loved the photography. You talked a lot about your military background, how it gave you the sense of belonging, letting you know that your life mattered and also what patriotism means to you. Could you expound on that for our listeners and also talk a bit about how you think the Democratic Party can get back to being the party that embraces people like you and gets them excited about what we have to offer. Yeah, this is my, if I do one thing in however many years,

I'm fortunate to have this job goal, which is to stop the direction where in our country, where having an American flag at your home or loving our country somehow belongs to one party, we need two functioning healthy parties at least. We need three branches of government that have checks and balances. These are all the things that our founding fathers and mothers talked about, wrote about in the federalist papers and so on. And I think we're at a moment in the country where we do need as leaders, not just in politics,

but all leaders need to remind people and sort of go back to our patriotic founding revolutionary roots, where we had a monarch with all power and control, unaccountable and unelected, taking our money for their own gain. And, you know, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. I think we're at a moment where we need. Patriots without partisanship attached to rise up here again and reassert that. And my goal is, you know, from within the democratic party largely, although I have my disagreements with the party to build that coalition out from there. Cause if you look at the last eight years, the Democrats are the patriotic party. We stood for our

Constitution and against an insurrection. We stood to keep our government open multiple times in my first two years in Congress when the Republicans wanted to to shut it down and so we have to make that proactive case and I think so much of the frustration I have the Democratic Party is right now, we've left a vacuum for our opponents to define us. In many cases, not grounded in reality or focusing on sort of the loudest voices that represent the far extreme.

And we need to make sure we're proactively putting out this patriotic vision, really, of where we think the country can and should go. How do you think we can do that? Well, I think sort of this idea that as we're in, or maybe approaching, crisis or maximum division, there actually is opportunity there. I hate to say that, but I think that I've generally

been that kind of person in my life, where even if you're in a bad situation, you try to make the best of it and use a crisis to bring people together. So I think focusing on core issues and areas where there's broad resonance and appeal, and without a doubt, that is affordability in the economy right now. It's the only thing we should be talking about as Democrats. And we failed to do it, at least nationally, in these last elections, myself and other House members that talked obsessively about affordability and listened also, more importantly, to our constituents about their

pain on affordability, we way outperformed the national brand because we just actually listened to voters and did everything we could to fight for them and against any power, whether corporate or government, that was sort of harming them from an affordability perspective. So we should see, for example, this coming potential shutdown or government funding moment that's coming in the next few weeks, I think, as an opportunity to assert a proactive view of what Democrats want to do in lowering housing costs, lowering prescription drug costs, lowering food and grocery costs, and put that out as our marker that if you don't work

with us on that, on these specific proposals, then you're obstructing the number one need of the American people. Should I take you as a no on the idea of being open to shutting down the government from the Democratic side, because that's something that's being floated. Senators Booker, Andy Kim are saying that they are open to a shutdown if it means being able to hold Musk and co accountable. Where are you on that? I think we're talking about with respect you're

talking about sort of inside baseball process rather than really talking about like what are we for? Like we should put out a policy focus, not like we're trying to shut things down or stop things. Cause a lot of, agree or not, a lot of what Trump is doing separate from some of these overreaches is very popular, as you said, in some of the polling numbers. So we should listen to our voters and focus on what he's not doing, which is anything at all in three weeks time to lower costs in any way.

In fact, much of what he's done is driving up costs, the threats and imposition of tariffs, seeing food prices go up, seeing costs of everything go up. We should talk about a proactive agenda that we want the Republicans to support in this budget negotiation about lowering housing, health care, and food costs. And if they don't do that, then that's their choice. They're in the majority. If they can't summon their majority, that's their decision to shut down the government.

But I think we should start from a place of good faith. Let's focus on the number one issue in the country, which is affordability. I like that. I think making it Mike Johnson's problem, as opposed to making it our problem, is definitely the right way to go about it. Just quickly, I think the messaging here,

to your point, is super important. I learned this day one in the Army, when in charge, take charge. They're in charge of everything. The American people chose that. They know the American people know that. We need to help remind them of that. And we can put out, we should put out our proactive agenda

of what we stand for and let them, let those in charge respond to that and either get on board with it or not. Yeah, also let them go on the record if they wanna make cuts to social security, to Medicare, to Medicaid. Let it be known. So much of what's going on right now,

at least it feels to me, is in this dark vacuum where people have no idea what you're talking about in your district that Head Start isn't open, that you can't go to the VA. They're messaging right now that nothing has actually happened, right? That the freeze was unfrozen and there are no problems. And the court system is struggling to keep up

with the breakneck pace of what they're doing. Well, and I think, understandably, this is me not being a lawyer. Most Americans, once it's in the courts and all that, it's like, all right, that's very complicated and long and slow. We need to be messaging in the moment at a local, visceral level.

These are the specific impacts, whether economic especially, but certainly to key things like childcare and veteran services that are real and visceral and tangible. And do it in a nonpartisan way. We've rallied in my district a bipartisan group of veterans, VFWs, legions, elected officials of both parties who have said, this is like not who we are as a country where we leave our veterans hanging and we're going to stand against this. And that's powerful in terms of coalition building

at a moment like this. 100%. It would be nice to be able to go no labels, right? If you could just be common sense and then see how the chips fall, we'd probably do a lot better electorally. This is an ad from BetterHelp online therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. The Republicans have been saying lots of things. Just yesterday, their leader said he wants to own Gaza? The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We'll own it. On Monday the Secretary of State said an entire federal agency was insubordinate. USAID in particular, they refuse to tell us anything. We won't tell you what the money's going to, where the money's for, who has it.

Over the weekend, Vice President Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, tweeted about the same agency that, you know, gives money to the richest man on earth, tweeted about the same agency that, you know, gives money to the poorest people on earth. We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead. But what have the Democrats been saying? People are aroused.

I haven't seen people so aroused in a very, very long time. Huh. That's a weird way to put it, Senator. We're going to ask what exactly is the Democrats' strategy to push back on Republicans on Today Explained. This week on Profgy Markets, we speak with Alice Han, China economist and director at Greenmantle. We discuss the potential impact of tariffs on China's economy, how Tesla is fairing against BYD, and how a Trump presidency could shape China's economy, how Tesla is faring against BYD and how a Trump presidency could shape China's foreign and domestic policies.

Trump is the biggest dove in a house full of hawks. Everyone else around him wants to push him towards being more hawkish on China, on trade, on tech, on military. And I sense that whether it's Rubio or Hegseth or Waltz, they're going to try to push the agenda of being tougher in China and having more deterrence vis-a-vis Taiwan. You can find that conversation exclusively on the ProfG Markets podcast. As an extension of what you're talking about, I'm curious what you think about rallying excitement for the Democratic Party because we don't get to campaign without labels.

And we're particularly suffering with young voters in the latest CBS poll. Trump has a plus 10 advantage with Gen Z voters, which if you told me in 2016 that that was even fathomable, I would have said, you know, I have millions of bridges to sell you. How can we address that problem and specifically targeting young men? And this is some of what that article you mentioned was focused on, is what happened with young people, especially young men. I don't think any person or group likes to

be talked to in such a political way of like, here's my plan to win back men, or here's my plan to win back women. I think that's disingenuous and comes up. People's BS meter is very high and that just rings the bell like, this is just a politician trying to sell me a bridge or whatever.

And so I think we need to be much more authentic and real. I think what I talked about in the article is sort of like, there is this conversation about toughness and masculinity happening where if the brand of the Democratic Party is, to me, there's two aspects to sort of leadership. One is care and one is fight. I have to fight for my people, but I have to do it from a place of caring about them. That's good leadership to me, whether in the army, business, family, politics. The Democratic Party, I think, is very heavy on the care, which is

great, but hasn't shown the fight very much, right? Trump and MAGA are big on the fight, less so on the care. And the sweet spot is both and doing it authentically. I think if we do that, certainly with policy, but more so at a values and culture level, that's when our brand is strongest. When we are fighting for the underdog, we're fighting for you against a person like Musk, by the way. And we can get back to that. Absolutely.

We've had FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln. These are models of how to have that sort of, what I'm calling patriotic populism. I know populism is like a word with a lot of current connotations, but we're in a populist moment in the country and Trump is destructive answers to that We have to have constructive answers and policies to meet the populists rage to riff on your

Title here of your great podcast like that's where we're at and we got to be we got to listen and hear voters on it It's definitely what seems to be in vogue and most resonant with voters. I have a lot of friends, I'm more of a normie Democrat or establishment Democrat, I guess, but I have a lot of friends who like to kind of goad me with Bernie would have won. I'm like, well, you know, he's out there on this or that, they said, but he's a populist fighter. And that is the mood right now. That is the mood. Certainly in my district, especially in any purple or competitive district, you talk to members of Congress, House members, which is where I just, you know, by virtue of wrench sitting tend to have the most conversations within my party is like, regardless of what

like traditional caucus or group you belong to, progressive or moderate or blue dog, the common theme is an economic populist set of policies and rhetoric that is just grounded in actually listening to voters. Understanding that like in my community, for example, wages for 20 years have been flat and costs are just piling up on everybody. Neither party has actually solved that and Trump was kind of the first one to actually channel that and get that and speak to that and shame on us for not having a better, more constructive set of solutions and rhetoric around it to give a case that people can trust and believe in around solving those problems. Absolutely.

One of the core complaints that I hear is about democratic leadership at this particular moment that we seem flat-footed. We don't have a unified message. Your complaints that I hear is about Democratic leadership at this particular moment, that we seem flat-footed, we don't have a unified message, we have these weird rallies with Chuck Schumer screaming, we will win after we just lost and Al Green's cane blocking the shot. What do you think leadership can do? I'm certainly not asking you to go against anyone and I think that Hakeem Jeffries does a great job in the House. But where do you think leadership can improve,

let's say, in making sure that the topics that you're discussing are what are in the forefront versus the sideshow stuff when people go to the polls? Well, by the way, I'm not saying I'm certainly right here. I'm just at a moment where I think we have to be willing to take risk and, you know, kind of say what we're hearing and then we see where it goes. So I'm not saying I have this all figured out by any means.

But what I think the moment we're at as a party is I actually think exciting where I'm a big believer in yes, you have formal official titles, but leadership to me is not about that. Good leadership is about by power of example, or by power of taking action and seeing people respond to it, you can set direction for any organization or group. And there's a lot of folks in the Democratic Party right now tend to be relatively younger, although that's a low bar, and newer and many of whom were mobilized by Trump's election in the first term, by the way, myself included, to come into politics, who I think have a different theory of change and are willing to be out there and kind of pushing. And I think that's healthy

at a moment like we're in. And we just sometimes leadership is creating, formal leaders creating a space for that innovation and nudging and pushing is what's needed and I think we're gonna start to see that bear out here in a way that's actually will ultimately in the medium and long term be healthy for the party especially as you look ahead to 2028 and our presidential primary where we'll really choose who's our next national leader but in the meantime I meantime, I don't mind letting House members and local elected officials and senators see what's working, connecting.

And it really requires us to go back to listen to voters and not just talk to Dems, but talk to everybody and see what helps rebuild this sort of patriotic coalition. And I think from that, we're gonna come through this okay, as long as we And I think from that, we're going to come through this OK, as long as we just bring intensity to that process. Are you seeing in particular with voters in your constituency who have jobs like teachers, police

officers, veterans, that they are shifting towards being less partisan? Because that's a trend that I'm noticing. Yeah, I mean, especially in New York specifically, I'm a data person. And if you look at young voter registration in New York, my district is one of the highest of us actually in the state and in the country. Young voters are registering, which is great, but they're increasingly

registering unaffiliated in New York. That just means you don't choose either party. We don't have like an independent label. You just registered, but unaffiliated. That's a growing, growing, that's now the second biggest group in New York, Democrats number one, unaffiliated number two, Republicans are third. And that that's mirrored across a lot of countries. So I think for a lot of good reason trust in both parties is at historic lows. And figuring out how to speak to those Americans and those voters in a way that's still grounded in values, but doesn't come with the typical partisan purity tests and framing, and you're either fully on this agenda or not.

That's not how anybody lives their life in the real world. We focus on the area where we have common cause. You build a coalition around it, that's clearly affordability and the economy, and that's the space we're going to have as each day Trump fails to do anything to fix the number one problem of the American people. Folks are smart, they will see that and feel that and he's talking about invading Gaza and sending American troops instead of bringing down egg and food costs and bringing down rents and housing costs, bringing down prescription drug costs and health care costs. So that's the one, even in early polling, that's the one place that the American people are already seeing and feeling like, huh, he said he was going to do this.

Instead he's doing a lot of other stuff, some of which I might agree with, but that's not my core problem that I elected you to focus on. I wanna make sure that we talk about your national service bill. How is the process going on that? Something Scott Galloway, who I host this with, loves this, and is talking about how we would be way better off if we did have a national service component

for every American, so please tell us. Yeah, very quickly, I think the case, which we should make every chance we get, is that my life was changed by military service. And exposing me to a bunch of people I wouldn't have otherwise met, forcing me to work together with them towards a common mission, and showing me that the greatest reward and joy in life is accomplishing something for a cause greater than yourself with a group of people.

And I think that's a big part of the answer, by the way, to the problem that young people are feeling to our prior conversation, where they wanna be part of something, but they don't see those options right now. So one of my big legislative priorities is a national service push, which has been really hard, sadly,

to get moving through Congress, even though it's such a bipartisan idea that everybody you talk to is like, oh, that sounds great. Congress, even though it's such a bipartisan idea that everybody talked to is like, oh, that sounds great. But when it comes time to fund it, generally Republicans unfortunately don't want to put up the money. Like for example, even if we just funded every person, every like, if we doubled the slots in some of our

existing national service programs, where you have more qualified applicants than you have slots, that would double the number of people in the country doing service. The cost is very, very low compared to many other things we invest in. And the return on that is just transformational. And you think about like the GI Bill of my grandfather's World War II generation. So legislatively, it's way harder than it should be. And so I'm gonna devote a bunch of energy to trying to build not only democratic support,

but Republican support. And there is a group in Congress that gives me some hope called the Four Country Caucus, which is a bipartisan group of military veterans. There's about 40 of us now, actually it might even be more than that now, I grew with some new members of both parties this time. And there is a consensus there that this is something we really need to prioritize through this caucus. So I think that's a logical place to build

some support and try to grow it. But maybe I'll come back to when we can sort of say, okay, if I only had a few more people on this, I think we can get over the line and see if we can rally more folks. I love that. I didn't know about the four country caucus. That's very cool. Um, so we're trying something new here at Raging Monterey. It's going to be the formal last question and you are the inaugural flight on this. So what's one issue that makes you want to rage and one issue you think

we should all calm down about. I think honestly, the issue that really makes me want to rage is you've got a president again in Donald Trump who has a documented record of calling our troops suckers and losers, who's insulted military families, Gold Star families, trampled on the honor of Arlington National Cemetery, all documented, not even really up for debate. And he ran largely on getting us out of wars, by the way.

And since taking office has talked about invading Canada, Mexico, Panama, and just the other day, doubled down on Gaza. And as someone who served and lost friends, and I still wear this memorial bracelet of all my West Point classmates that were lost in combat, that's bullshit. Like that is a disservice to our whole country and certainly to those who we lost. So that's the thing that makes me rage. I've been very public about that and tried to make that case in the 2024 election.

Unfortunately, did not succeed. But the thing I think we should be less outraged about is that the second half of this? Calm down. Let's, we're workshopping it. So if you think less ragey. I mean, this is maybe a slight variation on less ragey, but I'm getting a ton of calls in my office

from constituents saying, what are you doing to stand up against Musk and Trump and the MAGA movement? Which I understand that, but I've not seen any of my Republican colleagues that are in charge get this question as they all watch and say nothing about all the things happening.

Like even there were some Democratic activists that were protesting Democratic elected officials rather than protesting Republicans. I think that that just doesn't make sense to me. So that's less a calm down, more of a at least if you have rage channel it appropriately from an accountability perspective at the people who have the opportunity to fix the thing that you're concerned about. Yeah, I'm definitely a little bitter still about the people who didn't vote for Kamala saying

what's going on in Israel and Gaza is still Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's fault somehow. But that's a topic for another podcast. Lots of feelings on that one. So we'll have to have you back. Thank you so much, Congressman Ryan, for joining us. I hope that we'll stay in touch, and I appreciate your time and your thoughts on everything that's going on in the early days of Trump's second term. Thank you for having me. Keep the faith.

I'm still actually quite optimistic about our country. Love it. Thank you. Thanks.