Congressman Pat Ryan (D-NY) Talks Trump, Taxes, and Turning Voters

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

And today is our first episode for Thursday, and we have a very, very special guest.

Our first member of Congress is joining us today, Congressman Pat Ryan from New York's 18th District.

I had to get that right because you were actually the 19th district before.

He's in his second term in Congress from the great state of New York.

And we want to welcome the Congressman here to the Find Out podcast.

Congressman, it's great to have you here.

Thank you guys for having me on.

I heard there's,

is there a Celtics fan in this group?

Should we apologize?

Should we just go right there, right directly?

I think there's two of us, right, Tim?

So that, yeah,

that's me and Zach.

I was actually watching, what was that, game five or six, whatever the horrible one this weekend.

And I was thinking of the horse.

Well, five was horrible if you're a Knicks fan.

Six was true.

Six was, you know.

much better.

Oh yeah, it was six.

It was six.

So I, yeah, I have to say congratulations, even though that pains me as a diehard.

uh you guys play socks patriots we won last year so we gotta i gotta take it and congrats to you guys i think this is the first time in like a watch 25 years you've gotten the eastern the final so i gotta throw it out there

fair no it's legit since i watched you know now i have the the reggie miller like

drama from my oh early days that i now that's like the next phase of this for us knicks fans is like how to deal with that so

well congratulations well deserved um hopefully i won't have to say the same thing about the Yankees or the Mets or anybody at the end of this year.

But, anyways,

so we are

this week, the Republicans have dropped their tax bill.

And we thought, who better to talk about this than Congressman Ryan, who's been working, I think, with a group called Families Over Billionaires and has been part of these votes, obviously in the negative,

as they've been going through.

But Congressman, tell us a little bit about this bill and

why it's so bad.

It's like

a shit sandwich.

Like they're trying to pack all of this harm in it.

And like the two key pieces of the bread, if you will, holding this thing together is like at the top, massive, massive, unprecedented tax cuts for

individual ultra billionaires plus

a huge unprecedented corporate tax cuts.

So that's kind of one piece.

And then the other piece of it

are huge cuts to critical programs that a lot of people count on for healthcare, particularly Medicaid, which, like in my district, for example, of 800,000 people, it's over 200,000 people that get their healthcare.

Half of those are kids.

So basically, to pay for these huge

tax cuts for the rich, they're screwing everybody else, middle class, working class,

really everybody else.

And then the the last piece of it

is that

for a supposedly fiscally conservative party, they're adding $5 trillion trillion dollars to the national debt.

So it's not even like there's some fiscal responsibility undergirding this.

In fact, it's one of the most fiscally irresponsible pieces of legislation, certainly I'm 43 in my lifetime.

Yeah, I mean, it certainly seems that way.

And, you know, they they always tell us that when they do this, that, oh, it's going, I mean, it's essentially the trickle-down approach, right?

And that, you know, giving them all of these tax cuts will lead to stimulated growth.

What's your take on that?

I mean, I think I know, but I'd love to hear from you.

Like, is there, like, will there even be some of that?

Or is that just a complete lie?

Well, if you want to stick with my bad shit sandwich analogy here.

I do.

I do.

Something will trickle down.

It's that.

You know, like, it's not a great great image to put in one's mind.

But I mean, that's kind of the reality of it is like, I think that's clearly been disproven.

In fact,

if you look at any real objective analysis of what's happened to our economy since the Reagan era, you know, trickle down promise, that's where you start to see like

GDP, you know, the economy growing.

continuing to happen and then wages that we all live on flattening out for the first time in recorded history of the country.

That was a direct result of the supposed trickle down.

So, I think it's clearly been disproven as just a straight-up hover and lie for the ultra-wealthy.

And they're continuing it.

And the fact that Trump runs as a populist and claims to be for the people and then absolutely screws them is just infuriating to me.

And so I'm doing everything I can in my district in particular without judgment because there's a lot of people.

You know, my district's very competitive.

There's a lot of about half of my constituents voted for him.

But to help people understand, like, this is not good for really anybody.

I mean, I don't have any billionaires literally that live in my district.

We're a very working class, middle-class district.

So truly, nobody benefits from this and of my constituents.

I'll tell you who.

So first of all, our podcast is called Find Out, right?

And we use Newton as our logo because in November, November, we fucked around and now every day we got to find out.

The people who are going to find out real soon are veterans.

I'm an Army vet like you are.

And

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are planning to fire 80,000 people from the VA workforce.

One-third of every federal employee who's already lost their jobs are veterans.

It is our community that is, frankly, being specifically targeted with all of this.

We are losing jobs.

We are losing healthcare.

We're going to be losing benefits because you can't implement benefits without people working to process them, right?

So what are you doing to communicate with the veterans in your district who are about to face massive cuts to the VA?

I assume that was where the title came from and

appreciate it.

It's a good assumption.

Not that we want to be finding this stuff out, but we have to.

Unfortunately.

Yeah.

So obviously that's personal to me.

And I also represent, and to you too, of course.

And I represent 40,000 vets and their families in my district.

And the other thing that, you know, the way I've been talking about this and working on it, you know, there's a lot of these big kind of almost overwhelming numbers that we hear thrown around, like 5 trillion to the debt or 83,000 employees at the VA.

That's like, I don't think people can fully like understand what that means for them and their life and in in their world.

So in my district, we've been really focused on talking about local visceral already inflicted harm.

So even before these massive layoffs and cuts at the VA, we had 20 inpatient beds at our VA that provide critical mental health care, essentially veterans struggling with suicide and addiction recovery care closed.

This was due to this hiring freeze they put in place.

And I can give you the long backstory, but basically because of the Trump hiring freeze, they had to close his 20 inpatient beds.

We did a veteran speak out and then a follow-on town hall where we had vets, many of whom voted for Trump, come up and say, whatever I think about whatever other issue, like this is just not right.

It's not American.

It's a fundamental break of our sacred promise we've made.

And, you know, if we do that at scale on that issue and other issues, and we do it in all 435 house districts.

That to me is how we break through.

Like, bottom-up, this is not hypothetical.

This is this is real harm.

I have a question about that, actually, because, like, I think the average person, when they hear a tax cut, they just get excited and they don't think about the context at all.

So, like, how do we reach those people that look at this and go, well, I'm getting money, so whatever?

Like, that's a ton.

Most people who voted for Trump, I think that way.

But I think there's people in the middle who just don't really pay close attention and don't understand the scope of Medicaid cuts or veterans cuts.

How do we reach them and have them understand like there are massive consequences of this and you're barely getting anything, if anything at all?

Yeah, this is one of one of the many frustrations I have with the Democratic Party right now.

We talk like in the clouds and in these kind of like vague, throw around big numbers, throw around acronyms.

We don't speak

as just people.

And I know that's a big part of what you guys are working on to great effect.

Like we need to specifically talk about, and we've been doing some of the analysis on this as this bill's been getting

crunched and finalized.

Like, okay, if I, you know, say I work in the construction trades, I'm a union plumber in

Newburgh, New York in my district.

Like, what does this mean for me and my family in terms of actual what was I paying before?

What am I going to pay now?

And then compare that to the hire earners.

I think we have to show people that the specific choice.

And in most cases, obviously everybody's a little bit different.

You know, people might get, a lot of people will pay more, unfortunately, not only in their taxes, but certainly as prices continue to go up because of the tariffs, which we haven't even talked about.

Some people will get, I mean, frankly, you know, every bit helps, but essentially effectively relative crumbs, while the ultra-wealthy get a huge, huge help.

So that's like, if I'm making a few million dollars a year, I'm saving hundreds of thousands of dollars with these tax cuts.

And if I'm a middle-class person making, you know, median household income is $76,000 in my district, maybe,

you know, maybe a few hundred dollar savings at best.

And so showing that disproportionate share as a split screen, I think is really important.

And I'm curious because I think as we've seen this bill and we've talked about it,

you know, it doesn't seem like that the American public is super excited about this bill.

You know, you talked a little bit about the sort of the Trump voters that you've spoken to or some of the veterans in your district.

Like

I assume that you are hearing overwhelmingly that people are angry.

And I'm curious to hear some of the anecdotes of what people are saying about this bill, because everything we are hearing is just, I'm not seeing anybody other than the guys voting on it, supporting it.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the reality is most people have no idea, you know.

Frankly, they're, they're busy.

They're working often multiple jobs because of the economic choices we've made to just provide for their family and they're exhausted at the end of the day.

And

the ability to like track these details when you've got like a misinformation machine pumping the propaganda in is overwhelming.

And most people are just tuning out.

So for those paying attention

and doing their, you know, getting that objective analysis, which is so hard to get,

they're certainly eyes wide open that this is harmful and it's helping the rich and hurting the middle class and the working class.

But I think we have a lot of work to do to

make that real and visceral to folks.

And so that's a big part of what why

we need to be doing more town halls.

We need to be doing more of what you guys are doing

and do it at scale and make it as apolitical as possible.

Just these are the facts.

This is what's happening.

But you're, you know, I think exactly the point you made of like, like, even talking about this as a tax bill or these are tax cuts, I think is actually not the right framing.

It really is like,

these are cuts to veterans, cuts to seniors, cuts to kids.

I mean, half the people on Medicaid in my district are kids, by the way, literally can't even vote, and they're getting their health care ripped away from them.

The tax piece of this is honestly like the

least

operative unless you're ultra-rich.

Well, and Trump knows that.

I mean, that's why they're okay with taking on, what is it, up to five or more trillion dollars in new debt over the next 10 years.

I call it the, if you've seen Napoleon Dynamite, I call it the full Pedro approach where it says, vote for me and your wildest dreams will come true.

Just vending machines in every classroom, unlimited pizza parties.

And Americans are just like, oh, I'd like that.

I do have a question on that, though, because in the framing, it's incredibly difficult.

We know that you can look back at every chart and graph that matters and cut it any way you want back to the 80s.

Trickle Down doesn't work.

It has never worked.

It will never work.

And yet, populism has gained ground because of Trickle Down not working.

And yet, we've lost, or at least in

this last era of politics, lost the populism argument.

to a guy who is essentially just saying more trickle-down economics, but he's just saying it differently.

And they're using these wedge issues, because you talk about like

men want to provide for their families by and large, and we need a patriotic populism.

And

that really this comes down to affordability, but and then masculinity and affordability kind of going hand in hand for a lot of men.

But they are using wedge issues to

redefine masculinity, social wedge issues, while

just inflicting their economic damage on the same people

who they're manipulating.

So how have you personally dealt with that being in a 50-50, I mean, maybe even more than 50-50 Republican district?

How have you talked about economics versus wedge issues as distractions?

Yeah, I think the key is recognizing exactly what you said, that

I think in today's political environment, in particular, with so much going on,

what your position is often matters less than what you're actually choosing to talk about with the time that you have and the attention of people that you have.

So, just being like ruthlessly disciplined about always staying centered on the unifying

issue and the most pressing issue to voters, which is absolutely affordability and the economy.

And we just did that in every way that we could, like, not just in my campaign, but in like the first two years of my whole term where we just specifically my first year in office in what was a new district that I'd won by 1% in 2022.

I really almost only went to the areas that I knew didn't, didn't vote for me, you know, when you looked at the map.

And we did these

mobile, we called it our CARES van.

It's like literally, we bring government to you.

We show up, we do a little town hall, we help people with veterans benefits, social security, Medicare, IRS, like whatever's going on in your life, and just kind of tried to establish trust around that stuff first before getting into big

national debates.

And then every opportunity where they tried to distract, I just tried to bring it back to an economic message.

And I do think if we don't recognize that the country is rightly, given the inequality happening, at a populist moment and

Democrats have not offered an answer to that in any compelling way, Trump didn't win this election.

Democrats lost this election.

I believe that just deeply.

And that breaks my heart and pisses me off at the same time.

So I've been trying to offer up my working title: you mentioned

patriotic populism, this idea that we're in a populist moment, but we don't need destructive solutions to it.

Like Trump proposes, we need unifying, go back to founding principles of a country that, you know, we like competition.

Hard work is what we reward in this country.

We help people that need help when they need it and expect people to do the same for us.

Like, I think those are American things, not Democratic or Republican things.

And we just have to say them over and over and fix our brand around that, which is easy to say, hard to do.

And

I think that's kind of the path.

And the last thing I'd just say on this, I think it's going to be easy in the moment we're in and necessary to say what we're against with all the harm being done, including in this tax bill, including in all the other things they've done in the first 120 days.

But if we don't say what we're for

repeatedly and authentically around an economic message, we're in real trouble in 2028 in particular.

And I think we did just quick follow-up and then I'll give away the mic.

But

it's such a good push in that direction.

And I think we had an opportunity late in the election cycle when I think Donald Trump looked at all of the charts and graphs and he was like,

I'm setting myself up for an economic disaster.

He knew he wasn't doing the thing that needed to be done.

And so he started saying the last like two weeks, people are voting for me for immigration and mass deportations.

And he is still to this day trying to force feed the idea that immigration was the number one reason he was elected because I think he sees that he can do the most damage, frankly, on immigration.

And so he's trying to move the goalposts.

We never, you know, Kamala came out early with the $25,000 homebuyer tax credit, which was absolutely brilliant.

But I feel like we got, you know, we did what we do, which is to take their bait and then fight on whatever turf that they want to fight on.

And we spent the last two weeks not just.

bludgeoning the economic message, but then talking about human rights and talking about all this other stuff.

And I think to your point, you know, we maybe missed an opportunity to close the gap there at the very end.

Yeah, I was actually talking to a very smart friend and he was reminding me about

some thinking and writing about the Chinese communist revolution.

And it was paraphrasing here, but it was basically Mao was arguing for bread and the other side was arguing for democracy.

And we know how that goes and how that went and kind of how it went here.

And we got to meet people at sort of the base of the triangle of Maslow's hierarchy

rather than talk at the top of it.

I think that's, again, easy to say, hard to do, but we lost it.

I agree in that moment.

My perspective, and I'm curious what you think about this, is that

you're right, that Democrats just kind of pivoting the conversation is not going to work.

In my head, even though we have no real functional power, to me, the smartest way to combat what they're doing is to show exactly what we would do if we were in their position and offer that up.

Like it's only one thing to say, we don't like what you're doing.

Fine.

But if you were in power, what would you do?

So like it's a lot of work to draft your own bill and propose that bill.

But I feel like in these circumstances, if Democrats are to come out and go, look, we don't have the ability to do this, but this is what we would do.

Like I think that the average person would go, oh, I like that better.

Why aren't we doing that?

And that could change the tide.

I agree.

And I think like I was trying to make this case as we knew what was setting up in.

at least in the congressional side that they were going to do this big bill and they're sort of one shot.

And I was trying to say we should have our specific plan, which should be an affordability agenda, specifically around housing, healthcare, and food.

And just say that over and over and be specific.

I like actually the first bills I introduced in my term was an affordability agenda around that.

But I was arguing that we should do that nationally and say, here's the split screen here,

not only in this tax bill, but in the tariffs too.

And we're focused where the people are and they're focused on all this other

stuff.

But But again, I think this is where we continue to own goals here.

Like

just being against is how we've gotten in this in this situation.

So I know a lot of my colleagues feel the same way and are doing it where they can in their districts, but this is where we need the, you know, stronger leadership to pull that all together and

understand the assignment and the moment we're in.

It's just a different, people don't want the oppositional

stuff.

They want something they can be excited to be for.

Are you getting pushback from colleagues on this approach?

Like, are you getting people who are actively saying, No, that's not the right approach, or is it just the fact that leadership is not really able to piece together how we would functionally do this?

Yeah, it's

more like

herding cats kind of dynamics and collective action problem.

Yeah, I figured.

And I came from the army and I come from running two businesses.

So it's so frustrating to me of like, guys,

have a plan, operate as a team.

We each have our lane, message discipline, like, and this is, it's very different than that.

Um, so I'm not saying that Congress should be run like the military.

I'm not saying that, but like, let's, let's tip the scale a little bit more towards a,

let's have a strategy and execute the strategy, which is, I know, a crazy idea.

Totally.

Well, I want to, I want to let, uh, I want to, I want to get Luke in here in a second, but I just, uh, yeah, I'm going to put you on the spot.

So, so, Congressman, Luke is obviously our youngest, if you couldn't tell by looking at us,

our youngest co-host here.

He's 21.

And we saw a very troubling trend with the youth vote this time around, right?

We lost a lot of ground.

I want to get your reaction first, and then I'm going to make Luke ask a question.

But

what do we say to the, especially for men, right?

Because it wasn't as bad with young women.

Young men swung very rightward in this election.

Like,

what do we, what do we say to the young people to, to win them back?

Well, I think like the short answer is honestly, we just got to listen more and hear where folks are at rather than assuming past things.

In our district, we did much better in that regard.

There's probably a few different reasons for that, but I think most of it just had to do with showing up and listening and being authentic.

And

as I talk to young people, including my staff, including like I have a lot of colleges and universities, I have Barr, Vassar, Maris, I have West Point.

I have a lot of community colleges.

I spend a a lot of time talking to younger people and they're rightly like, yeah, I don't

fucking trust anybody.

Like I don't trust either party.

I don't trust the system.

And anything that

reeks of that, of status quo and of insider and of hired rehearsed talking points, people are going to reject because it just has not worked.

And I think that's my sense of what's driving separate from the, I mean, related to, but separate from the policy is we got to start at that level first.

But I don't know.

I don't know if that resonates with you a lot or not, Luke.

No, I think that's dead on the money.

Like you talk to anybody my age about politics, immediately they're like, well, you can't trust any of them.

They're all shady.

And I mean, they've heard that for fucking years from their parents, I'm sure.

Just, I mean, to some degree, I heard that too.

But like,

I think if you give them a reason to think differently on that, where it's, and I honestly, I've had some people where there's like, I've known people where it's like, oh, I got my loans forgiven and now they're fucked.

They're back.

And it's like, well, that's a pretty good reason to not trust politicians when you're like, well, they gave me this big, good present and then they took it away and they slapped me in the face.

Like,

I don't think that the average person who has that happen is going to go, yeah, it's, it's this, it's this half the politicians that do it.

They're going to go, oh, it's all politicians.

And like, it's a little bit tough to fight that argument when they got something taken away from them that would have benefited their lives immensely.

Yeah.

Or, or on the other side of that issue, which is a complicated issue, like you choose not to go to college and you go to an apprenticeship program in the trades, and you see during the Biden administration, you see one of your high school classmates now, like getting their loan forgiven, you're working your ass off, and you're in debt.

Like, that also doesn't feel right, you know.

And it just drives you further against, like, because there's this like

you use the analogy that the rich people are getting the whole piece of the pie and we're fighting over the crumbs.

And now, with that little tidbit, they're making the people who have the crumbs fight over the crumbs because instead of of just giving everybody a piece of the crumbs, they're, you know, you only get this many.

Well, yeah, they came after labor unions so that they could make the people who are not getting the good paying jobs through labor unions resent the people who are getting good paying jobs through academia.

Yeah, and

both parties to different degrees.

I'm not giving any, you know, moral, full moral equivalency here, but like.

That's just the reality.

I mean, for me, like I got deployed to Iraq when I was 23 and

hold both parties, elected officials accountable for sending us into a war that we shouldn't have gone to, then not giving us the stuff we needed, not asking the hard questions, continuing them for 20 years, and then really never reckoning with that or reckoning with the fact that that added trillions of dollars to our debt.

Like the two biggest additions to our debt

in my lifetime have been

two wars that we never raised taxes and asked the American people to pay for which i think is undemocratic and unconstitutional and tax breaks to the ultra wealthy so it's like especially if you're a younger person and you're like is this the the future that we're setting up for here guys um it's it's uh we got to turn that around well and i think i you know i worked in the federal government i was in the obama administration for five years and i i you know i saw things that don't work.

And I think one of the problems I think people have with Democrats or the Democratic brand as a whole is that they feel like we're for the status quo.

And I really think we have to talk about the broken things.

Like, I, I mean, there, there is waste in the government.

There are inefficiencies.

And I feel like sometimes, and I think this is why, you know, I think Trump did as well as he did, is that he was talking, I mean, the drain the swamp thing's silly because he filled the swamp deeper than it's ever been.

But that man is Shrek.

He is the beautiful for the swamp.

For sure.

But, but then we, you know, I just don't think that we have put forward and messaged an aggressive agenda of both making people's lives better, but also reforming

the things that are broken as well.

Like I had a hard time hiring anybody on my team that didn't, you know,

from the outside world.

You can't get people to

outside to come into the government without like a bunch of hurdles and things like that, or spending money.

You have to go through this contract process, which that whole thing is like a whole giant mess.

How do we start talking about

a reform agenda as well?

Because I think that's a key to bringing a lot of people back.

Totally.

I think it starts with saying,

what are we actually, what are the goals we're trying to achieve?

What are we trying to deliver?

Like talk about outcomes, not inputs.

Democrats are always talking about process and like,

you know, all the wonk and not about what it's going to mean for anybody.

So that's,

that's one.

But then we have to acknowledge when we don't do those things and we're not delivering then we have to go under the hood like we all do in our lives our businesses our our car like our car whatever's going on if it's not working we don't just keep doing the same freaking thing

definition of insanity yeah and then i i do think so that's i think just basic good governance and we've i was a local elected official before this and i had like five priorities and one of them was a more responsive and responsible government where we were specifically focused on like reforming what was a county government doing things better, putting in measures of effectiveness and accountability and transparency.

So that should definitely be part of our agenda.

And it hasn't been

for too long.

I do think though, too, and it's not, it's hard to do this, especially now, but like there are also things that are just public goods.

Like that.

Like the reason we form governments and societies in the first place, like that will not be provided in the same way that you would see

a business do it.

Cause if a business, like it's only the government's able to do it.

And we shouldn't be afraid to say that too,

that that's reminding people.

I think like if you really zoom out,

it's a contract, right?

Like all of us are paying taxes.

We're giving up certain things to be part of a community and a country.

And it should be like regularly sort of reviewed and renegotiated, essentially.

And if, and if people don't feel like they have say in that, and it's just like someone else is deciding and they're re-signing me up at a certain point, people are going to just like do a protest.

I'm not signing this thing.

And we've now done that twice, I think, with Trump.

So we should actually be thinking about like, what is that?

I mean, I'm not trying to conjure like Newt Gingrich

contracted America for

sorry to even say that on here, but like, what is our equivalent of that?

That's how we should be talking.

Like, that's what we should be putting out, not waiting until 2027

and not saying, well, we're in the minority, so we can't talk about it.

Specifically saying, yeah, no, we are in the minority to all your points.

And here's our alternative that we're going to start building now.

You know, I think one of the things that you and I have in common, Congressman, is our desire to serve.

Like we found fulfillment in that,

you know, whether it was joining the military, you've been serving in government for quite a while now.

I have been working in nonprofits and I wish that we could communicate to more people the value of service that goes beyond the feel-good stuff.

Like you and I earned educational benefits.

We earned healthcare benefits.

We earned all sorts of things that more Americans ought to be entitled to, not because they went to war or signed up to go for war, but because they're Americans.

How do we convince Americans that they deserve?

what is being demolished in this tax cut for billionaires?

How do we convince Americans that you shouldn't have to go to war to get an education?

That you shouldn't have to go to war to get your health care taken care of?

That's a great way to think.

I've not ever thought about it that way.

Well,

some people have actually said that to me, that like

some version of that.

Honestly, I don't have a great answer to that.

That's a really good, deep question.

I got to come back to you on that one, man.

I think that's a profound question that I should have a better answer to, but I don't off the top of my head.

Chris, maybe you're the next one to run after this.

Absolutely not.

I do not have the patience for it.

Yeah,

it's really, you know, people just thank you all the time.

I'll just, one just quick thought on this.

I do think, I mean, it doesn't fully answer your question, Chris, but I do think

some form of like I'm working on legislation on national service, which has been tried for a long time, but to specifically link it to

educational and college benefits so that to your point, you don't just, you know, the

GI bill for military service is not your only path to either pay for college, pay for community college, pay for an apprenticeship program, pay for other educational training.

But that if you go serve in law enforcement, serve as a healthcare provider in an underserved area teacher, you know, that there's an actual kind of to that point of a contract that I was talking about earlier, like let's give people a few different options to feel like they're part of the country, not on the receiving end of government, but they're actually part of this thing that we're all included in here.

And I'm still like very optimistic about the American people, that that's what they want, that's what they're hoping for, that they want some positive, inspiring leadership.

But

Dems didn't offer it, unfortunately.

I don't think people think Trump offered it, honestly, but at least he was authentic and willing to blow up stuff that wasn't working, right?

You know, I think if you were to offer a GI bill for cops, firefighters, and EMS, you know, other essential workers, right?

I'm, I think that that would be a popular idea.

The Republicans won't want to pay for it, of course, but, you know, I, I think that

your idea for a contract with Americans is profound.

It is fantastic.

Well, I hear Rich has a very important question for you, Congressman.

So I'm going to kick it over to him.

Yeah, I I know we're low on time,

but I don't think we can avoid this.

So I have to ask you:

you have two first names, and I've always had a problem with people with two first names.

Pat Ryan.

I have three.

I mean, really, I have three.

What?

Patrick Kevin Ryan.

You know, and I'm not three.

Oh,

I wasn't prepared for this.

We didn't have this in our notes.

I'm going to one-up that.

Do you want to take a moment to tell the, like, explain yourself to the American people?

Yeah.

Again, a question I haven't.

I will say this.

It's everybody feels like they know a guy named Pat Ryan, even if they

never.

A little bit, I do feel like they never.

I actually do.

Yeah, a lot of people actually literally do know him.

So there's some advantage to that probably electorally, but it is it is very confusing, especially as a kid.

I answered to like all

the names.

I just every version.

And your mail, your mail probably comes to any combination of the names.

Yeah.

If anybody, if anybody checks their mail anymore these days, I feel like.

Right.

Well, I'm glad we got to the bottom of that.

So it lends itself to a good, tight,

you know, campaign-wise.

It fits nicely on a sign.

So that's one upside of it.

But yeah, everybody should be skeptical of me and all elected officials until we prove otherwise.

I mean, honestly, like, that's for real,

regardless of our names.

Well, Congressman, I know we're basically at time.

So I had been thinking about trying to find some sort of comeback to you for you bringing up the Celtics Knicks.

And I've come up short.

So I'm just going to have to eat this one.

But

I was just like.

That's where I was at this morning.

I was going to come up with some joke to try to make you like endorse somebody for 2028.

And then I thought, oh, that's a little too risky.

So anyways, but we'll wait on that one for a little.

Maybe the next time you come on, we can talk about something like that.

But we just wanted to thank you for doing this.

I know being the first congressman to do to do anything sometimes is

a little different.

So we appreciate you jumping in with us.

We really do think that like do having these conversations helps and matters and will get out to a lot more people.

So we just wanted to thank you.

We're big supporters of what you do.

And I hope you'll come back and join us again sometime.

No, I'd be honored.

And I think you're doing a great service to the country.

So appreciate you guys.

Great.

All right.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, Congressman.

Thank you, please.

All right.

Take care.