Jack Schlossberg on why Democrats lost young men to Trump—and it starts with the reason he quit the Biden campaign

Jack Schlossberg has a confession: He thinks Donald Trump did something right.

At Fortune‘s CEO Initiative dinner in New York, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy — and now a Democratic congressional candidate running in Manhattan’s 12th District — sat down with Fortune editor Diane Brady for a candid, wide-ranging conversation that was as much diagnosis as campaign pitch. The verdict from the 33-year-old: Democrats have a serious problem with young men, and they brought it on themselves.

Schlossberg’s first question was to find an issue on which he and President Trump agreed. “I disagree with President Trump a lot,” he immediately offered, before saying he gives Trump credit for “getting people fired up about politics.” Trump “poached” many of the young men away from the Democratic Party, Schlossberg continued, urging his own party to look closely at how and why this happened.

“I think that they’re not stupid, those young men, and I give President Trump a lot of credit for being able to influence new meeting environments and make politics accessible.”

It’s a striking admission from a man who spent 2024 making viral social media videos for the Biden campaign — until he quit, that is. “I went down to Wilmington,” he explained, only to hear “no” over and over again. “Anyway, long story short, I quit the campaign because I thought if I don’t do this my way, I’m not going to be able to live with myself. A month la...