Lots of people have opinions about why Democrats flopped in 2024. A select few get to express those opinions on national television.

One of those people is Tim Ryan, the former Democratic congressman from Ohio. Last weekend, Ryan told MSNBC that the reason Democrats lost is simple: They didn’t love fossil fuels enough.

Speaking on The Weekend, which averages around 900,000 viewers per episode, Ryan said that Democrats lost “middle-of-the-road people” because they were not supportive enough of methane gas—a fossil fuel that poses risks to human health and the climate. 

Related reading: Why we’re not calling it “natural gas” anymore

“We did not give them enough of, ‘We are reindustrializing, we are talking about American competitiveness. We are moderate on things like natural gas in Western Pennsylvania,’” he said. “We can’t even be for natural gas replacing coal,” he added—a perplexing remark given that Kamala Harris fully embraced methane gas during her campaign.

The comment becomes less perplexing, however, when considering Ryan’s day job. The former congressman is a spokesperson for a group called Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, a fossil fuel lobbying group that brands itself as a climate group. 

Natural Allies is run and funded entirely by fossil fuel companies, including Williams, TC Energy, Kinder Morgan, National Fuel Gas, Southern Company Gas, and Cheniere Energy. 

These gas companies appear to pay Ryan handsomely for his hype man services. According to the group’s recently-released IRS 990 tax documents, Natural Allies paid “Wuzzy Enterprises LLC” a whopping $246,943 for “public relations services” in 2023. Though Wuzzy Enterprises’s organization documents in Ohio don’t list an owner, the LLC’s listed address in a 2023 Department of Labor filing matches the address Ryan listed as his home in a 2020 election filing.

MSNBC did not disclose Ryan’s lucrative day job to its viewers. He was introduced only as a “former Ohio congressman,” and his chyron said the same. MSNBC did not immediately respond to HEATED’s request for comment. 

I’m not here to argue with Ryan’s perspective on why Democrats lost the election. There are many theories about why Democrats lost the 2024 election, and it’s valid for MSNBC viewers to hear about all of them.

But when those theories are coming from paid representatives of one of the most profitable industries on Earth, it’s essential that viewers know about it. Ryan’s financial entanglement with the fossil fuel industry tainted his entire assessment of the Democrats’ failure—not just the portion explicitly about fossil fuels. For example, in addition to not loving gas enough, Ryan slammed Democrats for being “in a big fight” with the cryptocurrency industry. He asked: “Why are we in a fight with crypto right now?”

One reason, among others, is that cryptocurrency mining requires a lot of energy, and is therefore driving up demand for polluting fossil fuels—including, you guessed it, methane gas. So it benefits Ryan, and Natural Allies, to have Democrats stop pushing for accountability in the data mining sector. It also benefits Ryan because he’s the co-chair of BPI Action, the lobbying arm of the pro-bitcoin think tank Bitcoin Policy Institute.

But that’s not what MSNBC viewers saw. Instead, they saw only the unfiltered opinions of an Average, Regular Ohio Guy in a College Football Sweatshirt, who just happened to have once served as a U.S. congressman.

A watchdog group reacts:

For Charlie Spatz, a research manager at the Energy and Policy Institute who has followed Natural Allies since its formation, Ryan’s appearance on national news was tinged with hypocrisy.

“He’s trying to channel this working class message when he’s getting paid hundreds of thousands from his ‘elite’ clients,” said Spatz. In fact, Ryan’s concern about Democrats’ trustworthiness is “very much undermined by the fact that he isn’t disclosing his clients and promoting them on national news, while making hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.

While the former congressman seemed to be speaking as a representative for voters, Spatz noted, he also spoke on behalf of the industries that hired him.

“We’ve got to be more discerning of what voices are trustworthy,” he said. “Because there’s a lot of Ryans out there trying to insert their narrative to the benefit of clients.”

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Our previous reporting on Natural Allies, methane gas, and Tim Ryan:

• Here’s how much Democrats get paid to shill for fossil fuels (2024)

• Gas group infiltrates civil rights convention (2024)

• The urgent need for methane literacy (2023)

• Do fossil fuels have a place in the net zero transition? (2023)

• These natural gas ads are full of hot air (2023)

• Tim Ryan breaks the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge (2020)

• Tim Ryan may be removed from fossil fuel pledge (2020)

• Tim Ryan's shameless use of climate for clout (2020)

Catch of the Day: MSNBC tried to hide the fossil fuel spokesperson from us, but we found it. Now, can you find the hidden cat?

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