Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) are warning that socialist ideas are gaining traction among young Americans as the country heads toward the midterm elections, pointing to the education system, the appeal of “free stuff,” and the experiences of countries including Cuba, Venezuela, and the former Yugoslavia as they argue against bringing similar policies to the United States.
Tenney and Malliotakis discussed the rise of socialism and left-wing politics in an upcoming episode of the Republican Study Committee’s Right to the Point podcast. Breitbart News obtained an advance transcript of the interview ahead of its release.
The interview comes as both parties turn toward the midterm elections, with Tenney and Malliotakis focusing much of the discussion on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other socialist candidates.
Both lawmakers brought personal experience to the discussion. Malliotakis said her mother fled Communist Cuba in 1959, while Tenney said she grew up spending significant time in Communist Yugoslavia, later studied there, and worked for the Yugoslav consulate during the Sarajevo Olympics.
Malliotakis argued that socialist systems begin by gradually expanding government power through measures such as price controls and restrictions on individual freedoms.
“It is sort of the baby steps where they begin to implement changes. They begin to take away freedoms. They begin to ration things, to implement price controls that are very destructive to the economy,” she said.
She pointed to Cuba and Venezuela, arguing that policies advocated by Mamdani resemble policies implemented in those countries.
“They want to seize the means of production. They did that, particularly with the oil sector in Venezuela,” Malliotakis said. “They want to abolish private property rights. They want to have government-run supermarkets.”
Tenney described her own experiences in Yugoslavia, saying she saw dramatic changes from her time there in the 1980s to what she has seen since. She recalled experiencing shortages while living there.
“There wasn’t anything on the shelves,” Tenney said. “I mean, you had to wait in line for bread, and everybody just figured that was part of it.”
“It was what the government told you you could have,” she added, arguing that government-run grocery stores could lead toward similar outcomes.
Malliotakis cited Venezuela as another example, arguing that government control over production contributed to food shortages and hyperinflation.
“The average Venezuelan lost 24 to 40 pounds,” Malliotakis said. “Most Venezuelans had argued that they went to sleep hungry. They woke up hungry because they didn’t have access to food.”
She added that “eight million, if not more, Venezuelans” fled the country.
Malliotakis also described shortages in Cuba.
“There’s no access to basic things that we in the United States are very used to,” she said, citing toilet paper and aspirin. “My mother sends to our relatives in Cuba. We have to send them different types of over-the-counter medication because they don’t have access to that.”
Tenney then asked Malliotakis why socialism has become particularly appealing to younger Americans amid the success of socialist candidates in New York and elsewhere.
“I think the idea of free stuff is attractive to young people,” Malliotakis replied. “And I think a lot of it starts with our education system, that these young people are being indoctrinated there.”
Malliotakis said many young people born in the United States have “never known anything else” and do not know what life is like under socialism or communism. She said it was especially surprising to see people who fled those systems support similar policies in the United States.
She pointed to constituents with roots in communist China, Russia, Ukraine, and Vietnam who, she said, are alarmed by what they see occurring politically in the United States.
“They are really, really vigilant and they’re voting, and they’re getting out there, and they’re making their voices heard because they don’t want to ever see that happening here,” Malliotakis said. “Because where else will they flee to? There’s nowhere else to go.”
Malliotakis also raised concerns about foreign money entering American political activity through nonprofit organizations, citing Communist China. She said she drafted legislation that would be taken up in the House Ways and Means Committee to crack down on foreign influence flowing through nonprofit organizations and 501(c)(4) groups for political education and activity.
“We’re seeing that type of foreign influence from outside communist countries infiltrating and basically using it as propaganda,” she said.
Malliotakis said young people could either learn from history or “learn it the hard way.”
The lawmakers also turned specifically to New York City under Mamdani.
Malliotakis argued the city is already making life difficult for small landlords and property owners and said she believes that could lead some to abandon their properties.
“They are making the lives of property owners, small landlords, so miserable that they’re going to be abandoning properties,” Malliotakis said. “I think that’s exactly what Mayor Mamdani wants. He wants to be able to take those properties.”
She criticized Mamdani for targeting landlords while pointing to conditions within the New York City Housing Authority.
“The New York City Housing Authority is the biggest slumlord in the city of New York,” Malliotakis said, adding that her constituents have encountered mold, rodents, roaches, leaks, and other problems in city-owned housing.
“He should fix the property that the city owns itself right now, before he starts dictating what other property owners should or should not be doing,” she added.
Tenney later asked what could happen if Republicans lose their narrow House or Senate majorities in the midterms.
Malliotakis warned that socialist-aligned lawmakers in the majority could move from proposing policies to enacting them and controlling government funding.
“They will raise taxes,” she said. “They will reopen the border.”
“We say it’s a thin red line standing between this radical group of people and being the ones who are the lawmakers,” Malliotakis added.
Tenney closed the conversation by returning to her experience with the former Yugoslavia, arguing that the effects of socialist systems are difficult to reverse even after political change.
“It is very, very hard to correct the malaise that is caused from socialism,” Tenney said. “The real just tamping down of the drive and the incentives that people have to try to want to better themselves. They become so dependent on government, and that dependency just doesn’t go away.”
The interview follows months of similar warnings from Tenney and Malliotakis about socialism and Mamdani’s policies.
In November 2025, the House approved a resolution denouncing the “horrors of socialism” in a 285-98 vote, with every Republican who voted supporting the measure, while 98 Democrats opposed it, 86 supported it, and two voted present. The resolution cited regimes including Lenin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba, and Maduro’s Venezuela and declared that Congress opposed implementing socialist policies in the United States. Malliotakis said at the time that “Socialism is Communism-Lite and we will fight and defeat it,” pointing to Cuba and Venezuela. Tenney warned that “NY is already paying the price for socialism,” arguing that Americans “cannot let that failed ideology define our future.”
Tenney had also targeted Democratic leaders and Mamdani in October during the government shutdown, accusing Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer and House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries of surrendering to what she described as the party’s Marxist wing. “Make no mistake,” Tenney said of Mamdani, “he is the face of the far-left coalition and, make no mistake about it, the new leader of the New York Democratic Party.” She argued that Schumer and Jeffries “will not stand up to this movement because they’re terrified of it,” adding that “they’ve built their political survival on appeasing the far left.” Tenney also cautioned that New Yorkers were “already paying the price” through taxes, mandates, and policies involving illegal immigrants, saying that “the damage will not end at the Hudson — it will reach every corner of upstate New York and across this country.”
Mamdani called the January 2026 U.S. military capture of Nicolás Maduro an act of war and a violation of federal and international law and said his administration was focused on the safety of Venezuelans living in New York City. Malliotakis responded, “Before defending a murderous narco terrorist, did it ever cross your mind why eight million people — nearly equivalent to the population of NYC — fled the Maduro Marxist regime? Maybe ask some Venezuelan New Yorkers before you bring his failed socialist oppressive policies here.”
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