Politics & Power Quote by Matthew Lesko

Lesko’s line reads like a consumer warning disguised as civic education: if there’s money on the table, don’t let anyone tell you you’re “too old” to reach for it. Coming from an entertainer best known for turning bureaucracy into showbiz, the intent isn’t to deliver a fine-grained legal lecture; it’s to puncture the quiet, internalized assumption that public programs are mainly for the young, the newly credentialed, the startup-fluent.

The subtext is a kind of economic pep talk aimed at people who’ve been trained to self-select out of opportunity. “They cannot discriminate because of your age” functions less as a courtroom claim and more as permission. Lesko’s whole brand is translating government complexity into a simple emotional shift: from “the system is not for me” to “the system is mine, too.” He frames grants not as charity but as an entitlement of citizenship, a corrective to a market culture that treats reinvention as a youthful luxury.

Context matters: in an era of side hustles, midlife career pivots, and student debt spanning generations, age becomes a soft barrier even when it’s not a formal one. Lesko is addressing that barrier head-on, weaponizing plain language to give listeners confidence to ask uncomfortable questions, file the forms, make the call.

There’s also a subtle anti-gatekeeping jab here. He’s implying that intermediaries - institutions, advisers, even family - often enforce age norms harder than the rules do. The line sells a worldview: the real scarcity isn’t funding, it’s awareness and nerve.