Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - The Shadow of January 6th, Johnson’s Speakership, and Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov discuss the fourth anniversary of January 6th and its lasting impact on American democracy, Mike Johnson’s narrow win as Speaker and what it reveals about Trump’s grip on the GOP, and the enduring legacy of Jimmy Carter following his passing at 100. They also dive into James Carville’s critique of the Democrats’ economic messaging and what the party needs to do to win back voters. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway. And I'm Jessica Tarlov. Jess, we are together. We are together. We are in the same office. You came home to America. Yeah, I came back and you dragged my ass downtown to Broad Street. And you're being so pleasant about it. I'm so angry that first off, they didn't know who we were downstairs. And this is a ghost town. I don't, it makes me want to try and figure out a way to short commercial real estate. I can't believe you do this. You like coming in, right?

That's where your mind went on that, yeah. I was just like, oh, young people should want to be in an office, cause it's nice to meet people. You're just looking to escape your kids. Is what I came in here. Yeah, yeah, no, I ran right out of there. So the holidays, catch us up. What'd you do over the holidays?

I was around for most of it. I worked on a ghost town week, which I always like, because everyone who's there is in a good mood. They're getting overtime, which everyone likes. Not on air talent, but the amazing hair and makeup people and the tech people. So I did that. We were in New Jersey for Christmas Eve and Christmas.

Apparently, it's two separate holidays. And we went to Long Island for a few days, and then we had a staycation. Oh yeah, that's what you said. Which was the best. I still like my husband, who knew? I like my apartment, it'll go. He's a dude, we'll fix that. Okay, and tell us about Safari.

I was fine, I was in South Africa. My sister is at a, our kids are at a wonderful age. They're both 14 and 17 and so are her kids. And so it's fun to get them to hang out. South Africa is amazing. Safari is really wonderful. Yeah, I mean, super, super nice. I think I'm really into this idea of lifestyle arbitrages. If I was 20 years younger, there's a lot I would do if I were 20 years younger. But I think if you could make a US salary and did remote work, I think Cape Town would be a pretty interesting place to hang out.

It's so inexpensive. I'm obsessed with prices and money, and that came out wrong. But I find it. That actually came out right. Came out right? Accurate. That's not right. I think it came out accurate.

I don't know if you like that about yourself. But I'm fascinated with the cost of things. And South Africa right now is like, it's sort of the old Navy of global cities in the sense that it's 80% of a world-class city for 40% of the price. Anyways, that was my big observation around my great holiday with my family.

And what is in store? Like if for just Tarlop, do you do new year's resolutions? Do you have goals for 2025? Not set out like that actually. No? Probably should have. I just, I want to, you know, I'm like so in it with young kids, like three and nine months.

So I want them to have great years. Yeah, in the soup. I want to do, make sure that I do a couple big trips. Do good professionally, survive inauguration, like all the things. All the stuff? Yeah, what about you? I see all that happening.

I just want more of the same. I'm really, I'm rounding third right now. I'm enjoying my kids professionally, having a ton of fun. Yeah, I'm just, if it were up to me, I want everything to stay the same. I really don't have any resolutions. I wanna be less angry, less depressed, less unappreciative, less hard on myself,

less hard on others. Other than that, everything's good. Everything's good. All right, let's get into it. Today, speaking of being angry at others, today is the fourth anniversary of January 6th. We're recording this on, you guys did the 6th. Mike Johnson's encore as speaker, Jimmy Carter's enduring legacy, and the

Democrats' strategy moving forward. Let's bust right into it. It's been four years since the January 6th Capitol attack and the shadow it casts on American democracy still looms pretty, pretty large. Over 1500 people have been charged with sentences ranging from a few days to 22 years. And now on this anniversary, Vice President Kamala Harris has certified president-elect Donald Trump's win, a bitterly ironic twist on a day already steeped in history. Harris is called January 6, 2021, a moment of lawlessness, violence and chaos. The test of the nation's democratic foundations.

One side of the nation or 47% of the electorate or whatever it is, is going to try and just not talk about it. I can't imagine it's going to come up a lot on conservative radio today. And Democrats are going to try and pound the shit out of it and remind everybody what happened four years ago. Do you have any sort of, what are your observations kind of four years in? How little it matters. Not even just amongst conservatives who, and I would say as an addendum to your point

about conservative media and what they'll do, they will talk about it, but they will talk about this transformed narrative that it was a day of love, and who, where will the pardons be coming, and you know, because Trump has said that that's gonna be a day one activity for him, and really, you know, rewriting the script of what January 6th looked like.

President Biden had an op-ed out about January 6th today in the Washington Post. You know, one of those let's never forget, right, what actually happened on that day. And for the people who still remember, and a majority of Americans do think that it was an attack on our democracy, a majority of Americans think that Donald Trump is personally culpable for what happened. But the real take-home message is no one gives a fuck, right? Not enough. Not enough people. Not enough people, for sure.

The Liz Cheneys of the world and the bulwark guys and those people, they're out there. But when you look at the hierarchy of issues concerning, you know, a person in their day-to-day life, it ranks pretty low on it. And I think part of that might be that we live in this rarefied world where we can afford to sit there and pontificate about sort of threats to democracy when the real threat to democracy is

that your grocery bill is too high, right? Like that matters a hell of a lot more to you. But then I think there's also just been this dearth of good messaging almost, or keeping it in the national consciousness in a way that doesn't feel like you're bludgeoning people over the head with it all the time, but that it's always in the rear view mirror that there's one party that respects democracy and there's one party that doesn't. And your grocery bill, your gas prices, whether you can afford to have a new home, all of that actually doesn't matter if you have people in power who think your vote

doesn't count. And to me that's what January 6th was. It was an attack on law enforcement, of course, we're gonna talk about that, but it was a bunch of people saying it's not one person one vote here, you know, it's not one person, one vote here. It's my way or the highway. And I'm going to invalidate the will of millions of you. Yeah, I think we lost a lot of moral standing or currency around the world with our, I thought was sort of an errand or a mistaken invasion

of Iraq. I think that was probably the geopolitically maybe the worst, if not the second worst, decision by US government that cost us currency around the world and also turned Iran into a superpower. I mean, it just couldn't have been more stupid. But I wonder in terms of our currency around the world and our moral authority, seeing the capital attacked

and then having the guy who put up a golf tent to watch the attack be reelected. I just feel like we've lost all right to kind of preach to anybody about democracy. I remember thinking I loved it when Prigozhin turned his army eastward and started marching towards Moscow and I thought, oh my God, so embarrassing for Russia. And I had to remind myself actually this duck dynasty mob getting out of RAV4s and their Oakley glasses and their, you know, I'm being very disparaging in identity politics here, they actually raided the Capitol.

Yeah. Cool. And the guy who kind of was egging them on, and it was sort of their spiritual leader around this, was re-elected president. Of all the things you could add up, and there's a lot here, the kleptocracy, the conviction around sexual abuse,

the nuclear secrets or the secrets being hidden in a golf cart storage facility, I think this kind of bests them all. And this is not an easy contest. And that is, if you don't believe in a peaceful transfer of power, I just, like so many things, I thought, OK, this is disqualifying. Brazil has a much stronger democracy than us.

Their guy tried it and immediately got kind of flung out and they restored their democracy pretty quickly. And we didn't do that. We re-elected the guy who sponsored it. All right, moving on. Last week, with two votes separating, Mike Johnson from the Speaker's gavel, President-elect Trump stepped in calling GOP holdouts Ralph Norman and Keith Self to rally support. Their shift secured Johnson's narrow victory, highlighting Trump's grip on the party and the challenge of uniting Republicans in a divided Congress. Trump's endorsement was pivotal, with Johnson calling it a big factor and Rep. Andy Biggs

admitting the outcome would have been different without it. Trump's hands-on approach, a contrast to past leadership battles, showcases influence and the stakes of keeping the GOP aligned to deliver his agenda. Jess, how does this market shift in Trump's approach to party leadership, or does it? I'm not sure it's a difference in his approach to party leadership. It might be a difference in how his approach to party leadership

is going to be received for the next few years. And I think that there are two factors in this that really mattered. One, the impact of having the President of the United States or President-elect get on the phone and tell you, like, this is what's best for us. You've got to do this if you want to have any progress. And then the second piece is that this speaker battle, you know, was happening a few days before the election needs to be certified. And there's no reason to think, I mean, House Speaker Mike Johnson didn't play a role in the certification, but having the House in chaos going into January 6, 2025, I think

was something that was present in people's minds where they thought we, we need to get through Monday. And it was only a couple of people. And there were, from the Freedom Caucus people, like Chip Roy, et cetera, they have a whole list of demands that they were able to put out there. But I think that the Republicans have resigned themselves to, for the ones who are not huge Trump fans, like this is Trump's party at this moment,

and that we're going to be able to be more effective with the slimmest majority since 1917, once these vacancies take place, if we just get on board. And that's what I think happened on Friday. It strikes me that if you, A, position yourself, when I think of Senator Sinema and Manchin, they like to position themselves as moderates,

but I just think they were raging narcissists and loved the position of being swing votes and having the cameras and the president or whoever calling them and begging for them to see their way clear. And then they could fall back and say, oh no, we're just moderates and we have real concerns around these issues.

It strikes me you're gonna see, given the way elections work right now and how important it is just to get attention, regardless of it's good or bad attention. I'd just be shocked if you're not gonna see some of that mansion cinema holdout from a lot of Republican Congress people who are gonna be like, look, I'm really popular in my district and I like the attention. I like the idea of having all this power by basically wringing my hands and saying, well, I'm not sure. I have some concerns.

That's their favorite word. I wonder if they're gonna feel some of that frustration we used to feel where we couldn't. And vote with your heart and conscious. It's important that people, occasionally I like it when people break from a party line, but my sense is mansion and cinema got addicted to the attention of it.

It's almost as it really is kind of a split Congress at this point. It's not it's hard to even say it's a Republican Congress, right? Thank you for coming around to my thinking about this. It was not a landslide. No, no, it's not my idea. I said the presidency was a landslide, not Congress.

The narrative on their side is we have this massive mandate. If you had a massive mandate, you'd have a lot of people to be able to vote for your side. And right now, you don't have that. No, we lost. They have a trifecta that is a better position to be in on all of this. But when you look at the margins and you

think about someone like a Thomas Massey, who didn't vote for Speaker Johnson, he said he, you know, they could pull his fingernails out and he still wouldn't vote for Speaker Johnson, he said he, you know, that they could pull his fingernails out and he still wouldn't vote for Speaker Johnson. Mm-hmm. Look like at a Chip Roy, for instance. Mm-hmm. I mean, these people are going to be serious about the things that matter to them, and a lot of that is the deficit. And they're like, we're not here to rubber stamp spending the same way as if President Biden was in office and Chuck Schumer was the majority leader.

And that is going to be a big problem, I think, especially as we go through reconciliation. Now, Mike Johnson wants one bill. Trump said this morning, you know, if it's one or two bills, I don't really care because Senator Thune told him getting it to run one bill is probably not going to happen. But I mean, they are trying to do everything at once in four months. My understanding is that's near impossible logistically. Well, especially if you look at these margins. And then it'll be up to Hakeem Jeffries

to decide what he wants to do. Because he's in complete control of the Democratic caucus. No one goes out on their own, basically. Rebel forces are more likely inclined to follow their leader when they're kind of on their heels, if you will. I think the deficit is a super interesting one because deficits seem to be always at really high up in terms of concerns of the party not in control, right? And it is a huge issue.

I've both said that, or not always, but I do believe that the largest tax increase in history is that from George Washington, George Bush, $7 trillion in deficits, the Trump administration of the first one, $8 trillion, and Biden wasn't much better. And all that is pulling prosperity forward from younger people such that my generation can stay wealthy. Right? At some point, someone's going to have to pay this thing.

And now the debt or the interest on the debt is now greater than our military expenditures. What's interesting is in the administration, the unelected leader here, who I would argue is the secretary of adult behavior in the cabinet, is the bond market. And that is, if they come out with something that's going to really continue to increase the deficit,

I think you're going to see the 10-year spike. And I think for the first time, there's going to be rumors that the Chinese or other investors might not show up for the next Treasury auction, which would take interest rates way up. You see that happen or you see inflation spike again. You don't need Congress or you don't need deficit hawks. They're going to go, okay, if all of a sudden inflation's back, we're all getting swept out of office and people are going to find their backbone again.

And I love the idea of the most powerful unelected person right now is the bond market. I like it too. We should put him in a costume. I made it a, I gendered him. Maybe it's a woman, the bond market. But I think that that's a great way to look at it. And I actually wanted to ask you about this because it loops into the conversation

we were just having about messaging, about threats to democracy, et cetera. How can we effectively message the deficit? Because when I talk to my friends about it, or my mom, my mom's gentleman suitor, he says, well, okay, let's talk about the deficit. You know what the deficit is? It's the mortgage rate

that you can't afford to pay right now. That's how it's manifesting in your life, that is keeping young people off the property ladder, for instance. And I feel like we have done none of that, you know, talking about the links between those two things. It feels like this amorphous thing that you just can, that you are constantly kicking down the proverbial road. And I want to hear it in terms of interest rates, mortgage rates, you know, cost of living expenses. I mean, we have this number that Trump's plan will

cost us $4.6 trillion. That's what I'll add to the deficit. Put that in real terms for somebody who took a flyer on this chaos agent heading into this election, like the 32-year-old that has a $150,000 job, doesn't feel they'll ever be able to buy a house, is struggling to find a mate. Make the deficit real for that person.

I think that's a great messaging standpoint. So last time we had a surplus, democratic administration, record low interest rates during the Biden administration. And if you think about the power of the bond market, essentially the shortest tenure of any elected leader, I think, in history of a G7 nation was trust in the prime minister. And basically, the bond market-

Was that 10 days as a lettuce or something? Well, it was a lettuce test, which will last longer. Her prime ministership or this head of lettuce, and the head of lettuce, I think, won, or she won by three days. But basically, the bond market showed up. She put out a budget and said, we're going to lower taxes. We're going to go Reagan, Thatcher here, more Reagan, and no plan to increase revenues. And it's going to take our deficit up. And the world

market said, you don't have the default currency to keep printing money of people if you can't afford the interest rates here. And the market, the pound crashed, the interest rate. I mean, the bond market showed up and said, sorry, girlfriend, and she was out. And I wonder if there's going to be a moment here where if inflation, I think the seminal moment in 2025 for the Trump administration is going to be when inflation spikes. And all of a sudden it says, oh no, I'm still here.

You thought you killed me? I'm Jason. I'm in a hockey mask. And just when you thought it was over, I'm back. Just to scare the shit out of Jamie Lee Curtis's great-great-great-granddaughter. That was probably ageist. By the way, I went to the hottest woman.

It takes me back to the 80s. Wow. I mean, what was that show? Was it perfect? What was the one with John Travolta, where she was the aerobics instructor? Anyways, fantastic filmmaking. I think about, is it the sexy pole dance in True Lies?

That was, yeah, that was a great film. That was probably her cinematic peak. Actually, Trading Places was pretty good. Anyways, back to actual policy here, substance. But strikes me that, again, the Democrats aren't doing a good job of saying, oh, FYI, this guy's already threatening an irresponsible fiscal plan and the bond market is already responding.

And guess what? Your credit card bills, your mortgage payments, and your student loan payments are about to be higher because the adults are about to leave the building and the bond market is already really scared. And to put it in, like you said, to put it in layman's terms, saying, folks, your price is about to go up. You may, you may think you're not paying more, but you are because interest rates go up, which is a tax on everyone because people see that this, this guy's

irresponsible and the, this new analogy I love is that at negative 40 Celsius and Fahrenheit converge. You know, usually if you're in Canada or in Europe, I'm constantly converting, all right? It's 28 Celsius, double it at 30. At negative 40, they're the same. That is not a hospitable or good environment to be in. That means something's fucked up.

You don't want to be somewhere where Fahrenheit and Celsius converge, right? So those national- Or just negative 40. Negative 40 is bad. Just general, you just want to stay away from negative 40. And I find that there's an analogy or an apt analogy around whenever the far right and the far left come together, you're a negative 40.

It's a really bad idea. Whether I think the far left or the far right, anti-vaxxers. The far left and the far right, total anti-semites. The far left and the far right seem to come together to agree on, all right, we want more social policies and more spending. All right, we want on the far right, lower taxes and more military spending. I know, let's get together and do both

and explode the deficit. Well, that's a pretty big deal that we could already potentially predict that two weeks out from inauguration. Usually someone has to get in and for us to see the lay of the land. But because A, we have this strange situation that we've already seen him as president before. So we understand some of his proclivities

and that he has essentially become de facto president since he got elected. I mean, you know, Maloney is down there, Mar-a-Lago, Trudeau's been, though, you know, resigning from leadership of the party, which I think is a fascinating turn for Canada. But Trump has essentially gotten an extra couple of months of being president and the market no likey, right?

I mean, Jerome Powell, who came out and said, A, he can't fire me, which I kind of loved, but then said, prices are not going to get better, right? Your rates, we're not bringing the rates down. And then you have the mortgage rates, which is certainly, it's a hot topic of conversation amongst my cohort, right? Like elder millennials that are thinking, okay, this is our time to get on the property ladder.

We've been paying these nuts rents. And so the mortgage rates don't come down. And then on top of it, are we gonna have a little trade war with Canada? We're not going to be able to get any lumber to build houses, right? We're going to have a deportation force that's going to kick everyone out of the hospitality industry. There's going to be no one to build our homes, serve our tables, take care of our dying parents. And you're thinking like, what was I voting for here?

And there's I'm skipping ahead to something we're supposed to talk about later, but there was this big piece in the Wall Street Journal about the millennials living in arrested development in their 30s and 40s with their parents. And it feels like this confluence of every big problem that we've been talking about for the last kind of four to eight years, from student debt to sex and dating and relationships to social media and loneliness,

to high prices to unrealistic expectations to helicopter parenting, which I feel has been completely missed over as a key factor in why all of these people in my generation are fucked up and still living with their parents. And it's all coming together at the beginning of the second Trump term in a way that is not only concerning, but offers, I guess, a window into a very scary next 10 to 20 years, where people might not be pushing culture or, you know, civilization forward in the way that we always have. Yeah, that's dystopic, you know, that would be dystopic. You're learning to, I think I'm infecting you with half glass, half empty

itis. You said something, you said something that really struck me. I want out. There you go. And I've been thinking about this a lot. And that is I'm pissed off and it falls back, I think, again, at the feet of democratic or poor democratic leadership. We've decided that Trump's presidency is going to be not four years, but four years and three months. He and first lady Elania are controlling the news cycle.

Musk is having more influence over foreign policy right now than Biden, it feels. And I just, just a call out to all of my colleagues and friends who are constantly sending me emails saying he, Biden is going to be our nominee and you need to understand the assignment and get on board. The reason why an unelected man and the world's wealthiest man are now controlling the narrative is because we have a guy who should not be president because of his age and they are afraid to put him in front of a camera for the first time he's doing his, I forget what sign off speech, yeah without taking it without taking any questions from reporters. They are clearly so scared of this guy getting in front of people to actually have to answer questions

and express that cognitive ability that they've said even with this little to lose, even with, you gotta think even the folks from Fox are gonna be pretty nice to him if they ask questions during this thing. They said, no, we can't take that risk because this guy is in such serious decline. We should move on because we've gotten literally through about

10% of our topics here. So curious what you think about, we were talking, we started this conversation with talking about Speaker Johnson being getting the gavel again. I initially, when I had a litmus test or saw some of Speaker Johnson's background, I thought, oh, this is David Duke Light. I used that term on-

Oh yeah, you said that when we were on Bill Maher together. Yeah, and that was the wrong thing to say. And I don't know the man, he doesn't care what I think, but I think I got that wrong. I actually think Speaker Johnson has done a really good job. And that is the speakership is supposed to be an administrative position, not a political one. I don't agree with his politics. I'm never going to. But I think he's been a good administrator. I think he has done his job.

He has tried. He has corralled people. He's gotten the debt ceiling elevated. I think he is doing what that role commands of him. And I find him to be an adult and taking his actual position really seriously. I think he's done as good a job as we could have expected from what is arguably one of the worst, it's got to be just almost an impossible position right now. What are your thoughts on Speaker Johnson? I largely agree, not with the David Duke light part. I think there are concerning things about him and when we had that conversation a bit over a year ago,

we didn't know much about soon to be Speaker Johnson, except that he was part of an architect to overturn the election results. And there was good reason to think that he was more of a firebrand than an administrator. And it turns out that he's happy to kind of be like a little elf, right, in the workshop. And he's just running around from office to office saying,

what do you need? What do I need to do to get your vote? And he doesn't have rhetorical flourishes. He, I mean, he's fine on TV. He's on all the time, which I appreciate. I think it's good to hear from these people. He doesn't seem that afraid to talk to people he disagrees with, which I think is a massive plus point. But he doesn't, you know, he's not going to bring down the house like a Nancy Pelosi speech or Hakeem Jeffries or even Kevin McCarthy, I think had, you know, bigger moments where of gravitas. But he's getting the job done and he's working, like I said, it's going to be the slimmest majority since 1917.

What do you want from the man? He shows up every day. He looks perfect. He knows who he has to talk to. He has created a good, seemingly working relationship with President-elect Trump and Alania. And he knows how to kind of take what he gets from them and bring that back to an unruly caucus.

He's also gonna benefit from the fact that Matt Gaetz is not around from all this. He I think has a pretty decent relationship with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is now, you know, nutcase number one, I feel like in the House and Lauren Boebert, I guess, 1A for her. But generally speaking, yeah, I think he's probably the right man for this moment. But I don't know how this bill comes into existence. And I thought that we were trending the first speaker

fight from a couple of weeks ago. I thought we were moving towards a world where maybe we weren't going to have single issue bills, but we were going to have smaller bills, right? Like at least by policy area. So you say, here's the immigration bill, right? Here's the energy bill. Here's what we're going to do on climate, taxation, et cetera.

Or not. Right. And this just feels like it's going to be more of the same and it's going to obviously affect those less well off the most, which is what happens, right? The cuts are going to come from people who rely on entitlement programs, the people who operate at the lowest economic levels of our society, and the people who frankly needed whatever Trump was selling the most in all of this, right? The people who the great Biden economy was not working so well for the people whose credit

card debt is soaring through the roof. I mean, the numbers on that are staggering from a historical perspective. And they're going to get totally shafted, which this crazy reconciliation bill is going to cost us trillions and change nothing about the way Washington does business. Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us. Welcome back. Former President Jimmy Carter, the 39th president and a trailblazer in humanitarian efforts, passed away at the age of 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, surrounded by family. A Pena Farmer-turned-president, Carter's single term from 1977 to 81 faced economic

and foreign policy challenges, but his post-presidency legacy as a Nobel Prize-winning advocate for human rights and global peace reshaped how we view former presidents. President Biden called Carter a model of what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose. It's nice, isn't it? Let's read that again. A model of what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose and declared January 9 a national holiday of mourning. President-elect Donald Trump, who has often been critical of Carter,

acknowledged the former president's contribution, saying, we all owe him a debt of gratitude. Carter's state funeral will be held on January 9 in Washington, D.C., followed by a private internment in Plains. Jess, what are any thoughts on Carter's legacy and how he'll be remembered in light of the contrast between his presidency and his post-presidential work? I'm concerned that it's just always gonna kind of be shitty for Carter because his presidency is so present in people's minds,

especially having gone through this high inflationary period, that people just think of the Iranian hostage crisis and they think of the prices and they just say Jimmy Carter was all bad. And something that I've been reading up more on since he passed away or towards the end of his life since these obits have been hanging in the air. And there was this great, well, not great because the obituary writer ended up passing away but Jimmy Carter outlived one of his obit writers by like over a decade. But looking at his foreign policy record hostage crisis aside, it's incredible to look at all the groundwork that was laid during those years when it comes to China, when it comes to our anti-Soviet positions, you know, Reagan obviously getting credit for ending Cold War, but Carter

being the first one to actually be speaking out about the Soviets and to talk about democracy and human rights in those contexts. The Camp David Accords, peace treaties with Israel and Egypt, he has a reputation or had a reputation for being for strong Israel supporters is perhaps too pro-Palestinian, but looking back at pushing through and went through unanimously the vote to establish the Holocaust Memorial Council and build the Holocaust Museum. That is part of Jimmy Carter's legacy, that he was then hired as part of the Carter Center by multiple presidents to

go be election monitors all over the world to make sure that we were spreading democracy and human rights. There's a lot of very cool stuff to Jimmy Carter. And I want to say first and foremost with that, the 77-year love story with his wife. I went to see Jimmy and Rosalind Carter speak when I lived in London. And they were talking about the work of the Carter Center and about eradicating disease and spreading democracy. And I was so overwhelmed by the palpable affection that those two had for each other.

And that it just radiated from them a marriage of equals that I had not seen before. And I thought it was so special and I was so lucky to have been able to see it in person with another 5,000 people that were in the room watching them. But those are my quick thoughts. Well, I think he's getting a lot of well-deserved recognition, A, because of the extraordinary life you live,

but also because of the contrast. And that is to think about one president exiting the stage and his character and the way he acquitted himself and the one entering the stage. The contrast is just so palpable. And I'm on a board of a startup and the chair of the board is this former, I forget what it's called, there's

this, like, there's so many amazing units of our armed services where they find these incredibly superhuman-like fit and also very smart people who decide to serve their country. And he was on one of these mini submarines off the Iranian coast where they weren't allowed to ever surface for fear they'd be detected. And their job was to perhaps evacuate operatives from the shores of Iran or some, they had some strange, I forget what the group's called, forward something group. And they would kind of go in first for recon

in very sensitive places where it's like, don't get caught. And his job was to be in this tiny submarine off the coast of Iran, never emerging, if you will, and go out into freezing water and grab these people and put them back in a submarine that was floating at three miles an hour, four feet under the water. And if you miss the submarine, you were gonna drown in freezing water.

And he was talking about the rescue, the failed rescue attempt, and that the one thing they knew when they'd heard that one of the helicopters had been downed and that they'd called off the mission was that his presidency was done. That was going to be the October surprise, really kind of inflation, oil spiking.

Reagan was an outstanding candidate. The other place I go is I think about trying to evolve or shape a more aspirational vision of masculinity as I think masculinity has been perverted and conflated with coarseness and toxicity incorrectly. And as people try to develop a more aspirational form of masculinity, I'm constantly asked, well, who are some great role models? And I think about Jimmy Carter, I'm constantly asked, well, who are some great role models? And I think about Jimmy Carter. Grew up in Georgia, married for 77 years, went to college, then did graduate studies in nuclear physics,

decided to serve his country, joined the Navy, was actually in an incident involving an accident, and went into the room to fix some sort of nuclear reactor or something, was seen by his colleagues as a brave person, became an entrepreneur, took over this peanut business, ran for governor, you know, just a really intelligent, disciplined, serve your country, generous, loving man, like a nice vision for like, I think, a nice role model for young men. And he said something that really struck me. And I thought, guy, this guy's so prescient.

He gave a speech and he basically said, we've entered this, he was kind of giving Americans a talking to. And he said, we've now become a nation where people aren't judged by what they do, but by what they own. And he kind of predicted very early this what I call this era of idolatry of money,

where any of this type of behavior. I was at a conference and when we were in Q&A, I'm like, look at what money has done to us. And that I was speaking about Elon Musk, people always ask me, what do you think Elon Musk? I'm like, if you had a son who had been married three times and had 13 kids or 12 kids and wasn't living with any of them.

If you had a son who slept with a loaded gun next to his bed, if you had a son that was addicted to ketamine, if you had a son that was accusing people errantly and incorrectly of sex crimes such that they had to move. You know, if you had a son that was behaving this way, you'd call your son and and you try and do something. You'd be embarrassed for him. You'd be embarrassed for yourself.

You would think you were a failed father. But if he's worth $400 billion, all is forgiven. It's just as if we have absolutely decided the cash can replace any semblance of character and he saw that. And also he has defined what it means to be a post presidency. Like I really like, these people are you generally more likable post presidency. I would argue that Clinton has not had a great post

presidency because of some of the shit that's come up about him or that's haunted him. I think George Bush has had a great post presidency. You know? I mean, seems nice. He draws. Painting. Yeah. Seems like a nice man.

But Carter really. But it's not as impactful. I mean, it's all well and good to hang on a ranch. None of them are building houses. Right. Right? With their own hands. For the poor.

Yeah. With their wife of 77 years, you know, holding the tool kit or him holding her tool belt. Yeah, this guy. Yeah, he really did. It's, he's the anti-commercialization of the post-presidency and everybody else has been. And the Obama-

A quarter of a million dollars speaking fees are big, but- I don't think so. And, you know, all the more power to you. I think, you know, if the market can work in your favor, go and take advantage of it. But no, I think if we looked into the tax returns, we would see, you know see modest incomes living very similarly to the way that they did when they put that peanut farm

in a trust so that the American public could trust him when he came into office. And I look at, and maybe this is just my estrogen talking since I already said I love their marriage and their love story, the Obamas also have an incredible love story. But their post-presidency or his post-presidency is much more commercial than the Carter's, right?

And that's not to say they aren't doing a world of good, but we're as likely to see them as a habitat for humanity site as we are to see at the Oscars. And Jimmy Carter is not showing up anywhere, well, now he's really not showing up anywhere, but he's not showing up anywhere, well, now he's really not showing up anywhere, but he's not showing up anywhere to talk about anything. For a while, we hope.

We hope. But eradicating Guinea worm, right? And that's a real Marx difference. I will say in Clintonian defense, I think the Clinton Foundation has done a lot of good, but obviously as pillars of society, the Clintons, no one holds a candle really to the Carters. And you see that the way his passing and his last year in hospice has been covered from

local press, people who knew him. I mean, this is someone who was part of a community in a way that someone who went on to the presidency never is. This is the local guy who's sitting at the end of the counter when you show up at the diner. And I don't know how we would ever get that back again. I can't see anyone on the horizon who would be like that.

I think times maybe demand that it's not possible anymore. It costs too much to get elected. You need to be too famous. You need to be too famous. You need to be too good on a podcast. Too polarizing. Too polarizing. You need to have a partner that does something swanky and cool.

You need to have kids that fit into a certain bucket. All of these things that didn't exist when Carter got elected. But it feels like a real loss for humanity and dignity in politics that he's gone. And I hope that we'll consider the full raft of accomplishment. And obviously there are some things that he did

that were not fantastic. And there's a reason that, you know, Reagan came in in that kind of fashion, right? He opened the door big time to conservatism. But a really decent and good person. And it was sad to see him go, but he said, I want to live to vote for Kamala, and I don't want to live to see Donald Trump

as president again. So he got out on time. Box check. James Earl Carter, dead at 100 years of age, rest in peace. Before we wrap, let's dig into the state of the Democrats. In a recent New York Times op-ed, James Carville admitted Democrats lost in 2024 because they failed to connect with voters on the economy. For our previous comments, despite solid GDP growth and easing inflation, many Americans

felt the party wasn't addressing their struggles. Trump capitalized on this by making the economy a central message, winning over middle and lower class voters. Carvel says Democrats need a clear, relatable, and urgent economic narrative to win them back. At the same time, younger generations are delaying or skipping milestones, including homeownership and parenthood. Some by choice, others because of rising costs and societal shifts. Researchers warn this trend could become permanent, reshaping families, communities, and the economy. What do you think Democrats can do to try and reclaim the economic narrative here?

I'd had to, and maybe I'm too conciliatory in some ways, and I think part of that as a function of working in conservative media that I'm around people that I disagree with all the time, and I can see what place they're coming to the table from. I think most people are actually generally motivated by wanting good outcomes, and we just have different approaches for how to get there. But Tom Swazee, who's a conservative Long Island Democrat who we're going to have on

the podcast at the end of the month, had an op-ed in the New York Times that came out on New Year's Day where he talked about, you know, where we can work together, where we have to push back. And I think that employing some of that thinking and making sure that we're coming to the table with our own ideas, especially working against this super slim majority on their side will benefit us. But I wanted to double tap on the Carville op-ed

because he says it's about the messaging problem. And there was a 538 politics podcast about the 1992 election that came out that I was listening to of like how Clinton and Carville did it. And they were talking about, you know, it's the economy, stupid. And they just kept repeating very simple marketing phrases over and over again so that no one forgot what their campaign was about. And the Democrats, we didn't have that, right? We had like 10 slogans that people were going for.

For Clinton, it was putting people first and it's the economy, stupid. And that's what anyone really remembers, right, from the 1992 election. But making it just about the way that we message things ignores the fact that there are real fault lines in the way the American economy is working for people. And I'm scared that we're going to try to paper over those real problems with rhetorical flourishes and think that we should win in 2026, which by the way, a midterm, it turns out more people who are like us that are paying a lot of attention versus a regular American

that showed up in 2024 to vote for Trump. So what do you make of that? I mean, I want to bring up credit card debt again. I mean, this number is staggering. So it's at 1.17 trillion now of credit card debt. So everyone is basically living off their plastic at this point. Like that's a real indicator of how the economy isn't working for people, right? And how do you square that with Peter Baker writing in the New York Times that Biden is handing off the best economy that anyone has gotten since Clinton gave George W. Bush the economy

at the beginning of 2001? Yeah, the numbers are just, there's perception is reality, but the perception is much different than the reality in the sense that in terms of the economy, we have the strongest growth in the G7, lowest inflation something like 50 or 60 percent of all GDP growth on a gross level Globally is going to come out of the US our stock market represents half the value of the entire world stock market Low unemployment. I mean the problem is similar to the future what William Gibson said about the future. It's here prosperity is here It's just not evenly distributed.

And people really feel it. I would argue this was a referendum on young men, it was supposed to be a referendum on women, it wasn't, or women's rights. But the messaging, I think has to, and I'm a fan of trying to keep it simple, and that is it needs to move, in my opinion, from identity politics.

I really hope there's a reckoning here. My biggest fear around Democrats is to say, no, we weren't progressive enough. Yeah. And that they say we, and there's very articulate, compelling people on the left will say, no, we need to stick to our values. It's because we weren't strong about our values.

And I'm like, Jesus Christ, you want to talk about things getting even worse for us. I think they need to move dramatically away from, it just really frustrated me at the Democratic National Convention, I felt like this is a special interest group on parade. All right, do we have an Asian Pacific Islander to speak to other Asian Pacific Islanders

and assuming that, oh, because I'm Asian or Pacific Islander, I wanna hear the following things and feel seen around issues related to me as opposed to, that's not how I identify myself. And I think we really saw that with the Latino vote. They said, look, being Latin doesn't define me and what I care about. And the example that really struck me,

and I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris and he brought this up, was that, do you remember the court case or the court case that just happened where the young man was dealing or there was someone who appeared to be mentally? Daniel Penny. Yeah, basically was on trial for- Murdering Jordan Neely.

Well, yeah, he was accused. He was accused of murdering, but acquitted. And what they found in surveys was how you felt about it was if you found out who was white and who was black. That because it was a white man who had, people would argue, in self-defense or doing what he thought was the right thing, ended up killing this individual. How you felt about it, especially among Democrats, was knowing the identity and race of each of the parties. And it strikes me that, and I think it's a fair accusation of Democrats,

is that we're in many ways more obsessed with race than Republicans. And I think we need to get away from this. I would exit identity politics as aggressively as possible and move right into the discussion around inflation, around the economics argument. But until we move away from everything the Democratic Party being around,

we're here to protect and advance the rights of this group as identified by their race, their religion, their ethnicity, their nationality. I think we're stuck in this inexorable downward spiral. Yeah, I mean, to some degree, it's a good thing that society has moved in the direction that it has. It is a bad thing for Democrats politically that we've been slow on the uptick about it. And

you look at someone like NAOC, who split district, right? South Bronx went for her and they went for Donald Trump or Jared Golden in Maine. And this happened all over the country, right, where people said, I want to choose my fighter. And that was the key theme of this. If you are going to be fighting for me, I don't really care if you have a donkey or an elephant sitting on the other side of your name or your party affiliation. And I think that that's probably a net positive for us. But I would expand off of, you know, you have to talk about the inflation and the economy for sure, but I think the Daniel Penny example is a really important one.

And we covered that case day by day over at Fox. And- Oh, Fox would love that story. It would strike me. But it's a great story. It's not just because it's a Fox red meat story. And I brought it up. Yeah, you brought it up.

And the only interview that Daniel Penny has done is with Judge Neem Pierrot, who's on the five with me. And he served the country honorably. He's starting to be an architect. He was on a train where a mixed race group of people were all expressing fear of Jordan Neely, someone who was on this list of the top 50 most vulnerable homeless people in the city and arguably shouldn't have been able to be on the streets.

And you see Kathy Hochul now pushing for some involuntary confinement for people who are public safety threats. And she's only doing that because Richie Torres is going ballistic on her on basically a daily basis. But while you were away, I don't know if you saw the story, a undocumented man who had been deported multiple times set a woman on fire on the F train in Coney Island here.

And that kind of stuff has taken this so far beyond partisanship, where you just think my quality of life is not up to standard. We are paying- When you pay the highest taxes in the nation and people are being lit on fire on public transport. Right, people who, she was an alcoholic,

the Times finally has a big piece about her because they were able to figure out who she was because she was incinerated to the level that we couldn't do DNA testing for a while. And you have that image of also a police officer walking in front of her burning body and not doing anything. People just walking by. Yeah.

People just walking by. But New York City has a plea out right now. We need 1,600 new cops right now. We don't have enough New Orleans, the terror attack there. There was a point when New Orleans just a few years ago only had something like 700 beat cops. You can't protect New Orleans with that many people.

No, but defund the police. Right. All of that we can't lose sight of because that was part and parcel of the message that the Republican party was able to put out there. And I don't say message in that it wasn't rooted in real life. I mean, people that we know are walking around saying, like, I don't feel as safe as I should. I am taking the subway less.

I mean, congestion pricing is coming in to solve a problem of having everyone in Ubers and cabs because they're not on public transport as much. I'm the only person, at least on air at Fox, I take the subway in and out. I am very different on the subway now than I used to be. Not both AirPods in, lost on my phone. I'm paying attention to what's going on and I'm going from Tribeca to Times Square.

You're seeing that wave though. It's checking back in San Francisco. They've said, okay, no more. It used to be if you stole less than $900 and weren't going to prosecute. Yeah, Prop 36. Yeah, that shit has gone away. And it's, by the way, just to end here on a positive note, I absolutely love Representative Torres. Oh, he's the best. And I just, I, I, one of the things I like about him too is the far left

just doesn't know what the fuck to do with this guy. Cause the intersectionality of a gay Latino, black Democrat who was also- Millennial. Very millennial, but also very pro-Israel and wants to get away from identity politics. So like, oh wait, we want to like you, but you're making it hard to.

I think he's exactly kind of a Democrat. Well, I've told you that Brian, my husband's dream ticket, Federman Torres. He's like, give me Federman Torres for 2028. And I mean, Richie Torres has a huge Jewish community that's part of his district. And my friend lives there and he says that he's at the synagogue every week.

He shows up at his kid's religious school. They know him, they're like, oh, Richie's here. I mean, he's doing public service in a way that feels more Carter-esque, right? Than it feels like what today's current looks like. We have a lot of work to do. So just, we got to wrap up here. Just before we go, Biden is gonna give

his kind of last conversations here. Any thoughts on, you know, any advice for him, or do you think, what can we expect here? Does it matter? Will it be forgotten? This is sort of his last shot here. Any thoughts? I'm hopeful, but resigned to the fact

that it'll probably feel like a lot of what we've heard before and of going over accomplishments. And a lot of them were what you were just talking about, right, with the success of the economy on a global scale, right, and taking us from where we were with, you know, 15 million people losing their jobs, losing over a million lives to COVID, et cetera, and where we are today. And those are legitimate victory laps to be taken. But I really want, especially as there are very real questions and a lot of people who

are huge Biden supporters who now feel very differently about him and the presidency and his cognitive abilities, I want to see the empathizer in chief come out for one last hurrah and to talk about Not necessarily say, you know why kamala lost or why the democrats lost? But to show some of that humility and that connection to the average person that makes him more scranton joe Than the 46th president of the united states of america And I was listening to anthony blinken on he was on the sund Sunday interview on The Daily. I listened to that as well. Yeah, and I was not impressed.

God, it's so funny you said that. I was so angry. Funny flash, we were both crying. I was like, this is a disaster. Why didn't you get back in her face when she was basically so outraged at the Israelis? I'm like, how come the New York Times and this individual doesn't appear to be that outraged

about what happened on October the 7th? How come he's not back in her face saying, what on earth, why? It just struck me as so Biden-esque that he was playing defense and being very thoughtful and understanding her as opposed to saying, what the fuck? This is our ally.

Of course we came to their defense. Of course we were gonna provide them. Would you rather us have 10, 200 pound? There's no elegant way to kill someone. And you keep citing statistics from Hamas, better known as the Gaza Health Ministry, because you keep taking their word and not the word. He just did not get back in their face and give. And to a certain extent, Biden should be able to take a victory lap around the US's support of Israel. And instead they were milling mouth about it because they wanted to have it both ways. They fucked up so badly on Israel because they did the right thing and they refused

to take credit of it by having it both ways. Or to just talk about it in normal terms. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, the electorate has made it clear that they don't care if you say it fancy. They just want to hear it. And I felt like he was- And stab me in the front, not in the back. Don't give me a bunch of bullshit and say,

why we feel for the people. Yeah, of course we do. We all do. It's the greatest concentration of child amputees in the world. It's tragic. And you know what? That can be laid at the feet of Hamas and the 70% of Palestinians who still support Hamas.

And that's what they believe. Their actions support that view. They deployed two carrier strike forces right away. In my opinion, the Biden administration has been very good. But what's the point of doing good if you're not seen doing good? And so they said, well, we can't lose the Islamic vote

in Michigan. And guess what? They voted more than expected for Trump. And the general view was, I'd rather be stabbed in the front than in the back. Anyway, I. Well, that's not going to pan out that well from them, either. They're going to be plenty pissed within a few months.

But we are, I mean, I thought Blinken was a great representation of how mealy-mouthed our electeds have been about this. And that's not to say that I agree with everything that they've done, right? I think that there is a strong case that you could make that we are more involved in global wars or conflict than we should have been.

And that one of the promises was this return to normalcy when we sure we're bringing everyone home. Him saying, I wouldn't have changed anything about the Afghanistan withdrawal, excuse me. Like that's pathetic. But he sounded just like your average poll. And no one wants that. It's hard to end a war.

We fucked up. On the whole, we got some stuff right. We got some stuff wrong. And he made the same mistake, I think Vice President Harris did when she was on The View and asked, what would you do differently? And she said, nothing. Anyways, this is going to be an exceptionally interesting week and an exceptionally interesting year.

Jess, I'm thrilled that we're doing this. Please subscribe to our distinct Raging Moderates feed. We've had a fantastic first six months. We want to carry our momentum into 2025. That's it for this episode. Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates. Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and David Toledo. Caroline is leaving PropG Media.

So sad. I hate it when people leave voluntarily. I don't- You prefer to just fire them? Yeah, no, I don't mind that as much. Caroline, would you like to change your exit strategy? Caroline is going to the dark side. She's joining the Sith Lord known as Alphabet.

So I hope that... Good luck. By the way, we're going to break their ass up. We're going to spin YouTube just because I'm angry at them. I'm about to go into my next podcast where I'm going to suggest that we break that shit up. And by the way, I wish you the best of luck. I think it's important you go to work for crack dealers sitting outside junior high

schools getting them addicted to video and social platforms. Could you be nice? Caroline, this is awesome. Congratulations. I hold a grudge. I can't believe she's leaving. How can you leave all this? She's been with you forever. All that you're leaving all this. But Caroline, you're you're in a fantastic culture carrier. In addition to being very competent, we wish you the best.

I think you're going to be great. It was great getting to know you these past few months. You're always welcome back. You have you have that when you're leaving Disneyland and this is fucking Disneyland. This is the Matterhorn of careers. This is Space Mountain. This is good stuff.

People vomit on Space Mountain all the time. I am stamping, you are leaving the park, but I am stamping your wrist in case you decide to return. You are always welcome. You just have to flash your wrist and say, I was wrong. I was wrong. I wanna stay with Scott.

The most generous, loving person professionally in the history of modern society. And I screwed up by leaving the park early. You're always welcome back, your wrist is stamped. Caroline Chagrin, best of luck to you. Thanks for all your good work. All right. Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.

He's staying. Won't say anything about Drew. You can find Raging, smart guy. You can find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday. That's right, Raging Moderates on its own feed. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great rest of the week, Chas. You too.