The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Raging Moderates: The Shadow of January 6th, Johnson’s Speakership, and Jimmy Carter’s Legacy
Episode Date: January 7, 2025Scott 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
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Nice.
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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 where-
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.
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, because it's
nice to meet people.
You're just like, you're looking to escape your kids.
It's like coming there.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, no, I ran right out of there.
So the holidays, catch us up.
What did 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.
It 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's amazing.
Safari's 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 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-
That actually came out right.
Came out right?
And accurate.
I'm gonna give 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 Harlow, 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 we're 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 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 said the 6th. Mike Johnson's encore 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 large.
Over 1,500 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 has called January 6, 2021,
a moment of lawlessness, violence, and chaos
that tested the nation's democratic foundations.
You know, 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 gonna 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 would the pardons be coming and, you know, because
Trump has said that that's going to 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?
Like...
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.
It's my way or the highway.
And I'm gonna invalidate the will of millions of you. Yeah, I think we lost a lot of moral standing for 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 and also turn 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 Capitol 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 their Rav4s and
their Oakley glasses and their, you know, I'm being very disparaging and identity politics
here. They actually raided the Capitol.
Yeah.
Boom.
And the guy who kind of was egging them on,
and it was sort of their spiritual leader around this,
was re-elected president.
It just, 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, okay, this is disqualifying.
This can't, 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.
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All right moving on
Last week with two votes separating Mike Johnson from the speakers 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 6th, 2025,
I think was something that was present in people's minds
where they thought 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 senators, 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 going to 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 going to 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 hand 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, you know, vote with your heart and conscience.
It's important that people, you know, occasionally I like it when people break from a party line.
But my sense is Manchin 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, 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.
Now we lost.
They have a trifecta that is a better position to be in
in 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, that they could pull
his fingernails out and he still wouldn't vote for Speaker Johnson. Look like at a Chip
Roy, for instance. 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 through
in one bill is probably not gonna happen.
But I mean, they're trying to do everything at once
in four months.
My understanding is that's near impossible,
logistically, is that right?
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
really high up in terms of concerns of the party not in control, right? And it is a huge issue. I've 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, is pulling prosperity forward from younger people such that my generation can stay wealthy.
At some point, someone's going to have to pay this thing.
And now 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 is again, you don't need Congress or you don't need deficit hawks.
They're gonna go, okay, if all of a sudden inflation's back,
we're all getting swept out of office
and people are gonna 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, OK, 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 it's keeping young people off the property
ladder, for instance.
And I feel like we have done none of that,
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.
Right?
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, right?
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, you know Democratic administration
record low interest rates during the body administration and
I mean 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 is as a lettuce or something
Well, there 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 gonna 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,
I'd take some back to the eighties.
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?
She, 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 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 guy is irresponsible.
And this new analogy I love is that at negative 40 Celsius and Fahrenheit converge. Usually,
if you're in Canada or in Europe, I'm constantly converting. 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 in negative 40.
It's a really bad idea. Whether I think the far left or 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.
Right, 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 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, you know, 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 going to 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 thirties and forties 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, 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 just a call out to all of my colleagues and friends
who are constantly sending me emails saying,
Biden is gonna 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.
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 got to think even the folks from Fox
are going to be pretty nice to them. 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 this politics, I'm never going to.
But I think he's been a good administrator.
I think he has done his job.
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.
He's got to be just in 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 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 is 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, he's not gonna bring down the house
like a Nancy Pelosi speech or Hakeem Jeffries
or even Kevin McCarthy, I think had 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 going to 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 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, etc.
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, you know,
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 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.
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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 peanut 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, DC, followed by a private interment 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
going to 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. 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, you know, ending Cold War, but like,
you know, 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 as 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. Yeah. And he was
on one of these many 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 of operatives from the shores of Iran or some they had some strange I
figured 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, never emerging, if you will, and go out into freezing water and, 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 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.
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 as a by his colleagues as a brave person, became an entrepreneur, took over,
uh, 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 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 that 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 you'd 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
Yeah draws painting. Yeah seems like a nice man
But but Carter really impactful. I mean, it's all well and good to hang on a ranch. None of them are building houses.
Right.
With their own hands.
For the poor.
Yeah.
With their wife of 77 years, holding the toolkit
or him holding her tool belt.
Yeah, this guy, yeah, he really did.
He's the anti-commercialization of the post-presidency.
And everybody else has been.
And the Obama-
The quarter of a million dollar speaking fees
are big, but contract.
I don't think so.
And all the more power to you.
I think 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 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 Carters,
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 to talk about anything.
For a while, we hope. We hope.
But eradicating Guinea War, right? And that's a real marks 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, right?
Like 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 good on a podcast.
Too polarizing.
Too polarizing.
You need to have a partner that does something swanky 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 Reagan came in
in that kind of fashion, right?
He opened the door big time to conservativism.
But a really decent and good person.
And it was sad to see him go, but he said,
I wanna live to vote for Kamala
and I don't wanna live to see Donald Trump as president again. So we got out on time
Jack James Earl Carter
Dead at a hundred 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 Carvel 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 is
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, right?
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.
That's a real indicator of how the economy isn't working for people.
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... 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, the lowest inflation, something like 50 or 60% 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.
Now I would argue this is a referendum on young men, it was supposed to be a
referendum on women, it wasn't for 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, that's, you want to talk about things getting 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 fly, 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 an AOC 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 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.
Oh, Fox would love that story.
Well, but it's a great story.
It's not just because it's a Fox red meat story.
I brought it up.
Yeah, you brought it up.
And the only interview that Daniel Penny has done
is with Judge Neem Pirro, who's on the five with me.
And he served the country honorably.
He, you know, studying 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 this 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.
You know, we are paying-
When you pay the highest taxes in the nation
and people are being lit on fire on public transport.
Right.
People, you know, 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, you know,
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. 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.
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.
No, but def find the police.
Right. You know, 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 were 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, people were, 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 as 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, right?
Like, not both AirPods in, lost on my phone, right?
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, you know, they've said, OK, no more.
It used to be if you if you stole less than $900 and we're going to prosecute.
Yeah, probably 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, 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, because 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, before we go, Biden is going to give his kind of last,
last conversations here.
Any, any thoughts on, you know, any advice for him, or do you think,
what, what, 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 to say 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 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 slash 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?
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 to 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-
And stab me in the front, not in the back.
Right.
Don't give me a bunch of bullshit and say, well, 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, 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, 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
will make 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 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 it fantastic for 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. You 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 gonna break their ass up.
We're gonna spin YouTube just cause 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.
Would you be nice, Caroline? This is awesome.
Congratulations. I can't believe she's leaving.
How can you leave? She's been with you forever.
You're leaving all this.
But Caroline, you're been a fantastic culture carrier
in addition to being very competent.
We wish you the best.
I think you're gonna do great there.
It was great getting to know you these past few months.
You're always welcome back.
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 say it in a good way.
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 want to 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 are always welcome back.
Your wrist is stamped. Caroline Chagrin, best of luck to you. Thanks for all your good work. 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. Raging Moderates on its own feed. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
Have a great rest of the week, Chas.
You too.