The Shadow of January 6th, Johnson’s Speakership, and Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start?

Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is?

With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

You just have to hire one.

You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

Download today.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

No.

Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Tarlev.

Jess, we are together.

We are together.

We are in the same home.

You came home to America.

Yeah, I came back and you dragged my ass downtown to Broad Street.

You were 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?

I 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

looking to escape your kids.

Oh, I ran.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I ran right out of there.

So the holidays, catch us up.

What did you do over the holidays?

Um, I was around for most of it.

I, I worked on a ghost town week, which I always like because everyone who's there is like 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 right.

You said.

Which was the best.

I still like my husband.

Who knew?

I like my apartment.

It'll go.

Yeah, he's a dude.

We'll fix that.

Okay.

Yeah.

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 like U.S.

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...

It actually came out right.

Came out accurate.

I thought it came out accurate.

I don't know if you like that about yourself.

But I'm fascinated with the cost of things.

Yeah.

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 Tarlov, do you do New Year's resolutions?

Do you have goals for 2025?

Not set out like that, actually.

No.

I 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 want to 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 said the 6th.

Mike Johnson's encore of speaker, Jimmy Carter's enduring legacy.

and the Democrat strategy moving forward.

Let's bust right into it.

It's been four years since the January 6th Capitol attack, and and the shadow it cast 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 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 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.

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 rearview mirror that there's one party that respects democracy and there's one party that doesn't.

And your grocery 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 going to talk about that, but it was a bunch of people saying,

it's not one person, one vote here.

You know, 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,

with what I thought was sort of an errant or mistaken invasion of Iraq.

I think that was probably the, geopolitically, maybe the worst, if not the second worst, decision by a U.S.

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 re-elected, I just feel like we've lost all right to kind of preach to anybody about democracy.

I remember thinking, I loved it when Progozhin 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, well, actually,

this duck dynasty mob getting out of their RAV4s and their oakley glasses and their,

you know, and I'm being very disparaging in identity politics here.

They actually raided the capital.

Yeah.

And

the guy, 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, you know, and there's a lot here,

the kleptocracy,

the conviction around, you know, sexual abuse,

the 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 the 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.

Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless, that does sound serious.

I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble.

This September on Criminal, we've been thinking a lot about scams.

Over the next couple of weeks, we're releasing episodes about a surprising way to stop scammers.

The people you didn't know were on the other end of the line.

And we have a special bonus episode on Criminal Plus with tips to protect yourself.

Listen to Criminal wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for Criminal Plus at thisiscriminal.com/slash plus.

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, showcased his 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, how 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, you know, 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 going to see, given the way elections work right now and how important it is just to get attention regardless if 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 congresspeople who are going to 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.

Yeah.

I wonder if they're going to 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 Mansion and cinema got addicted to the attention of it.

It's almost a, 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 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 I don't really care because Senator Thune told him getting it to ruin 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, right?

No one.

No one goes out on their own, basically.

Well, rebel forces are more likely inclined to follow their leader, right?

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 always 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 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 hit.

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.

You know, how can we effectively message the deficit?

Because when I talk to, you know, 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.

Right.

Like 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 this 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 it'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.

Like 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 Biden 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...

10 days 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 going to be when inflation

spikes.

Yeah.

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 out of jamie lee curtis's great great great granddaughter um 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 uh the the sexy pole dance and true lies

she that was yeah that was uh that was a great film that was probably her cinematic peak actually trading places was pretty good anyways uh

I'm back to actual

policy here, substance.

But it strikes me that, again, the Democrats aren't doing a good job of saying, FYI, this guy is 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 have left the...

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.

You know, usually if you're in Canada and you're 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?

It's all 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, 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 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 the 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 Leikey, 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 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 pushing culture or civilization forward in the way that we always have.

Yeah, no,

that's dystopic.

That would be dystopic.

You're learning to, I think I'm infecting you with half glass, half emptyitis.

You said something.

You said something that really struck me.

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 Ilania 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 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,

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 him if they ask questions during this thing.

They said, no, we can't take that risk because this guy is is in such serious decline.

We should move on because we've gotten literally through about 10% of our topics here.

So I'm 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 use that term onto.

Oh, yeah.

You said that when we were on Bill Moore 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.

Okay.

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 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 bring down the house like a Nancy Pelosi speech or a 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 what he gets from them and bring that back to an unruly caucus.

He's also going to benefit from the fact that Matt Gates 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 Bobert, 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, 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 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 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.

That'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 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.

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, 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, you know, peace treaties with Israel and Egypt, you know, 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 it 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 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 eradicating 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 he lived, 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, 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 missed the submarine, you were going to 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, you know, the October surprise really kind of, you know, 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,

You know, 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, God, this guy's so appreciant.

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 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

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 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.

I mean, seems nice.

He draws.

Painting.

Yeah.

Seems like a nice man.

But Carter really.

It's not as impactful.

I mean, it's all well and good to hang out with.

None of them are building houses.

Right.

Right.

With their own hands.

For the the poor.

Yeah.

There's a.

With their wife of 77 years, you know, holding, holding the toolkit 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 above.

The $400 million speaking fees are big books.

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, you know, 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 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

but eradicating guinea worm.

Right.

And that's...

That's a real marked 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, you know, 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.

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, right?

It costs too much to get elected.

You need to be too famous.

You need to be too good on a podcast.

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

conservism.

Yeah.

But

a really decent and good person.

And

it was sad to see him go.

But, you know, he said, I want to live to vote for Kamala and I don't want to live to see Donald Trump as president again.

Sorry.

So he got out on time.

Fox 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 Carvell admitted Democrats lost in 2024 because they failed to connect with voters on the economy.

Per 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 tend 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 Swazi, 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, the lowest inflation, something like 50 or 60 percent of all GDP growth on a gross level globally is going to come out of the U.S.

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.

And 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 they say, no, we weren't progressive enough.

Yeah.

And that they say we, and there's very articulate, compelling people on the left who will say, no, we need to stick to our values.

It's because we weren't strong enough about our values.

And I'm like, Jesus Christ, that's, 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 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 want to 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 with a 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 on trial for

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 an AOC who, you know, 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, you know, 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, it would start.

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.

There you go.

And the only interview that Daniel Penny has done is with Judge Neem Piero, who's on the five with me.

And he, you know,

he served the country honorably.

He's, 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, an 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 are 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

with that many cables.

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 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, 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, 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've said, okay, no more.

It used to be if you stole less than $900, they weren't going to prosecute.

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 is also millennial, very millennial, but also very pro-Israel and wants to get away from identity politics.

They're like, oh, wait, we want to like you, but you're making it hard to.

I think he's exactly kind of the Democrat we need to be.

Well, I've told you that, Brian, my husband's dream ticket, Fetterman Torres.

He's like, give me Fetterman 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 kids' religious school.

They know him.

They're like, oh, Richie's here.

And he's doing public service in a way that feels more Carter-esque than it feels like what today is current looks like.

He's fantastic.

We have a lot of work to do.

So just, we got to wrap up here.

Just before we go,

Biden is going to give his kind of last

conversations here.

Any thoughts on

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 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 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 impressed.

Funny slash, we were both crying.

I was like, this is why didn't you get back in her face when she was 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 going to provide them.

Would you rather us have 10, 200 pounds?

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 U.S.'s support of Israel.

And instead, they were milly-mouthed about it because they wanted to have it both ways.

They fucked up so badly on Israel because they not only, they did the right thing and they refused to take credit of it by having to

They don't 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.

They stab me in the front, not in the back.

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 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?

Instead, 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 for 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.

We'll make sure we bring everyone home.

You know, him saying, I wouldn't have changed anything about the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Excuse me.

Come on.

Like, that's pathetic.

But he sounded just like your average poll.

It's right.

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 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 Chagren and David Toledo.

Caroline is leaving Prof G 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 well.

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.

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.

You'd be nice.

Caroline, this is awesome.

Congratulations.

I can't believe she's leaving.

How can you leave her?

She's been with you forever.

You're leaving all this.

But, Caroline, you're in a fantastic culture carrier.

In addition to being very confident, we wish you the best.

I think you're going to do great things.

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 matter horn of careers.

This is Space Mountain.

This is good stuff.

I say that again.

I'm not a comment on Space Mountain.

I am also.

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.

And that's 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 arist is stamp.

Caroline Chagren, 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, 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, Jess.

You too.