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

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0:01:08 – Welcome to Raging Moderates, I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:09 – And I’m Jessica Tarliff.
0:01:10 – Jess, we are together.
0:01:11 – We are together.
0:01:12 – We are in the same office.
0:01:13 – You came home to America.
0:01:15 – Yeah, I came back and you dragged my ass
0:01:17 downtown to Broad Street.
0:01:19 – And you’re being so pleasant about it.
0:01:20 – I’m so angry that first off,
0:01:23 they didn’t know who we were downstairs.
0:01:26 And this is a ghost town.
0:01:28 I don’t, it makes me want to try and figure out a way
0:01:30 to short commercial real estate.
0:01:31 I can’t believe you do this.
0:01:32 You like coming in, right?
0:01:34 – Went on that, yeah.
0:01:36 I was just like, oh, young people should want to be
0:01:37 in an office ’cause it’s nice to meet people.
0:01:40 – You’re just looking to escape your kids.
0:01:43 – Oh, I ran, yeah, yeah.
0:01:44 No, I ran right out of there.
0:01:45 – So the holidays, catch us up.
0:01:47 What’d you do over the holidays?
0:01:48 – I was around for most of it.
0:01:52 I worked on a ghost town week, which I always like
0:01:54 ’cause everyone who’s there is like in a good mood.
0:01:57 They’re getting overtime, which everyone likes.
0:01:59 Not on air talent, but the amazing hair and makeup people
0:02:01 and the tech people.
0:02:02 So I did that.
0:02:05 We were in New Jersey for Christmas Eve and Christmas.
0:02:07 Apparently, it was two separate holidays.
0:02:10 And we went to Long Island for a few days
0:02:12 and then we had a staycation.
0:02:13 – Oh yeah, that’s what you said.
0:02:14 – Which was the best.
0:02:17 I still like my husband, who knew.
0:02:19 I like my apartment, it’ll go.
0:02:20 – He’s a dude, we’ll fix that.
0:02:21 – Okay.
0:02:23 And tell us about Safari.
0:02:25 – I was fine.
0:02:26 I was in South Africa.
0:02:30 My sister is at a, our kids are at a wonderful age.
0:02:33 They’re both 14 and 17 and so are her kids.
0:02:35 And so it’s fun to get them to hang out.
0:02:36 South Africa is amazing.
0:02:38 Safari is really wonderful.
0:02:42 Yeah, I mean, super nice.
0:02:43 I think I’m really into this idea
0:02:44 of lifestyle arbitrages.
0:02:46 If I was 20 years younger,
0:02:48 there’s a lot I would do if I were 20 years younger,
0:02:52 but I think if you could make like a U.S. salary
0:02:53 and did remote work,
0:02:54 I think Cape Town would be a pretty interesting place
0:02:55 to hang out.
0:02:57 It’s so inexpensive.
0:02:58 I’m obsessed with prices and money
0:03:00 and that came out wrong,
0:03:01 but I find-
0:03:02 – That actually came out right.
0:03:03 – Came out right?
0:03:04 – Came out accurate.
0:03:05 – I’m gonna get out accurate.
0:03:06 I don’t know if you like that about yourself.
0:03:09 – But I’m fascinated with the cost of things.
0:03:11 And South Africa right now is like,
0:03:14 it’s sort of the old Navy of global cities
0:03:17 in the sense that it’s 80% of a world-class city
0:03:18 for 40% of the price.
0:03:21 Anyways, that was my big observation
0:03:23 around my great holiday with my family.
0:03:24 And what is in store?
0:03:26 Like if for just Harlow,
0:03:28 do you do New Year’s resolutions?
0:03:30 Do you have goals for 2025?
0:03:32 – Not set out like that actually.
0:03:33 Probably should have.
0:03:35 I just, I want to, you know,
0:03:37 I’m like so in it with young kids,
0:03:39 like three and nine months.
0:03:41 So I want them to have great years.
0:03:42 Yeah, in the soup.
0:03:46 I want to do, make sure that I do a couple big trips,
0:03:49 do good professionally, survive inauguration,
0:03:50 like all the things.
0:03:51 All the stuff.
0:03:52 – Yeah, what about you?
0:03:53 – I see all that happening.
0:03:56 I just want more of the same.
0:03:57 I’m really, I’m rounding third right now.
0:04:02 I’m enjoying my kids professionally, having a ton of fun.
0:04:04 Yeah, I’m just, if we’re up to me,
0:04:06 I want everything to stay the same.
0:04:09 I really don’t have any resolutions.
0:04:11 I want to be less angry, less depressed,
0:04:13 less unappreciative, less hard on myself,
0:04:15 less hard on others.
0:04:17 Other than that, everything’s good.
0:04:18 Everything’s good.
0:04:19 All right, let’s get, let’s get into it today.
0:04:21 Speaking of being angry at others,
0:04:24 today is the fourth anniversary of January 6th.
0:04:27 We’re recording this on, you guys said the six.
0:04:28 Mike Johnson’s encore speaker,
0:04:31 Jimmy Carter’s enduring legacy
0:04:33 and the Democrat strategy moving forward.
0:04:34 Let’s bust right into it.
0:04:37 It’s been four years since the January 6th Capitol attack
0:04:40 in the shadow it cast on American democracy
0:04:42 still looms pretty large.
0:04:44 Over 1500 people have been charged with sentences
0:04:47 ranging from a few days to 22 years.
0:04:51 Now on this anniversary, Vice President Kamala Harris
0:04:53 has certified President-elect Donald Trump’s win,
0:04:57 a bitterly ironic twist on a day already steeped in history.
0:04:59 Harris is called January 6th, 2021,
0:05:02 a moment of lawlessness, violence and chaos.
0:05:06 The test of the nation’s democratic foundations.
0:05:07 You know, one side of the nation
0:05:09 or 47% of the electorate or whatever it is
0:05:12 is going to try and just not talk about it.
0:05:14 I can’t imagine it’s going to come up a lot
0:05:16 on conservative radio today.
0:05:18 And Democrats are going to try and pound the shit out of it
0:05:21 and remind everybody what happened four years ago.
0:05:22 Do you have any sort of,
0:05:25 what are your observations kind of four years in?
0:05:26 – How little it matters.
0:05:30 Not even just amongst conservatives who,
0:05:33 and I would say as an addendum to your point
0:05:35 about conservative media and what they’ll do,
0:05:36 they will talk about it,
0:05:38 but they will talk about this transformed narrative
0:05:40 that it was a day of love.
0:05:42 And who, where will the partons be coming?
0:05:44 And you know, because Trump has said
0:05:47 that that’s going to be a day one activity for him
0:05:49 and really, you know, rewriting the script
0:05:52 of what January 6th looked like.
0:05:55 President Biden had an op-ed out about January 6th today
0:05:56 in the Washington Post.
0:05:59 You know, one of those, let’s never forget, right?
0:06:01 What actually happened on that day.
0:06:03 And for the people who still remember,
0:06:06 and a majority of Americans do think
0:06:07 that it was an attack on our democracy.
0:06:09 A majority of Americans think that Donald Trump
0:06:12 is personally culpable for what happened.
0:06:14 But the real take home message is,
0:06:16 no one gives a fuck, right?
0:06:18 Not enough, not enough people.
0:06:20 Not enough people for sure.
0:06:23 The Liz Cheney’s of the world and the bulwark guys
0:06:25 and those people, they’re out there.
0:06:29 But when you look at the hierarchy of issues concerning,
0:06:31 you know, a person in their day to day life,
0:06:33 it ranks pretty low on it.
0:06:36 And I think part of that might be that
0:06:39 we live in this rarefied world where we can afford
0:06:42 to sit there and pontificate about sort of threats
0:06:44 to democracy when the real threat to democracy is
0:06:46 that your grocery bill is too high, right?
0:06:50 Like that matters a hell of a lot more to you.
0:06:52 But then I think there’s also just been this
0:06:54 dearth of good messaging almost,
0:06:56 or keeping it in the national consciousness
0:06:58 in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re bludgeoning people
0:07:00 over the head with it all the time.
0:07:02 But that it’s always in the rear view mirror
0:07:04 that there’s one party that respects democracy
0:07:07 and there’s one party that doesn’t.
0:07:09 And your grocery bill, your gas prices,
0:07:12 whether you can afford to have a new home,
0:07:13 all of that actually doesn’t matter
0:07:15 if you have people in power
0:07:16 who think your vote doesn’t count.
0:07:19 And to me, that’s what January 6th was.
0:07:22 It was an attack on law enforcement, of course.
0:07:23 We’re gonna talk about that,
0:07:26 but it was a bunch of people saying,
0:07:29 it’s not one person, one vote here.
0:07:31 You know, it’s my way or the highway.
0:07:33 And I’m gonna invalidate, you know,
0:07:35 the will of millions of you.
0:07:38 – Yeah, I think we lost a lot of moral standing
0:07:41 or currency around the world with our,
0:07:43 what I thought was sort of an errand
0:07:44 or a mistaken invasion of Iraq.
0:07:47 I think that was probably the geopolitically,
0:07:51 maybe the worst if not the second worst decision
0:07:54 by US government that costs us currency around the world
0:07:56 and also turned Iran into a superpower.
0:07:58 I mean, it just couldn’t have been more stupid.
0:08:02 But I wonder in terms of our currency around the world
0:08:05 and our moral authority, seeing the capital attacked
0:08:07 and then having the guy who put up a golf tent
0:08:11 to watch the attack be reelected.
0:08:12 I just feel like we’ve lost all right
0:08:15 to kind of preach to anybody about democracy.
0:08:15 I remember thinking,
0:08:19 I loved it when Prugosian turned his army eastward
0:08:21 and started marching towards Moscow.
0:08:23 And I thought, oh my God, so embarrassing for Russia.
0:08:25 And I had to remind myself actually,
0:08:28 this Duck Dynasty mob getting out of their RAV4s
0:08:30 and their Oakley glasses and their,
0:08:32 you know, I’m being very disparaging
0:08:34 in identity politics here.
0:08:36 They actually raided the capital.
0:08:37 – Yeah, so.
0:08:40 – And the guy who kind of was aiding them on
0:08:44 and it was sort of their spiritual leader around this
0:08:45 was reelected president.
0:08:50 It just, of all the things you could add up,
0:08:52 you know, and there’s a lot here,
0:08:57 the kleptocracy, the conviction around,
0:09:02 you know, sexual abuse, the nuclear secrets
0:09:06 or the secrets being hidden in a golf cart storage facility.
0:09:08 I think this kind of bests them all.
0:09:10 And this is not an easy contest.
0:09:12 And that is, if you don’t believe
0:09:14 in a peaceful transfer of power,
0:09:15 I just, like so many things,
0:09:19 I thought, okay, this is disqualifying.
0:09:23 This can, Brazil has a much stronger democracy than us.
0:09:26 Their guy tried it and immediately got kind of flung out
0:09:30 and they restored their democracy pretty quickly.
0:09:32 And we didn’t do that.
0:09:35 We reelected the guy who sponsored it.
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0:12:58 (upbeat music)
0:13:01 – All right, moving on.
0:13:03 Last week with two votes separating Mike Johnson
0:13:06 from the Speaker’s gavel, President-elect Trump stepped in
0:13:08 calling GOP holdouts Ralph Norman
0:13:10 and Keith Self to rally support.
0:13:12 Their shift secured Johnson’s narrow victory
0:13:14 highlighting Trump’s grip on the party
0:13:15 and the challenge of uniting Republicans
0:13:17 in a divided Congress.
0:13:18 Trump’s endorsement was pivotal,
0:13:20 with Johnson calling it a big factor
0:13:22 and Rep. Andy Biggs admitting the outcome
0:13:24 would have been different without it.
0:13:26 Trump’s hands-on approach to contrast
0:13:29 to past leadership battles showcases influence
0:13:31 and the stakes of keeping the GOP aligned
0:13:32 to deliver his agenda.
0:13:34 Jess, how does this mark a shift
0:13:38 in Trump’s approach to party leadership or does it?
0:13:39 – I’m not sure it’s a difference
0:13:41 in his approach to party leadership.
0:13:43 It might be a difference in how his approach
0:13:46 to party leadership is going to be received
0:13:47 for the next few years.
0:13:50 And I think that there are two factors
0:13:51 in this that really mattered.
0:13:54 One, the impact of having the President of the United States
0:13:57 or President-elect get on the phone and tell you,
0:13:58 like, this is what’s best for us.
0:14:02 You’ve got to do this if you want to have any progress.
0:14:05 And then the second piece is that this speaker battle,
0:14:07 you know, was happening a few days
0:14:10 before the election needs to be certified.
0:14:11 And there’s no reason to think,
0:14:13 I mean, House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t play a role
0:14:17 in the certification, but having the House in chaos
0:14:20 going into January 6th, 2025,
0:14:23 I think was something that was present in people’s minds
0:14:26 where they thought we need to get through Monday.
0:14:29 And it was only a couple of people
0:14:31 and there were, you know, from the Freedom Caucus people,
0:14:34 like Chip Roy, et cetera, they have a whole list of demands
0:14:36 that they were able to put out there.
0:14:39 But I think that the Republicans have resigned themselves to
0:14:41 for the ones who are not huge Trump fans.
0:14:43 Like this is Trump’s party at this moment.
0:14:48 And that we’re going to be able to be more effective
0:14:51 with the slimmest majority since 1917,
0:14:55 once these vacancies take place, if we just get on board.
0:14:59 And that’s what I think happened on Friday.
0:15:03 – It strikes me that if you a position yourself,
0:15:06 when I think of Senator Sinema and Manchin,
0:15:08 they like to position themselves as moderates,
0:15:10 but I just think that we’re raging narcissists
0:15:11 and love the position of being swing votes
0:15:14 and having the cameras and the president
0:15:16 or whoever calling them and begging for them
0:15:18 to see their way clear and then they could fall back
0:15:20 and say, oh no, we’re just moderates
0:15:22 and we have real concerns around these issues.
0:15:23 It strikes me, you’re going to see,
0:15:25 given the way elections work right now
0:15:27 and how important it is just to get attention,
0:15:30 regardless of if it’s good or bad attention.
0:15:32 I’m just be shocked if you’re not going to see
0:15:35 some of that Manchin Sinema hold out
0:15:38 from a lot of Republican Congress people
0:15:40 who are going to be like, look,
0:15:42 I’m really popular in my district.
0:15:43 And I like the attention.
0:15:44 I like the idea of having all this power
0:15:47 by basically wringing my hands and saying, well, I’m not sure.
0:15:50 I have some concerns, that’s their favorite word.
0:15:53 I wonder if they’re going to feel some of that frustration
0:15:55 we used to feel where we couldn’t.
0:15:58 And, you know, though with your heart and consciousness,
0:16:00 it’s important that people, you know,
0:16:03 occasionally I like it when people break from a party line,
0:16:05 but my sense is Manchin and Sinema got addicted
0:16:07 to the attention of it.
0:16:09 It’s almost, it really is kind of a split Congress
0:16:10 at this point.
0:16:13 It’s hard to even say it’s a Republican Congress, right?
0:16:16 – Thank you for coming around to my thinking about this.
0:16:18 It was not a landslide.
0:16:20 No, no, it’s not my idea that.
0:16:22 – I said the presidency was a landslide, not Congress.
0:16:25 – The narrative on their side is we have this massive mandate.
0:16:26 If you had a massive mandate,
0:16:29 you’d have a lot of people to be able to vote for your side.
0:16:31 And right now you don’t have that.
0:16:32 Now we lost.
0:16:35 They have a trifecta that is a better position
0:16:36 to be in and all of this.
0:16:38 But when you look at the margins
0:16:40 and you think about someone like a Thomas Massey
0:16:43 who didn’t vote for Speaker Johnson,
0:16:46 he said that they could pull his fingernails out
0:16:49 and he still wouldn’t vote for Speaker Johnson.
0:16:52 Look at like at a Chip Roy, for instance.
0:16:55 I mean, these people are going to be serious
0:16:56 about the things that matter to them.
0:16:59 And a lot of that is the deficit.
0:17:02 And they’re like, we’re not here to rubber stamp spending
0:17:04 the same way as if President Biden was in office
0:17:07 and Chuck Schumer was the majority leader.
0:17:10 And that is going to be a big problem, I think,
0:17:12 especially as we go through reconciliation.
0:17:14 Now, Mike Johnson wants one bill.
0:17:17 Trump said this morning, if it’s one or two bills,
0:17:19 I don’t really care ’cause Senator Thune told him
0:17:22 getting it to run one bill is probably not going to happen.
0:17:26 But I mean, they’re trying to do everything at once
0:17:28 in four months.
0:17:29 – My understanding is that’s near impossible,
0:17:30 logistically, so right?
0:17:32 – Well, especially if you look at these margins
0:17:34 and then it’ll be up to Hakeem Jeffries
0:17:35 to decide what he wants to do.
0:17:38 ‘Cause he’s in complete control of the Democratic caucus.
0:17:41 No one goes out on their own, basically.
0:17:43 Rebel forces are more likely inclined
0:17:45 to follow their leader, right?
0:17:48 When they’re kind of on their heels, if you will.
0:17:50 I think the deficit is a super interesting one
0:17:53 because deficits seem to be always at really high up
0:17:57 in terms of concerns of the party not in control, right?
0:17:59 And it is a huge issue.
0:18:01 I’ve both said that, or not always, but I do believe
0:18:03 that the largest tax increase in history
0:18:05 is that from George Washington to George Bush,
0:18:09 7 trillion in deficits, the Trump administration
0:18:12 was the first one, 8 trillion, and Biden wasn’t much better.
0:18:14 And all that is is pulling prosperity forward
0:18:16 from younger people, such that my generation
0:18:17 can stay wealthy, right?
0:18:19 At some point, someone’s gonna have to pay this thing.
0:18:21 And now the debt, or the interest on the debt
0:18:23 is now greater than our military expenditures.
0:18:25 What’s interesting is in the administration,
0:18:28 the unelected leader here, who I would argue
0:18:31 is the secretary of adult behavior
0:18:33 in the cabinet is the bond market.
0:18:35 And that is, if they come out with something
0:18:38 that’s gonna really continue to increase the deficit,
0:18:41 I think you’re gonna see the 10-year spike.
0:18:43 And I think for the first time, there’s gonna be rumors
0:18:45 that the Chinese or other investors might not show up
0:18:47 for the next Treasury auction,
0:18:49 which would take interest rates way up.
0:18:52 You see that happen, or you see inflation spike again.
0:18:55 You don’t need Congress, or you don’t need deficit hawks.
0:18:57 They’re gonna go, okay, if all of a sudden,
0:19:00 inflation’s back, we’re all getting swept out of office.
0:19:01 And people are gonna find a backbone again.
0:19:04 And I love the idea of the most powerful
0:19:07 unelected person right now is the bond market.
0:19:09 I like it too, we should put him in a costume.
0:19:11 I made it a hit, I gendered him.
0:19:13 And maybe it’s a woman, the bond market.
0:19:15 But I think that that’s a great way to look at it.
0:19:17 And I actually wanted to ask you about this
0:19:20 because it loops into the conversation
0:19:22 we were just having about messaging,
0:19:24 about threats to democracy, et cetera.
0:19:27 How can we effectively message the deficit?
0:19:30 Because when I talk to my friends about it,
0:19:34 or my mom, my mom’s gentleman suitor,
0:19:37 he says, well, okay, let’s talk about the deficit.
0:19:38 You know what the deficit is?
0:19:40 It’s the mortgage rate
0:19:42 that you can’t afford to pay right now, right?
0:19:44 That’s how it’s manifesting in your life
0:19:45 that it’s keeping young people
0:19:48 off the property ladder, for instance.
0:19:51 And I feel like we have done none of that,
0:19:54 talking about the links between those two things.
0:19:56 It feels like this amorphous thing that you just can,
0:19:59 that you are constantly kicking down the proverbial road.
0:20:02 And I wanna hear it in terms of interest rates,
0:20:06 mortgage rates, you know, cost of living expenses.
0:20:07 I mean, we have this number
0:20:11 that Trump’s plan will cost us $4.6 trillion, right?
0:20:12 That’s what I’ll add to the deficit.
0:20:15 Put that in real terms for somebody
0:20:18 who took a flyer on this chaos agent
0:20:19 heading into the selection, right?
0:20:24 Like the 32 year old that has a $150,000 job
0:20:26 doesn’t feel to ever be able to buy a house
0:20:28 is struggling to find a mate.
0:20:30 Like make the deficit real for that person.
0:20:33 – I think it’s a great messaging standpoint.
0:20:36 So last time we had a surplus, you know,
0:20:38 Democratic administration,
0:20:41 record low interest rates during the Biden administration.
0:20:44 And I mean, if you think about the power of the bond market,
0:20:47 essentially the shortest tenure of any elected leader,
0:20:50 I think in history of a G7 nation was trust
0:20:52 in the prime minister and basically the bond market.
0:20:53 – Was it 10 days as a lattice or something?
0:20:54 – Well, there was a lattice test,
0:20:57 which will last longer her prime ministership
0:21:00 or this head of lattice and the head of lattice,
0:21:02 I think one or she won by three days.
0:21:04 But basically the bond market showed up,
0:21:05 she put out a budget and said,
0:21:06 we’re gonna lower taxes,
0:21:08 we’re gonna go Reagan Thatcher here,
0:21:11 more Reagan and no plan to increase revenues
0:21:13 and it’s gonna take our deficit up.
0:21:14 And the world market said,
0:21:16 you don’t have the default currency
0:21:18 to keep printing money of people
0:21:20 if you can’t afford the interest rates here
0:21:23 and the market, the pound crashed, the interest rate.
0:21:25 I mean, the bond market showed up and said,
0:21:28 sorry girlfriend and she was out.
0:21:30 And I wonder if there’s gonna be a moment here
0:21:35 where if inflation, I think the seminal moment in 2025
0:21:37 for the Trump administration is gonna be
0:21:40 when inflation spikes.
0:21:42 And all of a sudden it says, oh no, I’m still here.
0:21:44 You thought you killed me?
0:21:46 I’m Jason, I’m in a hockey mask.
0:21:48 And just when you thought it was over, I’m back.
0:21:49 Just to scare the shit out of Jamie Lee Curtis’s
0:21:51 great, great, great granddaughter.
0:21:53 That was probably agist.
0:21:55 By the way, I went to the hottest woman,
0:21:57 I’d take some back to the 80s, wow.
0:21:59 I mean, what was that show, was it perfect?
0:22:01 What was the one with John Travolta
0:22:03 where she was the aerobics instructor?
0:22:04 And it was fantastic filmmaking.
0:22:09 – I think about, is it the sexy pole dance in True Lies?
0:22:12 – Yeah, that was a great film.
0:22:14 That was probably her cinematic peak.
0:22:16 Actually trading places was pretty good.
0:22:21 Anyways, back to actual policy here, substance.
0:22:25 But strikes me that again, the Democrats
0:22:28 aren’t doing a good job of saying, oh, FYI,
0:22:29 this guy is already threatening
0:22:31 an irresponsible fiscal plan.
0:22:33 And the bond market is already responding.
0:22:34 And guess what, your credit card bills,
0:22:37 your mortgage payments, and your student loan payments
0:22:40 are about to be higher because the adults
0:22:42 have left that are about to leave the building
0:22:46 and the bond market is already really scared.
0:22:48 And to put it in, like you said,
0:22:49 to put it in layman’s term saying,
0:22:51 folks, your price is about to go up.
0:22:53 You may think you’re not paying more,
0:22:55 but you are because interest rates go up,
0:22:57 which is a tax on everyone because people see
0:22:59 that this guy’s irresponsible.
0:23:04 And this new analogy I love is that at negative 40,
0:23:07 Celsius and Fahrenheit converge.
0:23:09 You know, usually if you’re in Canada and you’re in Europe,
0:23:11 I’m constantly converting, all right?
0:23:13 It’s 28 Celsius, double it at 30.
0:23:16 At negative 40, they’re the same.
0:23:18 That is not a hospitable or good environment to be in.
0:23:19 That means something’s fucked up.
0:23:21 You don’t wanna be somewhere where Fahrenheit
0:23:22 and Celsius converge, right?
0:23:24 It’s not as national– – Or just negative 40.
0:23:25 – Negative 40 is bad.
0:23:28 Just general, you just wanna stay away from negative 40.
0:23:31 And I find that there’s an analogy or an apt analogy
0:23:34 around whenever the far right and the far left come together,
0:23:35 you’re in negative 40.
0:23:36 It’s a really bad idea.
0:23:41 Whether I think the far left or the far right, anti-vaxxers.
0:23:43 The far left and the far right, total anti-Semites.
0:23:46 The far left and the far right seem to come together
0:23:50 to agree on, all right, we want more social policies
0:23:53 and more spending, all right, we want on the far right,
0:23:54 lower taxes and more military spending.
0:23:56 I know, let’s get together and do both
0:23:58 and explode the deficit.
0:23:59 – Well, that’s a pretty big deal
0:24:01 that we could already potentially predict that
0:24:04 two weeks out from inauguration, right?
0:24:06 Usually someone has to get in
0:24:08 and for us to see the lay of the land.
0:24:10 But because A, we have this strange situation
0:24:12 that we’ve already seen him as president before.
0:24:15 So we understand some of his proclivities
0:24:18 and that he has essentially become de facto president
0:24:20 since he got elected. – 100%.
0:24:24 I mean, Maloney is down there, Mar-a-Lago Trudeau’s been,
0:24:27 though, resigning from the leadership of the party,
0:24:30 which I think is a fascinating turn for Canada.
0:24:33 But Trump has essentially gotten an extra couple of months
0:24:37 of being president and the market, no likey, right?
0:24:39 I mean, Jerome Powell who came out and said,
0:24:42 A, he can’t fire me, which I kind of loved,
0:24:45 but then said, prices are not going to get better, right?
0:24:49 Your rates, we’re not bringing the rates down.
0:24:50 And then you have the mortgage rates,
0:24:52 which is certainly, it’s a hot topic of conversation
0:24:54 amongst my cohort, right?
0:24:56 Like elder millennials that are thinking,
0:24:58 okay, this is our time to get on the property ladder.
0:25:01 We’ve been paying these nuts rents.
0:25:03 And so the mortgage rates don’t come down.
0:25:04 And then on top of it,
0:25:06 are we going to have a little trade war with Canada?
0:25:08 We’re not going to be able to get any lumber
0:25:10 to build houses, right?
0:25:11 We’re going to have a deportation force
0:25:14 that’s going to kick everyone out of the hospitality industry.
0:25:16 There’s going to be no one to build our homes,
0:25:18 serve our tables, take care of our dying parents.
0:25:23 And you’re thinking like, what was I voting for here?
0:25:25 And there’s, I’m skipping ahead to,
0:25:26 something we’re supposed to talk about later,
0:25:28 but there was this big piece in the Wall Street Journal
0:25:31 about the millennials living in arrested development
0:25:34 in their 30s and 40s with their parents.
0:25:38 And it feels like this confluence of every big problem
0:25:38 that we’ve been talking about
0:25:40 for the last kind of four to eight years
0:25:44 from student debt to sex and dating and relationships
0:25:47 to social media and loneliness to high prices
0:25:50 to unrealistic expectations to helicopter parenting,
0:25:52 which I feel has been completely missed over
0:25:55 as a key factor in why all of these people
0:25:58 in my generation are fucked up
0:26:00 and still living with their parents.
0:26:02 And it’s all coming together
0:26:06 at the beginning of the second Trump term
0:26:09 in a way that is not only concerning,
0:26:12 but offers, I guess, a window
0:26:15 into a very scary next 10 to 20 years
0:26:18 where people might not be pushing culture
0:26:22 or civilization forward in the way that we always have.
0:26:26 – Yeah, that’s dystopic, you know, that would be dystopic.
0:26:28 You’re learning to, I think I’m infecting you
0:26:30 with half glass, half empty items.
0:26:32 You said something, you said something
0:26:33 that really struck me. – I want out.
0:26:35 – There you go.
0:26:36 And I’ve been thinking about this a lot
0:26:37 and that is I’m pissed off.
0:26:39 And it falls back, I think, again,
0:26:42 at the feet of democratic or poor democratic leadership.
0:26:44 We’ve decided that Trump’s presidency
0:26:47 is gonna be not four years, but four years and three months.
0:26:51 He and First Lady Alania are controlling the news cycle.
0:26:54 Musk is having more influence over foreign policy right now
0:26:56 than Biden, it feels.
0:26:59 And I just, just a call out to all of my colleagues
0:27:03 and friends who were constantly sending me emails saying,
0:27:04 he, Biden is gonna be our nominee
0:27:07 and you need to understand the assignment and get on board.
0:27:10 The reason why an unelected man
0:27:12 and the world’s wealthiest man
0:27:14 are now controlling the narrative
0:27:16 is because we have a guy who should not be president
0:27:17 because of his age.
0:27:20 And they are afraid to put him in front of a camera
0:27:22 for the first time he’s doing his,
0:27:23 I forget what was sign off speech.
0:27:25 – Yeah, for the whole address.
0:27:26 – Without taking any questions from reporters.
0:27:30 They are clearly so scared of this guy
0:27:31 getting in front of people
0:27:33 to actually have to answer questions
0:27:36 and express that cognitive ability
0:27:38 that they’ve said, even with this little to lose,
0:27:41 even with, you gotta think even the folks from Fox
0:27:42 are gonna be pretty nice to them
0:27:44 if they ask questions during this thing.
0:27:46 They said, no, we can’t take that risk
0:27:49 ’cause this guy isn’t such serious decline.
0:27:51 We should move on ’cause we’ve gotten literally through
0:27:54 about 10% of our topics here.
0:27:57 So curious what you think about, we were talking,
0:27:58 we started this conversation with talking about
0:28:02 Speaker Johnson being, getting the gavel again.
0:28:04 I initially, when I had a litmus tester
0:28:06 saw some of Speaker Johnson’s background,
0:28:08 I thought, oh, this is David Duke-Light.
0:28:09 I use that term all the time.
0:28:11 – Oh yeah, you said that when we were on Bill Murray together.
0:28:12 – Yeah, and that was the wrong thing to say.
0:28:15 And I don’t know the man, he doesn’t care what I think,
0:28:16 but I think I got that wrong.
0:28:18 I actually think Speaker Johnson
0:28:20 has done a really good job.
0:28:22 And that is the speakership is supposed to be
0:28:24 an administrative position, not a political one.
0:28:27 I don’t agree with his politics, I’m never going to.
0:28:29 But I think he’s been a good administrator.
0:28:31 I think he has done his job.
0:28:34 He has tried, he has corralled people,
0:28:37 he’s gotten debt ceiling elevated.
0:28:40 I think he is doing what that role commands of him.
0:28:42 And I find him to be an adult
0:28:45 and taking his actual position really seriously.
0:28:50 I think he’s done as good a job as we could have expected
0:28:52 from what is arguably one of the worst,
0:28:55 is gotta be just almost an impossible position right now.
0:28:58 What are your thoughts on Speaker Johnson?
0:29:01 – I largely agree, not with the David Duke-Light part.
0:29:04 I think there are concerning things about him.
0:29:06 And when we had that conversation a bit over a year ago,
0:29:10 we didn’t know much about soon-to-be Speaker Johnson,
0:29:11 except that he was part of an architect
0:29:13 to overturn the election results.
0:29:14 And there was good reason to think that
0:29:18 he was more of a firebrand than an administrator.
0:29:20 And it turns out that he’s happy to kind of be
0:29:23 like a little elf right in the workshop.
0:29:25 And he’s just running around from office to office
0:29:27 saying, what do you need?
0:29:29 What do I need to do to get your vote?
0:29:32 And he doesn’t have rhetorical flourishes.
0:29:35 He, I mean, he’s fine on TV.
0:29:37 He’s on all the time, which I appreciate.
0:29:40 I think it’s good to hear from these people.
0:29:42 He doesn’t seem that afraid to talk to people
0:29:45 he disagrees with, which I think is a massive plus point,
0:29:46 but he doesn’t, you know,
0:29:48 he’s not going to bring down the house
0:29:51 like a Nancy Pelosi speech or Kim Jeffries
0:29:52 or even Kevin McCarthy.
0:29:57 I think had, you know, bigger moments of gravitas.
0:29:59 But he’s getting the job done and he is working,
0:30:01 like I said, it’s going to be the slimmest majority
0:30:03 since 1917.
0:30:04 What do you want from the man?
0:30:07 He shows up every day, he looks perfect.
0:30:08 He knows who he has to talk to.
0:30:12 He has created a good, seemingly working relationship
0:30:15 with President-elect Trump and Alania.
0:30:18 And he knows how to kind of take what he gets from them
0:30:22 and bring that back to an unruly caucus.
0:30:23 He’s also going to benefit from the fact
0:30:26 that Matt Gaetz is not around from all this.
0:30:28 He I think has a pretty decent relationship
0:30:31 with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is now, you know,
0:30:35 nutcase number one, I feel like in the house
0:30:39 and Lauren Boebert, I guess, 1A for her.
0:30:41 But generally speaking, yeah, I think he’s probably
0:30:43 the right man for this moment.
0:30:47 But I don’t know how this bill comes into existence.
0:30:49 And I thought that we were trending
0:30:52 the first speaker fight from a couple of weeks ago.
0:30:54 I thought we were moving towards a world
0:30:57 where maybe we weren’t going to have single issue bills,
0:30:59 but we were going to have smaller bills, right?
0:31:01 Like at least by policy area.
0:31:03 So you say, here’s the immigration bill, right?
0:31:04 Here’s the energy bill.
0:31:09 Here’s what we’re going to do on climate taxation, et cetera.
0:31:10 – Or not.
0:31:11 – Right.
0:31:14 And this just feels like it’s going to be more of the same.
0:31:18 And it’s going to obviously affect those less well off
0:31:20 the most, which is what happens, right?
0:31:22 The cuts are going to come from people
0:31:24 who rely on entitlement programs,
0:31:26 the people who, you know,
0:31:29 operate at the lowest economic levels of our society.
0:31:31 And the people who frankly needed
0:31:34 whatever Trump was selling the most in all of this, right?
0:31:37 The people who the great Biden economy
0:31:38 was not working so well for the people
0:31:42 whose credit card debt is soaring through the roof.
0:31:44 I mean, the numbers on that are staggering
0:31:46 from a historical perspective.
0:31:48 And they’re going to get totally shafted,
0:31:51 which this crazy reconciliation bill,
0:31:53 it’s going to cost us trillions
0:31:56 and change nothing about the way Washington does business.
0:31:59 – Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:32:00 Stay with us.
0:32:03 (upbeat music)
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0:32:46 Personally, I’d recommend the Masterclass with Bob Iger.
0:32:47 I’m fascinated by leadership.
0:32:49 And also the one with Martha Stewart,
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0:34:12 – It’s a new year.
0:34:14 Maybe you’re taking a month off from drinking,
0:34:16 you know, dry January,
0:34:18 and maybe you’re placing it with something else.
0:34:20 – Puff puff pass.
0:34:23 – Some like one in five people who do dry January
0:34:26 say they’re smoking weed instead.
0:34:28 And more Americans are now smoking weed daily
0:34:30 than drinking daily.
0:34:32 Current president is into it.
0:34:33 – No one should be in jail merely
0:34:35 for using or possessing marijuana.
0:34:36 Period.
0:34:38 – Future president is into it.
0:34:41 – I’ve had friends and I’ve had others and doctors
0:34:44 telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing,
0:34:46 the medical marijuana.
0:34:49 – Failed president and former prosecutor was down to clown.
0:34:52 – People shouldn’t have to go to jail for smoking weed.
0:34:55 – Even health conscious brain worm guy likes it.
0:34:57 – My position on marijuana is that
0:35:00 it should be federally legalized.
0:35:01 – Everyone’s getting down with pot,
0:35:05 but legislatively we’re still stuck with a hot mess
0:35:06 in the United States.
0:35:08 Today explained.
0:35:10 Wherever you listen, come find us.
0:35:15 – Welcome back.
0:35:17 Former president Jimmy Carter, the 39th president
0:35:19 and a trailblazer in humanitarian efforts
0:35:23 passed away at the age of 100 in his hometown
0:35:25 of Plains, Georgia surrounded by family,
0:35:28 a peanut farmer turned president.
0:35:30 Carter single term from 1977 to 81,
0:35:32 faced economic and foreign policy challenges,
0:35:35 but his post presidency legacy as a Nobel prize winning
0:35:38 advocate for human rights and global peace reshaped
0:35:40 how we view former presidents.
0:35:43 President Biden called Carter a model of what it means
0:35:45 to live a life of meaning and purpose.
0:35:46 It’s nice.
0:35:49 Let’s read that again, a model of what it means
0:35:51 to live a life of meaning and purpose
0:35:54 and declare January 9 a national holiday of mourning.
0:35:56 President-elect Donald Trump was often been critical
0:35:58 of Carter acknowledged the former president’s
0:36:01 contribution saying we all owe him a debt of gratitude.
0:36:04 Carter State funeral will be held on January 9
0:36:06 in Washington DC, followed by a private internment
0:36:07 in Plains.
0:36:10 Jess, what are any thoughts on Carter’s legacy
0:36:13 and how he’ll be remembered in light of the contrast
0:36:17 between his presidency and his post presidential work?
0:36:19 – I’m concerned that it’s just always gonna
0:36:21 kind of be shitty for Carter,
0:36:26 because his presidency is so present in people’s minds,
0:36:30 especially having gone through this high inflationary period
0:36:32 that people just think of the Iranian hostage crisis
0:36:34 and they think of the prices.
0:36:36 And they just say Jimmy Carter was all bad.
0:36:40 And something that I’ve been reading up more on
0:36:42 since he passed away or towards the end of his life
0:36:44 since these obits have been hanging in the air.
0:36:46 And there was this great, well, not great
0:36:48 because the obituary writer ended up passing away,
0:36:51 but Jimmy Carter outlived one of his obit writers
0:36:52 by like over a decade.
0:36:57 But looking at his foreign policy record hostage crisis
0:37:02 aside, it’s incredible to look at all the groundwork
0:37:06 that was laid during those years when it comes to China,
0:37:09 when it comes to our anti-Soviet positions.
0:37:13 You know, Reagan obviously getting credit for ending Cold War,
0:37:17 but like, you know, Carter being the first one
0:37:19 to actually be speaking out about the Soviets
0:37:21 and to talk about democracy and human rights
0:37:24 in those contexts, the Camp David Accords,
0:37:28 you know, peace treaties with Israel and Egypt.
0:37:31 You know, he has a reputation or had a reputation
0:37:34 for being for strong Israel supporters
0:37:38 as perhaps two pro-Palestinian, but looking back at
0:37:42 pushing through and went through unanimously
0:37:44 the vote to establish the Holocaust Memorial Council
0:37:46 and built the Holocaust Museum.
0:37:48 That is part of Jimmy Carter’s legacy
0:37:52 that he was then hired as part of the Carter Center
0:37:56 by multiple presidents to go be election monitors
0:37:57 all over the world to make sure
0:37:59 that we were spreading democracy and human rights.
0:38:02 There’s a lot of very cool stuff to Jimmy Carter.
0:38:05 And I wanna say first and foremost with that,
0:38:08 the 77 year love story with his wife,
0:38:11 I went to see Jimmy and Rosalind Carter speak
0:38:13 when I lived in London and they were talking
0:38:15 about the work of the Carter Center
0:38:19 and about eradicating disease and spreading democracy.
0:38:23 And I was so overwhelmed by the palpable affection
0:38:28 that those two had for each other and that it just radiated
0:38:33 from them a marriage of equals that I had not seen before.
0:38:36 And I thought it was so special
0:38:39 and I was so lucky to have been able to see it in person
0:38:42 with another 5,000 people that were in the room watching them.
0:38:44 But those are my quick thoughts.
0:38:47 – Well, I think he’s getting a lot of well-deserved
0:38:50 recognition, A, because of the extraordinary life you live,
0:38:53 but also because of the contrast.
0:38:57 And that is to think about one president exiting the stage
0:38:59 and his character and the way he acquitted himself
0:39:01 and the one entering the stage.
0:39:05 The contrast is just so palpable.
0:39:10 And I’m on a board of a startup
0:39:12 and the chair of the board is this former,
0:39:13 I don’t know what it’s called,
0:39:17 there’s this like there’s so many amazing units
0:39:19 of our armed services where they find these incredibly
0:39:22 superhuman like fit and also very smart people
0:39:24 who decide to serve their country.
0:39:26 And he was on one of these mini submarines
0:39:28 off the Iranian coast where they weren’t allowed
0:39:31 to ever surface for fear they’d be detected.
0:39:36 And their job was to perhaps evacuate of operatives
0:39:40 from the shores of Iran, they had some strange,
0:39:43 I forget what the group’s called, forward something group.
0:39:45 And they would kind of go in first for recon
0:39:48 in very sensitive places where it’s like don’t get caught.
0:39:51 And his job was to be in this tiny submarine
0:39:56 off the coast of Iran, never emerging, if you will,
0:40:00 and go out into freezing water and grab these people
0:40:02 and put them back in a submarine that was floating
0:40:04 at three miles an hour, four feet under the water.
0:40:05 And if you miss the submarine,
0:40:08 you were gonna drown in freezing water.
0:40:10 And he was talking about the rescue,
0:40:13 the failed rescue attempt and that the one thing they knew
0:40:15 when they’d heard that one of the helicopters
0:40:19 had been downed and that they’d called off the mission
0:40:22 was that his presidency was done.
0:40:24 That was gonna be, you know, the October surprise
0:40:27 really kind of inflation, oil spiking,
0:40:29 Reagan was an outstanding candidate.
0:40:34 The other place I go is I think about trying to evolve
0:40:39 or shape a more aspirational vision of masculinity
0:40:41 as I think masculinity has been perverted and conflated
0:40:44 with coarseness and toxicity and correctly.
0:40:47 And as people try to develop a more aspirational form
0:40:49 of masculinity, I’m constantly asked,
0:40:51 well, who are some great role models?
0:40:54 And I think about Jimmy Carter, you know,
0:40:59 who grew up in Georgia, married for 77 years,
0:41:02 went to college, then did graduate studies
0:41:04 in nuclear physics, decided to serve as country,
0:41:08 joined the Navy, was actually in an incident involving
0:41:11 an accident and went into the room to fix
0:41:12 some sort of nuclear reactor or something,
0:41:16 was seen as a, by his colleagues as a brave person,
0:41:19 became an entrepreneur, took over this peanut business,
0:41:23 ran for governor, you know, just a really
0:41:27 intelligent discipline, serve your country,
0:41:32 generous, loving man, like a nice vision for like,
0:41:34 I think a nice role model for young men.
0:41:37 And he said something that really struck me.
0:41:39 And I thought, oh, this guy’s so appreciant.
0:41:42 He gave a speech and he basically said, we’ve entered this,
0:41:45 he was kind of giving Americans a talking to.
0:41:47 And he said, we’ve now become a nation
0:41:50 where people aren’t judged by what they do,
0:41:52 but by what they own.
0:41:55 And he kind of predicted very early,
0:41:58 this what I call this era of idolatry of money,
0:42:01 where any of this type of behavior,
0:42:03 I was at a conference and we were in Q and A,
0:42:06 I’m like, look at what money has done to us.
0:42:08 And that I was, I was speaking about Elon Musk,
0:42:09 people always ask me, what do you think Elon Musk?
0:42:13 I’m like, if you had a son who had been married
0:42:15 three times and had 13 kids or 12 kids
0:42:16 and it wasn’t living with any of them.
0:42:18 If you had a son who slept with a loaded gun next to his bed,
0:42:19 if you had a son that was addicted to catamine,
0:42:23 if you had a son that was accusing people
0:42:25 erently and incorrectly of sex crimes,
0:42:27 such that they had to move.
0:42:30 You know, if you had a son that was behaving this way,
0:42:34 you’d call your son and you’d try and do something,
0:42:36 you’d be embarrassed for him, you’d be embarrassed for yourself,
0:42:38 you would think you were a failed father.
0:42:42 But if he’s worth $400 billion, all is forgiven.
0:42:45 It’s just as if we have absolutely decided the cash
0:42:49 can replace any semblance of character.
0:42:50 And he saw that.
0:42:52 And also, he has defined what it means
0:42:54 to be a post-presidency.
0:42:56 Like, I really like, these people,
0:42:58 are you generally more likable post-presidency?
0:43:00 I would argue that Clinton has not had a great post-presidency
0:43:03 because of some of the shit that’s come up about him
0:43:05 or that’s haunted him.
0:43:09 I think George Bush has had a great post-presidency, you know?
0:43:12 – I mean, it seems nice, he draws.
0:43:16 – Painting, seems like a nice man, but Carter really–
0:43:18 – But it’s not as impactful.
0:43:20 – I mean, it’s all well and good to hang–
0:43:22 – None of them are building houses.
0:43:23 – Right. – Right.
0:43:24 – With their own hands. – For the poor.
0:43:25 – Yeah, there’s a–
0:43:27 – With their wife of 77 years, you know,
0:43:31 holding the toolkit or him holding her tool belt.
0:43:33 Yeah, this guy, yeah, he really did.
0:43:36 – It’s, he’s the anti-commercialization
0:43:38 of the post-presidency.
0:43:40 And everybody else has been.
0:43:41 And the Obama–
0:43:42 – A quarter of a million dollar speaking fees,
0:43:43 a big book, book contract.
0:43:44 – I don’t think so.
0:43:46 And, you know, all the more power to you, I think, you know,
0:43:48 if the market can work in your favor,
0:43:49 go and take advantage of it.
0:43:52 But no, I think if we looked into the tax returns,
0:43:56 we would see, you know, modest incomes living very similarly
0:43:59 to the way that they did when they put that peanut farm
0:44:02 in a trust, so that the American public
0:44:04 could trust him when he came into office.
0:44:08 And I look at, and maybe this is just my estrogen talking,
0:44:09 since I already said, I love, you know,
0:44:10 their marriage and their love story.
0:44:12 The Obamas also have an incredible love story.
0:44:13 – Fantastic, yeah.
0:44:16 – But their post-presidency or his post-presidency
0:44:18 is much more commercial than the Carter’s, right?
0:44:21 And that’s not to say they aren’t doing a world of good,
0:44:24 but we’re as likely to see them as a habitat
0:44:28 for humanity site as we are to see at the Oscars.
0:44:30 And Jimmy Carter is not showing up anywhere.
0:44:32 Well, no, he’s really not showing up anywhere,
0:44:34 but he’s not showing up anywhere to talk about anything.
0:44:36 – For a while, we hope, we hope.
0:44:38 – But eradicating guinea war, right?
0:44:41 And that’s a real marked difference.
0:44:43 I will say in Clintonian defense,
0:44:46 I think the Clinton Foundation has done a lot of good,
0:44:49 but obviously as pillars of society,
0:44:53 the Clintons, no one holds a candle really to the Carter’s.
0:44:57 And you see that the way that his passing
0:45:01 and his last year in hospice has been covered,
0:45:03 you know, from local press, people who knew him.
0:45:06 I mean, this is someone who was part of a community
0:45:11 in a way that someone who went on to the presidency never is.
0:45:13 – Right, like this is the local guy who’s sitting
0:45:16 at the end of the counter when you show up at the diner.
0:45:22 And I don’t know how we would ever get that back again.
0:45:26 I can’t see anyone on the horizon who would be like that.
0:45:30 I think times maybe demand that it’s not possible anymore,
0:45:31 right?
0:45:33 It costs too much to get elected.
0:45:35 You need to be too famous.
0:45:37 You need to be too good on a podcast.
0:45:37 – Too polarizing.
0:45:38 – Too polarizing.
0:45:41 You need to have a partner that does something swanky
0:45:42 and cool.
0:45:44 You need to have kids that fit into a certain bucket.
0:45:45 All of these things that didn’t exist
0:45:47 when Carter got elected.
0:45:50 But it feels like a real loss for humanity
0:45:54 and dignity in politics that he’s gone.
0:45:58 And I hope that we’ll consider the full raft
0:45:59 of accomplishment.
0:46:00 And obviously there’s some things that he did
0:46:02 that were not fantastic.
0:46:05 And there’s a reason that, you know, Reagan came in
0:46:06 in that kind of fashion, right?
0:46:10 He opened the door big time to conservativism.
0:46:14 But a really decent and good person.
0:46:17 And it was sad to see him go.
0:46:19 But, you know, he said, I want to live to vote for Kamala.
0:46:21 And I don’t want to live to see Donald Trump
0:46:21 as president again.
0:46:22 – Sorry.
0:46:23 – So he got out on time.
0:46:25 – Bakshak James Earl Carter.
0:46:29 Dead at a hundred years of age, rest in peace.
0:46:32 Before we wrap, let’s dig into the state of the Democrats.
0:46:33 In a recent New York Times op,
0:46:36 that James Carvel admitted Democrats lost in 2024
0:46:39 because they failed to connect with voters on the economy
0:46:40 for our previous comments.
0:46:43 Despite solid GDP growth and easing inflation,
0:46:45 many Americans felt the party wasn’t addressing
0:46:46 their struggles.
0:46:48 Trump capitalized on this by making the economy
0:46:50 a central message, winning over middle
0:46:52 and lower class voters.
0:46:54 Carvel says Democrats need a clear, relatable
0:46:56 and urgent economic narrative to win them back.
0:46:58 At the same time, younger generations are delaying
0:47:01 or skipping milestones, including home ownership
0:47:02 and parenthood.
0:47:04 Some by choice, others because of rising costs
0:47:06 and societal shifts, researchers warned this trend
0:47:10 could be permanent, reshaping families, communities
0:47:11 and the economy.
0:47:13 What do you think Democrats can do to try
0:47:16 and reclaim the economic narrative here?
0:47:22 – I’d head to, and maybe I’m too conciliatory in some ways.
0:47:24 And I think part of that is a function of working
0:47:26 in conservative media that I’m around people
0:47:28 that I disagree with all the time.
0:47:31 And I can see what place they’re coming
0:47:32 to the table from, right?
0:47:34 I think most people are actually generally motivated
0:47:36 by wanting good outcomes.
0:47:39 And we just have different approaches for how to get there.
0:47:43 But Tom Swazi, who’s a conservative Long Island Democrat
0:47:44 who we’re gonna have on the podcast
0:47:46 at the end of the month, had an op-ed
0:47:49 in the New York Times that came out on New Year’s Day
0:47:52 where he talked about where we can work together,
0:47:54 where we have to push back.
0:47:57 And I think that employing some of that thinking
0:47:59 and making sure that we’re coming to the table
0:48:02 with our own ideas, especially working
0:48:05 against this super slim majority on their side
0:48:06 will benefit us.
0:48:10 But I wanted to double-tap on the Carville op-ed
0:48:12 because he says it’s about the messaging problem.
0:48:15 And there was a 538 Politics podcast
0:48:17 about the 1992 election that came out
0:48:20 that I was listening to of like how Clinton and Carville did it.
0:48:21 And they were talking about, you know,
0:48:24 it’s the economy stupid and they just kept repeating
0:48:27 very simple marketing phrases over and over again.
0:48:30 So then no one forgot what their campaign was about.
0:48:32 And the Democrats, we didn’t have that, right?
0:48:36 We had like 10 slogans that people were going for
0:48:38 for Clinton, it was putting people first
0:48:40 and it’s the economy stupid.
0:48:42 And that’s what anyone really remembers, right?
0:48:44 From the 1992 election.
0:48:49 But making it just about the way that we message things
0:48:52 ignores the fact that there are real fault lines
0:48:55 in the way the American economy is working for people.
0:48:58 And I’m scared that we’re gonna try to paper over
0:49:02 those real problems with rhetorical flourishes
0:49:05 and think that we should win in 2026,
0:49:08 which by the way, a midterm, it turns out more people
0:49:10 who are like us that are paying a lot of attention
0:49:14 versus a regular American that showed up in 2024
0:49:15 to vote for Trump.
0:49:16 So what do you make of that?
0:49:18 I mean, I wanna bring up credit card debt again.
0:49:19 I mean, this number is staggering.
0:49:23 So it’s at 1.17 trillion now of credit card debt.
0:49:26 So everyone is basically living off their plastic
0:49:27 at this point.
0:49:29 Like that’s a real indicator of how the economy
0:49:31 isn’t working for people, right?
0:49:33 And how do you square that with Peter Baker
0:49:37 writing in the New York times that Biden is handing off
0:49:39 the best economy that anyone has gotten
0:49:42 since Clinton gave George W. Bush the economy
0:49:43 at the beginning of 2001.
0:49:47 – Yeah, the numbers are just, there’s perception
0:49:50 is reality, but the perception is much different
0:49:53 than the reality in the sense that in terms of the economy,
0:49:54 we have the strongest growth in the G7,
0:49:57 the lowest inflation, something like 50 or 60%
0:49:59 of all GDP growth on a gross level globally
0:50:00 is gonna come out of the US.
0:50:03 Our stock market represents half the value
0:50:05 of the entire world stock market.
0:50:08 Low unemployment, I mean, the problem is similar
0:50:10 to the future of what William Gibson said about the future.
0:50:12 It’s here, prosperity is here.
0:50:13 It’s just not evenly distributed.
0:50:14 And people really feel it.
0:50:17 Now, I would argue this is a referendum on young men.
0:50:18 It was supposed to be a referendum on women.
0:50:21 It wasn’t where women’s rights.
0:50:24 But the messaging I think has to,
0:50:26 I’m a fan of trying to keep it simple.
0:50:28 And that is it needs to move, in my opinion,
0:50:30 from identity politics.
0:50:32 I really hope there’s a reckoning here.
0:50:33 My biggest fear around Democrats is that they say,
0:50:36 “No, we weren’t progressive enough.”
0:50:37 – Yeah.
0:50:38 – And that they say we,
0:50:41 and there’s very articulate, compelling people on the left
0:50:43 will say, “No, we need to stick to our values.
0:50:44 It’s because we weren’t starting about our values.”
0:50:45 And I’m like, Jesus Christ,
0:50:49 that’s, you wanna talk about things getting worse for us.
0:50:52 I think they need to move dramatically away from,
0:50:54 it just really frustrated me
0:50:55 at the Democratic National Convention.
0:50:58 I felt like this is a special interest group on parade.
0:51:00 All right, do we have an Asian Pacific Islander
0:51:02 to speak to other Asian Pacific Islanders?
0:51:05 And assuming that, oh, because I’m Asian
0:51:08 or Pacific Islander, I wanna hear the following things
0:51:12 and feel seen around issues related to me as opposed to,
0:51:13 that’s not how I identify myself.
0:51:15 And I think we really saw that with the Latino vote.
0:51:18 They said, look, being Latin does not,
0:51:20 it doesn’t define me and what I care about.
0:51:24 And the example that really struck me,
0:51:27 and I’m a huge fan of Sam Harris and he brought this up,
0:51:29 was that, do you remember the court case
0:51:31 or the court case that just happened
0:51:33 where the young man was dealing
0:51:35 or there was someone who appeared to be mentally?
0:51:37 – Daniel Penny.
0:51:40 – Yeah, basically was on trial for-
0:51:42 – Murdering Jordan Neely.
0:51:46 – Well, yeah, he was accused of murdering,
0:51:47 but acquitted.
0:51:50 And what they found in surveys was how you felt about it,
0:51:54 was if you found out who was white and who was black,
0:51:56 that because it was a white man
0:52:00 who had people would argue in self-defense
0:52:01 or doing what he thought was the right thing,
0:52:03 ended up killing this individual,
0:52:06 how you felt about it, especially among Democrats,
0:52:10 was knowing the identity and race of each of the parties.
0:52:12 And it strikes me that,
0:52:15 and I think it’s a fair accusation of Democrats,
0:52:18 is that we’re in many ways more obsessed with race
0:52:19 than Republicans.
0:52:21 And I think we need to get away from this.
0:52:24 I would fly, I would exit identity politics
0:52:26 as aggressively as possible
0:52:29 and move right into the discussion around inflation,
0:52:30 around the economics argument.
0:52:31 But until we move away
0:52:33 from everything in the Democratic Party being around,
0:52:37 we’re here to protect and advance the rights of this group
0:52:40 as identified by their race, their religion,
0:52:42 their ethnicity, their nationality.
0:52:46 I think we’re stuck in this inexorable downward spiral.
0:52:51 – Yeah, I mean, to some degree it’s a good thing
0:52:54 that society has moved in the direction that it has.
0:52:57 It is a bad thing for Democrats politically
0:52:59 that we’ve been slow on the uptick about it.
0:53:03 And you look at someone like an AOC
0:53:05 who split district, right?
0:53:06 South Bronx went for her
0:53:09 and they went for Donald Trump or Jared Golden in Maine.
0:53:11 And this happened all over the country, right?
0:53:16 Where people said, I want to choose my fighter.
0:53:18 And that was the key theme of this.
0:53:19 If you are going to be fighting for me,
0:53:22 I don’t really care if you have a donkey or an elephant
0:53:25 sitting on the other side of your name
0:53:27 or your party affiliation.
0:53:30 And I think that that’s probably a net positive for us.
0:53:32 But I would expand off of,
0:53:34 you have to talk about the inflation
0:53:35 and the economy for sure.
0:53:38 But I think the Daniel Penny example
0:53:39 is a really important one.
0:53:43 And we covered that case day by day over at Fox.
0:53:44 – Fox would love that story.
0:53:46 – Well, but it’s a great story.
0:53:48 It’s not just because it’s a Fox red meat story.
0:53:49 – When I brought it up.
0:53:51 – Yeah, you brought it up.
0:53:51 – There you go.
0:53:54 And the only interview that Daniel Penny has done
0:53:57 is with Judge Neampiro who’s on the five with me.
0:54:02 And he, you know, he served the country honorably.
0:54:05 He, you know, studying to be an architect.
0:54:09 He was on a train where a mixed race group of people
0:54:13 were all expressing fear of Jordan Neely,
0:54:16 someone who was on this list of the top 50
0:54:19 most vulnerable homeless people in the city.
0:54:21 And arguably shouldn’t have been able to be on the streets.
0:54:25 And you see Kathy Hochul now pushing
0:54:28 for some involuntary confinement for people
0:54:30 who are public safety threats.
0:54:32 And she’s only doing that because Richie Torres
0:54:35 is going ballistic on her on basically a daily basis.
0:54:36 But while you were away,
0:54:38 I don’t know if you saw this story,
0:54:42 a undocumented man who had been deported multiple times
0:54:47 set a woman on fire on the F train in Coney Island here.
0:54:52 And that kind of stuff has taken this so far
0:54:55 beyond partisanship where you just think
0:55:00 my quality of life is not up to standard.
0:55:01 You know, we are paying–
0:55:03 – When you pay the highest taxes in the nation
0:55:05 and people are being lit on fire on public transport.
0:55:06 – Right.
0:55:08 People, you know, who she was an alcoholic
0:55:11 at times finally has a big piece about her
0:55:13 ’cause they were able to figure out who she was
0:55:15 because she was incinerated, you know,
0:55:17 to the level that we couldn’t do DNA testing for a while.
0:55:20 And you have that image of also a police officer
0:55:22 walking in front of her burning body
0:55:23 and not doing anything.
0:55:25 – People just walking by, yeah.
0:55:26 – People just walking by.
0:55:28 But New York City has a plea out right now,
0:55:30 we need 1600 new cops.
0:55:31 Right now we don’t have enough New Orleans,
0:55:33 the terror attack there.
0:55:35 There was a point when New Orleans just a few years ago
0:55:38 only had something like 700 beat cops.
0:55:40 You can’t protect New Orleans.
0:55:41 – No, but to find the police.
0:55:42 – Right.
0:55:47 You know, all of that we can’t lose sight of
0:55:50 because that was part and parcel of the message
0:55:52 that the Republican Party was able to put out there.
0:55:55 And I don’t say message in that it wasn’t rooted
0:55:56 in real life.
0:55:59 I mean, people that we know are walking around saying like,
0:56:01 I don’t feel as safe as I should.
0:56:03 I am taking the subway less.
0:56:05 I mean, congestion pricing is coming in
0:56:10 as to solve a problem of having everyone in Ubers and Cabs
0:56:11 because they’re not on public transport as much.
0:56:14 I’m the only person, at least on air at Fox,
0:56:16 I take the subway in and out.
0:56:18 I am very different on the subway now than I used to be, right?
0:56:23 Like not both AirPods in, lost on my phone, right?
0:56:25 I’m paying attention to what’s going on
0:56:29 and I’m going from Tribeca to Times Square.
0:56:30 – You’re seeing that wave though.
0:56:31 It’s checking back in San Francisco.
0:56:34 They’ve said, okay, no more.
0:56:36 It used to be if you stole less than $900
0:56:37 then we’re gonna prosecute.
0:56:38 – Yeah, Prop 36.
0:56:41 – Yeah, that shit has gone away.
0:56:46 And it’s, by the way, just to end here on a positive note,
0:56:50 I absolutely love Representative Torres.
0:56:51 – Oh, he’s the best.
0:56:54 – And I just, I did, one of the things I like about him too
0:56:56 is the far left, just to know what the fuck to do
0:56:58 with this guy, ’cause the intersectionality
0:57:02 of a gay Latino black Democrat who is also-
0:57:03 – Millennial.
0:57:05 – Very millennial, but also very pro-Israel
0:57:06 and wants to get away from identity politics.
0:57:09 So like, oh wait, we wanna like you,
0:57:10 but you’re making it hard to.
0:57:12 – I think he’s exactly kind of a Democrat.
0:57:14 – Well, I’ve told you that Brian,
0:57:17 my husband’s dream ticket, Fetterman Torres.
0:57:20 He’s like, give me Fetterman Torres for 2028.
0:57:24 And I mean, Richie Torres has a huge Jewish community
0:57:27 that’s part of his district and my friend lives there.
0:57:29 And he says that he’s at the synagogue every week.
0:57:32 He shows up at his kid’s religious school.
0:57:34 They know him, they’re like, oh, Richie’s here.
0:57:36 I mean, he’s doing public service in a way
0:57:38 that feels more Carter-esque, right?
0:57:42 And it feels like what today’s current looks like.
0:57:43 – He’s fantastic. – We have a lot of work to do.
0:57:46 – So just, we gotta wrap up here.
0:57:50 Just before we go, Biden is gonna give
0:57:54 his kind of last conversations here.
0:57:59 Any thoughts on, you know, any advice for him
0:58:02 or do you think, what can we expect here?
0:58:02 Does it matter?
0:58:07 We’ll be, and this is sort of his last shot here.
0:58:08 Any thoughts?
0:58:13 – I’m hopeful, but resigned to the fact
0:58:15 that it’ll probably feel like a lot
0:58:17 of what we’ve heard before,
0:58:19 and of going over accomplishments.
0:58:21 And a lot of them were what you were just talking about,
0:58:24 right, with the success of the economy on a global scale,
0:58:26 right, and taking us from where we were
0:58:29 with, you know, 15 million people losing their jobs,
0:58:31 losing over a million lives to COVID, et cetera,
0:58:32 and where we are today.
0:58:35 And those are legitimate victory laps to be taken.
0:58:40 But I really want, especially as there are
0:58:41 very real questions, and a lot of people
0:58:43 who are huge Biden supporters
0:58:45 who now feel very differently about him
0:58:48 and the presidency and his cognitive abilities,
0:58:50 I wanna see the empathizer in chief
0:58:54 come out for one last hurrah and to talk about,
0:58:57 not necessarily say, you know, why Kamala lost
0:58:58 or why the Democrats lost,
0:59:01 but to show some of that humility
0:59:02 and that connection to the average person
0:59:04 that makes him more Scranton Joe
0:59:07 than the 46th president of the United States of America.
0:59:10 And I was listening to Anthony Blinken
0:59:12 on, he was on the Sunday interview on The Daily.
0:59:13 – I listened to that as well.
0:59:15 – Yeah, and I was not impressed.
0:59:18 – God, it’s so funny you said that.
0:59:19 I was so angry. – Funny slash,
0:59:20 we were both crying. – Ironic.
0:59:22 – I was like, this is a disaster.
0:59:23 – Why didn’t you get back in her face
0:59:27 when she was basically so outraged at the Israelis?
0:59:29 I’m like, how come the New York Times
0:59:31 and this individual doesn’t appear to be that outraged
0:59:32 about what happened on October the 7th?
0:59:35 How come he’s not back in her face
0:59:37 saying, what on earth?
0:59:40 Why, it just struck me so by nest
0:59:43 that he was playing defense and being very thoughtful
0:59:46 and understanding her as opposed to saying, what the fuck?
0:59:47 This is our ally.
0:59:49 Of course we came to their defense.
0:59:51 Of course we were gonna provide them.
0:59:54 Would you rather us have 10, 200 pounds?
0:59:55 There’s no elegant way to kill someone
0:59:58 and you keep citing statistics from Hamas,
1:00:00 better known as the Gaza Health Ministry
1:00:03 is you keep taking their word and not the word.
1:00:05 He just did not get back in their face
1:00:08 and give in to a certain extent,
1:00:10 Biden should be able to take a victory lap
1:00:12 around the US’s support of Israel.
1:00:13 And instead they were milling mouth about it
1:00:15 ’cause they wanted to have it both ways.
1:00:18 They fucked up so badly on Israel
1:00:21 because they did the right thing
1:00:23 and they refused to take credit of it
1:00:25 by having it both ways. – Or to just talk about it
1:00:26 in normal terms.
1:00:27 I mean, that’s the thing.
1:00:29 I mean, the electorate has made it clear
1:00:32 that they don’t care if you say it fancy.
1:00:34 They just wanna hear it.
1:00:36 And I felt like- – And stab me in the front,
1:00:37 not in the back.
1:00:39 Don’t give me a bunch of bullshit and say why.
1:00:40 We feel for the people.
1:00:41 Yeah, of course we do.
1:00:42 We all do.
1:00:44 It’s the greatest concentration of child amputees
1:00:45 in the world.
1:00:46 It’s tragic.
1:00:47 And you know what?
1:00:50 That can be laid at the feet of Hamas
1:00:53 and the 70% of Palestinians who still support Hamas.
1:00:55 And that’s what they believe.
1:00:59 Their actions support that view.
1:01:02 They deploy two carrier strike forces right away.
1:01:04 In my opinion, the Biden administration has been very good.
1:01:06 But what’s the point of doing good
1:01:07 if you’re not seen doing good?
1:01:09 And so they said, well, we can’t lose
1:01:10 the Islamic vote in Michigan.
1:01:11 And guess what?
1:01:13 They voted more than expected for Trump.
1:01:15 And the general view was I’d rather be stabbed
1:01:16 in the front than in the back.
1:01:17 Anyway, I-
1:01:19 – Well, that’s not gonna pan out that well for them either.
1:01:22 They’re gonna be plenty pissed within a few months.
1:01:26 But we are, I mean, I thought Blinken
1:01:28 was a great representation
1:01:31 of how mealy-mouthed our electives have been about this.
1:01:33 And that’s not to say that I agree
1:01:35 with everything that they’ve done, right?
1:01:37 I think that there is a strong case that you could make
1:01:42 that we are more involved in global wars or conflict
1:01:44 than we should have been.
1:01:46 And one of the promises was this return to normalcy.
1:01:47 We’ll make sure we’re bringing everyone home.
1:01:49 You know, him saying I wouldn’t have changed anything
1:01:50 about the Afghanistan withdrawal.
1:01:51 Excuse me.
1:01:52 – Come on.
1:01:53 – Like that’s pathetic.
1:01:57 – But he sounded just like your average poll.
1:01:58 And no one wants that.
1:01:59 – It’s hard to end a war.
1:02:02 We fucked up on the whole.
1:02:03 We got some stuff right.
1:02:04 We got some stuff wrong.
1:02:05 And he made the mistake.
1:02:08 I think Vice President Harris did when she was on the view
1:02:09 and asked what would you do differently.
1:02:10 And she said nothing.
1:02:14 Anyways, this is going to be an exceptionally interesting week
1:02:17 and an exceptionally interesting year.
1:02:19 Jess, I’m thrilled that we’re doing this.
1:02:22 Please subscribe to our Distinguishing Moderates feed.
1:02:25 We are, we’ve had it fantastic for six months.
1:02:28 We want to carry our momentum into 2025.
1:02:30 That’s it for this episode.
1:02:32 Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.
1:02:34 Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and David Toledo.
1:02:36 Caroline is leaving property media.
1:02:37 – So sad.
1:02:39 – I hate it when people leave voluntarily.
1:02:40 I don’t-
1:02:41 – You prefer to just fire them?
1:02:42 – Yeah, no, I don’t mind that as much.
1:02:45 – Caroline, would you like to change your exit strategy?
1:02:48 – Caroline is going to the dark side.
1:02:51 She’s joining the Sith Lord known as Alphabet.
1:02:54 So I hope that-
1:02:55 – Good luck.
1:02:57 – By the way, we’re going to break their ass up.
1:03:00 We’re going to spin YouTube just cause I’m angry at them.
1:03:01 I’m about to go into my next podcast
1:03:05 where I’m going to suggest that we break that shit up.
1:03:07 And by the way, I wish you the best of luck.
1:03:09 I think it’s important you go to work for Crack Dealer
1:03:10 sitting outside junior high schools,
1:03:13 getting them addicted to video and social platforms.
1:03:14 – Can you be nice?
1:03:15 Caroline, this is awesome.
1:03:16 Congratulations.
1:03:17 – I hold a grudge.
1:03:18 I can’t believe she’s leaving.
1:03:19 How can you leave all this?
1:03:20 – She’s been with you forever.
1:03:23 – You’re leaving all this.
1:03:26 But Caroline, you’re been a fantastic culture carrier
1:03:27 in addition to being very confident.
1:03:28 We wish you the best.
1:03:29 I think you’re going to be great there.
1:03:30 – It was great getting to know you
1:03:31 these past few months.
1:03:32 – You’re always welcome back.
1:03:34 You have that when you’re leaving Disneyland
1:03:35 and this is fucking Disneyland.
1:03:38 This is the matter horn of careers.
1:03:39 This is space mountain.
1:03:40 This is good stuff.
1:03:43 – People vomit on space mountain all the time.
1:03:44 – You are leaving the park
1:03:46 but I am stamping your wrist in case you decide to return.
1:03:47 You are always welcome.
1:03:49 You just have to flash your wrist and say,
1:03:51 I was wrong.
1:03:51 I was wrong.
1:03:53 I want to stay with Scott.
1:03:55 The most generous, loving person professionally
1:03:58 in the history of modern society.
1:03:59 And I screwed up by leaving the park early.
1:04:00 You’re always welcome back.
1:04:02 Your wrist is stamped.
1:04:03 Caroline Shagren, best of luck to you.
1:04:04 Thanks for all your good work.
1:04:06 All right.
1:04:08 Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.
1:04:08 He’s staying.
1:04:09 I’m not saying anything about true.
1:04:12 You can find raising smart guy.
1:04:13 You can find Raging Moderates
1:04:14 on its own feed every Tuesday.
1:04:15 That’s right.
1:04:17 Raging Moderates on its own feed.
1:04:20 Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
1:04:22 Have a great rest of the week, Chast.
1:04:23 – You too.
1:04:25 (upbeat music)
1:04:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]