Terrorist Attacks, the New Congress, and the Legacy of President Jimmy Carter

Discussion post for January 7, 2025

We are delighted to be back with you even when the headlines are challenging. It feels refreshing to have a place to digest the news. Today, Sarah and Beth discuss the domestic terror attacks that began the year in New Orleans and Las Vegas, the new Congress, and reflect on the life and legacy of President Jimmy Carter. Outside of Politics, they discuss the podcasts, books, and movies they enjoyed over the holidays.

Topics Discussed:

• A Violent Beginning

• A New Congress

• President Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

• Outside of Politics: What We Watched Over the Break

Pantsuit Politics Resources:

Save the Date for our 10th Anniversary Live Show in Cincinnati on Saturday, July 19, 2025

We are continuing our test of our new schedule for Pantsuit Politics and our premium podcasts, Good Morning and More to Say. Our goal is to be able to react to breaking news and take time to dive into deeper topics to feel anchored both in reality and the long story of our country. And we want to build that space into our schedule while still keeping up with the headlines and topics that matter.

• To search past episodes of the main show or our Premium content, check out our content archive.

• Want more Pantsuit Politics? Subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode and get access to our premium shows and community.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Episode Resources:

A Violent Beginning

• “Violent Domestic Extremist Groups and the Recruitment of Veterans.” (Center for Strategic and International Studies)

• The meh-ification of Jan. 6 (The Washington Post)

• Absent US congresswoman has been dealing with ‘dementia issues’, family says (The Guardian)

President Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

• Among Presidents, Jimmy Carter Was the Odd Man Out (The New York Times)

• Crisis of Confidence (The Carter Center)

• Did Reagan Start the Fire? (Pantsuit Politics)

• I Resigned from the Carter Center over "Apartheid" Charge; I was Wrong (History News Network)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.

[00:00:29] We're so glad you're here to ring in the new year with us. We hope your holiday season was restful and restorative or whatever you wanted it to be. Today, we're going to catch up. We're going to cover some of what happened over the holiday break, including the terrorist attack in New Orleans, the start of the 119th Congress, and the death of former President Jimmy Carter. And then Outside of Politics. We both watched and listened to lots of things over the break, so we want to talk a little bit about that.

Sarah [00:00:54] Before we do, we wanted to take a moment to thank so many of you who gifted Pantsuit Politics in some form or fashion over the holiday season. We did so many Cameos. We sold t-shirts. We sold gifts subscriptions to our premium shows on Substack, Spike, as all of you got in a very generous spirit. Not to mention the stacks and stacks of holiday cards that you sent to us with some of the loveliest notes I have ever read. All of it is such a gift to us. It means so much that our work can be a gift to someone else, and we are so appreciative to those of you who gave it. So, thank you. Thank you. It means a lot to us and, of course, it helps our business here at Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:01:40] We also want to give you a little bit of a sense of what you can expect from us as we head into 2025. So we are working hard to figure out who we want to be and how we want to contribute value in a new administration and a new time. So we're trying to think about reacting to headlines versus having deeper conversations. We are thinking about our schedule. We are going to continue in the month of January to have a late episode release on Tuesdays and then an early morning release on Fridays. We'll take a look at that in a few weeks and see how it's going. We are going to be celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. And so there'll be lots to look forward to, including an in-person live show in Cincinnati July 19th. So mark your calendars for that. We're going to have an executive producer retreat around that live show in Cincinnati. So there's just be lots of celebrations and still lots of contemplation here about how we can do our best work with what will be a pretty big political change that has already begun.

[00:02:38] So let's get to it. Let's talk about the new Congress, what happened in New Orleans, President Carter and other things that we missed while we were out. Sarah, I checked in on our Substack group chat over the break a couple of times and noticed that the top stories of the new year were landing really hard with everyone. If you weren't following the news on January 1st, a 42 year old Texas Army veteran and Deloitte professional drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Fourteen people were killed and 35 were injured. And then just hours later, a 37 year old decorated Army soldier from Colorado shot himself in a Tesla Cybertruck before it blew up outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.

Sarah [00:03:26] Yes, the time between Christmas and New Year's is such a liminal space. Some people call it dead week because there's just not a lot to do. You're not really sure what you should be doing. And I think all of that is made so much more intense because we're in between administrations. And that liminal space between two administrations is even weirder this year because we have a former president coming in again. So it's not like we just have a brand new administration, we have this former president. I was thinking even linguistically, the fact that we call him President Trump, even though he's about to be president again, it's just this very in-between spaces. And, look, I don't like liminal space. I know that it is profound spiritually. But that is because it is also profoundly uncomfortable. So I feel like psychically, we're already in this place where we kind of don't know what's coming, we know any comfort we feel right now is temporary because everything's about to change. And so we're already feeling very vulnerable and very disconcerted about what could be coming next. So then to have this terrorism, this violence on top of that, I think was very, very upsetting and sad and scary for all of us.

Beth [00:04:51] It also feels like it should be a contemplative time, but it's hard to be contemplative when there's so much unknown. And I think in the face of the unknown, we instinctively skew very negative. And so these attacks not only felt upsetting and sad, but they also felt foreboding. Is this what this year is going to be? The hardest part for me in digesting information about these two events, which we should say are separate, the FBI has told us they do not see a link between what happened in New Orleans and what happened in Las Vegas. They seem to be very different people with very different motivations. Still, as you take them both in, the commonality was the hardest part for me to swallow. Learning that both of these men are close to my age, American citizens with military experience. And just thinking about what should we learn from that? What does it mean? What should it turn our attention to this year?

Sarah [00:05:51] Well, and even the FBI presence is unsettled, right? Because we know the new administration has it out for the FBI. I'm already reading reports that so many Republican senators plan to use these attacks to push through the incoming administration's nominee, Kash Patel, to head the FBI. So this presents that should be comforting that says this is the information we have, this is what we know, it has this political underpinning. We learned over the break that Christopher Wray is going to step down, and so we are definitely going to have a new FBI director. And Kash Patel is quite the nominee, doesn't lend a lot of stability or encouragement to any fears we have that these are the first of many terrorist attacks. We know that this law enforcement agency that's supposed to come in and reassure us is going to be going through a time of great transition. So I think that part is really, really difficult too. Then I totally agree I think the commonalities between these two attackers, the military experience, this is something we've talked about before. This is a reality.

[00:07:03] Now, look, the percentage of veterans who commit acts of political violence is extremely small as a percentage of people with military experience. But when you look at the percentage of people who commit political violence, it is higher than the general population people who have this life experience. And I think it's not hard to see why. I don't think it's some sort of character flaw or judgment on the military. I think if you go into an experience that unites you through a shared sense of purpose and impact and then are left more or less upon return without that shared sense of action and purpose and impact, then you can see how the siren song of political extremism would offer a path. Not a good path, but a path.

Beth [00:08:09] And that seems to be what happened with the attacker in New Orleans. The individual in Las Vegas seemed to be suffering. He wrote that he needed to cleanse himself of the brothers he lost and the burden of the lives he took. And so, again, two very different effects of that service. One of the most helpful things that I read about the link between acts of extremism and violence and the military is that because our military trains people so effectively, terrorist organizations target them for recruitment. They target veterans for recruitment. And that's an opportunity for the military to more proactively educate soldiers that you are going to be targeted in this way and here's why and here's what we can do to help you with that targeting. It is all sad and it is all foreboding. And I had the opposite reaction of the Republican senators who have said, see, the FBI needs this overhaul. When I look at both of these situations, you rent a truck, you drive it into a crowd; you rent a truck, you blow it up outside of a hotel with fireworks, I thought, wow, the FBI has really done a remarkable job over the past few years that this feels unusual. This feels different. And we know Chris Wray has been sounding the alarm for several years now that the risk of these types of events has been way, way up. How difficult it is to prevent these kinds of lone wolf things. I felt deep appreciation for the many acts like this that must have been stopped over the past couple of years.

Sarah [00:09:50] Well, that's what's so hard about this one in New Orleans. It's like they knew they needed to decrease the risk of this particular type of traffic terrorist attack. And so they were fixing the barriers on Bourbon Street. They were trying to beef them up. They were trying to make them stronger. And I think that's what's so hard. But it had been identified. They were working on it. To me, one of the most disturbing aspects of this attack was the role of the meta glasses. The first time glasses have really like bubbled up to the to the mass consciousness. And here they are being used to film the area very indiscreetly before the attack. To me, that is a disturbing use of that technology, but also not surprising use of that technology and something that just one more technological advancement that will make the work of the FBI, that will make the work of educating the public. See something, say something. Well, you're going to see people wearing these glasses more regularly. How are you supposed to notice or identify a seamless, completely transparent use of video technology like Meta glasses? To me, that's one of the more disturbing aspects of this attack and speaks to how difficult the work the FBI does is.

Beth [00:11:17] That and the comments from people after the fact about how there are just hundreds of thousands of social posts and emails and text messages to go through anytime something like this happens. And that's my big concern about Kash Patel as the nominee to head the FBI. All of his public statements indicate that he is interested in an FBI that is very internally focused, settling scores, looking back at previous investigations. And there's value in that. I'm sure that there is some value. And I believe in an after action review. But clearly the threat level across the country and across the world demands a very externally focused FBI and one that is keeping pace with new threats and the ways in which technology makes it even harder to identify those threats.

Sarah [00:12:12] Well, and it's just one more way in which as much as the vote for Donald Trump I do believe was a vote for a type of isolationism, and we see that movement across the world. Olaf Scholz was kicked out. Justin Trudeau just resigned a lot due to concerns about immigration in both Germany and in Canada. But this increasing role of ISIS whose perpetuated attacks, they've not claimed responsibility for this attack in New Orleans. But the perpetrator was clearly influenced and saw himself as a part of that movement. And they're weakened, but sometimes weakened movements are just as dangerous. And you see these attacks across the world. It's another thing that unites us, even as we want to isolate ourselves more and more.

Beth [00:13:12] Thinking about what inspires political violence and what facilitates it, takes us to January 6th. We just had the certification of the Electoral College vote in about 30 minutes just came and went this year without incident. And I'm very grateful for that. And it's also kind of infuriating and I'm sure for the people who participated in it. I kept seeing the word surreal. That felt right to me. So I'm wondering, Sarah, how you thought about January 6th as it passed yesterday?

Sarah [00:13:44] Well, as I was thinking about these two terror attacks and the involvement of two military veterans, I was like, I wonder what the rate is among January 6th insurrectionists. And about a year ago, I found a study that said it was between 13 and 17% of the insurrectionists who had been criminally charged had military experience, which is not a huge number, but is more than double the military representation in the U.S. population as a whole. And so thinking about that, as we seamlessly certify Donald Trump's second electoral win, what hangs over this whole entire thing is his promise to pardon so many of these members of our own society that perpetuated and participated in political violence. And it's just so weird. There was a great piece in the Post about the meh-ification. It's not like people think January 6th was great. They're not following Donald Trump into this conclusion that it was a day of love. But when things go back to normal, I think there is this sense of like, well, then what does it really mean? We don't like it. We don't want it to happen every time. But it didn't fundamentally break anything either. So what does that mean?

[00:14:57] I'm in deep right now, I'm reading a lot of really old books. I'm reading a biography of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft. I'm reading Paradise Lost. I'm reading Wolf Hall. I'm like in it deep. And there's a part of me that's just like we probably won't know. We can't assess something as big as January 6th, even four years out. It's just so hard to see something like that so clearly, especially when we're still caught up in the story. Who's he going to pardon? What's going to happen next? Will we even know on our 10th certification after January 6th what it means? That's what I feel when I read about the meh-ification. I read polling about what Americans think about January 6th and I think about the pardons, it just feels like we're in a fog. It's so, so difficult to see historical events of that magnitude clearly. Four years is nothing. Joe Biden's trying to close Guantanamo Bay right now and we've never had a September 11th trial. Talk about terrorist attacks, the impact of them. Here we are 20 plus years later and we've never had a trial. So I think that's what I feel. I just feel fog. I feel like I can't see it clearly. And there's really no way to. There's only time that's going to give us that clarity.

Beth [00:16:29] Too many historic events converged at the same time, too. I'm finding a little bit more space and grace around that meh-ification because I think about the fact that it was pandemic times. We were still reeling from the summer of 2020 and the racial reckoning and all that followed it. The technological revolution that hit us in that time period like an asteroid. So I agree, I don't know what to say other than I continue to believe that it was terrible and historically significant and very important. And you know that it's important because it's not a meh for Donald Trump and for the MAGA faithful. It is very important to them to rewrite that story completely. And I think the most important thing that I can personally do is not allow that to happen. I don't need to build a shrine in my home or something to think about January 6th as this momentous occasion in my personal life. But I also need to resist the temptation to say, well, maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. Or maybe the January 6th select subcommittee from the House actually broke some rules. I think there's such an effort underway to completely retell it and I don't want it to be retold. I think we know enough about what happened now to say we don't ever want that to happen again. But I don't know what it requires for it to not ever happen again.

Sarah [00:17:57] But you know what? The retelling itself, if they had a historical awareness they would understand that all they're doing is increasing the importance of that event through their desperate attempts to retell it. Even if their retelling is successful in the short term, that doesn't last. Your desire to create a new narrative around January 6th only underscores its importance to future generations. Like, you go back and you read about how like the British parliament was thinking about the American Revolution or the French Revolution or all these events. The first take, the second take is only something for historians to excavate through. It's never the final call. All it does is turn up the volume on how important that event is. So go for it, guys. Keep talking about it. Keep going after Liz Cheney. Keep doing all this. All you're doing is underlining it in every single history book. You're just saying it's really important. It's really important. It's really important.

Beth [00:19:13] I think the pardons have that same effect and I feel very conflicted about the pardons, honestly. Because it does feel unjust to me that Donald Trump is going to be the president when he inspired, provoked, encouraged this event. And people who had comparatively minor roles have spent time in jail. That feels wrong to me. It also feels wrong to me to say it was okay, no worries, especially if you assaulted a police officer or otherwise caused violence and pain and suffering that people are still living with and that some people died from in one form or another. It feels wrong to say, well, you get a pass because we won. So I feel so much conflict about that from a really crass political perspective. I think that if he pardons all of those people and a single one of them commits another act of political violence, that's an enormous risk for him because the story around that-- you think of what he does with crimes committed by people who entered the country illegally, that same thing will be done about the 1st January 6th pardoned defendant who does something horrible. And one of them probably will. When you thrive on that kind of extremism, it doesn't typically just burn out. So I don't know. I think it's very risky. And I think you're right that it furthers the salience of the issue long term at the same time as frustrates a populace that says presently we're ready to talk about something else.

Sarah [00:20:54] I'm trying to read not only our populace, but that global populace because there is a narrative here. People want change. Again, France upended, Germany upended, Trudeau resigning. Everyone's mad. They want new things. But I just don't know if they know what it is that they want. There's all this talk of the terrorists, but people are like, should I be stocking up? I'm really concerned about the rising cost of tariffs. Where were you people on election day? Same with the union health care thing.

Beth [00:21:21] Everything was going to be cheaper on election day.

Sarah [00:21:25] Everything's going to be fixed.

Beth [00:21:26] January was going to be a picnic of free eggs. But now we're worried about the prices rising.

Sarah [00:21:32] And the eggs are expensive. Don't think for one millisecond I have stopped paying attention to the price of eggs. I have not. And they are very expensive right now because of bird flu. So I don't know. I can't read people. I can't read the populace. We're a messy bunch. That's why I have a smattering of sympathy even for this new Congress, even for the Republicans trying to lead it because I'm not sure the populace knows what it wants, much less as fractitious as the Republican caucus currently is.

Beth [00:22:12] And, look, I don't know in myself what I want on a lot of things. I'm finding myself in a space of trying to be flexible in my thinking and question my assumptions and recognize that we have just come through and maybe are still going through a lot of really historic events. So I agree. I have some sympathy. And then I also have a lot of frustration that the people who are entrusted with leading us through this period don't seem to be asking the kinds of hard questions that I would like them to be asking. We did see them get a little bit more organized than with the last Congress. So the 119th Congress was sworn in on January 3rd. Republicans have control in both chambers. There was a sense that Speaker Mike Johnson in the House could be in trouble. And there was a little simmering idea that maybe he would be voted down reliably. Thomas Massie, who represents my district, came out and said you could torture him and he wouldn't vote for Mike Johnson. But it didn't matter. He slowed the vote down and kept the gavel on the first ballot. And so I thought that was weirdly encouraging, even though I don't like Mike Johnson at all. I was glad they were able to do a process that got Congress started.

Sarah [00:23:36] Yeah, it's really interesting looking back over these last few weeks of the holiday season, December as the administration starts to roll out, picks off a bunch of people from an already teeny tiny majority. It's 217 to 215 right now. We're going to have some vacant seats. We have special elections that maybe will get a little bit bigger as some of those elections take place over the course of the year. But right now, it's tiny. I mean, he had three people that went back and changed their votes because I got a phone call from Donald Trump. The most interesting piece of reporting I heard about that was that Chip Roy, notorious leader of the Freedom Caucus, very concerned with government spending, which by all accounts is going to balloon despite Vivek and Elon's best efforts had some concerns about the process, had concerns about spending. But what he made Trump promise is that he would not threaten him on social media with a primary or just generally insult him. And I thought, wow, that's something, right? That's something that you're on a phone call with the president elect of the United States as you're trying to elect a speaker of the House. And you're, like, will you promise not to be mean to me on social media if I change my vote? Like what's happening? In some ways, like you said, I don't know what to think. Is it that they see each other clearly and they're getting organized and they understand how this works with this very fractious just caucus? Or is it still a goat rodeo? I really don't know.

Beth [00:25:11] Maybe see all of the above. don't know either. It was interesting to see that the Freedom Caucus, all 11 of them, came out with kind of a warning letter after the vote. You should have made concessions, and if you had, these are what they should have been. So it sets quite a tone as they go into this process of crafting the mega-MAGA reconciliation bill that they want to move out of the House into the Senate, which does not want a mega-MAGA bill. But we'll see.

Sarah [00:25:45] I think the mega-MAGA bill in particular is very interesting. You have so much heft around this idea of momentum. The first 100 days. And you want to move quickly. The Freedom Caucus wants to move quickly. They want the border shored up. They want to deliver on this biggest promise to close the border. But the mega-MAGA bill is this moonshot that, as far as I could tell, Beth, they just all got together on New Year's Eve at Mar a Lago Johnson's team, J.D. Vance, Trump-- I'm assuming Elon was there because I don't think he's left except to try to go pick fights in Europe. Which is fascinating. They get together and they're like, okay, here's what we're going to do. So you get two shots at budget reconciliation and they only need a simple majority. You don't have to worry about a filibuster. So let's just shove it all in there. If you remember from the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, because that's how they got the CHIPS act through I think and the Infrastructure Act through, you got to wait on the parliamentarian to say like, okay, this is closely related enough to a budget that we'll let you put it in the budget reconciliation. But these Freedom Caucus people, not only do they want to do the border quickly, they don't like shoving all this in here. They want to do it "correctly".

[00:27:07] They want to spread it out. They want to do it slowly. I talked about this on the News Brief. I feel like they were just filling their New Year's energy. They were just filling resolution and they were feeling like we're going to tighten things up. We're going to exercise every day. We're not going to eat sugar. You can feel that vibe. So they want to shove it all in this giant bill because Johnson thinks the hard liners will be less likely to vote against something if it's the one thing. But this one thing would take like April/May maybe to get through the House. And you still have to get it through the Senate. So this seems like a very risky maneuver. It shreds the idea of momentum. You're trying to get it through in 100 days. That's a very, very tight timeline. The Senate doesn't want it. The hard liners don't want it. You're losing any momentum around the border if you wanted to do that quickly. And that's if they let any of this border stuff go through the parliamentarian as budget related to begin with. So it just feels like a lot of ifs that they're throwing this all in on.

Beth [00:28:12] Which, you know, relatable as it pertains to New Year's energy. I understand that. I am very curious to see what happens when you have people-- and it seems like a growing number of people. It seems like a growing number of Democrats, too, who are very concerned about debt and deficit.

Sarah [00:28:30] As they should be. We agree with them.

Beth [00:28:32] As they should be. I think that we are really coming down to the wire on debt and deficit and a whole host of issues. Solvency of the Social Security trust fund. There are so many financial pressures that are being felt more acutely in Washington than I think they have been for a few years. So what are they going to do in making the 2017 tax cuts permanent and addressing those fiscal pressures without doing any really hard work on mandatory spending? I'm just fascinated to watch. I'm also fascinated to watch how the immigration discussion proceeds when so many people in the MAGA movement want to not only stop illegal immigration, but drastically reduce legal immigration, and the folks being selected for prime positions in the administration and who are camped out in cottages at Mar a Lago think that highly skilled immigration needs to drastically ramp up. There's just going to be a lot to sort through here, but some of that makes me feel almost excited because there are legitimate policy issues in it, and I hope that this becomes a more substantive conversation than anything we saw in the first term.

Sarah [00:29:49] I think it's definitely going to be more substantive no matter how you slice it. Just with Siouxsie Wiles at the helm, it feels like it's going to be a little tighter. Now it's a little tighter run ship. It's what we saw in the campaign, I have no doubt that we will see it within the administration as well. Johnson, I don't know how they're going to do all that, but I can tell you one thing. I don't think they're going to do it with a lot of Democratic support, at least when it comes to spending limits and budgets. He has his entire tenure as speaker of the House. He has depended on Democratic votes because there was a Democratic president. That is no longer the case, my friend. Do you have a new strategy? He won on the first ballot, so perhaps... But this uniting of the fractious caucus is going to crumble I would imagine the closer and closer we get to the midterm, which is about 18 months. So he's trying to align a lot of things here, and I can't tell with Johnson if it's skill, luck, circumstance. It's really hard to piece apart if he's actually figured out how to do this job or if he's just in this current moment been born on third and thinks he hit a triple. You know what I mean? That's what I can't quite piece apart.

Beth [00:31:08] I feel like some significant percentage of his successes, if you can call them that, come from the fact that no one else wants that job. So there's a little bit of an attrition effect for him.

Sarah [00:31:22] Yeah. But does he know that? Does he know that or does he think he's just really good at it? That's my question.

Beth [00:31:27] That's a good question. I am daily grateful that we don't live in Washington, D.C., but if I did I would spend a lot of my time camped out anywhere near John Thune. Because understanding who he is going to be as he becomes the majority leader in the Senate and the massive shift of having Mitch McConnell out of that leadership position, I am so curious to see what that's going to look like. I am surprised and happy to hear him say that he thinks the filibuster needs to remain intact and speaking as strongly as anyone does in the face of President elect Trump about explaining that the Senate is going to remain the Senate, I thought there are some good signs there. We'll see how they hold up. And I am extremely curious about what the relationship between John Thune and Mike Johnson is going to be. I think that that's going to matter tremendously over the next 18 months.

Sarah [00:32:20] With John Thune you can always bet that it's going to be closer to a Mitch McConnell approach because he was Mitch McConnell's deputy for decades than it's going to be to a Trump administration approach. And I would think Mike Johnson, just personality wise, would lean a little more to John Thune than Donald Trump. But it's hard. It's the access to power, right? It's the access to the top. How much influence will you have? And, look, steering the Senate Republican caucus and steering the House Republican caucus are two very different jobs, neither of which I envy. But if I had to pick one, it would definitely be the Senate. I think the interesting component here is that Mitch McConnell's a little free. It's not like all his power is gone. It's not like his fundraising prowess has disappeared and his ability to manipulate the process. I don't think John Thune and Mitch McConnell have stopped speaking. So I think that the idea that Mitch McConnell now can sort of be a little freer to emphasize the things he deeply cares about, including the cause in Ukraine is fascinating to watch. I think this new administration is not just a reset on how Donald Trump and the people that surround him behave, but I think it's also going to be an interesting examination of how the House and Senate and particularly the Republican caucuses behave as well.

Beth [00:33:41] It is also going to be a real generational experiment. Because you do have younger people-- I mean, John Thune is not 30, but younger people coming into these leadership positions while their predecessors are hanging around. You see, even though it's a warm relationship, it's tricky for Hakeem Jeffries that Nancy Pelosi is still in the House. It's going to be tricky for John Thune that Mitch McConnell is still in the Senate. It's going to be tricky for Donald Trump that J.D. Vance is so much younger than he is and is probably more closely aligned with the Vivek-Elon power center that's developing. We haven't even talked about the reporting out of Texas about Kay Granger that you had this committee chair--

Sarah [00:34:28] An important committee. It's a very important committee.

Beth [00:34:31] Appropriations committee chair who for some number of months had been living in a memory care facility, unbeknownst to most people.

Sarah [00:34:41] Well, and look, she had resigned her committee chairmanship, but this is on a rapid onset condition. So I think it's not outside the bounds of common sense to conclude that Kay Granger had probably had decreased capacities for quite some time. This is what we talked about with Dianne Feinstein. You have a situation in which the only person who can make the call does not have the capacity to make the call. And we don't have a process for that and we really, really should. That's not acceptable. That should be very concerning. And the only reason it's not obviously dangerous is because they're in the legislative branch. But that doesn't mean it's not bad, right? It's still really, really bad that this very powerful member of the caucus had decreased capacity and that was hidden from her constituents, and as far as I can tell from some of her peers for months. It's really bad.

Beth [00:35:46] And it's not to pick on any of those people as individuals. As you said, there is no mechanism to address it overall. And I really do sense that in this Congress and in this administration, some of those generational tensions are going to boil over. So a lot to watch. A lot to watch as we head into a new Congress and a new administration and a new year. Sarah, we also wanted to spend some time today remembering President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on December 29th at the age of 100.

Sarah [00:36:24] The dream. Along with much of America, I have greatly admired President Carter in particular the way he has conducted himself as a former president. I did like reading that the other former presidents weren't always a fan.

Beth [00:36:42] All of them.

Sarah [00:36:43] It could be Democrat and Republican. Listen, because his mere existence drew into contrast the way in which the rest of them lived. President Carter returned to his same home in Plains, Georgia, that he lived for the rest of his life. He did not take speaking fees. He did not sit on boards. He earned all of his income from writing books, and it wasn't much income. And I think it was admirable. I think it put in contrast the way that many former presidents earn income and live out that phase of their life. But since he has passed away and I think probably some before then, as many of the issues that he addressed got swept up in as a president have come more and more to the forefront. He was a leader on climate change. He was such an influential force in foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. That I've really been reexamining this wrote thing we all say about him. That he was a terrible president, but a great former president. I don't know if that's true. The more I look back on it and the more I think about him, the more I think he wasn't a terrible president. He was a very different kind of president because of his moral foundation and his ethical what I think some would call intractability. But the types of challenges he faced are so relevant pressing at the time. And the way he faced them is exceptional. It's just exceptional as you look out over the remaining 20th century presidencies and the 21st century presidencies. He was an exceptional type of leader.

Beth [00:38:41] If you haven't revisited the crisis of confidence speech since his passing, I urge you to do that. It is the kind of thoughtful, plain, deep examination of issues that I have felt just aching for from a president for years now and very, very relevant to the moment that we find ourselves in. I think that with President Carter, I feel some of what I feel about President Biden there are two very different figures. But I think when the history books are written about President Biden, despite all of my very recent and intense frustrations with him, for the most part, I think he'll be viewed favorably. And it will be this was a good leader in a hard time. And so good leaders in hard times are often unpopular because they are pushing the public to tolerate the hard in favor of something long term that's going to be really important. And I think that that's what President Carter did. And I think it's just maybe too big of an ask of a voting public to be as long term as their leader is.

[00:39:52] But I wish that we had a modern equivalent of someone who could stand up and give that crisis of confidence speech and who would approach their position as former president with that posture of both service and critique. He continued to advocate for what he felt was important, and that's part of why the other former presidents found him so annoying. He had pretty sharp elbows in talking about what they were doing. He often went on foreign trips promoting a foreign policy at odds with the current administration's postures. But I think there's been a lot of value in that. And what really tells me that there's something special about Jimmy Carter, that the day that he died I did a quick pass through X-- I get served some pretty right wing stuff in my X feed. I assume that we all do now that's what Elon wants us to see. But I saw so many tweets from people like Charlie Kirk who is one of the leaders of Turning Point USA, very grassroots MAGA kind of group, praising President Carter's character and saying that he really did set an example that other public servants should follow when they're out of office. And that's striking.

Sarah [00:41:06] Yeah, I don't think there's any debate about his time as a former president. Maybe among the other former presidents, because he would criticize when the idea was we let the next guy do the job. What I'm so interested in is his presidency more and more. Because it's something like you just articulated. You call for this all the time. We talk about it. We need leadership. We need somebody who will say the hard things. But he was tough. Sanctimonious is a word people often used to describe Jimmy Carter. He would probably use that word himself, I would think, from time to time. And I imagine Rosalyn would as well. And that's not an insult. I can also be sanctimonious, but I just think a lot about, well, what does that mean in politics? I had a conversation over the break with a friend who was like, basically, I can be ethically pure because I'm not a politician. And by aspect of being a politician, you are morally compromised. Jimmy Carter is an excellent case study because he was morally unbending in so many ways.

[00:42:17] But what does that mean when the morally unbending approach means you lose to somebody like Ronald Reagan, who we've done a show on as the turning point in so much of American history where everything kind of went off the rails with Ronald Reagan. So what does that mean, though? If you're morally unbending to a cause that suffers because people aren't ready, because they're not with you, because they're not quite ready to go where you're asking them or you're trying to lead them, what does that mean? Should he have made more compromises? So much of Jimmy Carter's history is just-- I don't want to call it bad luck, but the Iran hostage situation, a lot of it turned on like a sandstorm. That sucks. Or not to mention the cheating a Ronald Reagan who went to them and said like, wait, we'll give you a better deal. So much is the historical-- I don't know if it was an accident, but the historical impact of that one event. But I don't know. Is it if he had been different.

[00:43:31] FDR was in some tough times, but he was able to tell people tough things but also make ethical compromises because he knew he could take people only so far, particularly around race. So what do we think? I wish I could have asked Jimmy Carter that. I think I know what his answer would be. He stayed that way as a former president, I think, because he believed it was the right way to be. I read a beautiful essay from a former member of the Carter Center board who had resigned when he wrote a book calling the treatment of the Palestinian people an apartheid. He used the word apartheid in the title of the book, and many members, Jewish members of the board resigned. And this Jewish member years later sent him a letter and said I was wrong and you were right. And this was a person who spent time in Israel, whose grandchildren were born in Israel, was dedicated to the cause of Israel, but said you were right. And Carter responded like, you don't need to apologize. You're welcome back anytime. But I wonder what he would say. Like, is it worth it if you lose political power to the cause? I don't think there's an easy answer. But his presidency, I think, presents such a fascinating opportunity to ask those very difficult questions.

Beth [00:44:48] And is it simpler than all of that? His crisis of confidence speech boosted his approval rating for a short period of time. I don't think it is the uncompromising, deeply evangelical part of Jimmy Carter that caused him to lose the election. And I look at that a little bit differently after the election that we just had. Mostly, as I think through the election that we just witnessed, the story as best as I can see it today, just a few months later, is a lot of people don't think about politics at this level and aren't that engaged and really vote based on what's happening in the economy. And is it just the truth that cyclically some presidents are going to bear the brunt of an economic downturn? And that's what happened to Jimmy Carter. And maybe there's a parallel universe where everything that is so admirable about President Carter is deeply admired because also unemployment is really low and the GDP is high and the stock market's rocking. I don't know.

Sarah [00:46:01] Well, no doubt that you're going to spend some of your political capital if you're dealing with massive inflation like they were and gas prices at the end of the 70s. Like would people have rolled a little deeper with him on the hostage negotiation if they had not already been deeply pissed off about the state of the economy. I don't know. Maybe.

Beth [00:46:27] I think so, too.

Sarah [00:46:27] He's fascinating, too, because he'd been so ambitious. What an ambitious pursuit of the White House in the face of great odds, but then not to be willing to take off the political heat in ways he could have done with the Iran hostage negotiations. I think that's a very interesting question. But, again, if you go back to FDR, who I know is always like the default example, it's not like he had economic headwinds backing him up. Talk about somebody who was dealing with not just visceral anger-- and maybe that's the difference. Maybe you passed a threshold with the economy where it's not about I'm pissed off, it's about that I can't survive. This is not about my emotions. This is not about the vibe around the economy. This is around I can't feed my kids. And that's a different place to be in as a leader when you're dealing with economic headwinds. That's not an economic headwind. That's an economic hurricane. Maybe that's it. I just think that Carter in so many ways, like I said, was so prescient. And if you're so insightful about the future and you understand the impact of these decisions.

[00:47:40] I mean, huge things. The creation of the Department of Education, the deregulation of the airline industry. All these domestic policies that you knew were going to play out over decades. But it did feel like with foreign policy he was not willing to play politics in a way that maybe could have increased his chances with the election? I don't know. I think it's so fascinating to think through the ethical conundrum that so many politicians and public servants go through. Because I don't think that you're immediately morally compromised just by virtue of running for office, even by virtue of running for the presidency. He was the somebody that people trusted after Watergate. But then for four years later to have already lost that trust, to get beat so badly by Ronald Reagan, it's a moment in American history that feels like it still has a lot to teach us. And I think he was an amazing teacher. One of my biggest regrets is that we go down to Atlanta a lot. That's where my husband's from. And I really wish I'd stopped and gone to one of his Sunday school classes at least once.

Beth [00:48:56] The thing I admire the most about President Carter is this clear sense of peace that he felt about how he approached the office and how he approached his life after the office and how he approached his family and how he approached his death. And I think his death is also, in some ways, a case study and a lesson. And I am really grateful for his example. And I wish for all of us to find, to be able to tap in whatever our sources to that sense of peace that President Carter so clearly had about his life and his death. Sarah, we always end our show talking about what's on our minds Outside of Politics. And we just had a break and had some time to watch TV and listen to podcasts. And I'm curious what jumped out at you in all of the different media you consumed over the break?

Sarah [00:49:57] Well, it put a dent in some of the Oscar bait. I saw Conclave. I saw A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic. I saw Emilia Perez, the big winner at the Golden Globes, and I saw A Real Pain, which was-- that really wasn't over the break. I saw that at the beginning of December, but just chef's kiss. So good. And we did some driving. So we listened to Hysterical, which I think I talked about before. We also listened to the podcast series Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, which is about the documentary industry, podcast and film industries. And then, of course, did just a lot of reading. So much reading. I love it, though. Listen, this is my favorite time of year. I like Oscar bait time. I want to watch all the critically acclaimed movies. I need them to put The Brutalist on more screens because that's the one I really want to see. But I loved them all. I think that especially A Real Pain and A Complete Unknown. I like Bob Dylan and that movie was so good.

Beth [00:50:57] I saw Conclave a couple of weeks before the break, I think maybe over Thanksgiving. I liked it so much. And I saw Baby Girl over the holiday break. I read an interview with Nicole Kidman that made me really want to see it and it did not disappoint. I have been thinking about it a lot since I thought it had a lot of interesting things to say. I listened to Hysterical and Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative at your recommendation. I thought they were both great. I especially liked listening to Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative first because it asks so many good questions about whether you can even ethically make a documentary podcast. And I don't think that she intends for you to listen and then say, well, no, I'm done with this genre. But I do think if especially if you like true crime, listen to that series and just approach it with those questions in mind and some of the tools of the trade that she illustrates in that series. I thought it was so well. I also loved Animal from The New York Times. It's just a lovely, sweet, kind of elegant look at big questions in life through the prism of animals. There's a whole episode about puffins and one about ferrets. It's funny and it's deep, but it's light at the same time. It was perfect. It's perfect for this time of year.

Sarah [00:52:21] Well, I think for me last year with Oppenheimer and Barbie, it felt like what if we made something really good? What if we just really pushed ourselves and made something really good? And now it feels like, well, what if we made something different? Why don't we just make them really different, including, I think, Hysterical and Shocking, Heartbreaking and Transformative, which is too hard to say every single time. But they were just asking really interesting questions for me and presenting not easy answers or answers at all, which I really appreciated. And I think that's true of a real pain, which is just a beautiful reflection on generational trauma. Emelia Perez I still don't really know what I watched. I think I do, but it was confusing. And I'm loving that. I'm loving that what if we just did something different? What if we tried something new? Because I think we're a little stuck. I think media is a little stuck. I read that great piece about Netflix. And there was that great piece last year about the mid TV. Everything's about mid. I do not watch a lot of TV except for The Sopranos, which I'm still working my way through because I do want that. I want something new. I want you to be trying a new format. I want you to be asking new questions, even if it's not perfect. And Emilia Perez is not. I don't even think Conclave was that perfect. I thought that a little heavy handed at the end, but I want to do something. Just try something. Please do something. Get my attention. That'd be great.

Beth [00:53:53] Yeah. I listen to Slow Burn season about Fox News over the break, too. And I was thinking I think I'm done. I get it. This format is done for me.

Sarah [00:54:02] Yeah. I Haven't listened to Slow Burn in a while.

Beth [00:54:04] This story is told for me. They do great work, but I am also ready for something different. I saw a quote from the director of Baby Girl saying we can't just say like, well, the MeToo era happened and so sex is over and stories about sex are over. And she really wanted to push that conversation. I think she really did. And I'm interested to see what doors might open because of that movie. I do admire the risk taking that some of what I took in over the holiday involved and I'm anxious to see more of that risk taking.

Sarah [00:54:41] I will say I also watched a new holiday movie and not like of the Sexy Snowman variety, the dumb variety. I watched a beautiful movie called Nutcrackers. Did you see it on Disney? It's Ben Stiller and his sister has passed away and her four children are like in the foster care system. And he's trying to find them a family because he can't possibly take care of them. And the four children are played by four brothers in real life. And it's shot sort of interestingly and just kind of a little more melancholy definitely than you're Sexy Snowman. But even as you're more average holiday fare. And I really loved it. I really, really loved it. And so, again, it's just that show me something different. Try something new. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. That's okay. Let's at least try it. I'm really feeling that right now.

Beth [00:55:39] I didn't watch the Sexy Snowman. I feel bad that I didn't because I feel like it's coming up everywhere.

Sarah [00:55:43] My husband did. He was obsessed. He's like, we got to watch the Sexy Snowman. I'm like, no, we don't. But he did. He watched it. I don't know why.

Beth [00:55:49] I did watch Red Wine, which I thought was very fun.

Sarah [00:55:51] I heard Red Wine was good.

Beth [00:55:53] I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a very good mixture of the marvel, the best of Marvel with the Christmas stories. And I liked it. That was a good time.

Sarah [00:56:02] Yeah, I had friends in real life-- I don't mean like the Internet. Because the thing I did not partake in over the break was the Internet basically at all. And you know what? It went fine.

Beth [00:56:15] Yeah, I'm pretty well off social media. I do a breezed through X because I'm interested in that culture about once a day. That's about it. And it's working for me just fine. I check my direct messages occasionally, but it's good.

Sarah [00:56:30] You got a lot more time to read and watch if you're not scrolling.

Beth [00:56:33] And think.

Sarah [00:56:33] That's for sure.

Beth [00:56:34] I just want to think more. Thinking in 2025 is in for me. Well, we're so glad that you're here with us to think together and to talk together. And we really are looking forward to this year, even with all of the uncertainty and difficulty that it might present. We'll be back with you on Friday for another new episode and till then, have the best week available to you.

[00:56:54] Music Interlude.

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers:

Ali Edwards, Nick and Alysa Vilelli, Amy & Derek Starr Redwine, Amy Whited, Anya Binsacca, Ashley Rene, Ashley Terry, Barry Kaufman, Becca Dorval, Beth Loy, Brandon & Jessica Krausse, Catherine Kniss, Chelsea Gaarder, Christi Matthews, Christian Campbell, Christie Johnson, Christina Quartararo, Connie Peruchietti, Crystal Kemp, The Adair Family, Ellen Burnes, Emily Holladay, Emily Helen Olson, Gabrielle McDonald and Wren, Genny Francis, The Charney Family, Heather Ericacae, Jacque Earp, Jan Feltz, Janice Elliott, Jeff Davis, Jen Ross, Jeremy Sequoia, Jessica Whitehead, Jessica Boro, Jill Bisignano, Julie Haller, Julie Hough, Karin True, Katherine Vollmer, Katie Johnson, Katy Stigers, Kimberley Ludwig, Kristen Redford Hydinger, Kristina Wener, Krysten Wendell, Laura Martin, Laurie LaDow, Lee Chaix McDonough, Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen, Lily McClure, Linda Daniel, Linsey Sauer, Bookshelf on Church, Martha Bronitsky, Megan Hart, Michelle Palacios, Michelle Wood, Morgan McHugh, Onica Ulveling, Paula Bremer, The Villanueva Family, Sabrina Drago, Samantha Chalmers, Sasha Egolf, Sarah Greenup, Sarah Ralph, Shannon Frawley, Stephanie Elms, Susanne Dickinson, The Lebo Family, The Munene Family, Tiffany Hassler, Tracey Puthoff, Veronica Samoulides, Vicki Jackman.