A (5:06)

Who? I have no idea.

B (5:08)

Well, we've talked about this before. I, you know, I give friends grief sometimes. I'm like, don't you bother to listen to the podcast. And I'm going to ask you, Ben, don't you bother to listen to our podcast? We talked about that on the very same day.

A (5:22)

Set up. And this is the moment. If anyone's listening right now, if you want to know what a setup from, from Senator Cruz sounds like, I get the experiences more than almost anyone else in the world. This is a setup. And, and this is how it always plays out. So you've all been warned. That moment, if you're at dinner with him, you know it's coming so go ahead. I cannot wait to hear this answer.

B (5:44)

So Jimmy Carter was born on the very same day that William Hobbs Rehnquist, the 16th chief justice of the United States, was born. And as you know, Chief Justice Rehnquist was my former boss, and I knew him well. And he passed a long time ago. So, I mean, he did not live to 100. And I wrote a couple of different obituaries for Chief Justice Rehnquist when he passed, and noted in one of the obituaries that I wrote that he and Jimmy Carter were born on the exact same day. And so that gives a sense of the length of time and service that Jimmy Carter served. But I'll tell you secondly. So Jimmy Carter, interestingly, is intimately connected to my very first political memory in life.

A (6:30)

Really?

B (6:31)

Yeah.

A (6:32)

How so?

B (6:33)

So my first political memory in 1976 is my mother voted for Jimmy Carter. And my mother was a Republican, but she just thought Gerald Ford was an idiot. She did not like Ford. She just thought he was not all that bright. And she thought Carter seemed like a very nice man. And so she voted for Carter. And what I remember, so at the time, my dad, who, as you know, was from Cuba, he was a Canadian citizen at the time. They had moved to Canada and started a business in Canada. And so he was not a US Citizen at the time. And I remember my dad and my mom having an argument in the living room because my father was horrified that she had voted for Jimmy Carter and because she was an American citizen. And he was not at the time. He is now, but he wasn't then. He felt like she had the family vote. And so he was really. I just remember them fighting back and forth. My mother came to regret that particular vote. But my first awareness that politics existed was. Was wondering why my father was so upset that, that. That my mother had voted for Jimmy Carter.

A (7:41)

That's really interesting. My first interaction with Jimmy Carter was actually, of all things, you laugh. Because if you. If you've ever met my sister, she's not exactly the most political person. She's interested school teacher, and she kind of laughs at how different our lives are. But she met a president of the United States of America before I ever did. And it was Jimmy Carter at the Memphis College of Art, where I think one of his. His children or grandchildren was at school. He had come down for an event. She happened to be there and got his autograph when she was like, I think seven or eight years old. And so forever.

B (8:18)

He was a nice man.

A (8:19)

Oh, said he was so nice. He talked to her for a minute and. And chatted, and they talked about Memphis and asked what she was studying and was she doing art. And so to this day, she's always like, you know, you may have met a lot of political people, but I just want to remind you, I met a president long before you ever did, which is true, because I didn't meet a president for another, I don't know, 15 years.

B (8:41)

Well. And look, that's consistent with everything I've ever heard. I've never heard of him being unpleasant to anyone. You know, one of the things I saw on Twitter today was videos of him coming onto a commercial flight on Delta and just stopping and shaking hands with everyone in the seats, going through, which seems very consistent with everything about his character that I knew about. You know, Donald Trump sent out a tweet that I thought was very well done. Here's what Trump wrote. Quote, I just heard of the news about the passing of President Jimmy Carter. Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as president understand that this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the greatest nation in history. The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude. Melania and I are thinking warmly of the Carter family and their loved ones during this difficult time. We urge everyone to keep them in their hearts and prayers. And I gotta say, what I like about that statement in particular is the second paragraph. The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country. Unquestionably true. And he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. And I think that's a very nice way to compliment him, because I think he did believe he was improving the lives of all Americans. Now, Trump did not say his policy succeeded in that, but he was earnest in his desire. And I thought that was a nice way for Trump to compliment it.

A (10:26)

Yeah, it really is. And I will say, as divided as politics has been, it is cool to see a former president put politics aside in many ways, later in his career and his legacy and work with building homes and bringing people together in that way. I know several people that had the opportunity to help build a home with him, Habitat for Humanity, many different places around the country, and it really is cool to see that legacy. So our thoughts and our prayers are with the family, obviously, of Jimmy Carter. And anytime you have a president of the United States of America pass away, it's always important. I think we just take a moment, pause and say, job well done. I mean, to live 100 years is incredible. To be a president of the United States of America, the 39th president, incredible. And to do what he did after he left the White House, really remaking, I think, how people would remember him because they don't really remember the political stuff in the 70s and what brought us Ronald Reagan. They remember, I think, that he built a lot of houses.

B (11:25)

To be clear, Skippy, you weren't alive then, so you definitely don't remember it.

A (11:29)

81. I'm an 81, but my oh my, did I hear the stories. I heard the stories. All right, let's get into this.

B (11:37)

Well, the Reagan revolution doesn't make sense without the Carter predicate, but that's another story for another day. So let's move to the Washington Post and I'm gonna do something unusual on this podcast. So I read this article and my head exploded and I texted you and said this is the most absurd, self satirizing article I've ever seen. So I just wanna go through it literally, line by line. This is a major story in the Washington Post banner headline on Drudge and it is entitled we're just gonna go through sentence by sentence. It's entitled How Biden, Joe Biden's Lonely Battle to Sell His Vision of American Democracy. In his presidency's final chapter, Biden has mused about whether he should have handled some decisions differently. And the guy who wrote this is a guy named Tyler Pager. We're going to come back to him later, so let's start. Earlier this year, Representative James E. Clyburn met President Joe Biden at the White House to deliver a stern message. Biden had to find a way to revitalize his flagging campaign. Clyburn, who had been pivotal to Biden's 2020 victory, also made a confession about his own long standing belief that substance is more important than style and politics. Quote, I've come to the conclusion in recent days that I'm wrong about that, the South Carolina Democrat, 84, remembers telling Biden. The new environment that we currently live in, style seems to carry the day more than substance. Your style, he told the president, does not lend itself well to the environment we're currently in. Clyburn's conclusion, which was shared by anxious Democrats in the months before the president ended his reelection bid, undermined Biden's theory of presidential leadership. After Donald Trump's ascent, Biden believed that he just needed to show Americans that traditional democracy still worked by listening, but to experts working with Republicans, passing popular policies, and voters would rally around him. All right, let's stop there. Okay, so so far, every word of this article, if this was written by the Biden press office, it would not be any different. And this entire article is hagiography. This entire article is not journalism. It is not only trying to praise breathlessly as we're going to go through Joe Biden and cast him as, as a mighty titan, but it is profoundly dishonest. So it starts with the frame that Biden's great success is on substance, not style. And the obvious implication of which we're going to get more is that all Trump has, his style, there's no substance. That's the obvious implication. Let's take this last sentence. After Donald Trump's ascent, Biden believed he just needed to show Americans that traditional democracy still worked. We're going to get more into democracy in a second by listening to experts, working with Republicans and passing popular policies. What experts did he listen to? He did not work with Republicans. Every damn thing he passed, he ran through on a vicious party line vote. He used budget reconciliation over and over again with no Republicans and passing popular policies. Nobody helped Donald Trump get elected more than Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Because his policies were so incredibly unpopular. All right, let's, let's keep going back to the article. Quote, he succeeded in phase one of his plan. Did he now? Enacting legislation, much of it bipartisan, to reshape the nation's infrastructure, revive the semiconductor industry and fight climate change. Let's be clear, the climate change, the Inflation Reduction act, was a straight party line vote rammed through on reconciliation. But phase two never happened. The truth of Biden's presidency is that he has failed in what, by his own count, his most important mission, making Trump's presidency seem like an aberration. Quote, he governed through traditional processes and institutions, said Julian E. Zelizer, a moron presidential historian at Princeton University. It doesn't say moron, but you're going to see that everything this guy says, I don't, he's sadly a professor at my alma material. He's a complete moron. Let's start with the traditional processes and institutions. There's nothing traditional about weaponizing the federal government to go after your opponents. There's nothing traditional about prosecuting and indicting the former president over and over and over again. There's nothing traditional in using the institutions, about opening the border and having an invasion of our country. But here, the good Princeton professor, quote, it didn't change the picture where he started. This anger in the electorate towards institution, this support for a pretty radical conservative vision that Trump embodied. It didn't do anything to end the very intense polarization that exists in this country now. The idea that Trump is a radical conservative is a, is a bizarre idea. Trump ran on securing the border, bringing down inflation, standing with our friends and defeating our enemies. That, that is, that is very hard to characterize as a, quote, radical conservative vision. But, hey, the Princeton professor says it and the Washington Post breathlessly reports it. We're going to go on. But, but, but give me your thoughts so far, then we'll go back to the article.

A (17:04)

I'm not surprised that this is how they want to just rewrite history part of this and just be, be so delusional. I, I am a little bit, it gets worse. I, I'm a little bit shocked though. It. If they, like, you know how you're supposed to, like, proofread before you print. If you're reading what you just wrote that you just read, I would think there would be a moment where you might be like, yeah, I don't know if this needs to see the light of day. Yet here it is. They put it out there.

B (17:35)

All right, let's keep going because it gets much, much worse. Previous articles in this series examine the pillars. Oh, they're so strong. The pillars. The pillars of Biden's leadership. How he absorbs information, how he makes decisions, how he communicates with Americans. They showed that Biden, even at the peak of his glorious, magnificent power, doesn't say glorious magnificent, but it's just implied, struggled mightily to communicate his decisions and vision. This article, based on interviews with more than 2,000 people close to Biden, reveals the ways in which his theory of how to succeed in an era of American politics dominated by Trump fell apart in the final phase of his presidency and how he's been publicly and privately rethinking whether he should have handled some decisions differently. Even some of his closest advisors, without faulting Biden, conceded recently that his style of governing did not always mesh with today's politics. Quote, the president has been operating on a time horizon measured in decades, while the political cycle is measured in four years. Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said with his lips planted firmly on Biden's rear end, that last piece was my like, I want you to go back and listen to that sentence again. The president has been operating on a time horizon measured in decades, while the political cycle is measured in four years. Now, look Kudos to the Biden White House for just having the chutzpah to say, oh, Biden's presidency would be hysteric. And, you know, you really have to measure decades. 12 million people invading this country. 4 years is too short to measure it. We're gonna screw up this country for decades, you know, undermining our allies, causing two wars, a war in Ukraine and a war in Gaza. Like, you're right, the harm from Biden will last decades. But. But that's their entire spin. Well, yes, everything Biden did was profoundly unpopular because all of his policies failed. But he's really playing the long game. You foolish people don't understand. This, this, this misery is good for you. All right, let's add. Let's keep going. Sullivan added that Biden's accomplishments, by their nature, will take a long time to bear fruit. Quote, how to govern at this moment to set the US up for long term success has one answer. And how to deal with midterm and presidential elections in the very short term might have a different answer. He said, the President went with doing things that really put America in a strong position. Ben, what the hell have they done to put America in a strong position? In every part of the world, America is weaker today than when Joe Biden entered the White House. Like, this is absurd. And I got to say, the absurd thing. We're going to go back to this in a minute, is the Washington Post just publishes this drivel like it's news. There's not a moment of reflection. There's not a moment of facts, that there's not a moment of reality. And it's. I mean, how do you react to that? Oh, he's playing the long game.

A (20:58)

Yeah. I think there's two things here. One, there's a part of me that's like, I can't believe it. And then there's another part of me, it's like, good, because if you don't learn from your losses, then you're going to repeat the same mistakes that you just made. And I think the Democratic Party learned nothing from November. Nothing from losing the popular vote, nothing from the resurrection of Donald trump from. From 2000 to 2024. Nothing from weaponizing the government. Nothing from overspending and no accountability. And honestly, nothing. They've learned nothing from having a president that clearly was incapacitated. So part of me is like, good, keep writing these types of articles, because it's going to help conservatives like you and I be able to be way more successful and getting this country back on track.

B (21:45)

Well, Ben, the Post just reported that he absorbed information like, you know, some sort of Nobel scientist, like, just. All right, let's go back. As his presidency and his 50 year political career wind down far faster than he wanted, Biden has taken to acknowledging some strategic mistakes, both big and small. Many of those missteps resulted from his determination to restore the age old rules of the American presidency after Trump's term, a determination that many of his supporters in retrospect consider a politically fatal error. All right, so what are the age old rules of the American presidency that he returned to earlier this month? In a speech on his economic legacy, Biden admitted he was stupid for not putting his own name on the pandemic relief checks his administration sent out in 2021. Yeah, that really was the problem. He just didn't sign the checks. Clearly, Kamala would have won if Biden had just signed those checks. That, that, that was the pivotal issue. I didn't see Joe Biden's name on those checks, so forget it. But hey, Trump, by contrast, made a point of signing his own relief checks in 2020, and Biden suggested that Trump got more credit for the economic recovery because of it. Balderdash. Biden acknowledged that he had, quote, screwed up at his June 27 debate against Trump. You think as he struggled to put together sentences and defend his policies, as his rivals held forth with a series of falsehoods, evil liar who I hate named Donald Trump. That is not there. It's just implied and called him a criminal. He does not regret participating in the debate, just his performance that night. Now, at this point, there's a breakout quote. And you know what the breakout quote is? It's Jake Sullivan saying the President is operating on a time horizon measured in decades, while the political cycle is measured in four years. So if you missed the central political spin from the White House, then, well, that's your problem. Let's, let's keep going. He has also mused on changes in the media, arguing that he did not get enough credit for his accomplishments, especially on the economy, but inciting examples like Richard M. Nixon's 1960 debate against John F. Kennedy. Biden has suggested that, like Nixon, he has struggled to adjust to a new media landscape. We pick what news we want to hear. It's a totally different deal. Biden said in a podcast interview this month. We've got to figure out how we deal with this significant technological change. If Nixon was more accustomed to television, he wouldn't have perspired so much, and he would be president when he beat Kennedy. I know that sounds silly, but think of the changes taking place. Where do you go? What is true? We have no evidence anymore. I'm not sure how that gets resolved. The President and his aides have acknowledged that they struggled to communicate. See, that's the whole problem. The record was phenomenal. They just failed to communicate it. Struggled to communicate about the administration's efforts to lift the country out of the pandemic. Frustrated that even as the United States fared better than other countries, Americans did not feel the impact psychologically. You idiots. You're doing great. Why are you so dumb that you don't realize it? And now here's. All right, now remember, so so far, there's two main themes that the Post has laid out. Number one, genius. Biden is playing for the history books for the decades rather than the short term political cycles. So don't blame him for the disasters of his policies. But number two, that he wanted to restore the norms of the presidency and the norms of democracy. So this next paragraph is going to blow your mind in private. Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as Attorney General. Well, no kidding. He was the most partisan and political Attorney General in history and a disgrace. The Department of Justice. But no, no, no, no, no. That's not Biden's complaint. Biden, quote, complaining about the Justice Department's slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden's son, Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments. So understand this great titan restoring the norms of the White House. His DOJ is the first Department of Justice to indict and prosecute a former president and a leading candidate for president who later got elected president. In the history of our country, it's never been done under Biden. They did it twice. They absolutely weaponized the DOJ to go after his opponents over and over and over again. They weaponized the FBI. And his complaint is, dammit, they didn't do enough. They should have been more vigorous. They should have indicted him more. They should have indicted him faster. We should have attacked him from day one. I mean, it is. And by the way, everything I'm saying, there's not a word of that in this article that they don't acknowledge. No other DOJ has indicted a president. They just report like a blinking, doe eyed four year old. Well, his complaint was Biden didn't move fast enough. And the other thing, he was too aggressive in prosecuting Biden's son. Now mind you, the Biden DOJ went to a court and tried to enter a sweetheart deal that Biden got a slap on the wrist and no jail time. And it was so egregious that the judge threw it out only after public scrutiny, including this podcast, which shined a great deal of light on it. But he still says that's too much to hold Hunter accountable. And by the way, the DOJ also bent over backwards to protect Joe Biden. It. That paragraph may be the most astonishing paragraph of this entire article.

A (27:33)

You look at this article, and I think there's three different points that I want to dive into with you. One, what was the real purpose of writing it? I'm still trying. I mean, I get the whole rewriting of history, but it's so extreme that I don't even think many on the left could take this seriously. Or am I wrong? So let's start with that.

B (27:54)

Well, I think they have the audacity to believe that they can, that they are, that the newspaper, the Washington Post, is the first draft of history. And as I said, this is not journalism. This is hagiography. The article continues. We've only done about the first third of it. I'm not going to continue reading the rest of it. It goes on to say how Biden modeled himself after fdr. And I am just going to skip, skip to the end, because the end is every bit as absurd as the earlier parts we read. So here's the end of the article. To show that he respects the peaceful transfer of power, Biden is welcoming Trump, who openly challenged that transition. Biden has repeatedly directed his aides to do all they can to help Trump assume the presidency. After years of calling Trump unfit for high office. Now, mind you, every day in the White House, Biden is doing everything he can to frustrate Trump coming in. So what is he doing? Number one, he pardoned Hunter Biden, which we predicted on this podcast, because he does not want any accountability for the rampant lawlessness of his son and the corruption of selling access to himself. Joe Biden. Number two, he pardoned every single federal death row inmate except for the three most notorious. So of the 40, he pardoned 37 of them. Again, we predicted that it was absolutely brazen. Why? Because he knew Trump was going to actually carry out the law, and so he's trying to frustrate that. Number three, he's selling off the border wall for $5 a parcel because he doesn't want Trump to build the wall. Number four, he's granting, considering granting wholesale pardons. He is actively trying to do by the way, number five, Trump has said he wants federal workers to go back to work. So Biden is signing contracts, collective bargaining contracts, to make sure that federal workers can stay home because he wants to tie up the next administration on litigation. So, but here, here's what the Post said. Biden has repeatedly directed his aides to do all they can to help Trump assume the presidency. Like, what? Utter and complete garbage. And let me, let me say something. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos should be ashamed of this garbage. If Jeff Bezos cared at all about the integrity of the Washington Post, this guy, Tyler Paget, I have no idea who this numbskull is. He should be fired. He is not a journalist. Anyone who writes this garbage that contains no facts, it contains no, no counterbalancing, countervailing side. It is simply, if Madison Avenue were hired to come in and let's rewrite the Biden presidency to be exactly what we wanted it, they couldn't write it more ridiculous than this. And by the way, the editor who signed off on this should be fired as well. This is. You want to know why nobody trusts the media? It's because they publish garbage like this without even a tiny nod to facts or the simple reality that we just saw a overwhelming election where Trump won the popular vote of the seven battleground states. He won all. All seven. Someone at the Post should say, gosh, maybe these incredibly popular policies that were so good for America, maybe people really didn't like it. Maybe waging a war on oil and gas and driving up energy prices was a really bad idea and hurt a lot of Americans. Maybe undermining our allies, maybe giving Vladimir Putin a gift of waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2 and causing the biggest war in Europe since World War II. Maybe that wasn't a great idea. Maybe sending $100 billion to Iran, who sends it to Hamas and Hezbollah, who uses it to fund a war on Israel, the worst war in the Middle east in 50 years, maybe that wasn't a good idea. Maybe turning a blind eye and refusing to prosecute anti Semitic terrorists all across their protesters. Terrorists is too strong. But anti Semitic protesters who threaten violence, Maybe that is a profoundly bad idea. Maybe watching the integrity. Half of America believes the FBI and the Department of Justice are completely unprincipled because, well, they've been completely unprincipled. None of that. There isn't even the tiniest acknowledgement of facts. This is the Washington Post behaving in a way that I think everyone connected with this article ought to be Thoroughly, thoroughly embarrassed. When your principal points are we're aiming for 50 years, not four. So as bad as our policies are in 50 years, we'll claim they were great. And Merrick Garland's problem was he wasn't political enough and he should have indicted Trump even more and he should have covered up Biden's wrongdoings even more. And you don't acknowledge any like, this is a load of crap. That ain't journalism.

A (33:15)

Final question on this, because there's two articles now in about a what, an eight day span? One of them was an article that was written a couple days ago encouraging Congress to stop Donald Trump and we mentioned on the show from becoming president. And then now you have this one. Is there a chance that the media has just gotten so radical and is so far gone now that they're actually just going to lose their influence over the American people? Because this is no longer even looking like journalism. And this is just two examples of just how insanely biased they are. Is that the blessing in disguise here?

B (33:58)

Yeah, I think there's no doubt that the reputation of journalism has gone down incredibly. You know, you see these, these corporate journalists screaming about, you know, the American people are not journalists now. The fact Twitter or X has completely transformed it where when they lie, the facts come out immediately. And, and, and it drives these, these liars crazy. Look, we've talked before about how Trump broke the media. This is, this is an incredible example. And, and by the way, look, today in most corporate media outlets, there's going to be some hagiography of Jimmy Carter. You know what, I'm okay with that. He lived till 100. It's the time of his passing. I think you can be respectful to people when they pass. Now, mind you, the media never is to Republicans. But set that aside. It's one thing to do it when someone passes away, it's another thing to do it when you're just ignoring reality. That the American people rejected the obvious and incredible failures of the Biden policies. And, and it's not even that they don't include it. Much of what they say in the article is exactly the opposite of reality. So when you hold Joe Biden up as a paragon of returning to norms, look, look, on our open borders, no president in the history of this nation, none has had a lawless policy of simply defying federal immigration law and releasing the people. They apprehend. That was a massive issue in this election. They don't acknowledge it at all. Instead, they say, he's a champion for democracy. This is at the same time they're arguing to hell with democracy, block Trump from becoming president. They went to court repeatedly. They tried to throw him in jail. They, you know, we saw multiple Democrat officials across the country try to throw Trump off the ballot. Thankfully, the Supreme Court unanimously reverse that because, you know, nothing says defending democracy like trying to stop damn pesky voters from voting for your opponent.

A (36:13)

Yeah, it really, you're right. It's incredible. And I do think Trump, as you said, breaking the media is going to have an incredible impact on future elections. Not having to basically go up against a machine that has been as effective as the media has been. They have been basically being able to give billions of dollars in kind donations Democratic candidate, and they seem to be losing that influence. Let's hope it keeps going that way. Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday and Fridays. Hit that subscriber auto download button and make sure you write us a five star review, if you would. Wherever you listen this podcast on those in between days, grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast. I'll keep you updated date on the latest breaking news as well. And the center and I will see you in 2025. Be safe out there on New Year's Eve and we'll see you then.