Jan. 9, 2025

Former Presidents Set to Reunite at Carter Funeral While Trump and Newsom Clash Over LA Fires

Show Notes
Transcript

The historic gathering of five presidents at Jimmy Carter's funeral and the heated exchange between Trump and Newsom over the Los Angeles wildfires. A unique look at how two major stories - a solemn presidential reunion and a political firefight over actual fires - are shaping today's headlines.

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Calarogus shark media from Washington, d C. Where five presidents

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will be in the same room for the first time

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since presidential transitions involved handshakes instead of handcuffs. This is

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ballot that's right, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden will

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all be in the same room for the first time

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since twenty eighteen. The Secret Service has a special seating

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chart that arranges them by who's least likely to start

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tweeting about the others during the service. Let's hit this.

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So Trump and Gavin Newsom are having another one of

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their classic California conversations, you know, the kind where Trump

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suggests the state should have just raked its forests better.

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It's like suggesting you could solve traffic by teaching everyone

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to parallel park. Trump's claiming this is all about water management,

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which actual water experts say makes about as much sense

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as blaming the fires on insufficient jazz hands. As one

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expert put it, Southern California's reservoirs are well above historical averages,

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which is experts speak for sir, that's not how this works. Meanwhile,

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Biden was in LA for his great grandson's birth, probably

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thinking I came here to welcome a new life, not

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to referee another Trump Knewsome Twitter feud, and Vice President

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Harris's house is under evacuation orders, which means even the

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second highest office in the land doesn't get you out

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of California fire season. The one bright spot Florida Governor

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Ron de Santis offering help, proving that sometimes politicians can

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actually act like grownups during a crisis, though I imagine

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his staff had to talk him out of sending a

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plane full of rakes. In the end, it's a reminder

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that while politicians can debate water management all day long,

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the real heroes are the firefighters on the ground doing

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the actual work. They're probably too busy saving lives to

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check truth social anyway. All five living presidents are gathering

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today for Jimmy Carter's funeral, and it's like the most

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awkward family reunion ever planned. You've got Trump and Biden,

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who are basically in the middle of a custody battle

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for the White House, Clinton, Bush, and Obama who've spent

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years giving Trump the political equivalent of a one star

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YELP review, and they're all coming together to honor Carter,

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who spent his post presidency building houses while they were

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building empires. Carter lived to be one hundred years old,

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outlasting seventeen presidents, from Calvin Coolidge to Biden. That's like

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spanning from the Model T to Tesla. And during that

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time his relationship with other presidents was interesting. Obama basically

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ghosted him, Clinton used him like tech support for North Korea,

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and Trump went from calling him a nice man to

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complaining about the Panama Canal faster than you can say

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half staff. Speaking of Trump, he actually managed to turn

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Carter's funeral flags into drama. He's upset they'll still be

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at half staff during his inauguration, which is like complaining

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that someone else's birthday cake has too many candles. Biden's

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probably the only one who's consistently been team Carter since

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nineteen seventy six. He was the first senator to endorse

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Carter's presidential run, which back then was like betting on

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a peanut farmer to win the Kentucky Derby. So now

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they'll all be there under one cathedral roof, probably assigned

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seating like at a wedding where the planners really had

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to think about who sits where, and Biden has to

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give the eulogy which means for the first time in history,

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a sitting president has to speak at the funeral of

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someone from the President's club while the guy who's about

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to replace him is sitting right there. Trump and Elon

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are having this weird bromance where Musk is literally living

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in a cottage at mar A Lago, a cottage. He's

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like that friend who crashes on your couch and then

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just never leaves. And Trump made him co head of

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the Department of Government Efficiency, which sounds like something you'd

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make up to keep your roommate busy while you figure

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out how to evict them. But now Trump's getting cranky

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because Musk donated two hundred and fifty million dollars and

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thinks that buys him unlimited hangtime. Trump's going around whispering

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to people He's here all the time, you know, like

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when your mom has a friend over and she's giving

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you that look that says, please make up an emergency

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so I can leave. According to Maggie Haberman, who's basically

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the Jane goodall of Trump observers, certain things can zots

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Trump zots. There's apparently a Chinese saying two tigers cannot

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live on one mountaintop, which is true, but usually one

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of those tigers isn't living in the other tiger's guest cottage.

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While donating a quarter billion dollars to their political campaign,

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Don Junior flew into Greenland like he's showing up to

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inspect a potential Trump property. Trump sent his son there

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with the message, We're going to treat you well, which

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is exactly what my realtor said right before showing me

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an apartment with vintage charm and a bathroom in the kitchen.

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The best part, Don Junior was only there for four hours.

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That's shorter than the average layover at LaGuardia. He basically

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did a real estate drive by of an entire nation.

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You know things are getting weird when world leaders have

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to specify that countries aren't available on Zillo. Oh, you're

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going in to love this one. Deep Fission wants to

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solve our energy crisis by checksnoes, drilling holes and dropping

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nuclear reactors into them like they're playing the world's most

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expensive game of operation. They're literally planning to stick nuclear

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reactors a mile underground through thirty inch holes. This is

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what happens when someone watches too many James Bond movies

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and thinks, you know what would be cool if we

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combined nuclear power with gophers. But here's the brilliant part.

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They're saying the earth itself will act as the containment structure.

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Instead of building those massive concrete domes, They're just letting

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Mother Nature do the heavy lifting. It's like they looked

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at a volcano and thought, hey, the Earth's pretty good

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at containing hot stuff. And you know who's super excited

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about this tech companies Google's jumping in open ais. Sam

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Altman is backing a similar project. It's like Silicon Valley

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suddenly discovered nuclear power and said, wait, we can power

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our AI with something other than hopes and dreams. The

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best part is they're promising to deliver power at five

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to seven cents per kilowatt hour. That's cheaper than my

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coffee habit and probably more reliable than my local power

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grid during a light drizzle. But seriously, they're planning to

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have these up and running by twenty twenty nine, which

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means somewhere right now, there's an engineer staring at a borehole,

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going okay, but how do we get it back out

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if something goes wrong? And another engineer saying that's a

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problem for twenty twenty nine. Portions of today's program were

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created with the help of AI, but that too is

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a problem for twenty twenty nine.