Carter's funeral and legacy (01-09-2025--Hour1)

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[00:00:28] I guess maybe like, yeah, like 40% of the hour was just eaten up by, it's like a Carter-esque inflation, if you will. It just kind of took a portion, it's like a tax, you know, inflationary tax. It just took part of the hour as part of Jimmy Carter's funeral coverage here at WBT.

[00:00:51] Um, listening to the funeral today, I don't know, like, with all of those accomplishments that they were citing, like, how did Jimmy Carter only serve one term? He was apparently the man. He was an awesome president. I don't understand what happened. It was before my time.

[00:01:12] I don't recall the election. I don't recall the election. I was like three years old. So, uh, I, I don't remember those times, but, um, just listening to all of the things that he did and paved the way for and I mean, apparently like all this time I've been under the impression that inflation was a huge problem for Carter and that he solved it, but then lost.

[00:01:39] And, and then Reagan got to enjoy all of the fruits of Carter's inflation busting. Well, he didn't actually have policy, I guess. It was putting Volcker in charge of the Fed.

[00:01:53] Yeah. Um, yeah, so I don't know. Um, I mean, here I thought Jimmy Carter won because he had the Watergate scandal, the backlash against Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon and basically any Democrat would have kind of walked in.

[00:02:11] Um, and so all he had to do was really win the Democrat primary, which he did. And then things were really, really, really bad. So bad that they threw him out and brought in Ronald Reagan.

[00:02:25] That's what I thought. But apparently I was mistaken all of this time that Jimmy Carter was apparently like the best president we have ever had. That's I, I cannot fathom why he only had one term.

[00:02:39] Um, now some other things, uh, Jimmy Carter, they usually point to Jimmy Carter's legacy, um, after he served the four years, uh, and all the stuff he did.

[00:02:50] And usually it's about the building of all of the habitat houses and that's not to be denied. Not at all. That's, he did a lot of good work for that, but he also did some other stuff.

[00:03:01] You know, there, there were other things that Carter did. Like for example, in January of 1996, he went out and met with leaders of Hamas.

[00:03:15] That would be January. And then a couple of months later, Hamas started a whole bunch of suicide bombings. They murdered 65 people. So there was that.

[00:03:22] He then met again with the Hamas people in April of 2008 while it was launching a whole bunch of missiles at civilian targets.

[00:03:33] Um, also, um, the former president harbored a quote fondness for Yasser Arafat, who was kind of sort of the godfather of modern terrorism.

[00:03:48] He said the relationship transcended politics and was based on their emotional connection and the shared belief that they were both ordained to be peacemakers by God.

[00:04:00] Yasser Arafat, peacemaker, as we all know him to be.

[00:04:04] Um, Carter apparently also tried to cram Arafat into the Camp David peace talks after Israel and Egypt had already cut a deal.

[00:04:15] Which, according to David Harsanyi at the Washington Examiner, Carter really didn't have a whole lot to do with. It was Israel and Egypt.

[00:04:23] Now, Harsanyi says, to be fair, the only people Carter is inclined to extol more than Palestinian terrorists are communists.

[00:04:32] And I don't mean communist in an ambiguous pejorative sense. I mean like actual commies.

[00:04:38] The esteemed Georgian never met an Eastern European strongman that he didn't admire.

[00:04:45] Soviet flunky Edward Jarek of Poland was among the most enlightened leaders, to quote Carter.

[00:04:54] In the whole world, this guy was.

[00:04:56] How about Tito of Yugoslavia?

[00:04:59] He was a man who, quote, believes in human rights, said Carter.

[00:05:04] Romania's Ceausescu was dedicated to enhancing human rights.

[00:05:07] You get the idea here.

[00:05:09] Even as the world was running out of communist dictatorships for intellectuals in America to whitewash, Carter was seeking them out and lifting them up.

[00:05:16] And then, of course, there was Fidel Castro.

[00:05:19] I'm not talking about the prime minister of Canada.

[00:05:21] That's that's baby Fidel.

[00:05:24] Carter famously became the first ex-president to visit the Cuban dictatorship and praised its superb systems of health care and universal education.

[00:05:34] He participated in gross propaganda events with Castro as political prisoners rotted in cells and families were held in a captive state.

[00:05:45] Oh, and then there was Hugo Chavez.

[00:05:48] Remember that guy?

[00:05:50] Carter didn't merely back Chavismo, as it was called, as so many progressives did.

[00:05:55] He legitimized one bogus election after the next in order to keep the man in power.

[00:06:03] When Chavez died of cancer in 2013, Carter lamented the loss.

[00:06:09] Like Hamas, Carter implored Americans to give communist Daniel Ortega.

[00:06:13] Ortega, give him a chance.

[00:06:15] Just like, you know, give Hamas a chance.

[00:06:18] As president, Carter helped facilitate Ortega's rise in Nicaragua, welcoming him to the White House in 1979.

[00:06:24] The murderous Sandinistas became a cause celeb for Democrats into the 1980s.

[00:06:31] And remember also, Carter was not appointed by anybody to do these things.

[00:06:38] His post-presidency was dedicated to undermining the will of U.S. voters.

[00:06:44] Journalist Lance Morrow best described him as the anti-president.

[00:06:48] Which I wonder if that might be shading just a little bit of the nostalgic look back on all the wonders and achievements of one James Earl Carter.

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[00:08:15] John sends an email that says,

[00:08:17] Pete, let's put aside all the canonization of Carter.

[00:08:20] He was a good man who did much after he was out of office,

[00:08:23] but no one should have ever been in charge of the launch codes who pronounced it nuclear.

[00:08:30] That's fair.

[00:08:32] James, welcome to the show.

[00:08:33] Hello, James.

[00:08:34] Hey.

[00:08:35] Hey.

[00:08:35] Your rhetorical question about why did this wonderful man who's the greatest thing since sliced bread

[00:08:42] lose the election after one term?

[00:08:45] Yeah.

[00:08:47] Double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates.

[00:08:51] Yep.

[00:08:52] Stagflation.

[00:08:53] My first mortgage was 13%.

[00:08:57] Yeah, a lot of people don't understand how high those rates were

[00:09:01] when they've grown up with rates under 5%, you know?

[00:09:06] That's true.

[00:09:07] Yeah, it was unbelievable.

[00:09:11] And basically, as far as his foreign policy was concerned,

[00:09:16] he's the one that gave us all the wonderful things that we've had going on

[00:09:20] for the last 30 years in the Middle East.

[00:09:22] No, I've been told at the funeral there that he made us energy independent and such.

[00:09:28] That's, yeah, that's what I was reliably informed today.

[00:09:31] James, I do appreciate the call.

[00:09:32] Look, there was really one terrific result that occurred after the Carter administration

[00:09:38] was shown the door, which was Reagan.

[00:09:45] Without Carter, I don't think we would have had Reagan.

[00:09:49] And as Frank Hill wrote at the North State Journal, NSJOnline.com,

[00:09:55] it could happen again starting on January 20th at noon this year.

[00:10:00] That Americans, having seen the last four years of Biden, much like after seeing four years of Carter,

[00:10:08] Americans are like, whoa, yeah, we don't want this anymore.

[00:10:12] And then course corrects the country back to a center-right disposition.

[00:10:18] David Harsany also pointed out that Carter famously brokered, quote unquote, a treaty with North Korea in 1994.

[00:10:27] Remember that?

[00:10:28] Deliberately undercutting the Clinton administration's efforts to stop that communist state from obtaining nuclear weapons.

[00:10:35] Carter was not empowered to enter into agreements on behalf of the U.S.

[00:10:39] or anybody else for that matter.

[00:10:49] Carter admitted this.

[00:10:51] He said, I hope that it would consummate a resolution of what I consider to be a very serious crisis.

[00:10:57] A Clinton aide called his actions, quote, near traitorous.

[00:11:02] Indeed, if anybody ever deserved to be prosecuted under the Logan Act, it was Jimmy Carter for that.

[00:11:09] But Carter's defenders whitewash his long, unsightly history by treating the former leader of the most powerful nation on the planet as some well-meaning naif,

[00:11:18] whose only goal was merely to broker peace.

[00:11:21] Hey, have you heard about all the houses he builds?

[00:11:23] Yeah, but in truth, he was a middling political talent who lucked into the presidency after Watergate took it upon himself to spend his life legitimizing some of the most nefarious people and regimes on the planet.

[00:11:36] See, that's my assessment of Jimmy Carter.

[00:11:39] And had the eulogies not glorified this man as they did today, I probably wouldn't have said anything.

[00:11:51] But they did, so I did.

[00:11:53] Oh, last thing.

[00:11:54] Peter Schweitzer says, remember this.

[00:11:55] In January 1984, Carter went to the Soviet ambassador as a private citizen and urged the Soviets to do what they could to make sure Reagan did not get reelected.

[00:12:10] Yeah, appalling conduct by a former president.

[00:12:15] Don't ever forget.

[00:12:16] All right, I hope you had a happy holiday season, but tell me if something like this happened at your house.

[00:12:22] Your family and friends are gathered around, maybe y'all are in the living room.

[00:12:25] You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says,

[00:12:29] Hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes?

[00:12:32] Did you ever get them transferred?

[00:12:34] And then the room gets all quiet, all eyes are on Dad, who says,

[00:12:38] Oh, you know, well, I've been meaning to, but I just haven't gotten around to it.

[00:12:42] Look, don't let those priceless memories sit in a box for another year.

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[00:13:03] And next year, instead of talking about those memories, imagine gathering the family to watch them together.

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[00:13:13] Trust the experts at Create A Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill, right off I-485, and online at createavideo.com.

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