On today’s show: What to know about wildfires ravaging Southern California. The Los Angeles Times is tracking all the latest developments. Jimmy Carter’s funeral takes place in Washington today. The New Yorker examines his legacy of honesty. And the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher explains how the former president’s honesty may have been his downfall. For the first time tonight, two Black head coaches will face off in a College Football Playoff semifinal. The Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Bachman lays out why it’s taken so long to get here. Plus, Attorney General Merrick Garland says he’ll release the special counsel’s report on Trump, how to avoid norovirus, and Hoda Kotb of NBC’s ‘Today’ signs off for the last time. Today’s episode was guest-hosted by Gideon Resnick.
Chapter 1: What are the current wildfires impacting Los Angeles?
But first, to the devastating scenes in Los Angeles, where multiple uncontrolled wildfires have destroyed homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate.
The entire town, as we've known it for decades, is gone.
We were running down, you could see palm trees, just like random palm trees on fire. So I'm sure leaves are burning and falling down, and it's literally apocalyptic.
This is the worst fire I've ever encountered.
There are at least five major fires burning. The first and biggest broke out in Pacific Palisades, followed by others near Altadena, the San Fernando Valley, and the Hollywood Hills. And authorities have said these are among the most destructive fires to ever hit Los Angeles. CNN spoke with Governor Gavin Newsom, who said their resources were maxed out quickly as these fires multiplied.
We've depleted all our resources. Northern California, we'd already pre-positioned on Sunday hundreds of personnel, specialty units, water attenders, dozers, engines, helicopters, and it wasn't enough.
Officials have reported at least five fatalities, but that's expected to climb as search and rescue efforts continue. Thousands of homes and buildings have burned. Authorities also say there are a high number of injuries to people who chose not to evacuate.
Lots of people have lost power at some point, and there are air quality advisories in effect, with many saying it's hard and even dangerous to breathe. The LA Times warns that the tiny particulate matter in the air can travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream.
The LA County Fire Chief, Anthony Maroney, said at a press briefing yesterday evening that firefighters and resources from other states, including Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, had arrived to help fight the fires. And the Pentagon has offered aid as well. L.A.
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Chapter 2: What is the human and economic toll of the wildfires?
City Fire Chief Kristen Crowley said at the same briefing that citizens should stay informed through trusted channels and that people living near wildland areas need to be prepared to follow all evacuation orders as soon as they are given.
We are not out of danger. You can see the active fires that are burning. With strong winds that are going to continue throughout the night, I can tell you and assure you that firefighters and first responders remain focused on protecting lives and property.
Chapter 3: How are officials responding to the wildfires?
All Los Angeles Unified schools are closed today, and officials say two elementary schools that serve more than 700 students in the Pacific Palisades area were completely destroyed. And there's a reason that the fires got so bad so fast. There's been an unprecedented windstorm, with gusts reportedly reaching up to 100 miles per hour. Embers can travel for miles on a gust of wind.
California is also in the middle of an unusual winter drought. This is typically the rainiest season. But according to the LA Times, the last time the city received more than a tenth of an inch of rain was last May. Here's Newsom again, speaking with CNN.
There's no fire season in California. It's year-round. But to have this level, the acuity of fires is without precedent. These guys were just up there to try to mitigate the embers going two miles and getting just to go a quarter of a mile.
Firefighters have struggled to contain the blazes because fire hydrants in the area are reportedly running dry or have weak water pressure. Fire officials say they were drawing water faster than tanks could be refilled. Here's L.A. County Fire Department Battalion Chief Brenda Simonian, who spoke with KCAL while she and her team tried to extinguish flames that were tearing through a senior center.
We're losing water pressure up here. We have a lack of resources. The wind, as you see, is pushing it very violently. And the lack of water is a huge, huge hurdle that we're trying to overcome so we can save as much as we can. All the hydrants have run dry.
In addition to the human toll, the economic impact on Los Angeles is expected to be massive. Insurers were already pulling out of California in recent years because of the high risks of natural disasters like these fires. And this disaster could create an even bigger strain. Homes in the Pacific Palisades are worth on average $3.5 million.
And preliminary estimates put the total cost of damage of all the fires at $10 billion. Officials say winds should die down today, which could provide some respite for firefighters. But because conditions are so dry, even moderate winds can still be dangerous. This is a rapidly moving story. You can follow the latest in the Apple News app.
We're going to include a link in our show notes to an article with a list of organizations working on the ground to help. The state funeral service for President Jimmy Carter is today in Washington, after which the former president will be transported to his beloved hometown of Plains, Georgia, to be laid to rest next to his wife, Rosalyn.
As the nation reflects on his legacy, there's one word you'll hear often, honesty. It was the cornerstone of Carter's commitment to the American people when he took office.
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Chapter 4: What is the legacy of Jimmy Carter?
In fact, Fisher writes that Carter's commitment to honesty may have also been his downfall, as he dealt with everything from the Iran hostage crisis to rampant inflation and high gas prices.
He's got one crisis after another to deal with, and he insists on leveling with the American people. And he infamously gives this speech that later became known as the malaise speech, even though he never used that word. And in that speech, he says, look, I'm gonna level with you. I'm gonna tell you that things are bad.
I'm gonna tell you that there's no easy way out, and there's a lot of difficult time ahead of us.
The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways, It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
Chapter 5: How did honesty shape Jimmy Carter's presidency?
And boy, did Americans not want to hear that. And so his numbers just collapsed after that speech.
Which is why politics is so complicated. In polls, Americans consistently say they want their politicians to tell the truth. In fact, in a poll last summer by YouGov, a research group, Americans said that honesty was one of the top three qualities they care about most in a president.
And I think it's clear that while people say they want to hear the unvarnished truth, they really don't.
There's no better proof of that than the election of Donald Trump. The Washington Post ran the numbers, and in his first term, Trump said things that weren't true more than 30,000 times. That's an average of 21 false statements a day. Still, that didn't seem decisive in how voters made their choice in this election.
Chapter 6: What challenges did Jimmy Carter face during his presidency?
And because Trump has found that his style works with American voters, that is starting at some level to become normalized in our politics.
There are very few Jimmy Carter-type characters in our politics today. The humility that Carter pervaded, that we just don't see in our politics these days. And that's partly Trump's influence, but it's partly the mood of the country.
Fundamentally, Fisher told us, he thinks we're in a moment where Americans' trust in just about everything, from politics to institutions, is being redefined.
You know, we talk a lot about how trust has collapsed. And again, people don't trust their doctors or their religious leaders or their political leaders. And across all of the traditional measures of trust, it's fallen off a cliff. And yet we live in a moment where people are trusting things that they would never have trusted before. We're trusting driverless cars. So it's not that trust is gone.
It's that we're redefining it. And we're thinking about who we trust in very different ways. And a new generation is saying, we just define trust differently than you do. And that's interesting and exciting and scary all at once. And so in our politics, we haven't figured out what to trust. And the reelection of Donald Trump is the ultimate expression of that.
Now to college football, where Penn State and Notre Dame will make history before they even step on the field tonight in the Orange Bowl. And it's because of their coaches, Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame and James Franklin at Penn State.
They are the first two Black coaches to get this far in the college football championship race.
That's Rachel Bachman, a senior sports reporter with The Wall Street Journal. She told us about one big reason that we've never seen a Black coach win a national title in the history of college football.
College football has been slower to diversify its top ranks, even though about half the players in college football are Black and more like two-thirds are non-white.
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