• Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump’s victory Monday, exactly four years after he denied President Joe Biden the same courtesy by inciting a violent mob of insurrectionists to march to the Capitol. At 78 years old, Trump will be the oldest president ever sworn into office, edging out Biden by just a few months. And at 82, Biden will walk away as the oldest sitting president ever. In fact, nearly a quarter of Congress is 70 or older. Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist covering national security, explains the problems an aging Congress poses.
• And in headlines: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he’ll step down after nearly a decade in the role, a New York judge denied Trump’s request to postpone sentencing in his hush money case, and the former chairman of the Proud Boys asked Trump for a presidential pardon.

• Check out Ken’s Substack – https://www.kenklippenstein.com/
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, January 7th. I’m Jane Coaston. And this is What a Day. The show that is taking a break from discourse. Which discourse? All the discourse. Twitter discourse. Blue sky discourse, Discord discourse. I have discoursed and now I’m discoursed out. [music break] On today’s show, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces his resignation. And the former leader of the Proud Boys is asking Trump for a pardon. Let’s get into it. The certification of the 2024 election went off without a hitch on Monday. The 119th Congress confirmed President elect Donald Trump’s victory exactly four years after Trump denied President Joe Biden the same courtesy by inciting a violent mob of insurrectionists to march to the Capitol. Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the ceremony, certifying her own loss. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] This announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States. 

Jane Coaston: Speaking after she said she was just doing her duty. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] It was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power. And today I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath that I have taken many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. 

Jane Coaston: One person’s civic duty is another’s state sanctioned torture, I guess. Monday’s certification sets the stage for Trump’s inauguration in two weeks. At 78 years old, he’ll be the oldest president ever sworn into office. He’ll edge out Biden by just a few months. And at 82, Biden will walk away as the oldest sitting president ever. It speaks to a bigger issue within American government. That the people running it are old as hell. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi led their respective caucuses into their ’80s. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer isn’t far behind at 74, and that’s just senior leadership, no pun intended. Last month, we found out 81 year old Texas Republican Kay Granger was living in a retirement home and hadn’t voted since July. She wasn’t seeking reelection, but the former congresswoman’s office also never disclosed what was going on. In fact, nearly a quarter of Congress is 70 or older. While the median age of Americans is about 39. And there’s a word for this, gerontocracy. During a CNN panel with incoming freshman lawmakers, 30 year old Republican Brandon Gill of Texas said it’s a problem. 

[clip of Brandon Gill] Young people have seen this country run by an older and older and older generation, and what have we experienced? We’ve experienced a housing crisis where it’s difficult whenever you’re graduating high school or graduating college to find affordable housing. We’ve seen our jobs being taken away from illegal aliens who are coming in, wages depressed because we because of our open borders. 

Jane Coaston: Now, you don’t have to agree with everything or anything he says there, to agree with the sentiment. And sure, getting older is a fickle thing. People don’t age uniformly. There are plenty of spry 70 year olds out there, and I hope you’re listening to this podcast. But for more on the problems an aging Congress does pose, I spoke with Ken Klippenstein. He’s an independent journalist covering national security on Substack at KenKlippenstein.com. Ken, welcome back to What a Day. 

Ken Klippenstein: Hey, good to be with you. 

Jane Coaston: So broadly speaking, we know that a gerontocracy is a government run by the elderly. But can you put a finer point on that definition for us as it relates to the U.S. government? What does it look like here? 

Ken Klippenstein: Yeah. Well, I’m actually a national security reporter, first and foremost. And so people often ask me, how did you get into covering the gerontocracy issue? And my first exposure to it, where I sort of realized that it, you know, it was a it was a thing was reading a report by the Rand Corporation, which is the Pentagon backed um think tank, warning that all of these senior officials have access to, you know, classified information. And increasingly because of advancements in medical technology, they’re living longer. And so they’re finding that um dementia is more and more of an issue. And that report in itself is kind of interesting because they described how, despite all of the checks in place, to ensure that people with access to, you know, our nation’s most closely guarded secrets, um there actually wasn’t really any mechanism to try to pull someone’s clearance in the event that dementia ends up um, you know, causing them to disclose some of this information. But to to your question, gerontocracy, uh you know it’s a, derived from Latin, ruled by the elderly. And, you know, people disagree on what age constitutes, you know, too old to be in office. But, I mean, some of these cases, like McConnell just shutting down and freezing like multiple instances like this is clearly affecting their ability to carry out the job. I mean, we saw this, I think really strikingly in this election uh of the top Democrat for the House Oversight Committee, which is going to have a very visible and public facing role as we go into the Trump administration over the next two years. The selection of uh I think he’s 74 year old Gerry Connolly over I think AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is about 30 years old. Um and uh Pelosi, in a scene that you couldn’t make up in Hollywood was whipping votes for Connolly to be ranking member of that committee from the hospital while being treated for a fall that she herself sustained two or three weeks ago. And on that same week another congressional a senior congressional official suffered his own fall. I think it was Mitch McConnell, if I remember right, on the same week. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. 

Ken Klippenstein: And it’s like I can’t even keep up with I’m not going out of my way trying to find these things. They keep popping up, you know, And so I’m just trying to um draw a line between all the points because it’s clear that this is so pervasive. It’s not these aren’t one off instances. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. I keep thinking about because I’m curious as to how this happens, why this happens. And part of it for me is that I think that we do this thing with politicians in which we ignore how old they are. I’ll give you an example. I am aware that Bill Clinton is quite elderly, but in my head, Bill Clinton is still like Bill Clinton from like 1995. Now, I was eight years old in 1995 and he was not elderly then. But I think that there’s something about political figures where they get kind of frozen in amber. Bernie Sanders will always be Bernie Sanders of eight years ago. Donald Trump is Donald Trump of eight years ago. I think that we have this inability for political figures to age even when they’re very clearly aging. You know, Nancy Pelosi’s recovering from hip surgery and is currently walking with a walker. So why do you think we got to this place where so many people in Congress are so old? 

Ken Klippenstein: Well, culturally, there is a system of deference to members with more seniority. And in the past, that has been something that it’s not an official system, but it’s kind of the rules of the road, so to speak. We’re okay you’ve been around the block for X number of years. Let’s give them the chair of the committee. But as they’re getting older, I don’t think there’s been an attendant realization that, hey, guys, maybe we should change this informal system that we have. Maybe this isn’t serving us as well as it could be, but the uh inertia of that having been the way that it was handled, I think that plays into it. And then a second point I would make is that I agree with the point you’re making that that they seem frozen in amber in our imaginations, but that is cultivated in part by them. I mean, I’ve had so many people that have worked in offices describing to me these members who are advanced in age, talking about how they intentionally avoid doing media hits. They only do media hits that can um that they can expect that they’re going to be able to control the framing. I mean, to some extent that’s true of any politician. But with respect to age, that allows them to project a certain image that is, let’s say, not um an accurate representation of what necessarily is going on behind the scenes. So in the case of Dianne Feinstein, who died in office, she had a coterie of aides that were going around trying to it sounds crazy, but just trying to find a path for her to travel out of Congress so that media wouldn’t stop her and question her and and, you know, find out that she’s not doing very well. Um. So there’s kind of a cover up. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, And it was interesting, though, because setting aside literally everything else, Vice President Kamala Harris is 60. The country elected Trump, who at 78 will be the oldest president ever sworn in. So are voters partly to blame for this? Are we wired to vote for and trust older elected officials? 

Ken Klippenstein: Um. Again, I would say that more time on earth would give you more time to accrue power, social capital, actual capital. And so that’s always going to be an advantage. But I think there are a lot of other advantages that are being overlooked to, you know, being on these social media platforms the younger people exist on, especially at this time when you’re seeing the demographic characteristics of the parties kind of up in the air. So clearly what you’re saying is the case. There is just some advantages to being older, but part of it is that the media doesn’t talk about the risks of running someone who’s in their 80s. There’s just so little coverage of it for the reason I described before. They don’t want to alienate them. They don’t want to lose access. They don’t want to seem like jerks. I mean, I feel that. But um.

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Ken Klippenstein:  But I think that if there was–

Jane Coaston: I would also say–

Ken Klippenstein: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: And I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this. I would also say that one of the challenges that we have is that gerontocracy impacts not just politics, but also media. And you see that with you know how long it takes to get political capital, how long it takes to get media capital, how long it takes to move up in media. By the time that you are the anchor of a TV show or you’re doing really well at a newspaper or at an outlet in general, you’re probably older at that point. And you mentioned um Gerry Connolly uh beating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for you know that house position, and I thought that that was such an interesting moment because it was so clear that not only is Gerry Connolly elderly, but he is also battling esophageal cancer. And it just seemed like a moment in which you see both parties, I would argue, don’t really want younger people to lead. They want younger people involved. But I think that there’s a sense of like, we’ll let them fundraise. We’ll let them talk a lot–

Ken Klippenstein: Yeah exactly. 

Jane Coaston: –on the Internet, but we don’t want them to run anything. So. 

Ken Klippenstein: Right. 

Jane Coaston: If you have both parties who don’t want to let younger people lead, what can we really do to combat gerontocracy besides pointing out, hey, it’s kind of weird that this member of Congress might be in a memory care facility. 

Ken Klippenstein: Well, I would say that. You know, having monitored this fairly closely over the last couple of months at least, I am seeing signs of a shift on the part of uh public opinion. But even in the case of Biden, that was something that uh contrary to the sort of received wisdom about the debate, having done him in. Um polling showed Democrat a majority of Democrats being uneasy about his age, going back over a year prior to that to that debate. So this is something that’s percolating in the I think in the general sort of public imagination, even if people in the halls of power aren’t interested in in hearing that. So I think I think we’re really going to have to I don’t know, I guess I feel a little bit I feel less pessimistic about it than than I would have if you’d asked me this question maybe two or three months ago. 

Jane Coaston: Ken, thank you so much for joining me again. 

Ken Klippenstein: My pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Ken Klippenstein. He’s an independent journalist covering national security on Substack at KenKlippenstein.com. We’ll get to more of the news in the moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Justin Trudeau] I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide competitive process. 

Jane Coaston: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Monday he’ll be stepping down after nearly a decade in the role. The decision comes amidst pressure from his own party to resign as the once popular prime minister faces increased public frustration over things like inflation and the cost of living. Sound familiar? Incumbent parties and candidates around the world have been falling left and right as voters look for an alternative in the face of rising costs. And Canada’s opposition party say they plan to trigger a general election by calling for a no confidence vote against Trudeau’s Liberal Party when Parliament is back in session. Trudeau acknowledged his political reality. 

[clip of Justin Trudeau] This country deserves a real choice in the next election and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election. 

Jane Coaston: Parliament had been set to return on January 27th, but will now be suspended until March 24th, giving the Liberal Party time to choose a new leader. Trudeau will stay on as prime minister until his replacement is chosen. Trump’s request to postpone sentencing in his hush money case in New York was denied Monday. Justice Juan Merchan’s decision came after Trump’s lawyers asked for a delay while an appeals court weigh the decision that upheld Trump’s conviction. Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records last year. His sentencing is set for Friday. Merchan said last week it wouldn’t be practicable to give Trump jail time, since he’ll be returning to the White House. Trump can still ask the appeals court for a delay. Also on Monday, a federal judge in New York City found Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court in his defamation case. Judge Lewis Liman ruled Giuliani failed to provide information about his assets to the Georgia election workers he defamed following the 2020 election. The workers won over $140 million in damages after suing Giuliani for spreading lies about them. Giuliani testified for a second day Monday in a contempt hearing about failing to comply with evidence requests. Liman said Giuliani, quote, “willfully violated a court order and attempted to delay proceedings.” Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of the House Select Committee on China asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Monday for a briefing about a Chinese cyber hack on the department. During the attack, which was reported last month, Chinese hackers accessed U.S. Treasury workstations and unclassified documents. In his letter to Yellen, Krishnamoorthi says even unclassified information amounts to a, quote, “devastating breach of national security.” Tensions over cybersecurity between the U.S. and China are already running high. Chinese authorities were criticizing the U.S. Treasury this week for placing sanctions on a Beijing based cybersecurity company. The group allegedly played a role in hacking attacks against U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, which gave Chinese officials access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. The sanctions are unrelated to the Treasury breach. The former Proud Boys chairman convicted of orchestrating his group’s attack on the U.S. Capitol ahead of January 6th, is asking Donald Trump for a presidential pardon. Enrique Tarrio is serving 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy in connection with the insurrection, even though Tarrio was not in D.C. on January 6th. He was, in fact, already banned from the city by prosecutors for burning a Black Lives Matter banner. In a letter to Trump Monday, Tarrio’s lawyer said Tarrio was, quote, “nothing more than a proud American that believes in true conservative values.” Tarrio did an interview with CNN after the riot defending his actions. 

[clip of Enrique Tarrio] I was celebrating, and I’ll tell you, I’ll celebrate the moment that the government does fear their people. 

Jane Coaston: Tarrio’s lawyer wrote to Trump that the government prosecuted Tarrio and other Proud Boy members for, quote, “expressing their freedom of expression.” And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. What are you doing right now while you listen to the show or watch it on YouTube? Are you doing the dishes? Walking your dog? Working out? Driving? When was the last time you did any of those things without a distraction? Don’t ask me. I’ve been working out to episodes of Dateline for like six years now. I spend a lot of my life doing multiple things at once, lest I ever for a second experience the worst thing in the entire world, boredom. I remember what life was like before widely available, high speed Internet because I am 37 years old and sometimes my back hurts for no reason. And what I remember is being bored. Being a kid is incredibly boring, as you might recall. But the internet solved that problem. We can never be bored. I don’t think I’ve been legitimately bored since 2007 because the internet is an endless fount of stuff. But it’s not as if I’m filling my own time with learning new skills. I’m filling my alone time with true crime documentaries on YouTube and checking what the worst people on the Internet have to say on Twitter and substack and not just what people say, but friends, I read the comments on what those people say. Apparently finding out what gutter misogynists have to say to one another is preferable to me ever experiencing not having something to think about. MSNBC host Chris Hayes has a new book coming out entitled The Sirens Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. And he wrote a piece for The New York Times that argues boredom is a good thing. It’s how we get to know our own minds. I texted him to ask what people can gain from boredom. The feeling I’ve spent the last 20 odd years trying to avoid. He said that boredom can offer inspiration, creative urges and new ideas. And he told me that a lack of boredom paradoxically makes it easier for us to be bored. We can’t stand stillness, and we spend all of our time looking for diversions. Like the comment section on National Review articles. And by we, sadly, I mean me. It’s a new year and a good time to think about ways we can all live better and do better for ourselves and others. And one thing I could do better is do the thing I hate most, be bored. [music break]. 

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Contemplate how Elon Musk has decided he’s now very interested in British politics. And seriously, you can just do things, I guess, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how really you can just do things, you can just decide that today you are an expert in the Labor Party and tomorrow you are an expert in bird flu and apparently if you are very rich, people will just go with it, which is sure something, like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and maybe I’ll become an expert in something too. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. 

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