One year after the passing of President Jimmy Carter, Ron reflects on what Carter’s life and legacy still mean for a country struggling with division and distrust.
Drawing from a powerful Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed, Ron is joined by Linda Peek-Schacht, who served in the Carter White House press office, to talk about civic virtue, truth-telling, and the kind of leadership America may be searching for next. The conversation looks back at Carter’s moral imagination, his willingness to confront uncomfortable truths, and how those qualities shaped both his presidency and his life after the White House.
Plus, it’s the plucky determination of The Carter Center, led by CEO Paige Alexander, that should inspire us all to keep moving forward despite the obstacles – or in their case massive funding cuts – because “the work” still needs to be done.
Lastly, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s most recent “mainstream media” exposure via the New York Times sees her going “scorched earth” on MAGA and Donald Trump, going even so far as to questioning his faith.
Brian Recker, a former Marine, former evangelical pastor, current theologian, speaker and writer, has developed a healthy social media following and solid presence on Substack. His focus? Deconstructing his faith to find a more inclusive spirituality – which often runs afoul of today’s right-wing aligned American evangelical movement.
He’s just the kind of guest to discuss the ’Ted Cruz v. Tucker Carlson’ dust-up over Cruz’ limp grasp on scripture he believes commands him (and the U.S. apparently) to support Israel unequivocally.
Recker and I discuss this at length, along with the use of religion as a tool of manipulation by pols like Cruz, and also religion’s manipulation of politicians like Cruz, too. I also asked, is Trump using religion to manipulate Republicans or is he the one being manipulated by religion?
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Fast forward to today, Christmas Eve:
Then, meet Joshua Doss, Chicago-based political strategist, pollster and social media influencer. Listen to one of his latest social media gems where he calls out Georgia’s white evangelical voting bloc and their inconsistencies with their Christianity and their rebuking of REVERAND Raphael Warnock, Senator from Georgia, while their embrace of one Nicki Minaj.
The now-infamous ‘60 Minutes’ segment pulled at the 11th hour by CBS News head Bari Weisshas surfaced anyway, notably because Bari doesn’t realize how affiliate relations and marketing works in the TV business, but after watching it (you get to hear it – also shared @RonShowATL on X and BlueSky), Ron’s left wondering what the big deal was.
A similar ’60 Minutes’ story on the same el Salvadoran hellhole prison at CECOT aired in April; Ron spotlighted it, then. So okay, maybe Weiss’ insistence that Sharyn Alfonsi’s story didn’t move the story “forward” has some merit, but then why did Weiss miss five screenings then essentially sign off on it Thursday, then again Friday before having a last-minute change-of-heart? Makes no sense, and now the organization’s in chaos.
Weiss, we learned, pressed for someone from Homeland Security or the Trump administration to go on camera, to which Alfonsi and producers said they’d been invited and declined. Ron’s hunch (and that of Alfonsi, too)? The “wait til they go on camera prior to airing” gambit is a tacit “kill switch” to stories the Trump White House wants bogged down.
Ron walks through what the report revealed, why journalists inside 60 Minutes pushed back, and how the unaired segment ultimately leaked online anyway. Along the way, he explores the larger questions raised by the decision: media independence, political pressure, and what happens when powerful interests collide with journalism.
A purposely misleading headline and article set off a weekend firestorm in Georgia politics, with insinuations that 315,000 Fulton County votes from 2020 were improperly counted. Ron and his guest, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance cut through the noise. Long story short, the claims of illegality are nonsense. Even worse, the so-called missing signatures are sought to certify votes in accordance with Canadian law. Not even kidding.
Marilyn also walked Ron through the process for vote tabulation, why those ballots were always valid, and how bad faith actors are using confusion to distract from real election administration problems that still need fixing before 2026, and how circling vultures on the state elections board and Trump Department of Justice may expose Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
CBS News legal analyst Thane Rosenbaum joined Ron in hour two to help bring some clarity to the muddy mess that is the (somewhat) release of the Epstein Files.
Friday, December 19, 2025: A mystery group is spending millions on attack ads against Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, and no one seems to know – or wants to say – who’s behind it. Kind of rich that Jones and the Georgia GOP are suddenly outraged over dark money tactics they’ve long defended. The ads, tied to an unregistered group called Georgians for Integrity, have sparked ethics complaints, legal threats, and a political guessing game inside the Republican primary for governor.
Comedian Sterling Thrill joined Ron to laugh through the absurdity, unpack the hypocrisy, and talk about why this shadow campaign may be rattling the GOP front-runner more than the allegations themselves.
Thursday, December 18, 2025: A newly revealed audio recording puts fresh attention on Donald Trump’s post-2020 efforts to pressure Georgia officials, and Ron breaks down why it matters now. The New York Times reports Trump urged then-House Speaker David Ralston to help overturn Georgia’s election results, adding new context to the already controversial interference case.
At the same time, Fulton County DA Fani Willis testified before a Georgia Senate committee in a hearing that produced plenty of heat but little clarity. Let’s revisit the political theater, the unanswered questions, and what this moment says about accountability inside the GOP. WABE reporter Chamian Cruz joins the show to share what it was like inside the room and what lawmakers may do next.
Not that you need ANY more information to BE outraged about this tragedy, but did you know that, in 20-year-old Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom’s home state of West Virginia, the minimum age to even BECOME a police officer is 21?
She was 20.
She was 20, in the National Guard, serving essentially in a law enforcement capacity for no rational reason, and was there in camouflage – which camouflages you from NOTHING in the streets of any American city – for all intents and purposes adorned in “military target” wear for anyone who’d wish to do harm TO someone in our military to easily target.
Then this: “A running theory of investigators is that the suspect in the shooting of the two National Guard members suffered from paranoia and other mental health challenges that indicated he believed authorities sought to deport him from the U.S., multiple law enforcement sources told CBS News on Thursday.”
The Ron Show – weekdays 4-6pm on Georgia NOW.
Gee, why would ANYONE in his circumstance get THAT wild idea from, eh? Well, I’ll tell ya why. Because just days ago, the Trump administration ordered a review of Biden-era refugees – which included refugees from Afghanistan, many of whom assisted the United States in its two decades-long war in that country.
From Reuters: “The USCIS memo, dated November 21, said the agency will terminate the refugee status of people already in the U.S. if they are found to not meet refugee criteria. The memo claims the Biden administration potentially prioritized expediency, quantity, and admissions over quality interviews and detailed screening and vetting.”
MAGA wants you to believe this has something to do with a perceived “lax Biden policy,” but the alleged gunman – Rahmanullah Lakanwal – had his asylum “granted earlier this year, while President Trump was in office, a Homeland Security official told CBS News.”
Then there’s this: the “CIA said Lakanwal previously worked with the U.S. government, including the CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar …”
See in MAGA mind, it doesn’t matter what you may have done in service of our military in places like Afghanistan. Cue the Peter Griffin meme holding up the “immigrant skin color” card.
It’s quite likely – easy to surmise actually – that Rahmanullah Lakanwal flipped his lid at the Trump administration’s decision to terminate hundreds of thousands of refugees’ statuses in this country, then took it out on an easy target. Why would there even be so many Afghan refugees, you wonder? Well, Trump 1.0 negotiated them back into power, essentially.
“”What went wrong under Donald Trump is that he was out-negotiated by the Taliban in Doha, and he handcuffed both himself and the next administration to a timetable and a deal that gave Taliban the leverage,” Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), who served in Afghanistan, said in an interview on “The Hill” on NewsNation.””
Rep. Auchincloss is right; it was Trump team’s negotiations that led to thousands of Taliban prisoners being released, re-armed, and there to topple a fragile Afghanistan government, leading to the perilous exit where thirteen more U.S. military personnel lost their lives.
Back to the alleged D.C. gunman: who’d want to live in a Taliban-governed Afghanistan? Well, that’s what Rahmanullah Lakanwal was facing.
So of COURSE the Trump administration – never shy about taking an instance like this and turning it into fodder to double-down on their dog-whistle racism – is calling for even more National Guard troops in D.C. Never mind that the troops deployed there had precious little to do there other than stab garbage in parks and stroll the sidewalks and stand on street corners peering for crime that was already under control there prior to their activation. Yes, definitely a good idea to put more Guard members in easy-to-spot military fatigues on the streets of our nation’s Capital for another lunatic with an axe to grind to target.
The fallen – 20-year old Army specialist Sarah Beckstrom – wasn’t even old enough to be a law enforcement officer in her home state of West Virginia, but that’s essentially the role she was called up to serve in Washington D.C.
It’s impossible to know how many young servicemen and women patrolling the nation’s city streets are just like her – not even old enough to be a cop in their home state but tasked with serving in a law enforcement capacity they’re untrained to perform.
Make it make sense.
– Ron
Ron Roberts is host of ‘The Ron Show,’ airing weekdays 4-6pm on Georgia NOW.
Fulton County Superior Court judge Scott McAfee issued a one-page dismissal of the sprawling racketeering case against President Donald Trump, essentially ending Georgia’s prosecution of the former-and-current President and co-conspirators in their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The prosecutor who’d recently taken on the case, Pete Skandalakis “wrote in a memo accompanying the notice that overt acts listed in the indictment that were taken by the president and other Republicans “are not acts I would consider sufficient” to sustain a racketeering case. Skandalakis said that after reviewing the evidence, he concluded that a federal prosecution was more appropriate than one pursued by the state of Georgia, and said the “strongest and most prosecutable case” against those who allegedly sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election was the one being pursued by former special counsel Jack Smith.” (CBS News).
I’ve spent a lot of time the past few weeks marveling at the moderation of one Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whether it’s appearing on ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ or ‘The View,’ more recently with Dana Bash on CNN even, the formerly bombastic Greene had found a tone of civility so unlike what we’d seen of her that not many can (or do) believe this is who the “notorious MTG” truly is.
I’ve never met her but count me among those that think what we saw of her was her true nature, but that what we see of her now is, too. Marge went to Washington and now she’s ready to leave it (for now, anyway) a different woman.
The Ron Show – weekdays 4-6pm on Georgia NOW.
I’ve opined a time or two in recent weeks, on my show, that Marjorie Taylor Greene went into Congress a brash, loud and opinionated (albeit misinformed) MAGA mouthpiece, not unlike her President. Where he and she differ is he was able to skip many steps on the ladder that she came to find not steps for her, at all, but instead, glass ceilings she couldn’t penetrate. A “good ol’ boys’ club,” she called it – speaking of her own party – and she wasn’t wrong.
The thing is, the men (or man, if it were just Donald Trump) weren’t wrong to tell her she had no shot at higher offices prior to her “change of tone.” She stood no chance of winning a statewide race in her former caustic form. Now?
Now, I dare say, she could win a statewide GOP primary. She has independents nodding in agreement with her and some liberals openly wooing her. That’s a hard ‘no’ for me, but then again I’ve said quite often former GOP Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan really should enjoy a few sermons before taking the pulpit in the party, himself, but who am I?
So Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on her vast and popular social media apparatus’ that she’s stepping down from her seat in the House of Representatives on January 5, 2026. Two things of note there: 1) her five-year pension mark is January 3, 2026, so she vests. 2) She’s now free to do whatever she wants on January 6th.
Too soon?
In leaving, though, she did it again: she uttered a thought I completely understood and agree with. She has. to. stop. doing. that.
All kidding aside, her rationale makes total sense to me.
“I have too much self-respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will lose the midterms.”
She didn’t feel like fighting to keep her seat only to have to defend the “menace of Mar A Lago” dutifully as an elected Republican after overcoming the millions he and his cronies would likely pour into a primary race to try and snuff her out, politically. I get that.
“It’s all so absurd and completely unserious,” she said. “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
Same, girl; same. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have the option to just get to dip out on this wacky presidency in seven weeks.
– Ron
Ron Roberts is host of ‘The Ron Show,’ airing weekdays 4-6pm on Georgia NOW.
