Trump’s inauguration moving indoors due to weather

(WASHINGTON) — Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman said he hopes President-elect Donald Trump is successful in his second term and that he’s not “rooting against him.”

“If you’re rooting against the president, you are rooting against the nation,” Fetterman told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “So country first. I know that’s become maybe like a cliche, but it happens to be true.”

Fetterman, who has made headlines as one of the few in his party who have met with several of Trump’s cabinet picks, said his Democratic colleagues need to “chill out” over everything Trump does.

“I’ve been warning people, like, ‘You got to chill out,’ you know? Like the constant, you know, freakout, it’s not helpful,” Fetterman said. “Pack a lunch, pace yourself, because he hasn’t even taken office yet.”

Asked by Karl what the single biggest factor was behind Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in November, Fetterman pointed to the “undeniable” and “singular political talent” of Trump.

“He had the energy and almost a sense of fearlessness to just say all those kinds of things,” Fetterman said. “You literally were shot in your head and had the presence of mind to respond, you know, ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ I mean, that’s a political talent.”

Fetterman also said that the election was “never about fascism” to him. Harris said in an October town hall that she believed Trump was a fascist after Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly said that his old boss fit the definition of one. Fetterman said that was not a word he would use.

“Fascism, that’s not a word that regular people, you know, use, you know?” Fetterman said. “I think people are going to decide who is the candidate that’s going to protect and project, you know, my version of the American way of life, and that’s what happened.”

Fetterman also pointed to Elon Musk’s endorsement of Trump as another key factor in the election.

“It’s rare to have a surrogate that has a lot of fanboys and is very compelling to a lot of the demographic that we are losing in my party and in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said about the billionaire businessman.

Fetterman said Musk’s endorsement “really mattered” and he believed it did “move the needle.”

Fetterman was the first Democrat in the Senate to meet with Pete Hegseth, the controversial former Fox News anchor who Trump selected for defense secretary. Fetterman has not ruled out supporting him — or any of Trump’s other picks.

“My commitment, and I think I’m doing the job, is I’m going to sit down and have a conversation,” Fetterman said. “To me, it would be distressing if, if he is confirmed, if the Democrats are going to turn our back collectively to the leader of the defense. I mean, that’s astonishing and that’s dangerous.”

Along with Hegseth, Fetterman has met with Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel, Trump’s selection for FBI director.

Patel’s vow to take on Trump’s political enemies has drawn scrutiny. Asked by Karl whether he thinks Patel will use the FBI to do so, Fetterman said while he wasn’t able to go into detail due to the off-the-record nature of the meeting, “That’s never going to happen.”

“So you see yourself inclined to be open to supporting these controversial nominees?” Karl asked.

“Potentially,” Fetterman replied. “But nobody can accuse me of just saying I had a closed mind, or I just said no because Trump picked this person, or whatever.”

Fetterman has said he will vote to confirm Rep. Elise Stefanik as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He said he will also back Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state.

“Rubio, for me, it’s like, he’s in the other party, obviously, but you know, there’s a lot of, the Venn [diagram] is closer, there’s a lot of overlap,” Fetterman said. “If I was, as a Democrat, looking to assemble a bipartisan cabinet, he’d be a solid choice.”

Asked what his message to Trump would be if the president-elect called him, Fetterman said he’d like to talk about opportunities where “we could work together.”

“I’d like to avoid the, you know, the cheap heat and some of the other stuff, but it’s going to be a kooky ride, I’m sure,” he said. “And you know, I try to be a committed, steady voice for Pennsylvania and to remember that we have to find as many wins in the middle of incredibly divisive times.”

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(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he plans on firing FBI director Christopher Wray and replacing him with longtime ally Kash Patel.

The appointment must be approved by the Senate.

Patel has been a staunch supporter of Trump for years and served in his first administration under a number of roles. He has vocally defended Jan. 6 rioters.

Patel has said he would target journalists, former senior FBI and Department of Justice officials and turn the FBI into a museum for the “deep state” on Day 1.

“This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

The FBI and Patel did not immediately comment about Trump’s announcement. Trump can not make personnel changes to the FBI until he is sworn in.

Wray was appointed in 2017 after he fired Director James Comey, less than four years into his 10 year term. Trump claimed Comey “wasn’t doing a good job.”

Patel, 44, grew up in Long Island and earned a law degree from Pace University Law School. He first served as a public defender in Miami for nine years before moving to Washington D.C. in 2013 to work at Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Patel left the Justice Department in 2017 claiming frustration with the agency, especially with the handling of the Benghazi case.

He went on to lead the “Russia Gate” investigation for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, with a promise from Nunes that after the investigation he would help Patel get a job at the National Security Council in the White House.

As the self-described “lead investigator of the Russia Gate hoax,” Patel authored the so-called “Nunes memo” alleging that the FBI improperly eavesdropped on former Trump adviser Carter Page.

A major report by the Justice Department’s inspector general released in late 2019 found that the FBI was not impacted by political bias when it opened the investigation — though it outlined what it called “serious performance failures” on the part of agents as they vetted information from sources and sought surveillance warrants against Page.

In February 2019, Patel became Deputy Assistant to the President and “senior director for counterterrorism” on the White House’s National Security Council.

In February 2020, Patel took on a “temporary duty assignment” as deputy to the newly installed acting Director of National Intelligence. That November, after Trump lost the election, Patel was named chief of staff for the Defense Department, despite large critics pointing out that he was unqualifed for the role.

After Trump left the White House, Patel held a number of jobs including hosting shows on far right media outlets.

On a podcast two months ago, Patel said anyone involved in “Russiagate” should be stripped of their security clearances.

According to Patel, there is a “massive” list of such government officials, from the FBI and Justice Department to the CIA and U.S. military.

“They all still have clearances,” including those who left government for private sector jobs, so “everybody” should lose their clearances, Patel said.

Patel said he has personally “recommended” to Trump that the new administration also strip any security clearances still held by the 51 then-former intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan, who in October 2020, just weeks before the 2020 presidential election, signed onto a letter dismissing the public release of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop as part of a “Russian information operation.”

Patel has also come to the defense of January 6th rioters.

He’s raised money for Jan. 6 defendants and their families, including by promoting the “J6 Prison Choir,” featuring Jan. 6 defendants still in jail, and co-producing their fundraising song “Justice for All,” which Trump played at some of his campaign rallies. And Patel once suggested Jan. 6 was “a free speech movement.”

Patel became a part of the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

After news surfaced that the National Archives found some classified documents in boxes previously stored at Mar-a-Lago, Patel called the news “disinformation” and insisted he was there when Trump “declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves.”

Four weeks later, Trump named Patel as one of his official representatives to the National Archives, and Patel promised to “march down there,” “identify every single document that they blocked being declassified at the National Archives, and we are going to start putting that information out.”

Two months later, Patel’s claimed Trump declassifying documents were included in the FBI’s affidavit laying out why the FBI believed a broad search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was warranted. And Patel was subpoenaed to testify to the grand jury investigating the matter, but at first he refused to answer key questions.

He later returned to the grand jury and answered those questions only after being granted limited-use immunity. He has blasted the entire probe as unlawful overreach by a politically corrupted Justice Department.

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(WASHINGTON) — Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president known as a champion of international human rights both during and after his White House tenure and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his lifetime of dedication to that cause, has died at 100, ABC News has learned.

Carter’s death was also announced by the Carter Center on X, which posted “Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia.”

Carter, whose wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96, is survived by the couple’s children — John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip) and Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff); and their daughter, Amy Lynn.

Carter had endured several health challenges in recent years. In 2019, he underwent surgery after breaking his hip in a fall. Four years earlier, Carter was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma that had spread to his brain, though just months later, he announced that he no longer needed treatment due to a new type of cancer therapy he’d been receiving.

In February of 2023, the Carter Center, the organization founded by the former president to promote human rights worldwide, announced that Carter, with “the full support of his family and his medical team,” would begin receiving hospice care at home.

“After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the Carter Center said in a statement.

Carter attended the public memorial service for his late wife on Nov. 28, 2023, some nine months after the announcement that he’d entered hospice care. Frail and in a wheelchair, he didn’t speak at the memorial. Instead, his daughter, Amy, spoke on his behalf, reading from a letter Carter sent to Rosalynn some 75 years earlier, when he was away serving in the Navy.

“My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I have been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are,” the letter read, in part. “While I am away, I try to convince myself that you really are not, could not be, as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you, I fall in love with you all over again.”

Carter turned 100 years old on Oct. 1, 2024, an occasion that was celebrated with events both at the Carter Center in Atlanta, and in Carter’s Plains, Georgia hometown, though Carter himself was by that time too frail to attend them. Just 16 days later, the Carter Center announced that the former president had cast his ballot by mail in the presidential election. Carter’s grandson, Jason, previously told ABC News that his grandfather would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The son of a Georgia peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter first appeared on the national political scene in 1976 with a toothy grin and the simple words that would become his trademark: “My name is Jimmy Carter, and I’m running for president.”

Among his administration’s most notable achievements were the Camp David Accords, which Carter brokered between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978, and that led to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty the following year. Carter’s time in office also saw the first efforts toward developing a U.S. policy for energy independence.

However, the Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran for a total 444 days, beginning Nov. 4, 1979, battered Carter’s 1980 reelection campaign. He won just six states and the District of Columbia, for a total of 49 electoral votes compared to Republican challenger Ronald Reagan’s 489 electoral votes. Reagan also defeated Carter by more than eight million ballots in the popular vote.

Though political pundits of the era predicted he would be remembered as an average, one-term president, it’s often been observed that Carter’s reputation became more distinguished after he left the White House. He continued to champion international human rights and peace efforts, prompting Time magazine to declare in 1989, just eight years after the end of his presidency, that Carter “may be the best former president America has ever had.”

Carter “redefined the meaning and purpose of the modern ex-presidency,” Time wrote. “While Reagan peddles his time and talents to the highest bidder and Gerald Ford perfects his putt, Carter, like some jazzed superhero, circles the globe at 30,000 feet, seeking opportunities to Do Good.”

Carter was the third U.S. president, following Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 2002 after creating the Carter Center. Barack Obama became the fourth, in 2009. In selecting Carter for the honor, the Nobel Committee cited “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

Peanut farmer to politician

James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Georgia, on Oct. 1, 1924, to James Earl Carter Sr., a peanut farmer and businessman, and Lillian Gordy Carter, a registered nurse who famously became known as ‘Miss Lillian.’ Though he was the first American president born in a hospital, Carter was raised in a farmhouse without indoor plumbing or electricity.

Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946 and after spending seven years as an officer — he volunteered for submarine duty and was honorably discharged in 1953 — he returned to farming. He began his political career in 1962 when he was elected to the first of two terms as a state senator in Georgia. During his tenure, he promised to read every bill that came to a vote, even taking a speed-reading class to keep up.

After an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1966, Carter fell into a spiritual crisis, emerging as a born-again Christian. He later recalled this period as one that changed his life dramatically, saying on the campaign trail: “Since then, I’ve had an inner peace and inner conviction and assurance that transformed my life for the better.”

Armed with this renewed energy, Carter launched an aggressive gubernatorial campaign and won the office in 1970.

Carter announced his bid for the presidency in December 1974 as his term as governor of Georgia was ending. A relative unknown, Carter won early victories in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He became more well-known as he steadily picked up delegates and beat back challenges from Rep. Morris ‘Mo’ Udall and U.S. Sen. Henry M. Jackson to secure the nomination.

The deeply religious candidate caused controversy late in his campaign when he told an interviewer from Playboy magazine, “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” While there was considerable criticism of that line and some of the other language Carter used in the interview, then-U.S. Rep. Andrew Young, whom Carter later appointed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Carter had “taken care of his religion problem once and for all.”

In November 1976, Carter defeated President Gerald Ford with 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 241 to become the 39th president.

Energy and economy

From the moment of his inauguration, Carter set a different tone in Washington. He avoided formality, taking the oath of office as ‘Jimmy’ instead of ‘James Earl’ Carter. He and the first lady even walked the mile-and-a-half inaugural parade route to the White House, rather than ride in a limousine.

Once in the Oval Office, Carter continued to bring a common touch to the presidency. He discontinued limousine service for presidential staff and even personally controlled the schedule of the White House tennis courts. As America weathered an energy crisis, Carter ordered his staff to turn the White House thermostats down in the winter and up in the summer, an energy-conscious practice he continued throughout his public career.

Focus on foreign policy

Carter struggled with domestic policies, fighting near-record highs in inflation and unemployment. Among his few victories was the establishment of the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, the latter in response to a continued energy shortage at the time.

Yet, while his domestic policies drew criticism, Carter found widespread success in foreign affairs. His administration attracted worldwide praise for distinguishing itself with a firm commitment to international human rights. Unlike his predecessors, Carter did not hesitate to criticize repressive right-wing regimes, saying in a 1977 commencement speech at Notre Dame, “Because we know that democracy works, we can reject the arguments of those rulers who deny human rights to their people.”

The Iran Hostage Crisis and the end of an administration

The largest stain on Carter’s foreign policy record came in November 1979, when a group of Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostage 52 American citizens. The militants demanded the return to Iran of the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from the U.S., where he was seeking medical attention, to stand trial.

Carter initially responded to the crisis by cutting diplomatic ties with Iran and blocking imports from the country. But when those measures failed, in April 1980, he ordered a secret armed rescue mission. It ended in disaster when several American helicopters malfunctioned and two aircraft collided, killing eight U.S. servicemen.

The hostages were freed Jan. 20, 1980, after 444 days in captivity. Perhaps as a final insult to Carter, Iran released the hostages just minutes after President Ronald Reagan had been sworn in. The new president sent Carter to Germany to greet the hostages.

Post-presidency legacy of public service

It wasn’t until years after he left the White House that many came to appreciate Carter. The former president embarked on a new phase of his career in public service, devoting his days to peacemaking and humanitarian efforts.

“He has made the post-presidency an institution that it had never been before,” said historian and author Steve Hochman, who helped establish the Carter Center. “He has been the most successful, most influential former president in American history.”

Among the organization’s many efforts, the Carter Center helped spearhead a successful campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasitic infection spread by drinking water contaminated with the worm’s larvae. In 1986, the disease affected 3.5 million people per year in 21 African countries, but by 2017, it had been reduced by 99.99%, to just 30 cases, according to the Carter Center.

Carter told ABC News in 2015 that his goal was to eradicate the disease entirely. “I think this is going to be a great achievement for — not for me — but for the people that have been afflicted and for the entire world to see diseases like this eradicated,” Carter said.

Carter also became the highest-profile supporter of Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit devoted to creating affordable housing. The Carters personally helped to build, renovate and repair 4,390 homes in 14 countries, according to the organization, which also called Carter and wife Rosalynn “two of the world’s most distinguished humanitarians.”

Guided by ‘deep Christian faith’

In addition to his extensive humanitarian work, Carter wrote more than two dozen books after leaving the White House, including “Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a President” (1982), “An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of My Rural Boyhood” (2001), “The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter” (2002), and “Faith: A Journey for All,” (2018). He also wrote poetry collections, as well as a fictional work about the Revolutionary War, titled “The Hornet’s Nest” (2003).

Carter referenced his Christian faith in the opening lines of his presidential inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1977, quoting the biblical Old Testament call “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

Carter’s faith and seemingly limitless energy manifested themselves as he taught at his church’s Sunday school in his Plains, Georgia hometown, where congregants lined up to attend. He was also known for walking the length of every plane on which he traveled – he always flew commercial – to shake hands with every passenger.

Yet behind Carter’s easygoing Southern manner was an iron will and inexhaustible determination. Biographer Douglas Brinkley recalled the 39th president as “a kind of military man” who never seemed to get tired.

“I mean,” Brinkley noted, “the Secret Service nickname for him was ‘Dasher’ because he could move around so much.”

Jimmy Carter’s commitment to the principles that defined his life was, again, expressed in his presidential inaugural address: “Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws fair, our natural beauty preserved,” Carter declared. “The powerful must not persecute the weak, and human dignity must be enhanced.”

ABC News’ Patricio Chile and Christopher Watson contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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