Behind the Bastards - Part Three: H.L. Hunt: The First Elon Musk

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Robert concludes the story of H.L. Hunt with his involvement in the death of John F. Kennedy and downfall as a polical force.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, part three of our series on H.L. Hunt this week. You are welcome. But you all should really thank Princess Weeks, our wonderful guest, for agreeing to sit in for a third episode in a marathon recording session. Thank you, Princess. You are braver than the troops. Thank you. I love to learn. And I honestly just genuinely love hearing about this stuff. This is so fascinating. Yeah. And terrible. Well, I love telling you about it. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.

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The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name.

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Because I discussed how he eventually moves them up to New York and has a guy marry them. What I did not note, because I went in and kind of added some stuff to the script once I realized that we're going to wind up getting three parts. And I found something I'd forgotten to add that was in my note stock, which is that. that apparently Frania, like when he marries her, she didn't even know his real first name. Like he marries her under a fake name. Oh my God. And one of the notes that Hindershot has in her book is that he probably, she probably first starts suspecting that something's weird when they have their first child, who is a girl,

just like his first child with Lida. And he names her Haroldina, which is not, he's not telling her his first name as Harold, but he names her after himself. and he tries to name her Harold Dina. God. Which is like crazy? No. But I'm not Harold.

That's not my name. Why are you so, why is that so important to you, man? That's really weird. Right? Like, be better. No risk. That's just bizarre. What an odd guy.

When she finds out, he tries to get her before he moves to New York. He tries to convince Frania to move to Utah and become a Mormon so that they can legally, quote unquote be bigamous. The rulebook never changes. The rule book never changes. He's like, listen, babe, we can get a farm. It's going to be good. What are we just Mormons?

Latter day, let's go. Not a legal then. First off, your first wife wouldn't be in Utah. Second, you're not Mormon. But I could be. And that's what matters. And yeah, it's when that stuff doesn't work that he like pays her to move to New York, right? And sets up trust for all the kids and finds someone to marry them, pretend to be the father.

Now, this is, he's just going to get and have kids with a third woman after this. And I think he's, I think actually this is after Lida dies that he has his third partner, but I'm not 100% sure. But they wind up having several kids. And he, like, lives with them later in life in Dallas. But he doesn't ever marry her, right? Because he's, you know, he learned his lesson. Yeah, I'm not letting no broads take my money this time.

At least I'm not going to be bigamously married. I'm sure he winds up. I think he does actually give them a lot of money. But yeah, he doesn't want to, he's not going to get big and miserably married again. So the need to seem fair and unbiased meant that smoot, you know, on his, is the facts for him. His former FBI man host has to act like he respects the liberal line on things. But he's always visibly more interested in the conservative arguments. Another good example of that would come from. One time smoot gets asked, should we continue to handle Korea as a limited police action? You know, this is right. at the start of the Korean War, or should we, you know, put more troops into it, right? Quote, Smoot first dryly answered in the affirmative, quoting Adelae Stevenson, Korea is the most remarkable effort the world has ever seen to make collective security work. In choosing to repel the first armed aggression of the communists, we chose to make bitter sacrifices today to save civilization tomorrow. On the negative side, Smoot drew a portrait of a hypothetical soldier named Joe.

It's cold up here in the winter, sometimes 30 below zero. If a boy cries his tears turn to ice, and then, then there is the enemy, always the enemy, and the kind of fight that man fought centuries ago, knives and fists, fingers groping for eyes, and teeth seeking a hot, a soft spot in the neck. Maybe Joe will die in the slit trench, and maybe he will live, his hands sour and gummy, with half-digested rice gruel, ripped out of the stomach of a bleeding bundle of rags and bones at his feet. Okay. So wild, wild little rant to go on there, man.

Yeah, I was just like, bro. Okay, man. You wanted to be a screenwriter. Yeah. Yeah. In one of my favorite lines from her book, Heather Hindershot writes, quote, Smoot could somehow snarl a feminine egghead in such a way that it sounded infinitely worse than son of a bitch. So he's like that kind of, you know, that kind of broadcaster.

Now, the Facts Forum made itself a nexus of support for Joseph McCarthy, as Hunt sought to convince regular Americans that communists needed to be rooted out. Joe guests on only one episode of the Facts Forum, but his researcher in future wife, Gene Kerr, worked for the Facts Forum as a staffer, Another early staffer was Robert E. Lee. Not that Robert E. Lee. I was going to say. Yeah.

This Robert E. Lee was a former FBI man who helped McCarthy compile his list of 205 communists in the State Department. And there's so many FBI guys who work for the facts for him that there's like a joke in the FBI that like that's the retirement plan is working for this fucking right wing billionaire. So things are going well. He's using the facts for him to support his buddy. McCarthy, but then Tail Gunner Joe makes the mistake of picking on the Army. And the 1954 Army McCarthy hearings are a disaster for the man and for the broader cause of being visibly crazy as an anti-communist activist. The hearings were broadcast on television, and while only ABC and the Dumont Network broadcast

the hearings in full because they're 36 days long, the bigger networks, CBS and NBC, broadcast excerpts. And this actually, the fact that these networks, because there's money in advertising now, they don't want to run just 36 days of congressional hearings. It's a huge waste of money. But because they decide to take excerpts and just run clips from it, this is actually the way the media covers the McCarthy hearings is one of the first cases of soundbite journalism,

right? And soundbite journalism in a positive way, where previously the reporting on this would have just been kind of dull articles about another series of hearings about communism in the U.S. that most Americans wouldn't have known there was anything to be upset by. Because these journalists are looking for like, well, what are the craziest things McCarthy's saying? What are the wildest moments from this? It makes it impossible to ignore. And they're playing this over and over again that like, no, this is actually a real problem, right? Like, this guy is out of his mind and is just attacking people for no reason. Like, that really, the fact, how this gets reported really

helps to make that case. Because these networks are looking for like the most embarrassing and shocking moments and clipping them out and playing them over and over again. In What's Fair on the Air, Hindershot writes, Joseph Welch's famous rhetorical question, Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last, was not only televised live by both ABC and Dumont on day 30 of the hearings, but also repeated dozens of times on radio and TV that night. Following McCarthy's attack on General George C. Marshall, former president Harry S. Truman, appeared on Edward R. Murrow's See It Now, and expressed his own feelings about McCarthy. The man who made that attack isn't fit to shine General Marshall's shoes.

Damn. Yeah. It's a pretty sick burn, actually. He meant it. No, that's so interesting, though, because it's like, I think when we were growing up and we learned about this era of McCarthyism, it seems so, like, inherently absurd. And you're just thinking, like, how could that ever happen? Like, isn't it just so obvious?

And then you're here, and you're like, well, Yeah. People don't pay attention to the longer thing. They need the sound bites, sadly. Yeah, they need the sound bites, right. And there's actually some benefits to that. It's not all downsides. Now, one of the things this does, the fact that this is kind of destroys McCarthy,

it makes Hunt furious. And it makes him furious because he becomes convinced this evidence of the liberal media and the pernicious left-wing bias within the media, right? It's a communist organ. You know? And this is kind of where the liberal media as a conservative bugbear starts, right? Not just with Hunt, but it starts as a result in a big way. Like, it's majorly supercharged by the reaction to the McCarthy hearings.

And Hunt is one of the people leading the charge in attacking the liberal media, right? And for H.L. Hunt, one of the things I think is really important to point out. Today, if you listen to like what Barry Weiss and like the free fucking press people say, they all talk about. Edward R. Murrow, too, was like, we need to get back to a time when newsmen weren't political. And, you know, they just were telling people the truth. And they were trusted. And in those days, you know, Americans knew that they could rely on their, you know, the people giving them the news to not just be in it for personal political gain. It wasn't just some like wokenest bullshit. If Edward R. Murrow were reporting the day, they would call him woke. And I know that because they called him woke in the 50s. Like H.L. Hunt and called him a woke leftist communist infiltrator. And they called him.

called him it because he was deliberately and aggressively multicultural, right? To quote from Hinder Schott's article, Murrow was fiercely patriotic. His America was an inclusive, democratic place in which citizens rationally discussed their problems. When Murrow took See It Now's cameras to Korea for Christmas in 1952, he celebrated the sacrifices of the troops. Murrow also made a point of picturing an integrated platoon that included not only whites and blacks, but also a Chinese American and a Korean American, a gesture that surely rubbed some

viewers the wrong way, right? And fucking, they attack, like, because the newsletter for lifelines isn't subject to the fairness doctrine, they're able to be really political. And in that newsletter, Hunt calls him Chow in Kronkite and calls Dan Rather, Ho Chi rather, right? Again, they are calling these guys fucking communists back then. too. Like Walter Cronkite was never seen as a totally unbiased and fair man by conservatives. They hated him. Just really want to make that point as clearly as I can.

It's so exhausting because, and they keep telling us that these are the people that we can reach. We just got to give them just give them a little bit of more information. It's like they have the information. They don't like it. They don't want it. No. They thought Edward R. Murrow was a communist because he pointed out that there were fucking Chinese people in the U.S. Army, right? Like... And had been so for ages. Yeah.

Some Chinese families have been here longer than some of these other than Trump's family. These people have always hated this kind of shit, right? Always hated the idea that we're multicultural country and anyone who celebrates it, even if they're celebrating it in the context of supporting the Korean War, right? He gets called a communist. And supporting the troops. And like... Yeah, and supporting the troops.

Right. Doesn't matter. No, communism. So this, the fact that fucking Hunt goes so crazy after Murrow and gets so pissed about the reaction to the McCarthy hearings gets him in trouble. Democratic congressmen start being like, wait a second, he's getting like public funding basically for making nonpartisan media and this is what they're calling nonpartisan. Congressman, when congressman points out that Hunt's tied to Joseph McCarthy and there's complaints that the facts form is benefiting from its tax-free status despite being very biased. and then start being investigations. Lee, his former staffer, was made FCC commissioner in 1954, which further upset Democrats,

who were like, well, now his guy is controlling the FCC, so of course he won't get attacked. Now, what's weird is Lee's actually a really fair-minded FCC commissioner. He does a lot of stuff that pisses off the right. He's actually, like, surprisingly good at the job, I think. And Hindershot proposes that the whole Brouhaha does more to make Hunt famous as a right-wing crank than it does to actually help his shows, right? Right, that like the fact that he's tied to Lee and the fact that like he's like there's this uproar about it, he becomes known as being like a crank. Like it does not spread.

He doesn't make his ideas more popular. Now, past this point, because of how many people get pissed off about this, Hunt becomes increasingly famous, right? He's now someone who is known and talked about for his political activism and he does not like this. Oh, he doesn't. Right. No, because he's got stage fright, right? He hates putting himself out there, right? In fact, as a young man, his stage fright is so bad that he once swallows a bunch of tobacco to make himself sick to get out of giving a speech when he's like a younger businessman.

So the fact that, like, the eyes of America are now on him and he's being accused of partisan instigation fucks hunt up. And in 1956, he shuts down the facts for him to avoid controversy. Not because he thinks he's done anything wrong, because he just doesn't like being under the gun like that. that, right? Like, he's just anxious. What a pussy. So he, yeah, he's a wuss. He does launch immediately another series called Answers for American. This actually launched, I think, a little before the facts form quits. It's a public service program that's broadcast on 22 TV stations and 360 radio stations. Broadcast live, this was a half-hour panel discussion on ABC that featured a mix of liberals and conservatives. There's your liberal panel and your conservative panel. Repping

the left was former congressman George Combs and New York, you professor Charles Hodges, opposed to them were William F. Buckley and a rotating guest. Now, if you don't know William F. Buckley, he is like the proto bin Shapiro. He's an essayist and a public debater who gets really famous going on TV to debate politely liberals, right, about the issues of the day, right? That's how he's known. And he is still to this day, like liberal, like centrist, liberal Democrats. Buckley is like the ideal of the conservative intellectual. He's one of the good ones, right? He's a, he was not.

But he's like respectable. Like, this is how you should do it. Look at the respect he always showed the people he was debating alongside. Their nostalgia goggles for him is always just like, we used to be able to have these conversations in peace. Yeah. And by the way, his son is like a major pro-Rodysia activist. Like these, not polite ever.

But yeah, like that's his space in the American mind. Right. Now, you can already see in the way the show is set up how some of the bias creeps in. This is supposed to be two liberals and two conservatives seems non-biased. But why is one of the conservatives always a rotating guest? Is it maybe because that makes the conservative seem more dynamic and the liberals seem like it's just these two old hokey college professor types, right? Right. Buckley also is a, he's a great performer. William F. Buckley is one of the first media trained guys who exists, right?

and the liberals that Hunt picks are not super charismatic figures, as Hindershot writes. Combs did not fare well under the harsh studio lights, and although most of the participants chain-smoked, it was only Combs to whom the smoke seemed to cling in a thick film.

In his three-piece suit, with carnation bout and air, he effused a stereotypical East Coast liberal establishment persona. Professor Hodges was articulate, but often came across as a cartoonish liberal intellectual, or worse, an old windbag.

Buckley spoke an easily digestible conservative soundbites, such as we would rather die than be enslaved by communism. Right? Again, you can see the evolution, how this is even a little more disguised as non-biased while still pushing a very clear ideological line. And this is such a good idea. Fox News is going to rip this basic model off decades later for their hit show Hannity and Colmes.

Oh, yeah. The same basic premise applies. The aesthetic of debate, but with the certainty that one side is going to win, and the enemy's always going to look like a big stupid dope. And you also make sure that the conservative looks, you know, like young and put together while the liberal looks like, you know, like a nerd, right? I've got a photo of Hannity and Combs for the viewers, but like Sean Hannity at the start of that full head of hair, you know, younger guy in Combs, halving, you know, kind of looks like

a nerd. He looks like George Costanza there. Right. Wow. So in the age of social media, this idea reached its final. form with guys like Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and I forget the name of the change my mind guy who would go on the college campuses with the, you know, whatever change. Oh, the one with the failed marriage. Yeah, I forget his fucking. Yeah, but they all got failed marriages except for, well, no, I guess not. I guess they don't all have failed marriages. Just that guy. I forget his name, but then I don't care to remember it. Um, but yeah, and you, and in this, instead of like, you don't even have like the boring hokey professors now, you have like, the liberals and left are represented by like this carousel of college kids that you pick out.

because they clearly don't have media training and they're not like good at debating with a professional broadcaster on television, right? It's like the more septum piercing is the better speaking as a septum piercing effort. Yeah, are they a little high? Good, get them in here. Yeah.

You know who else is a little high? The sponsors that support this podcast, you know? Every single one thing we guarantee is that every advertiser on this show just, the second I said just, just sparked up a fat blunt. Every single one of them, especially the Washington State Highway Patrol. Facts.

If you hear that ad, you know the whole Washington State Highway Patrol is blazing a bone right now. No notes. Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium Outlets and Mills. You can get points at scores of stores, access to exclusive offers and exciting surprises. You've got an extra day off, so make it pay off. with the best deals from brands you love all in one place. It's a summer kickoff thing.

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Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny. The French Open is one of the toughest tests in tennis, and I know firsthand because I competed there myself.

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Now, this is not, this time he's not going to try to get the tax breaks by being balanced, right? He decides that's not worth, you know, the trouble. So I'm not going to claim that we're not, we don't have like a line. Instead, in order to avoid getting in trouble, I'm not going to reference political parties or political tendencies at all. I'm not going to say the Democrats or the left. I'm not going to say Republicans or the right or conservatism. Instead, I'm going to have, I'm going to have this fucking preacher guy come up here, the Reverend Wayne Poucher, who was, if you want to know who this guy's background, he was the former campaign manager for Strom Thurman's successful 1954 campaign. Well, that generation of conservative.

Yeah. So Poucher's first, just kind of less aggressive than Smoot was, right? He's, and he speaks more about religion and stuff. He's not talking about the left being evil. Instead, he talks about everyone, instead of referring to them, like, by their political terms, he calls them the mistaken. And he calls the good guys, the constructive people, right? And so he gets away from these, like, fairness standards by not talking about the left

and the right, but talking about the mistaken and the constructive. And he speaks more on like, parochers. about right and wrong. And it's very clear that he's talking about politics, but he's not using political terms. So it kind of slips by, right? So annoying. And in 19, yeah, it's really annoying.

Now, Hunt does an interview with Playboy in 1966 where he talks about why he's not using, why this lifeline doesn't use the term conservative and why he doesn't like using that as propaganda anymore. And he says, conservative is an unfortunate word. It denotes mossback, reactionary, an old foggyism, right? So I don't want to seem like an old. Fogie. So I'm just going to talk about the mistaken and the constructive people, right? Now, I think this is a mixed success. This show is never wildly popular for like legitimate

reasons. A lot of people listen because sometimes it's the only thing on the air in a lot of areas, right? So it gets listeners from that, but it's kind of boring. It sounds much wild. It sounds a lot more boring. Smooth was at least exciting. He was aggressive, right? This dude, Poucher is like boring and he mostly talks about God and he ends every broadcast with don't forget to pray. He makes that his tagline because that means Hunt can claim an exemption on the basis of running a religious organization for tax purposes, right? That'll know. Good shit.

Good shit. By all accounts, Lifeline was just as conservative as the facts for him, but a lot more boring because Hunt is scared of pissing people off. Now, he's also making a lot of other propaganda. He is, by dollar amount, the number one producer of right-wing propaganda in, like, the 50s through the 60s. He is publishing newspapers, too, and magazines, including the newspaper, the magazine of Human Events, which goes on to be pretty popular. He has a regular column that he sells to a bunch of different newspapers that he writes called Hunt for Truth. Oh.

You get it? I hate that that's a good name. I mean, I wouldn't watch it, but I know someone's dad. Yeah. So the nation summarized. the state of his propaganda operation in 1964, this way. H.L. Hunt, in addition to being very probably the richest man in America, is very probably the country's most powerful propagandist for the extreme right.

The main vehicle for his brand of conservatism today is Lifeline, a radio program originating in Washington, D.C., and daily reaching an estimated audience of 5 million persons in 45 states. It has heard over 331 stations, among which are 25% of the nation's clear channel outlet. That's a lot, just because, again, There's not much else to put on there. And this is something the conservatives will learn from a lot of where we are right now politically is the result of the fact that for years, like 20-some years, liberals kind of ignored talk radio

for the most part. There were a couple attempts to get into it. But it was and it was just assumed that like, well, the fact, like more people listen and trust like the news and, you know, magazines and newspapers and TV news and, you know, all of that is more liberal than it. is conservative and like talk radio was out there being the only thing in tens of millions of Americans ears for hours as they're commuting driving all across the country i grew up i i lost listened to so many hundreds hours of michael savage and rush limba all these guys and it made

a really solid core people wonder like why is there this core of like 30 percent of the country that will never reconsider supporting trump oh talk radio is a big part of why yeah and hunt isn't good he doesn't figure quite out how to make it work that way. But he's the first guy who really realizes why talk radio is valuable. And everything that comes after is at least influenced by that. And it also shows how the left is always really so supportive of institutions and like the power of institutions that they just won't even make a solid attempt because like it was how many years into Joe Rogan. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That like liberals were like, oh, we should have a Joe. Rogan thing. It's like a podcasting thing or YouTube and then Twitch. It's like, oh, we should, we should finally have someone in this space. And it's like, yeah, if only you invested in stuff. You can influence people's politics by making them listen to a crazy guy for hours. Maybe you should have your own crazy asshole that people like to listen to. I don't know. Or at least someone interesting. Not having that guy didn't work. I'm not a big, we need a Joe Rogan of for fucking the Democratic Party. Right. It just doesn't work that way. You're never going to succeed doing that.

If you're just like, let's make our own Democratic joke, you're always going to fail if that's how you think about it. But what you do need is like fucking people who are crazy popular that a lot of folks listen to who are talking about politics in a way that is like usable to you. And when you see people like that instead of discarding them and like hating them and running away from them, you should try to find ways like the smart strategies to try to find ways to benefit from that and to like make them make that. might make that useful to you as opposed to pretending nobody cares about this stuff and they're just assholes talking on the internet they are just assholes talking on the internet but unfortunately it matters right exactly i say as an asshole talking on the internet hey i do it that's my full-time job on youtube it's like i i definitely think it's so frustrating because like the right what it is able to do with having so much young talent is really have like a lot of hypervisibility in those

spaces. Whereas like, you know, you can only be academic for so long in a time period where like no one wants to read. Right. Exactly. So the Lifeline Advisory Board included the CEO of Sears, Robert Wood, and John Wayne, but it also hosted several ministers. Yeah, John Wayne, baby, by helping to shape the future a talk radio. God. The religious right was not a thing yet in an organized political way. That doesn't start until like the start of the 70s. No abortion yet. I mean, yeah, that's not really a massive.

Again, Hunt is going to be one of the people who helps push that, even though he is not really religious and doesn't really care about that stuff. He is, again, one of the earlier conservatives to see, oh, you know what, if I marry my feelings on tax policy and like stopping people from voting with all of these like weird religious conservative like bug bears, like abortion, I can make those people. support my crazy tax shit and use that as a political weapon too, right? Right. So again, Hunt foresees this.

He tries to use Christianity to spread his own anti-government message. His first wife, Lida, dies in the 50s. And after he gets with his, well, she's not really a wife, but he joins her Baptist church. His pastor, Reverend Chris Well, was a howling reactionary. In 1960, Hunt printed up an anti-Catholic sermon. Chris Well had written and handed it out at the DNC because JFK is running for president. It included this line. The election of a Catholic as president would mean the end of religious liberty in America.

Like, you know, the thing that happened. Hunt dedicated numerous columns to Kennedy, who he warned would sell the nation out to communists and or the pope. His real issue, what's very funny to me is that like, and or. And or. He doesn't hate JFK because of like, like, they're, you know, JFK is more of like a liberal progressive and he's very conservative. He hates JFK specifically.

And the Catholic stuff is like, he's using that because he thinks it'll be useful in getting other people to hate JFK. He hates JFK because JFK supports reviewing the oil depletion allowance and changing it to end that loophole that lets oil men not pay taxes, right? And there it is. I know you're going to say because he's so hot and he was like, I can't have that. But the oil thing makes sense. It's his only real political issue is the oil depletion allowance.

Everything else, all the cultural stuff that he talks about. I mean, he does believe in the anti-communism. But 90% of his propaganda is about keeping the oil depletion allowance. Everything else, like the working with the religious right, it's all to protect the oil depletion allowance because he fucking loves that shit. He's like, I can excuse communism, but I draw the line at my oil allowance. But me paying taxes? Yeah.

Per the nation, when Hunt talks at his country's troubles, he does not always sound funereal. But when he discusses the oil depletion allowance and possible legislative threats to it, his face takes on the stricken blankness of one who has just heard the last Trump. I'm in favor of depletion allowances for all natural resources, he said recently. But without the depletion allowance for oil, we are utterly ruined. Again, you're the richest man on earth. You would just have to pay taxes. But he's got so many kids.

And, like, support the roads and stuff. Yeah, he's got so many kids. This is why Hunt promptly had 200,000 reprints of Chriswell's sermon made and mailed out, after which he sat back and hoped to watch a wave of aroused Protestantism wash Kennedy out of the running. Right. Like that's at least as far as the nation is concerned, like that's what his goal is here. It doesn't work. Sadly, Nixon was on the docket. Yeah.

It really, what happens is this just pisses people off. There's a bunch of editorials about like this guy's trying to force Kennedy. out because he doesn't want to pay taxes. And it just kind of pisses every. And a lot of people get angry that like he's trying to make people hysteric about an anti-Catholic. He's trying to use, he's trying to like rustle a bunch of anti-Catholic bigotry so he doesn't have to pay taxes. Like people recognize this and call it out. And it pisses folks off. It draws the Senate's attention again too. They point out that like, hey, this flyer you distributed the DNC is actually a federal crime to distribute anonymous circulars after the start of a campaign to influence a political

campaign in this way. And you did not note at all who paid for this. You committed a crime. There's an uproar. There's Senate subcommittee investigation. Hunt just hides. Like he panics and he basically goes on the lamb a little bit. And he just pretends he can't make the meeting. Yeah, he's like hiding. So Chriswell has to take it on the chin in the Senate subcommittee meeting and like actually talk to Congress. And Chriswell like pretends he doesn't know anything about Hunt's money and stuff. When Hunt finally surfaced again, he admits the he paid for the leaflet, but he's like, oh, I didn't do it to hurt LBJFK. I did it to help LBJ's campaign because I'm really pro-LBJ.

Texas, baby. That's all. That's the only reason I did it. He also claimed that I didn't run away to avoid being investigated. I ran away because I had a book to write for the good of the nation. Like I come up with that idea of those book that's really going to change everything. So I was just like writing. I just didn't, I couldn't make it to Congress.

Sorry about that guys. Now, he did write a book. The 48 Laws of Cow. Yeah, 48. No, it's even weirder. It's even sillier. So in 1960, he publishes his first novel, Alpaca, which is a work of right-wing utopian fiction. The book took place in an ideal society that followed Hunt's plan for a wealth-based voting system. Hendershot describes, in his perfect world, political discussion could only take place via the printed word. Discussing politics on radio and TV or speechmaking before an audience of more than 200 people was outlawed as inflammatory. It was why, widely reported that Hunt had hired someone to write the romantic parts of alpaca, as he was only interested in the politics. When the book breaks from political exegesis, we find our right-wing lovers spouting inane dialogue such as,

I am putty in your hands. I need to read this book, one of these days. Oh, my God. Yeah, and there's like a bunch of cool stuff in there. The book was published by H.L. Hunt publishing, a company who created to publish phone books. So just as like a side business, he has a phone book. company that he has published his shitty novel?

That writer for that nation piece notes that by the mid-60s, a lot of Dallas newsmen had come to believe that Hunt had based the protagonist of his shitty novel on an idealized version of himself. And here's one relevant line from the novel. Huge penis. And this is about the protagonist. He had burning convictions, but there were few in alpaca, he told himself, who could agree with him, right?

Like, he's this iconoclast, genius rebel, and other people just don't see how brilliant he is, you know? It's very much Hunt thinking of about himself. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to write someone who's so smart. Yeah, the smartest man alive. The article goes on to describe the model constitution that Hunt presents in his novel. Quote, a constitution that gives each person a quota of votes based primarily on how much he pays in taxes. There are other ways of getting votes under the Hunt plan.

If you are old enough to draw retirement pay but refuse to accept it, you get two extra votes. If you are a government worker and refuse to accept more than 50% of your pay, you get one extra vote. On the other hand, anyone receiving welfare or sick pay from the government gets no vote at all. Oh, okay.

Uh-huh. No blacks, no pores. No, no. No, just rich guys get a lot of votes. That's crazy. Now, a book reviewer interviewing Hunt says to him after reading his book, it's a kind of fascist democracy,

if you get what I mean. And Hunt later in the interview says, you're the only one who understood what I was getting at. I think it's a bit. in reference to another line, but it's very telling. He's like, yeah, kind of. So Hunt sends copies of his stupid book to every sitting congressman,

along with a number of foreign heads of state, and quote, many colleges. He brags that he has a sequel planned, which would present an even better constitution, as long as he could just get a couple of weeks to finish it. And he never publishes this book, but the working title was Your Topia. Not Alpacett, too? He does eventually do a sequel to Alpaca, but he doesn't publish Yortopia. Mm. Terrible.

Great stuff. Great. Very 60s book title. You have your own publishing house and you still can't finish a second novel. No, no, man. It's hard. Look, hey, I'm working on that one myself. It's tough.

You know what else is hard? It's hard for me when I see people not giving the proper amount of respect and love to the products and services that support this podcast. Why don't we all just think about them and how nice they are and also listen to their ads for a second? Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium Outlets and Mills. You can get points at scores of stores, access to exclusive offers and exciting surprises. You've got an extra day off, so make it payoff with the best deals from brands you love all in one place.

It's a summer kickoff thing. Join today at Simonplus.com. Rewards program terms apply. See Simonplus.com for details. Canadian women are looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of, their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests

from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open.

Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio. app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Cuba me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. The French Open is one of the toughest tests in tennis, and I know firsthand because I competed there myself.

I'm Renee Stubbs, and on the Renee Stubbs Tennis podcast, I'm breaking down everything happening at Roland Garris, every match, every upset, and what it really takes to win on clay. Genshin win. I mean, she went down in three. to Rabakina, but I'm delighted. She's an outsider to win the French for me. And she likes Clay.

Listen, Lena Rubakina is arguably the best player in the world right now. And I actually can win on any surface. Because if she's serving, well, good luck. Consider this your court side seat to the French Open. Listen to the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. We're back. So one of Hunt's dearest beliefs is that letters to the editor are the part of the paper that people read most often.

But like people will just skim over the articles. They want to read letters to the editor because people have a natural curiosity over what other ordinary people have to say. That's H.L. Hunt's like most deeply held belief. And he's not an ordinary person. But he also thinks that if you write a letter to the editor, people assume you are. and so for most of his public life, he's writing like sometimes more than a dozen letters to the editor per day. And he has a small army of secretaries who will mimeograph them and will mail them to hundreds of newspapers.

So he just has like a rant about politics or fucking taxes or kids these days. And he'll write a letter to the editor and he'll send it to every newspaper he can think of or his secretaries can think of to get it printed. Right? I'm sometimes I'm so glad I don't have money because this is like the impulse. of like me writing to like teen vogue be like you don't understand the sexiest man in america is not blake shelton it is yeah dear teen vogue there are too many states please eliminate three i am not a crank exactly hunt is that guy i'm a hip kid yeah yeah i'm cool he thinks that like this will this will really get americans trick him into believing my politics they'll just

read all these letters to the editor and assume i'm a normal guy and they won't be able to they won't be able to catch it. Now, this leads me to a very funny quote from Heather Hendersonshot's book, quote, respectable businessman gave money to the causes in which they believed. Hunt wouldn't even give to local Dallas charities, much less political campaigns. Asked to contribute to diabetes research, Hunt responded, as summarized in an FBI memo, that society would be better off if persons who were permanently disabled or physically incapacitated and unable to financially care for themselves were let to die rather than to be a burden on society. What?

Great. Okay. Wow. Yeah. He loved Buck v. Bell. He was like, I'm going to endorse that. He sure did. Yeah.

Yeah. He's like, like, just a, just the kind of piece of shit you would imagine, like, perfectly so. Now, I will say this is all frustrating. Like, the fact that he's trying to brute force his horrible genocidal politics into the world is disgusting. And there's like, there's so many good quotes. Like one of the nation, he's like, I'm slow, but I'm the best writer I know. Like he's certain about that. Even though, again, he's not, he's not great, right?

Like, he's not a particularly good writer. And editors of these newspapers that he's trying to, like, get letters to kind of call him on his bullshit. One Texas editor told the nation, Hunt earns in one hour about $20,000 to $12,000. That's what I earn in a year. He probably spends an hour dictating each letter that comes in here. I like to cut them in half because that means I'm putting about $5,000 of hunt money in the waste basket. Bars. I love that.

Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. So in 1959, Hunt started a health food and supplement business. Ah, you got it. If you're a right wing, he's like the first of these, though. You know? He really is a trailblazer.

All these bitches are his sons, like, truly. What's interesting is he invents, I didn't realize this, he invents the Alex Jones strategy where he has his right-wing propaganda station and he invents a supplement in health food business and it's the only advertiser on his radio show and TV shows. So it exists to sell the products, right? Right. So the sole advertiser of Lifeline is his health products business. And his favorite product is gastro magic, an anti-gas pill that he was so proud of.

His office is described by that the nation author is basically empty, but there's a plaque in it made with the letter from a happy customer being like, thank you for making these gas pills. It's like the only decoration he has. He's like, this is my true pride and joy, not one of my 15 kids. My true pride and joy, not any of my 15 kids. Fuck those kids. This is my only child. Yeah. It's so, I want to quote from Heather again, because she's got a line about this. One politician was lured to his office expecting a contribution, but left only with an ample supply of Hunt's gastromagic and digestion pills.

Another, George Herbert Walker Bush, met with Hunt in 1962, hoping for a contribution to his congressional campaign. His heart must have skipped a beat at the end of the meeting when Hunt discreetly gave him a bulging an envelope. It was filled with lifeline pamphlets. That's funny. Incredible. It's so funny. Oh, my God, that's such a control. He's such a weird crank about his health food business, which again, he's crazy rich from oil.

This is not a meaningful amount of money, but it's clearly his passion. Like, one of the things he's famous for is he drives himself to work, even when he's the richest man alive. And he's covered his car in bumper stickers advertising Lifeline and, like, his gastro magic pills. Like a crazy man. And he'll, he's trying, because he's like, this will advertise it. People will buy it if they see it on my car. Yeah. The nation notes,

sometimes he circles the block an extra time before parking to let Dallas pedestrians have one more look. Oh, my God. And he's like making his employees put shit on their cars. He's like, you got to help the business. He's his own best marketing. These gas pills are.

He's acting like he isn't a rich guy. He's like hustling like a poor guy. It's so funny. It's giving I'm selling my mixtape out of my trunk. Click. What are we doing, babe? Right. He's acting like a broke dude who gets to do an MLM. It's really funny. And he's the richest man alive. Like, he would be a modern day, like, hey, girlie, sending you a DM.

He's a hun in the feet. Are you feeling a little gassy right now? Don't worry, guys. I got you. I got you. I have this really great supplement. You would only have to subscribe. Like, oh, I know we haven't talked since high school, but literally. And he is always, when he's meeting with people weirdly who always want his money, he'll just start going on these rants about his different products. One attorney who worked with him, he says that like as soon as Hunt walks in the room,

he runs up and shakes his hand and says very quickly, Hello, I am H.L. Hunt, the world's richest man. And these are gastro magic, which I make so they must be good. Try some. It's just like crazy person stuff. Dude. Too many kids. One of Hunt's kind of downfall moments is that, as I noted, he doesn't like Kennedy, right?

He lifeline attacks him. He attacks him in his column hunt for the truth. And he's like trying to drum up like religious hatred to attack him, right? He's also supporting Barry Goldwater. You know, he loves Barry Goldwater. She's just so strange. So unique. As you all know, on November 22nd, 1963, Bernard Montgomery Sanders shot President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

in Dallas, Texas, right? And this happens to happen, like, right after he'd run, like, a column and episodes of Lifeline talking about, like, the need of the Second Amendment so that, like, people could kill government leaders who try to oppress them. So he's just put this out, and then Kennedy gets shot. And the FBI questions him and members of his family. He's like, if you go into that, like, there's a lot of conspiracies that put Hunt at the center of like the conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

Cool. There's a couple of weird things in there. For one thing, the guy who kills Oswald, Jack Ruby, had Hunt's name and his address book. Oh my God. Although Ruby doesn't seem to have liked Hunt

because Ruby was a real far right crank and Hunt is like just in it for his own weird right wing beliefs. So I don't think Ruby doesn't actually like him very much because he's not a team player basically. So there's a lot of allegations, but the family received so many death threats from these, in fact, that, like, the FBI gives them, like, a security detail at one point

because people are so convinced he's involved. He gets weirder and crazier as he ages. His Dallas home, I think it's in White Rock Lake, is a replica of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate that's five times as big. Like, that's his house. Oh, my God, bro. Daddy issues up the butt. The mother of all daddy issues.

And he's got this fucking huge crazy rich man house with like a billboard that he puts on his front lawn for Lifeline. And he has this up in his fancy neighborhood until the neighbors complain, at which point he replaces it with a crude hand-painted sign, advertising Lifeline. Oh, that's the strangest vibes. Like he's a, like he's selling lemonade. Yeah. Now, despite putting more money into right-wing media than anyone, Hunt's influence falls rapidly in the late 60s from its peak in the mid-50s, partly because he refuses to work or cooperate with anyone and has no interest in being

part of the conservative movement as such. He wants conservatives to agree with him. Because he tries to be a kingmaker. He fancies himself one, and he becomes a major backer of Barry Goldwater. And when Goldwater is just that has the shit kicked out of him in 1964, One reason why, according to the media, because there's a bunch of articles about like why didn't Goldwater do better. And one reason that's posited by a lot of pundits is that H.L. Hunt kind of poisoned the campaign, right? Not just Hunt because the John Birch Society is also behind Goldwater and people don't like them.

But it gets to the point where according to Heather Hinder shot, quote, even the rumor of an association with Hunt could be damning for a candidate, especially after Hunt was investigated in connection with the Kennedy assassination. And yeah, like it's, it's, you know, good stuff. His sons are kind of involved in his downfall as a political influence or two. His son, Bunker Hunt, had financed a John Birch Society newsletter that had attacked Kennedy in really vicious terms and was made a lot of people suspicious. And then one of Jack Ruby's friends, the reason why Ruby had Hunt's name is that he had approached Lamar Hunt to try to get a job in a bowl. Alley that Hunt owned. So his fail sons are part of why he stops becoming as influential. His attempts to co-opt Christianity for his own ends are also way too clumsy to work very well.

His daughter June, who later becomes like an influential Christian media figure, even attacks him for his hypocrisy and constant cheating. As the story goes, Hunt kind of snaps back at her, I'm not Christian. I don't have to go by Christian ethics. and then he sends her ass to boarding school. When his other daughter, Swanee, makes similar complaints about his womanizing. He tells her, King Solomon had 700 wives, and that's in the Bible. Wow.

So great guy, great parent. Good job. As the 70s dawn, hunts in his 80s. He continues to wear the same blue suit every day, but he only dry cleans the pants to save money. So eventually the top and bottom are totally different colors. What? Such a freak. He doesn't have to live like this, literally.

No, man, no, you really don't. Such an odd guy. So his son Hassi, who we talked about, never recovers from that mental break. He's ill. And Hunt keeps his, he's the only of his children that Hunt has a picture of in his office. I think because he feels really bad about this. And he spends a lot of his life desperately but incompetently trying to help Hassi to get better. The nation writes,

Hunt had sought various magic cures for the boy. One day, the answer was Valium. The next, prostitutes. Finally, a lobotomy took the edge off of Hasse's violent fits, but just a bit. So, just a great dad. Just so good. Just a great dad. That triple threat.

Triple threat father. He develops increasingly strange health beliefs as he aged and became an almost religious advocate of creeping. Sophie's going to show you a picture of this because anytime anyone asked him, He would get down to demonstrate this exercise technique that he's fallen in love with. It's basically a crab walk. He gets down on his knees and his hands and knees and just like walks across the ground. He fucking, and there's like, there's like a weird kind of like yoget component to it.

Like he must have found this in some book or another, but he is obsessed with creeping. The New York Times quotes him as saying, creeping is probably the second best exercise in the world next to swimming. It's perfect. Okay. All right. He's a creeper. He's a super creeper.

Yeah. Not surprising. He loves creeping. He lives in his last years with his second family in that Mount Vernon home or third family, I think, actually. And he spends a lot of time promoting health foods. He's got like a vegetable garden on his property and he eats mainly these along with. He has like a very weird diet. He eats a lot of just like bullion cubes, I think, just like straight, like flavor.

He's so weird. He's a freak. He's a weirdo. Cool guy. Now, as I noted, his sons, especially Nelson Bunker Hunt, our real strong anti-communist. Bunker is going to be a big George Wallace supporter and a fascist. Like, he's a real hardcore segregationist fascist, giant piece of shit. Hunt also supports Governor Wallace's campaign, but he dies on November 29th, 19th.

At the time of his death, his estate is valued at $2 billion, which is split between his two surviving ex-wives, 15 children, and many grandchildren. There are years of probate battles, right? I'm sure there were. I'm sure. As a note about his shitty-ass sons, you should know, one of his sons, Lamar Hunt, founds the AFL, the American Football League. And he's a major figure in professional tennis and soccer in the U.S. So that's where the AFL comes. And I want to quote from Hendershots article one last time,

Herbert and Bunker Hunt had been caught attempting to corner the world's silver market. Could the crooks really have thought that no one would notice an ongoing attempt to purchase all the silver in the world? They were also entangled in a wiretapping caper. It's wiretapping over like their dad's, like, this is as a result of like the fight over like his will in probate. Wow. And yeah, Bunker is a hugely successful oil man. He becomes a major John Birch donors with his oil money. Classic.

He helped, like, his company finds oil deposits in Libya. And I think Pakistan, I think they're also involved in Saudi Arabia. Like, they are a lot of, like, Arab oil and Middle Eastern oil. Like, his company is involved in, like, getting the rights to and selling. He also gives a quarter of a million dollars in cash in a briefcase to George Wallace as a rainy day fund. And he tries to bribe Curtis LeMay to be. become Wallace's running mate, or he puts up like a trust fund to convince LaMay to become Wallace's running mate.

So he just loves all of the worst fascist. Bunker Hunt, giant piece of shit. Wow. So yeah, that's the end of Hunt's life. One of his long, his probably his biggest ongoing contributions to popular culture is that Bunker Hunt is such a giant famous piece of shit for all of his criminal activity and weird business activity and oil money, that he's, he, he, inspires the show Dallas.

Ooh, I love Dallas. Is based off of the hunts. Yes. JR is based off of bunker hunt. Oh, damn. Like heavily based off of bunker hunt, right? In part because he gets in trouble for committing a bunch of crimes, right? Yeah.

So, at least we get to show Dallas, you know? I'll take it. Who shot J.R. was very big for our parents. Yeah. Yeah. Bernie Sanders, by the way, did. A lot of people don't know that. Anyway, Princess, how you feeling at the end of these episodes? I feel great.

There's nothing like knowing the origins of the war crimes that are being put out into the world every day. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. War crimes, crimes against truth, all this good stuff. Thank you so much for all of that amazing effort. This was a great three-part of a part of. We're just happy to have you here, you know. Happy to have you here talking about this real piece of shit and his strange beliefs about the world.

At his strange pills and his strange 15 children. Wow. Anything you want to plug at the end here, Princess? Oh, yeah. Just if you want to see some other fun yappers, I have a YouTube channel where I talk about pulp culture, history, all kinds of fun things. And I'm just happy to be here. Thank you guys so much for having me.

Excellent. Sweet. Thanks for coming along, everybody. Yeah. All right, folks. We're done. I'm going to go pet. Dogs. Bye.

Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday.

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access to exclusive offers, and exciting surprises. You've got an extra day off, so make it pay off, with the best deals from brands you love all in one place. It's a summer kickoff thing. Join today at Simonplus.com. Rewards program Terms Apply. See Simonplus.com for details. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide.

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter. Who's the worst singer in the group? The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt. They're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If you were me, I need some jokes to make me seem funny. If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news,

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