Behind the Bastards - Part Three: Lee Atwater: The Political Dirty Tricks Artist Who Gave us President(s) George Bush

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Robert concludes the story of Lee Atwater by discussing his greatest success and then his sickness and fall from power and influence. We also talk about the Grammy nominated album he made with Isaac Hayes. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/lee-atwater https://archive.is/STJGq https://www.newberryobserver.com/news/10323/notable-newberry-alumnus https://andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/p/the-death-bed-confession-of-a-boogie https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-papers-of-lee-atwater-who-invented-the-scurrilous-tactics-that-trump-normalized?_sp=a8ee96fb-f790-4047-ae41-50c5940d1092.1729971751539 https://www.csmonitor.com/1989/0626/elee.html https://archive.is/yZ0Hf#selection-553.0-553.173 https://time.com/archive/6702136/saying-no-to-lee-atwater/ https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brady-bad.html https://nul.org/news/ghost-lee-atwater-haunts-2022-midterm-elections https://www.npr.org/transcripts/94931206 https://milwaukeecourieronline.com/index.php/2021/08/13/the-spirit-of-lee-atwater-lingers-among-us-how-critical-race-theory-became-the-gops-new-southern-strategy/ https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/05/13/willie-horton-revisited https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/atwater/etc/synopsis.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/04/19/weighing-lee-atwaters-regrets/c78da503-8dc9-4c58-a8d6-d5524ffdfa8e/ https://archive.is/7CjqQ https://brooklynrail.org/2012/02/express/letter-from-the-trail-atwaters-ghost/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Coalzo Media I still have Japanese Kit Kat in my mouth. All right. All right, let's just start the episode with that. Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where Garrison is the bastard by secretly revealing to us their Japanese Kit Kat habit. The Masha Kit Katz are so good. Yeah, it is a $20,000 a month habit.

It's destroying their life and finances. But this is Behind the Bastards, a show where we don't judge unless you're one of the worst people in all of history, which Garrison is not yet. Garrison, welcome back to the show. The tariffs are really, really hurting this. The Japanese Kit-Kat addicts. My monthly budget has skyrocketed.

Yeah. Someone who knows something about math, to please tell Garrison how to make Inns meet with their $20,000 a month Kit-Kat habit. That's how I feel about my obsession with Korean sunscreen. I'm like, God damn it. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, no, totally.

You do kind of look like every white woman in the Korean sunscreen shop. Jesus Christ It's a better It's frankly a better product This is part three of our episodes On Lee Atwater A bastard who wouldn't have been happy For us to lead into him this way

But yes let's plug some things up I just wanted to plug Friend of the Pod Sean Malin's book The Podcast Pantheon 101 podcast that change how we listen And we're in it We're featured in it

Oh Robert look what my bookmark is Can you tell? Is it us? No, it's the pamphlet to the knife you got me after I had surgery. Oh, okay. There you go. This is probably a really interesting read. But yeah, we're featured in the book.

And it's available for pre-order now and is out on September 16th. Wherever you get books, I'm assuming. Anyways. Presumably wherever you get books. He wrote nice things about us, which I appreciate. And again, it is not in our wheelhouse because we don't write nice things. I just write bad things about bad people. This week, it's Lee Atwater.

I just kind of want to read what's in this. No, no. It's really cool. We're reading about Lee Atwater. We're not reading about our podcast. No, not our podcast. I want to read the pamphlet for the knife. Your bookmark, which was the knife?

The Bowie Knife pamphlet. Yeah, yeah. It's the New Zealand Bowie Knife, yes. And that's a good pamphlet. Old Vaughn was a terror with the Bowie Knife. That's how it starts. Yeah. Yeah, anyone who fought with a bowie knife was a terror with it, because that's a scary weapon.

Like, anyone whose choice in an era with, like, guns and swords is something that's shorter range than either is a frightening person. This is a good read. I'm not going to lie. It's a good read. Go buy yourself a bowie knife, people. Certified behind the bastards moment here. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the knife that is slightly too large for basically any useful purpose. I use it for cutting down trees. This is an I-Heart podcast. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime.

My husband said, your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tide, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Milgar. I was just completely in shock. Liz's father murdered, and her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet found. I didn't feel real at all. More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers. We're still fighting. Listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road.

In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning River Road on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast, hunting for answers, I highlighted the story of 19-year-old Lechay Dungey. But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside And that text message

Would be the last time anyone would ever hear from her Listen to hunting for answers From the Black Effect Podcast Network On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcasts In 2020, a group of young woman Found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare Someone was posting photos

It was just me naked Well, not me, but me with someone else's body part. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Collidoscope, about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levitown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1984, Lee Adwater has been brought back on the team, or has been brought back on the election team

to help Reagan get reelected, right? He's in the Reagan White House. He's kind of coasting off his laurels from the 1980 election for a while. In 84, he gets given his most prestigious position yet, which is assistant to the campaign manager, Ed Rollins. Talking to PBS, Rollins later claimed, a lot of people told me he wouldn't be loyal to me

and told me not to pick him, Roland said. I admired his work ethic. Now, whenever people tell you, Don't pick this Republican strategist because he'll betray you, and you're like, but his work ethics good, you're about to get betrayed. That's just how this story ends 100% of the time, and that's where it ends with Lee Atwater, per that PBS piece. Not long after, Roland says, Atwater arranged what turned out to be an ambush media interview in which Rollins was accused of running a dirty tricks campaign against the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro. Lee had put a spear in my back, Roland says. It was just a two-year effort to destroy me.

He wanted to run Bush's presidential campaign. So he starts plotting this while they're working together. And it doesn't fully come out how badly he's fucked him until the election is over. But from the instant they start together, he is planning, how am I going to stab this guy in the back so that by 19 to 88, his corpse is clear of my path. And I can get the job that he's got right now. What a cool guy. He's always thinking a step ahead from at least the other Republicans, Lee, Atwater is. So he's like, how may I stab you and where?

If only he had a bowie knife. If only someone had told Ed, this guy will definitely stab you in the back. Oh, Lee Atwater, the backstabber? He's probably going to stab your back. I don't think he's going to stab my back. Not the back stabber. Then gets his back stabbed, you know? It's a tale is oldest time.

Tale is oldest time. What's he going to do, stab me? What's he going to do, stab me? Man who just got stabbed by Lee Atwater. So Reagan wins re-election, obviously. And Atwater, you don't get a lot. from him during this period, so I'm going to guess he's not playing as formative a role as he is in 88, but it's easier to get a president reelected, usually, historically, than it is to

get them elected the first time. Things are weird now. So after 84, Atwater's like, I've spent my time working in like politics and working under elected leaders and working for the party directly. It's time for me to go into private practice, right? In part because it's time for me to make the money. And I want to set myself up so that in 88, I'm an independent political campaign figure, and I have a better chance of getting appointed by George H.W. Bush, who everyone knows is going to be the Republican candidate, pretty much, right? Yeah. There's a little bit of fuckery that's going to have to happen to secure him the position, but people are pretty much sure. In particular, there's going to be some fuckery against Dole, that Atwater's going, Bob Dole, if you remember

Bob Dole, which you probably don't, if your knees don't hurt. He's the Fruit Cup guy, right? Yeah, probably. I think he's the Fruit Cup guy. He's the guy who the Simpsons parodied by just having him say his own name a lot. He didn't walk great because of his war injuries. He was an astronaut. Also, a Democrat by political standards today, but pretty hard Republican by the standards of his time. He ran against Clinton, too.

He was pretty boring. You watch that Simpsons Halloween episode, and you get most of what you need to know about Bob Dole. And Bill Clinton, to be honest. So he starts a political. consulting firm for all of the lower level candidates who had hired him periodically to conduct push polls or whatever. And that's what he's doing when he starts his independent firm. What's a cult?

Well, his first, I think it's like campaign consultants or something like that. But after the 84 election, he merges with a larger consulting firm. So he's not independent for long. And the firm that he merges with, you might have heard. If we've talked about though on the show, guess who, guess who. You kind of guessed in the first episode, actually, Gary. Roger Stone's firm. It's black Manafort and Stone, that's right.

Okay. Yes. Yeah. That's where... That's who partners with Lee Atwater's... Because they need, I think they need more of a domestic angle, because they're more focused on foreign dictators at this point, right? And Atwater's...

To part three to get to Roger Stone, though. Also, there's an expanding area to operate in for non-foreign dictators. Right, right. Yeah, there's a chance that you could make a non-foreign dictator if you get good enough at getting people elected domestically. And that's what Roger Stone's going to be in man afford, right? Yeah. In Leattwater, probably would have if he'd survived long enough.

Now, Roger Stone would later say of his friend and business partner, we both knew he believed in nothing. Above all, he was incredibly competitive. But I had the feeling that he sold a soul to the devil, and the devil took it. Roger Stone, everybody. If you want a guy who, as your friend, is going to speak well of you when you're dead, Roger Stone is not that man. Not the kind of fella he is.

So Lee's tactics fit in with Manafort, Black, and Stone, but his interests diverged from his partners. Because, again, they're more interested in becoming the go-to PR agency and campaign experts for dictators and wannabe dictators all over the world. And Atwater is pretty resolutely interested in the U.S. and U.S. elections. One of his former colleagues, Atwater's former colleagues, told the Washington Post, Charlie Black wants to be rich Roger Stone wants to be rich Lee Atwater doesn't want to be rich He wants to be master of the game

And there's a picture You can see I believe that's Manafort That's Roger Stone in the middle And then that's Lee Atwater On the right side of your screen In this photo From their days working together

And James Urbaniac is still in play Yeah absolutely Now who are you going to get to play Young Roger Stone Because honestly he looks like Niles from Frazier but Niles from Brasier can't play that role anymore. I think, what's his name? Eddie Redermaine?

Is that his name? Eddie Redmayne? Yeah, he might believe it. Yeah, he is similarly off-footing. Now, where do you get a man with a thumb-shaped head who can play a Paul Manafort? That's really going to be the key, is a thumb-en-off-shaped celebrity. That could be a star maker. Like I said in part one, Atwater could be played by Tofer Grace.

Atwater could be played by Tofer Grace, but I think Tofer Grace is older now than Atwater ever lived to be. Manifort. You know what? Come back to me. Manifort's going to be tough. Manifort. I went to high school with a couple of guys who looked like Paul Manafort, but they all went and got Paul Manafort jobs. So I don't think you're going to get him in acting. This could be controversial. Maybe you tap someone like Shane Gillis. It's not hard for a Shane Gillis type to play a Paul Manafort. So Lee Atwater has started working with Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and the light. And while he's doing, this, you know, while after, right after, shortly after, he's gotten, I guess, acquired or partnered with them. In April of 1985, George H.W. Bush invites his sons and some of his close relatives to Camp David to prepare them for his 1988 presidential run. Basically, number one, he's getting ahead of things. He wants them to meet the probable team. I don't think he's locked down all of his team positions, but he knows more or less the people he wants

working with him, even though even if he's not sure what job they're going to get. And so he wants his family, who have always been a big part of his political campaigns, to meet the people who are going to be running his 88 campaign. And one of the people he assembles and has come to Camp David for this 1985 meeting is 34-year-old Lee Atwater. Who's already proven to be a seasoned partier? Yes, a solid party. And you have to really, especially given how close he and W become, what kind of shit did you

guys get up to at Camp David together? Like, what were you? I know, I think this is part during Bush's sober period, kind of, but I don't know. I feel like Bush and Lee Atwater probably did Coke together. That's my Lee Atwater head canon. So Lee's double cross of Rollins had worked though, right? Because a year earlier, Rollins had been a shoe in for the job. And Bush actually hadn't trusted Atwater at first, which is, again, usually a good instinct. And his son's particularly disliked Lee, right? Jeb has gone on to say that, like, initially we saw him as more self-interested and interested in burning his own reputation than in helping our dad.

And we were worried that, like... It's really damning that Jim is calling someone self-interested. Only for a little while. Because their worry was that, like, well, these dirty tricks of his, maybe they'll work, but they'll ruin our father's reputation. His spotless moral record, as former director of the CIA. The Bush family reputation is of great importance. Orner-on-Contra, the Bush family, spotless.

Wow. Eric Alterman describes how Lee Atwater gained the Bush family's trust. And this is, you know, Gary, I know you've been looking to do this yourself. So you might be wanting to take some notes on this point. What? To prove his loyalty and increase his leverage with the family, he invited, demanded actually, that George Jr. joined him full time in the campaign. It was a tofer, he recalls.

Not only would have in their questions of loyalty, but Atwater got the services of a staff member who could organize the family at a moment's notice. He turned out to be the most political and the most loyal to my father, Jeb Bush now says. Atwater could go to hell tomorrow and I'd be a supporter. He has proved himself with our family. Jeb! Exclamation point. And W will say basically that like this is a lot of where he starts learning politics is from this period when Atwater takes him under his wing. He's working directly for Lee helping to get H.W. Bush elected.

Like this is a lot of W's introduction to politics. And again, Atwater has already gotten Carl Rove started. in his career. He's going to be Bush's campaign manager. So even though he's not going to live to see the Bush era, he's often given credit as an architect of the Bush era. And he really does deserve that. I wonder how much of that influences also like Bush's decision to go full cheney. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I need an evil mastermind at my side. Exactly. My question is, do you think if Lee survived longer, that Jeb exclamation point would have, you know?

No. No. Because at that point, at that point, At that point, Lee would never, I think, hook his horse onto someone that much of a loser when you have, like, a clear, like, con man and winner in the game. Like, why? There's two, and, you know, we'll talk about this at the end. There's two possibilities for how Lee Atwater would have handled the rise of Trump. One would have been, I think he would have gone hard never-trumper, if for nothing else, then, like, well, I'm kind of old and tired now, and there's money in doing this, and maybe

I don't really care. Like, I know I know I can't win, but I know I can grift off this. that's good enough. Or I think if he had stayed in like politics shape as he was kind of at the peak of his career, I think he would have seen Trump coming and gotten in bed with him. But it's one of those two things. And we'll talk at the end again about what we think is likelier for old Lee Atwater had he lived to see this. But he takes W under his wing and trains him up. And it's during this 1988 election that Lee would reach the peak of his career, possibly the peak of the damage he'd cost to society. But before I get to this, we need

to pull back again and talk about how the justice system in this country used to work, right? Because this is integral to how Lee does what he does and the damage that he causes doing it. Oh, boy, really excited for this. Yeah, we don't talk about this a lot, but by 1988, all 50 states had furlough programs for inmates, which allowed people who were incarcerated and still serving time to earn passes to leave prison for differing, like, periods, right? At the most basic level, maybe, like, you've got a funeral or a wedding, and you can get, like an afternoon pass to attend it, but some people got passes that were kind of a similar

to work release program. Some people got to spend weeks at a time out with their families, and they'd go back in for a while. It was often seen as like a transition thing with like, okay, this person has sort of proved themselves inside. Let's see if they can handle limited amounts of time free before we start talking about like a commutation or about parole, you know, depending on the kind of conviction that they've got, right? And about 10% of all prisoners in the U.S. received some sort of furlough in 1987. Per an article for the Marshall Project by Beth Schwartzopfel and Bill Keller, nationally, murderers served an average of eight years before they were paroled or commuted,

so furloughs were, in the toolkit of a previous generation, an uncontroversial proposition. They offered incentives for good behavior behind bars and a good way for inmates to reacclimate to the life they would almost certainly return to outside of prison. Use of furloughs for prisoners in the U.S. is widespread, successful and relatively problem-free, the editor of a magazine for Corrections Professionals told the New York Times in 1988. So again, I have to really emphasize this is not at all a political thing. In fact, under Governor Ronald Reagan, California had one of the most generous furlough programs

in the country. As stated, the program was really helpful to many inmates, but given the sheer number of people involved, there were always cases of it going wrong. And while Reagan was governor, two prisoners were furloughed by his justice system and went on to commit murder. This happened two separate times. And there were criticisms of the program and of Reagan, for allowing it during this period of time.

And after the first murder, he responded to these criticisms by saying, more than 20,000 people had these passes. And this is the only murder, ending with, obviously, you can't be perfect. Which is a kind of reasonable you just cannot have conversations like this about the justice system today. No, is this like so having something like this now would be like outrageously progressive. Yeah, but like look, two out of 20,000 ain't bad, you know? Like that's just life.

Like the current like crime crackdown that that is like. sweeping the nation with National Guard deployments everywhere. It's like... All crimes at an all-time low, yeah. It's so opposite towards this logic. And having, like, a Republican Party use this logic to justify a furlough program is so alien to the current understanding of politics. Yeah.

I mean, and that's like, that's partly what's so depressing about it is that, like, you can say, obviously you can't be perfect and that's the end of it, at least as a Republican. But then the Republicans, when it happens to a Democrat, are going because of Leattwater, to leap on this sort of thing as a way to destroy a presidential candidate, right? So you jump forward to 1988. Bush's opponent is Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts. Two years before the election, a guy named Willie Horton, imprisoned in Massachusetts for his part in a 1974 robbery murder, gets out on furlough. And to be clear, we don't know if Willie killed anybody. He was one of three robbers.

He would claim that he stayed in the car and that his friends had no idea, that he had no idea his friends planned to kill a guy. One of his friends would say, no, no, it was Willie who went in. I think his friend was like, I stayed in the car. But these people are all dealing with, we have no idea what actually happened. And it doesn't matter to an extent because all three of them were part of the crime. And that's the way this sort of things gets charged, right? If you're part of a robbery where someone gets shot, you can get charged with that murder, even if you don't pull the trigger. That's just the way the legal system works and worked then.

In June of 1986, Willie gets out on furlough, but he gets in trouble. I think he gets basically the police come after him, and he decides to flee the state rather than get caught and go back to prison. He spends some time in Florida. Eventually, he moves up to Baltimore. And in April of 1987, someone breaks into a suburban home in Maryland, owned by the sales manager for a car dealership. The intruder, I think, stabs and ties the husband up and repeatedly rapes his wife, Angela

Miller, at gunpoint. neither victim got a good look at the assailant's face, but the victim stole the homeowner's Camaro, and not long after this, the police find that Camero with Willie Horton behind the wheel. While he's being arrested, he waves a gun at the police, and they start shooting, and long story short, he gets arrested after being shot, I think, a couple of times.

So Horton gets charged for the home invasion and the rape, and when the news finds out that he is a, like the local news, finds out that he's a furloughed murderer from California, they flip out. And initially it's just a local paper, the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, who wins a Pulitzer for their coverage of this. They are pretty relentless on covering the story. But it proves to have legs beyond the local area. And the first person to use it politically is actually Al Gore, because during the primary process, Gore has to debate Dukakis for the Democratic primary election. And Gore asks if elected president, would you put the same program in place federally, which is itself kind of a stupid

question because there were federal furloughs at this point in time, right? It wasn't the same program that existed, but like, yeah, anyway, Gore is the first person to use this story for his benefit, but he doesn't name Horton, right? He talks about the story in broad details. He doesn't name the guy. He doesn't put his picture out there. But Lee Atwater, he's paying attention to this debate. He knows it doesn't, you know, give Gore the win.

but he also, I think, kind of sees where Gore didn't have the killer instinct, right? Ran up short, wasn't quite willing to go through with this to the extent that Lee is going to be willing to. And Lee sees this and he's like, that's it. That's how we win this fucking election, right? And he insists in campaign meetings that they have to pivot to make this the central message of the campaign. He tells his colleagues, by the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis' running mate, right? that they being the voters. He told a Baltimore reporter,

the Horton case is one of those gut issues that are values issues, particularly in the South. And if we hammer at these over and over, we are going to win. So all of this culminates in one of the most famous political ads in the history of this country, the Willie Horton ad. And we're going to play that.

But first, let's have some ads. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband comes back outside, and he's shaking, and he just looks like he's seen a ghost, and he's just in shock. And he said, your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tide, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Melgar. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet, her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help. I was just completely in shock.

Her dad had been stabbed to death. It didn't feel real at all. For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened. There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me. And I just, I want answers. Listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquittic? Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

There are many versions of what happened. in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think, in the New York Daily News, it's Teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you. The story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes.

Will Ted become president? Chappaquittic is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal. The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family.

And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to change? choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth. Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number,

a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline. physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything.

Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So the Willie Horton ad is, to this day, one of the most famous and probably one of the most successful political ads ever run. I'm just going to play it if you can watch it in the YouTube or just go watch it separately. You could Google the Willie Horton ad or type that into YouTube. You'll find it. We'll put it in source links as well. We'll describe what's going on.

But you're going to see a lot of a very scary picture of Willie Horton right after he got arrested with a couple of gunshot injuries. A picture that Willie Horton today is like, yeah, it's a scary-ass picture of me. Bush and Dukakis on crime. Bush supports the death penalty for first-degree murderers. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times.

Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man, and repeatedly raping. his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes. Dukaka's son crime. And the scary photo is the second one they show of him where he's being like led in by a cop who he's easily looks, I think because of forced perspective, like two feet

taller than he's just been shot and he, yeah, he like he looks like a guy who walked away from multiple gunshot wounds, you know? Like it's this, I'm going to like inundate the airwaves with this ad, these pictures of a guy during like the worst point in his life and also these pictures. of a guy who I can kind of, it's this southern strategy thing, right? Where I can throw all of our audience's fears of crime and their fears of black people and mix them together. And like, Dukakis is voting to let specifically black murderers out.

Well, they will specifically target white women, right? That's the message of the ad. This is the same, like, logic used in the last election, but with immigrants. Like, you look at the way that they talked about, like, the Lake and Riley Act and showed mugshots of alleged Venezuelan gang. members during these big press conferences. And yeah, it's attacking the same fears, like the Biden administration or whatever is releasing these violent, violent immigrants into our country.

Yep. Yep. And that's, you know, the Willie Horton ad gets a huge amount of credit. And this is a thing where this election had looked a lot different in the summer of 1988, which is, you know, right before the conventions, which used to matter more, the fact that you were locking in, you know, people during that used to matter more. but by the summer of 88, Dukakis is ahead by more than 17 points. And Bush's people are kind of braced for a disaster.

And the future president's chief of staff, Mary Madeline, recalls, quote, Lee held us together with pep talks, history lessons, and weird statistics. And a lot of those statistics had to do with how he thought white people were going to react to this story, this Willie Horton story, right? And this does help turn things around. Now, it's not his only dirty trick in the Dukakis campaign. He is fucking so cruel to Dukakis. He starts a rumor that Dukakis had like, because it had worked for him well in the

past, basically been close to being institutionalized for depression over the fact that the Washington Times published an article that Atwater laundered that he had received treatment for depression at one point. And this was a fairly minor thing. But again, Atwater has it blown up. He makes sure this article gets a lot of play. And it extends to the point where like a reporter asks Reagan. And again, there's, you know, did DeCoccus plant the question with the reporter?

Did he just plant the article? But this reporter asks Reagan, should DeCoccus release his medical records? You know, and the president Reagan says, look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid, which is almost the same response atwater had given to the about like the electroshock treatment. Like he's doing the same thing again, right? Like you see how it's not a limitless playbook, although playing the hits also works, right? And yeah, like journalists are asking DuCock. are you going to like have you seen a psychiatrist and like if he'd admitted that he had like

that's that also would have been seen by a sizable number of people is like disqualifying right we can't have a president who's ever gone to therapy um i think we've seen where that takes us as a culture um and yeah this is like there's a lot of negative statements about decaucus's wife too as a result of i think like some of her mental health treatment and whatnot and he kind he goes after Kitty Dukakis as well. And yeah, it's like there's a lot of grossness around this election. And a significant chunk of it is centered around Atwater. Like his whole attitude is I'm not going to like, I'm not going to pull any punches and I will in fact invent some punches if that's what it takes to like kick a guy when he's down as much as it's possible.

Right. And yeah, I mean, the end of the story is Bush wins. like Bush beats Dukakis. Now there's also Ducaucus rides around in a tank and doesn't look great in the tank. There's a very silly video. Like the helmet looks a little too big on his head.

But that's paired with the reason people saw it is it's paired by an ad that Atwater helps to orchestrate where people are talking about all that Dukakis had done to trim defense budget and to like stop spending and basically to disarm America during the height of our conflict

with the USSR. And Dukakis was a governor. Like, he wasn't voting to, like, it was all lies. And DeKaz just, like, they didn't know it even checked it. It's just lies, yeah. But again, the truth doesn't matter, right? What matters is you get this, you get this shit in people's ears, and that does all

of the damage you need it to do, right? And that's, that's what Lee Atwater knows. And that's kind of his, his major contribution to Republican politics and specifically to Republican electoral victories is he is the guy. Like, he gets credited with getting Bush Sr. elected. And because of when he dies, he'll sometimes his death will be blamed on Bush, senior, failing to get reelected. Bush Sr. denies this, but I don't know if he's the best source on things that got him elected and didn't get him elected, given his record. So this is like the peak of his life and the peak of his success, right?

Things turn around rapidly for him after this. Obviously, the Willie Horton ad in particular gives Atwater a reputation. for being a racist. And this is one of the few things that really seems to bug him, right? Because he would always bring up the fact that he visited James Brown in prison, the fact that he played with a number of, he cuts an album. One of the people he cuts an album with is Isaac Hayes. Like he cuts this like R&B blues album and whatnot that's like, yeah, has Isaac Hayes

on a couple of tracks. And there's a very funny review of it. One second, let me pull it up. I should have had this. Oh, I'm excited to hear this. we can we can try to get a track together for the end here but yeah so he production the album was recorded in 1989 uh get one guess is to the title garrison i oh my god because lee atwater cuts this his goal was to bring the a wider audience the sounds of the 1960s right um so he gets

some all-time great rhythm and blues singers uh there's isa case chuck jackson b b b king the memphis horns, Sam Moore, Arletta Nightingale, uh, yeah, like some heavy hitters on there. And then Lee Atwater featured first. Um, the critical reception was not entirely bad. The Los Angeles Times called Atwater not any better than a singer in an average bar band, but he is more convincing than other such pop celebrity figures such as the Blues Brothers or Bruce Willis, which I think is an insult to the Blues Brothers. Let's, let's stop right there. But fair enough when we're talking about Bruce Willis and his period of time in music. Look, he's no William Chattner, okay?

He does not have Shatner's instincts, no. USA Today wrote, even Abel Assists from Bee King and Isaac Hayes can't mask the utter amateurism of Atwater's soul is chirping. That's a little devastating. That's a little mean. That's a little cruel. And it's going to come out at a time that's extra painful for him. Anyway, he, again, as a result of his friendship with a lot of these guys, he's really

going to get heated, one of the ever journalists will suggest maybe there was something racist about that racist ad. And his ultimate argument was not even that like it wasn't racist. It was that I didn't have anything to do with it. It was produced by a third party. An independent or basically a PAC made it and they put it out there, right? So we're not to blame. We had nothing to do with it, right? And this was a lie. Evidence has since come out tying Atwater in the Bush campaign to directing and funding the ad. And more recently, Roger Stone has come forward. to admit that like, yeah, that was Lee. PBS summarizes his recollection of events.

Well, he was running the Bush campaign. Atwater said that he had secretly arranged financing for the Horton ad. Atwater locked the office door, says Stone, and he popped the famous Willie Horton spot onto a television. He said, I got a couple boys who were going to put up a couple million dollars for this independent, and I said, that's a huge mistake. And Stone always has an agenda. I think in this case, he didn't want to be associated with an ad this famously poisonous

and racist, and so he really wanted to jam it. onto Atwater's head. But there's independent people who will make the same claim that, like, yes, this was funded as this kind of shit often is by the campaign. They just wanted plausible deniability, right? Everyone who's anyone knows it was Atwater. He gets the next big, like, because of this, because of not just the Willie Horton ad, but his altogether successful role helping to get Bush senior elected, he gets appointed

head of the RNC immediately after the 80th election. That's his next job. Yes, like he was, he was cutting that album while the head of the RNC. Yes, Garrison. To the head of the RNC. He is the head of the RNC when he records with Isaac Hayes. So this is the peak of Atwater's career. And while his only, you can't get higher than that, right?

It seems like everything he wants out of life in a way. He has, and life is just about done for him. And I should stay here before we get further into his life. while his only lingering interest in the Willie Horton ad was separating himself from it, right, after it had done what he needed to do for Bush's campaign, the repercussions for our criminal justice system continue on to this day. During the election, Governor Dukakis froze and then banned furloughs for people with life sentences. This is in 1988.

And the Marshall Project describes how chaotic this is at the time. Inmates and staff in Massachusetts prisons at the time describe how dozens of lifers who had moved over the course of years from maximum to medium to minimum, even to work-release programs, were gathered up in the middle of the night and brought back to more secure facilities. They went out at midnight and scooped up all these lifers to get them back behind the walls in case any of them had any mind to take off, said Greg Dietchenko, who had recently begun serving a life sentence in Massachusetts at that time. Some of these lifers were out there for many, many years, these first-degreeers,

hoping for commutation, getting furloughs and everything. Those guys kept their hopes up, even after all that, that the political climate would died out, and they would eventually work their way out. We were told it would just be a short while, maybe a year or two, before the political climate changed and guys would get back out. But things never changed back, as we're all unfortunately aware. State after state and the wake of the Willie Horton ad began restricting parole and eliminating work releases, commutations, furloughs, and conjugal visits.

This marked the start of the Republican Party's embrace of just-billed-more prisons as the solution to every crime-related problem. But Democrats go down on the action, too. When stumping for his crime bill, Joe Biden described his objective as to lock Willie Horton up in jail. And Joe, Willie Horton was already. locked up. Like, from then on, it was known that any attempt to make life easier for prisoners

or provide chances for clemency, especially as a member of the, as an elected leader, as an executive, right? If you're a governor or something, if you show mercy on a prison, all it takes is one of the thousands of people you might provide clemency to, to commit a crime. And that's your career. That can ruin your political career. The lesson they take, right? It's great.

Now, would something like this have happened, like the Willie Horton ad have happened later if it weren't for Lee Atwater? Probably. But it happened when it did and how it did because of him, right? And it reflects the type of stuff that he's talking about after like the Nixon campaign, right? And like a continuation of the Southern strategy.

Yeah, all of this is the Willie Horton ad is another way of just not saying the N-word in campaign ads when you really want to. So 1989, Lee's recording. a real album. He's on top of the world. He's running the RNC. Eric Alterman spent time with him in April to write that New York Times article that we've quoted from. And the article describes his dirty tricks in detail, but also lingers on how cool Atwater seems to this journalist. Here's how it opens. It's 2 a.m. on a sultry Saturday

in Columbia, South Carolina. Does the Republican Party know where its chairman is? Harvey Lee Atwater, hometown boy, is on stage at Bullwinkles, a smoky dive with two pool tables, dollar beers, and the raunchy long-haired mojo blues band, shaking the rafters. The overflow crowd is packed against the wall, forcing overdressed Republican gentry to slip to rub elbows with the bullwinkle regulars. Atwater has changed out of his blue blazer and tie into a late-night t-shirt that David Letterman gave him. His guitar was a gift from Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, a souvenir of Atwater's

Gala Blue celebration at a presidential inaugural ball. Drinking beer straight from the pitcher, sweat pouring down his face. Atwater apologizes for going home so early, but the St. Patrick's Day parade is just seven hours away and he is the grand marshal his final number is a repeat of his opener eddie taylor's bad boy i'm bad i'm bad cries the man who masterminded george bush's 1988 presidential campaign i'm the worst you ever had it's the drink is straight from the picture for me oh man this ain't your grandpa's republican party this ain't your grandpa's republican party they're cool now that's every they want to be cool so bad it's so funny it's so funny it's the own literally

the only thing denied to them. It's such this, like, psychosexual drive for conservatives to be the real rebels for them to be, like, the actual cool kids. And they will move mountains. Yeah.

And it's because... To try to achieve this cool kid status. The ones who are smart and influential are together enough to, like, have interests outside of politics and to know vaguely that, like,

what I'm doing is really uncool and fucked up. I wonder if I could just sort of punish everyone into pretending that's not true, you know? Yeah. And then they'd have to treat me like, I'm a good musician and not write mean things about how Isaac Hayes his voice is better than mine. So even that soon after the 88 election, Lee's tactics were being adopted by campaign managers across the

political spectrum. Patricia Schroeder, a Democratic congresswoman, told the times the real problem with Lee Atwater is that his tactics are contagious. And in his article, Alterman adds, indeed, the question Democrats around the country are asking themselves is, can you beat Lee Atwater unless you join him. And, you know, the answer's no, but also they never quite figure it out, do they? They're always bad at it. Yeah. Yeah, we're still here.

We're still here. We're still getting dunked on by the guy doing shots at bullwinkles. Maybe we can just copy the Republican strategy over and over and over again. Yeah, after they've already done it. Maybe it's going to finally work. Yeah, maybe being exactly like the Republicans will take the Democrats where they want to be one of these days. The thing they never learn is like what you should learn from the,

the Republicans is that it's okay to be a dick to your enemies. You don't have to treat them respectfully just because you're running against them and you watch the West Wing, right? You don't have to, for example, lie about their wives. Aaron Sorkin and his consequences have been a disaster for U.S. politics. So Lee's tactics live on. He does not on March 5th, 1991. Atwater collapsed at a fundraiser for a Republican senator. And there's a very funny story in the documentary boogeyman that covers Lee Atwater, where he, Ed Rollins, who worked several floors above him, when Lee starts having seizures, his aides go get Ed Rollins, because Atwater's like, you're the only guy I trust. They're going to kill me otherwise, and I don't know who they

are. It's either, is it the Democrats? Is it other, nefarious people? But like, Ed is like, I thought, you know, we'd really reached a point of like rapproch ma because he was like, I'm sorry for like fucking you over and all the bad shit. I did. You're the only one I trust. And Lee, like, Rollins will be like Lee said that I was his rock basically during this period. And I found interviews with like the, like a major figure at the D&C saying the same things about Lee that like after Lee got sick, he reached out to them and was like I now, like we're friends now, you know, like I can respect this person. I was never able to do that before I got sick. But now I can respect this person who I disagree with. They've

become my rock. And it's just, I think Lee just lied a lot about who. how much support he was getting because he wanted other people to talk well about him after he died. I think that's most of what this is. That's really bizarre. Yeah. And that's kind of what Rollins concludes. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But like, yeah, on a, so yeah, he collapses at this at this fundraiser, gets taken to the hospital. Doctors find out he's got a brain tumor shortly thereafter. The New York Times wrote, quote, after the tumor was diagnosed, Mr. Atwater assigned friends and AIDS to research all aspects of the disease. to help decide on the best course of treatment.

Our research said, and the further study of my scans kept us on a roller coaster of good news and bad, he said. Then on March 21st, we hit bottom. And it was then that he learned that the tumor was way worse than they had originally thought. He sees a healer who tells him to get rid of his black t-shirts and start wearing red underwear, and he does this. Hell yeah.

He tries massage therapy. But his particular cancer, it's this brain tumor he's got, the only way they have of treating it at that time. I don't know if we're much better at it now, but they're literally drilling a hole into his head and dropping little radioactive specs in there. So he has to like sleep in a lead-lined room in his own house and it swells his head up.

Like he's too embarrassed to be seen in public because his like head gets massively swollen. Like he does not, he looks like he's dying horribly, right? Like this is a really terrible death that he dies. And he's aware of it the whole time. There's a very unfortunate video of him like going out in South Carolina one last time and singing, I'm bad while deeply ill and, like, not able to get the lyrics.

And you can tell he just desperately wants to be back at his height again, back. Like, at this peak, he inhabited not long earlier. He talks about that a lot, about, like, and he'll give crowd-pleasing speeches about how I had everything just a little while ago. And now I understand that, like, friends and family are all that matter. But you can also tell, like, I don't know how much you believe that, Lee. I think you would, you'd throw your friends and family away in a second to be healthy. and able to do this for another 30 years.

Just for a chance to go back to what you were, yeah. Yeah. But he does, there's a public perception that a change sweeps over Atwater. He writes like an article for the Times about how bad he feels about all his dirty tricks. He starts reaching out to people he'd harmed over the years. He sends a letter to DeCoccus. He apologizes to him for the making Willie Horton your running mate comment and also for saying he intended to strip the bark off the little bastard.

He admitted to the naked cruelty of the remarks. He also claimed to have sent an apology for Willie Horton. Now, the Marshall Project talked to Horton, and Horton was like, I don't remember getting it, but I got a lot of mail back then, so maybe I just missed it. That one's going to have to come down as, like, kind of unknown, because Horton wasn't willing to, didn't say it was a liar. It was like, no, I literally might have missed it. Like, there were a lot of shit coming in back then.

He does write apologies to a lot of people. Now, depending on who you ask, his people who remained his critics will be like, he never repudiated the tactics. He never said that he regretted helping out the Republican Party or everything he did to win. He just regretted how hurtful some of the specific things he did were, and he apologized to those individuals, right? But he never repudiated the strategies that had brought him wealth in power. And Jane Mayer, who goes through after his death and then after his wife's death, his kids let Jane Mayer go through his papers. for the New Yorker, right? And, like, one of his daughters who went on to be a Democrat is, like, I don't, I'm not

going to talk about, like, my dad, what he did is in politics. He was a good father during the time that I knew him. But, like, you know, obviously, as adults, they thought that this stuff was important to get to a journalist, like, given the influence he had, creating the modern Republican party. And mayor also interviewed members of his family, his old partner, Roger Stone. She writes, his memoir calls on politicians to instead follow the golden rule. Roger Stone, who formed an early consulting and lobbying firm in the Washington area with Atwater

remains unconvinced about Atwater's spiritual awakening. Lee was a great storyteller, Stone told me in a recent interview, but in the end he was just grasping at straws. The Outwater family disagrees and has no doubt that he became a Christian. But at that point, he was also a Buddhist, Hindu, and everything else. He had converted to every faith under the sun. Whatever religious leader he sees, he's making a conversion. That's that old Lee that I know in love.

That's the old Lee we know in love. whole deathbed conversion Lee Atwater. And we'll talk some more about Lee Atwater dying horribly, but first here's some ads. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband

comes back outside and he's shaking and he just looks like he's seen a ghost and he's just in shock and he said your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tide, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Milgar. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet.

Her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help. I was just completely in shock. Her dad had been stabbed to death. I didn't feel real at all. For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened. There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me. And I just, I want answers. Listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke,

but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage.

Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number,

and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program

and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming. and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquittic?

Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline. I think in the New York Daily News, Teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you.

The story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become president? Chappaquittic is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal. The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week, we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And we're back. So I want to read, there's a fascinating paragraph of a Brooklyn Rail article, a letter from the trail Atwater's Ghost, that really gets into how Atwater paved the way for Trump, not just by normalizing ugly attacks and making. rhetoric meaner, but by destroying the credibility of even mainstream Republican candidates, in other words, decades of Atwater politics convinced conservative voters that there were no good candidates, not even on their side, which was a necessary precursor to Trump's rise to power. And this is something I didn't really get until I read this article. Oh, my God. Let me read this quote first, and we'll talk about it.

As Atwater's progeny have become embedded in the party in its process, the constant stoking of fears and the consistent personal attacks have eaten away at the credibility of its candidates, and in turn the candidates don't actually particularly require credibility to become the nominee. Far more important is money, organization, effective destruction of the other, and an ability to address as little as possible. The campaign is now only about the campaign. Accordingly, mere electability becomes the only major issue, the ability to campaign all that matters.

It is not he who is best who will win, but he who best runs that will be awarded the chance to run again. It's so much of it is like disregarding, like accepting that each, Each candidate as like a person obviously is going to be terrible. And it's just about this theatrical process. Right. And who is best able to withstand it and endure it and what, which is not ever going to be someone who's a good person anywhere close.

Not that that's who was getting elected before, but man, are you going to be worse, right? And there's one story from that boogeyman documentary that I find really funny about Lee near the end, which is they talked to one of his like many R&B. singer friends, like one of these guys who's like a legitimate, like actual legend within the field, Chuck Jackson, who like he played with from time to time and who thought himself a friend of Lee's. And Chuck was like, when he got sick, you know, I gave him a Bible and he told me, you know, that this really helped. This was like the one thing that helped get me through it.

It was like, you know, coming back to finding my faith and, you know, thank you. You played a big role in that giving me this Bible. It meant everything to me. And the documentary then cuts to Ed Rowland's being like, well, I was talking to a friend after they cleaned this stuff out of his office. And she found the Bible and it was still wrapped in cellophane. And he was like, that was Lee. That was Lee. That rules. Every time.

And like, he dies. He dies at fucking 40, right? At March 29th, 1991, after a year-long fight against a brain tumor, he is 40 years old. Man, he probably never even got to see Wild at heart. Never got to see Wild at Heart He did get nominated for a Grammy That he does not get for this terrible album of his Which is listed as like

One of the only things he wanted out of life That he hadn't gotten is a Grammy But at least he got nominated before he died He's buried in his jogging suit And holding his red hot and blue album So grave robbers There's a Grammy nominee Lee Adwater

Better known for his other work Better known for his other work destroying the country, helping to, right? God, it's so funny. He's such a fantastic piece of shit. There's a really good quote. I also like that Brooklyn Rail article, how it describes his end, like his last months of life.

So I'm going to read that really quickly as we close out. Telling a friend that it's all bullshit, the truth has nothing to do with it. Atwater talk with regret of his actions, seemingly fearful of that which he was leaving behind. Whether the repentance was genuine or just a calculated attempt to gain passage to a peaceful afterlife will never be discovered. But the damaging effects of his earthbound legacy

were plain to see in his home of South Carolina. If one is seeking an analogy to describe the current incarnation of the Republican Party, one could do worse than a dying Lee Atwater, its brain consumed with a deadly cancer, its words erratic, their credibility under assault by its own crisis, its body radiated, fattened, atrophied.

At the last, the analogy runs dry, for while Lee let out a cry for forgiveness, a plea to heaven, the party and its voters seem to be headed in the opposite direction. and all of us going with them you know that's the one thing

all of these negative articles about Lee tended to have wrong was they all were written more in the aughts a lot of them came out during like this particular one

that I'm quoting from came out in 2012 so it's like the middle of the Obama years and like no no no this is gonna work out a lot better for them than you think it is

you're just irrationally optimistic right now because we're in between shit storms but boy howdy I'll give you a couple more years you'll be right in different things about old Lee.

Oh, my. Yep. How are we doing? Oh, well. Anyway. I mean, yeah, I don't know what else there is to say. I mean, he... It's not necessarily that, like, he won, but, like, his shadow, I guess, looms.

Yeah, he taught them what they needed to know to get to the next step. He was a trailblazer, I guess. He was a trailblazer. That's for sure. Doing that trail even further than what he had in mind, and he maybe, he maybe saw the extension of where that trail would go and maybe that like frightened him a little bit, but making the trail was just too much fun. Yeah, yeah, he may have hoped kind of half-heartedly that like, ah, well, I got kids, he's starting to, because his kids are young when he dies.

So maybe there's a, maybe there's a moment in there where he's like, oh, no, I may have left them a much worse world. And I had always kind of hoped I'd get enough time to, like, redeem myself, help someone who didn't suck ass get elected president. Maybe I'm giving Lee too much credit there, right? I don't really think he became much better, but I'll believe he was worried about the future that he helped make, you know? We've got to have like a, like a political position in the country, like, like our, like our national like riddler, you know, just somebody that can have fun, play some games. Yeah. We need, we need a fourth branch of the government. That's the riddler, yes. Because we could, we could save so much, so much trouble by just,

having people who need to be entertainment but can't quite cut it, serve in public office in some way. It's kind of an extension of like a court jester role. And I think this would be really helpful. Like if we should like nationalize like wrestling or something. Yeah, we should nationalize wrestling. I've been saying for a while we need to one one real use for like all of the AI chat bots is we can create a fake Hollywood where like you give people like Ben Shapiro like Hallmark movie budgets to right make whatever movies. And we just. generate fake fans for them. And we trick them all into thinking

that they're beloved creators. You give them an award every now and then. This could be one of the greatest harm mitigation operations of all time. We could have saved the country, you know? If we'd really gotten onto this early enough, we could have done a lot of good. Even people on the left like this sort of thing.

Like just this past weekend, Zoron did a massive scavenger hunt around New York City. Everyone wants to do this sort of stuff. And I think we should have a proper place for it. We should. Let that man play some mediocre blues.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. If only, I mean, we started to figure that out. He got his album at the end. And you really got the feeling that like, look, man, if we had let him cut a blues album earlier. If he got that Grammy in the 70s, whew.

Yeah. We need an organization doing what like the CIA used to do for like democracies in Latin America. But for like. What they used to do to comedy? For like failed comedians that are clearly heading for the far, right? We're like, no, no, no, you got to save this man's career. We got a possible Stephen Crowder situation developing in Iowa. If Joe Rogan gets too into podcasts, it's going to be a disaster for everybody else.

You need to get his acting career going. Get him a gig every two years with Adam Sandler in some depressing movie. Your factor season 13 is a go. I can just imagine like Adam Sandler's out in like the fucking woods of Montana a helicopter. touch us down, a man from the in us, Mr. Sandler, we need you to make another movie. Here's your cast list, sir. I got out of this business years ago.

Jesus Christ. So what's your job of government? I'm Adam Carolla's official handler. Yeah, yeah. I convince Adam Carolla things are still going well. He's popular. Oh, my God. Yes, it is a full-time job.

If the Democratic, like elite cabal was real. This is what they should be doing. This is the actual need. Yeah. Anyway. Oh, well. Got anything you want to plug, Gare? Sure. News podcast. It could happen here.

Our weekly News Roundup, Executive Disorder. I post about Yowie and conspiracy theories and other fun stuff that tickles my fancy on Blue Sky and X the Everything app at by Shonen type. wrapping up a series right now for it could happen here on blue and on liberal conspiracy theories so that'll probably be out by the time you listen to this so find find that on it could happen here that will not be out by the time they listen to this that'll be coming out a couple days after this wrap after labor day I'm still polishing this conspiracy turd so yeah yeah after labor day check out check out my my piece on blue and on yeah yeah all right everybody

And remember, folks, if you need to get a copy of the original album pressing of red, hot, and blue, just find Lee Atwater's Grape. There's a track scene in there, too. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Send it up with Voyager. We need the aliens to listen to this. Oh, my God. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Cool Zone Media. or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, appa podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband said, your dad's been killed. This is hands tied. A True Crime Podcast, exploring the murder of Jim Milgar.

I was just completely in shock. Liz's father murdered. And her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet bound. I didn't feel real at all. More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers. We're still fighting. Listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I knew I was.

wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For my heart podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning River Road on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Short on time, but big on true crime. On a recent episode of the podcast, Hunting for Answers, I highlighted the story of 19-year-old Lechay Dungey. But she never knocked on that door. She never made it inside. And that text message would be the last time anyone would ever hear from her. Listen to Hunting for

Answers from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body part. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and ColliderScope, about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levitown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.