Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Thomas Jefferson: King of Hypocrites

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Robert and Prop talk about Jefferson's embarrassing history as a war leader and how he helped invent scientific racism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cold Zone Media. Ah, woo, boy, it sure is cold in here, because we're doing a cold open, Prop. How do you feel about cold opens? Hey man, you know, I don't like being cold at all, but you know, opening is great. How many times? And they're usually pretty fun. You've done that bit. How many times are you going to do it?

How many times? I've done it, I don't know that I've done that exact bit. Oh, you have, because I remember being like... Not times? I've done it. I don't know that I've done that exact bit Oh you have cuz I'm ever being like Fair fair. I remember being like with our good friend prop, you know, hey, I'll give you a cold opening question. Okay. Yeah, okay What's the what's what's the worst thing you love? What's the worst thing you man I love so many bad things I'll tell you this right now. It's harsh chemical cleaning products. Oh yeah, yeah, some of that, those big jugs of green shit

that- Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, Fetuloso. Give me all that like- Oh yeah. I need to kind of make like nerve gas when I clean the bathroom. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah. Oh yeah, I love that kind of shit.

Overpriced skincare products. Worst thing. Oh my God. I like driving, which is killing everyone. So bad. But I really enjoy it. So who's to say if it's bad or not? Scientists.

Scientists. Speaking of scientists, most scientists will agree that the Revolutionary War happened. Why would they disagree with that? It definitely did. I was going to do speaking of cold opens, Valley Forge, pretty cold, but also, you know, the revolution lasted years. So I assume it was warm for periods. Valley Forge is just like, you know, that's one of the high points.

It's one of the moments. Yeah, a lot of freezing cold colonial militia, yeah. Keeps me west. Yeah, that boat that they had to cross in to kill some Hessians. A lot of Hessian killing in early American history. Yeah. Anyway, Thomas Jefferson is not around for a lot of that.

He's involved with the revolution, obviously, but he's a lover, not a fighter. Not really a lover even. He's a guy who likes to write things not a I was like Pretty Sigma, you know, yeah. Yeah, very much. So he's the John wick of writing essays Last season millions tuned into the betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all-new story of Betrayal. Justin Rutherford.

Doctor, father, family man. It was the perfect cover to hide behind. Detective Weaver said, I'm sure you know why we're here. I was like, what in the world is going on? Listen to Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. More, more, more, more, more, better.

Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero. And I'm Stephanie Beatriz. You may know us from television. Nine, nine. And now we're here with our very own podcast, More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. Join us as we take on topics like listening to yourself, the challenge of self-care, and making friends as an adult. We're going to

share our struggles. We're going to speak to experts, and we're going to share everything we learned with you. Listen to More Better with Stephanie and Melissa on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you love comedy movies and Hollywood satire, you're going to want to listen to a brand new podcast called Get It to Dutch. In Get It to Dutch, we play three aspiring screenwriters on a quest to get a script to big time Hollywood producer Dutch Huxley. Each week on the podcast, we perform a movie script right before your ears.

It's like going to a movie with your eyes closed. And we have amazing guest stars, including Tim Robinson, Rob Hubel, Lily Sullivan, Jamie Moyer and Weird Al Yankovic. Listen to Get It to Dutch, a screenwriter's journey on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, as the Revolutionary War starts to pick up speed, most of the prominent figures urging rebellion held a Continental Congress. Jefferson was not enough of like a front burner kind of dude to get elected to that in 1774,

but the next year he gets appointed as an alternate for another guy in the Second Continental Congress. And that guy ends up having to bounce, which is how the future president first gets into Congress. The fighting against Great Britain had just begun and Washington was chosen for the commander of the American forces. And Jefferson soon gets elected

to be in Congress properly. And he serves through the opening years of the war, returning home briefly in 1776 to deal with the death of his mother about whom he writes nothing. So he is, you know, from this point on, a figure in the leadership of the revolution, but not yet through, he kind of gets in,

it's still a lot of his dad's reputation that kind of secures him this position. Ellis in American Sphinx describes him as entering national affairs by the side door. His main claim to fame in these early years. Yeah, that's an interesting way to put it. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. The kind of the first thing he does

that really gets him some attention on his own merits is that in 1774, he kind of almost accidentally publishes a pamphlet called A Summary View of the Rights of British America. This had been written as a set of instructions for the Virginia delegation to the First Continental Congress, right? Because he's held office in Virginia.

Virginia's sending people to the First Continental Congress, which he is not at, and he writes some instructions for how they should, what lines they should hold to in this kind of debate over what posture delegates should take towards Great Britain. And Jefferson urges them to take the most radical course in writing, arguing that, again, Parliament has no right to control or tax the colonies. But he doesn't actually have the stones to like get up in front of everybody and argue his point. So he plays sick when the debate in Virginia

over this goes down. And this track that he writes gets published later by his friends who like basically are like, well, this is a good thing you've written and we agree with it. So we're just gonna put this out there, even though you decided to play hooky when it was time to stand up for it.

What a lame dude. That's TJ baby. put this out there, even though you decided to play hooky when it was time to stand up for it. What a lame dude. That's TJ baby. Now, there's a lot to criticize about Jefferson, but we see in this document, the skill with wordplay that's going to become evident to the world when the Declaration of Independence gets published. But here's a sample line from this first pamphlet. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed

to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers to plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery. Now, that's interesting. That's how he is. That's what he says that England is trying to do to them.

And he, part of kind of making England into the heel is that he decides to blame them for the whole state of slavery in the colonies. This is where Jefferson's gonna publish his first kind of statements against slavery that are under his own name, arguing that not only should the slave trade be stopped, but the new government should push for the enfranchisement

of the slaves that we have. And he's arguing basically that like the king started the slave trade. That's his fault. He like, we, like, it's almost talking about him. Like he was like a drug dealer who came and was like, look, we can't be blamed for getting hooked on this stuff. They were the ones pushing it, you know?

Yeah. We were born ones pushing it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We were born into this asylum guys. Yeah. And yeah, that's why I was like, dude, it's the king like Thomas cognitive dissonance Jefferson. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the best. He is the best at it, dog.

To be like, well, that's like slavery. Wait a minute. He's got a hole between his corpus callosum, right? Like his brain is just two rattling separate abs. Yeah, Doug. Jefferson's writing gets shared widely, including by the most prominent leaders of the revolution. But he himself is going to initially be a marginal figure

even after he enters Congress for the simple fact that he sucks at public speaking and he has no heart for argument. While he awkwardly almost accidentally stumbles into revolutionary leadership, he devoted most of his mental efforts to crafting his inherited home, Monticello, into a functioning vision of the agrarian ideal that he had inherited in somewhat mutated form from Romans like Cato. In Master of the Mountain, Henry Wynseck writes,

In the winter of 1774, Jefferson started his farm book, the plantation ledger he would keep until his death, writing out a census of the 45 slaves he received from his parents, the 135 from the Wales estate, and the five he had purchased. He owned the future. The census included the astonishing total of 79 children under the age of 14. About 40% of Jefferson's slaves were children. Jefferson's architectural papers contain an intriguing document, probably dating to the mid-1770s, when the Monticello household was taking shape. Jefferson sketched out plans

for a row of substantial, dignified, neoclassical houses with stone or brick hearths and ample windows for George and his family, and Betty Hemings and her family. The enslaved people of Monticello were nearly all members of a couple of different slave families, including the Hemingses and the Evanses, from whom we get Jupiter. Jupiter is in Evans. They were an inheritance from his wife's side of the family and also literally his wife's side of the family, because Martha's dad had as many as six children with the matriarch of the family, Betty.

From American Sphinx, quote, it was an open secret within the slave community at Monticello that the privileged status enjoyed by the Hemings family derived from its mixed blood. Several of Betty's children, perhaps as many as six, had most probably been fathered by John Wales. In the literal, not just figurative sense of the term, they were part of Jefferson's extended family. All the slaves he eventually freed were Hemings's, including Robert and James in 1794 and 1796, respectively.

If what struck the other slaves at Monticello was the quasi-independent character of the Hemings clan, with its blood claim on Jefferson's paternal instincts, what most visitors tended to notice was their color. And what Ellis means here is that the Hemings family is very light-skinned. Some of them are described as looking white, a fact that has suggested for some time that Thomas Jefferson continued his father-in-law's tradition. And he definitely did, by the way. We will be talking about that later because that really becomes a factor when he's in

France. In factual terms, there's no other way to describe this than as rape because Betty and Sally Hemings could not say no. That said, we don't know how the Hemings women themselves would have talked about what happened to them because they weren't allowed to, right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Or at least like they didn't, you know? It's a black box to us, right? Like we just don't have, and that's part of kind of where I see some of like the evil of this, right? Is in that fact. Yeah, and the, the, the subsequental view of, like, like I'm tying this all to like the subsequent view

of like black masculinity and like, you know, and how they were played in like coon songs and like minstrel shows that like we were known for having just this amazing sexual prowess that like had to be curved. And while at the same time being lazy, dumb and docile, while at the same time being incredibly strong and powerful. Man. Yeah.

Like most historians that I've read, you know, and this has started to change thankfully because of some stuff that came out in the late 90s, but, you know, even up until then, and Ellis's book comes out in 96, which is like, to cut ahead a little bit, two years before DNA evidence makes it very clear what Jefferson was doing with Sally Hemingway.

Yeah, there was, yeah. So he writes American Sphinx in a period of time where there's actual debate over whether or not this happened between historians. And as a result, Ellis cuts Jefferson more slack for his behavior than I think is reasonable. But he does make a point to outline one of the more fucked up dimensions of the situation at Monticello, which I had not really thought about as much before I read his book. Jefferson had so designed his slave community that his most frequent interactions occurred with African Americans who were not treated like full-fledged slaves and who did not even look like full-blooded Africans because in fact they were not.

In terms of daily encounters and routinized interactions, his sense of himself as less of a slave master than a paternalistic employer and guardian received constant reinforcement. Yeah. And stoking the still, the still an issue of fair skin and dark skin, black people, still an issue, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It is, and I skin black people, still an issue. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. It is. And I mean, Jefferson, you can almost see as like, he's certainly not alone, but one of the founders of that, like that conflict. Yeah. And it exists, his contribution to that exists

so that he can see himself, not as a guy who owns people and holds them in brutal bondage, but as like, I'm like the patriarch of the family, I've done well, everybody's got a job, you all get it, come work for Uncle Tom. Yeah, that's you. I mean, it's like- Yeah, I'll take care of ya.

The word slave is a little crass. It's just, it's crass. We prefer family. Right. Community. We're all a family here at Monticello. Yeah. Yeah. If you think of, if you've watched that show, The Bear,

he's like the, he's like the uncle character who has all the money. He's always bailing them out, right? Like that's how he wants to be seen, you know? Yeah. And again, this goes back to this, this talent he has for crafting reality for himself that differs from what you might say is objective factual reality, but that he is able

to certainly make real for himself a lot of the time. And he's also able to like extend through history. Like a lot of people buy this vision that he puts out for a long time. Yeah, I mean, his vision is better. Like just like the Jefferson Bible. It's like, well, let me just remove the shit I don't like. You just fix this.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, between Monticello and Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson spent the mid 1770s flitting between the gritty real world of war and revolution and his utopian fantasies. I am convinced he would have been a podcaster today because he hated talking in front of people, but he loved going on deep dives through history books and then writing weird political

rants inspired by the experience. Absolutely. In 1775, the book he read was Diverse Voyages by a guy named Richard Hacklut. Hacklut? Hacklut? Yeah. Okay. It's a weird name.

H-A-K-L-U-Y-T. Written in 1852, this is a set of three tracts that were probably published separately at Hakelute. Yeah. Okay. It's a weird name. H-A-K-L-U-Y-T. Written in 1852, this is a set of three tracts that were probably published separately at first going into the history of European exploration of the Americas. Hey everyone, Robert here. I completely misspoke. Obviously, 1850s is well after Thomas Jefferson's death. Richard Hakelute's Diverse Voyages was written in 1582, which makes a lot more sense

in context. Sorry. Hackle-Yout, who's the first professor of modern geography at Oxford, was an early ideological advocate of English colonial expansion. He was essentially an early propagandist for British imperialism. Despite this, Jefferson loved him because his idiosyncratic reading of Hacliut was that the original colonists from England had traveled to the Americas

without help from the British government. Thus the colonies from the beginning represented a clean break with the mother country and the English clean in parliament had no right to govern them. America was the creation of this almost mythic independent group of Saxon explorers, not a colonial project of Great Britain.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like, well, now, well, y'all ain't- That's right, yeah. Y'all ain't pay for us to come, and we just kind of came. So like, you don't get to, yeah, nah, yeah, that is mythology, bro. It is revisionist history, we might say,

in modern terms. Yeah, right? Yes. And it's one of those things, nobody really buys this except for his old mentor, Mr. With, right? He's like, yeah, you've got it, Tom. But he's kind of like, he's like a little bit of a crank, right?

Yeah, yeah. And right around the same time too, John Adams is kind of gonna do his own version of like searching back through the history to look at like, how were the colonies, you know, colonized initially and like how much right does Great Britain have to govern and tax us? And his work is done, I mean, you wouldn't call this by our standards, perfect history, but it's done with more rigor than Jefferson's is, right? You might equivocate Jefferson's work here to almost like sovereign citizenship, right?

And the main reason it's not seen that way, even though it is a historical, is that his ultimate contention, which is that the colony should be independent, was not controversial among the people who win, right? But it is important to see that he is just inventing history here for the purpose of political expedience, right?

Because yeah, because he could argue that like, hey listen, from Britain's perspective, they're saying this, this and this. He's like, from our perspective, here's what we was actually doing. So he can make that argument as like, yeah, I'm not just making this up from like out the thin air, which is kind of was,

but like he could be like, well no, like that's how they viewed it. Their view is incorrect. We knew what we was doing and they had a limited perspective. I know what we was doing, you know, and you could make that again. And it's because we, like you said, we've already they've already accepted the point. The point is we post to be we got to get out of here. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Who's homeboys name? I forget, homies name. Hackle yet. Huh? Hackle yet. Maybe that's him. Hackleute? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, there was one homeboy that was like, and they ended up burning his books. Ah, God, what is his name?

Oh, you're talking about Thomas Paine. Yeah, that was just like, I came for the money. Thomas Paine is dope. Yeah. Yeah, he was like, I'm here for money. I don't understand, like, I don't know about the pirated shit. I don't understand about this independent shit don't know about the peer to shit. I don't understand about this independent shit.

Y'all doing the natives wrong. They seem to be nothing like what y'all said. I came to make some money. I don't know. Me and the homies came for money. I don't understand what the rest of y'all is doing. Yeah, and they burnt his books, boy. They was like, don't be telling everybody that.

Jefferson's actually gonna, it's weird, cause like pain is much more of a radical than Jefferson and is by the way, an abolitionist. Jefferson's gonna be getting a lot of trouble later in his career for going to bat for Thomas Payne after Thomas Payne loses a lot of his support because he's, I mean, he's too much of a radical. He's like very critical of Christianity

in ways that are pretty modern actually. Yeah, exactly. His views like, yeah, I then man, at some point, at some point we got, I got to figure out how to do a deep dive on him. Cause he was just like. He's a fascinating fellow. Yeah, like y'all tripping. Like, I don't understand. Like you supposed to be the ones, you supposed to be the God believers.

Like I don't believe none of that. And look how you treat these people. That's weird to me. He's like the most reasonable man in the 1700s. Right. Or at least the most reasonable white guy in the 1700s. Right. Yeah. Right. Or at least the most reasonable white guy in the 1700s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Jefferson's skill at making up bullshit

to justify his beliefs after the fact would reach its apex with the Declaration of Independence and prop, we are finally getting to that. That's the money shot of any history of Jefferson. But looking at my little clock here because Sophie's not around to warn us and we are flying like blind here. It's time for some ads.

Yeah, we should probably do some ads now. Yeah, take some ads and call me in the morning, or in like four minutes, after you skip ahead to the part without ads. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all new story of betrayal.

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Listen to new episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Frieling and Jason Flom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. So the whole Declaration of Independence project kicks off in 1776 when Jefferson was appointed with four other delegates to write a Declaration of Independence. And it is a sign of how good he is as a writer that the other committee members,

which include Ben Franklin and John Adams, all agree to let him handle the pros. I think Franklin says he does it because he can't stand being edited, right? Like I'm not gonna write something for somebody else to edit, you know? And this is gonna go through like the Congress is gonna Have to approve this and they're gonna make changes. Yeah, John Adams I think is like Jefferson is just such a good writer will let you do it

He spends the rest of his life regretting this by the way, which you would you know Yeah in his first draft of the document Jefferson spent a good number of words blaming King George III for sparking and growing the slave trade framing it as a great evil forced on the colonies by their vile king. Now, this specific charge is silly, but Jefferson's description of the slave trade is not. He describes, quote, a market where men should be bought and sold as a hideous thing, in large part due to the brutality involved in transporting them. Henry Wynsek writes, for many slaves suffered as Jefferson wrote miserable death in their transportation. Every vessel tossed overboard 20, 50, 100 corpses in its passage across the sea.

Jefferson most likely learned of the shrinkage of inventory from his father-in-law, John Wales. Yeah. And Jefferson describes slavery in his initial draft of the declaration as an excreble commerce. It's shitty. He says it's shitty, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And that's good and accurate. But all of this writing is cut from the final draft as an article for the Miller Center explains. After deleting Jefferson's biting attack on King George III for trafficking slaves and debating other issues of substance for three days, Congress approved the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America on July 4th. The Continental Congress never calls it the Declaration of Independence, by the way. It's just a better name. Sometimes that happens. Yeah. These guys sucked at titling. Only Thomas would have been a good podcaster. I'm strong on that one. No, that's real. Yeah. That's real. Because he's actually like, because yeah, he's one of those dudes where like,

yeah, damn on paper, bro. Like you, you got it fam. That's right. Especially, you know, and at this point, he still is a guy who could have wound up. He's a guy who inherited a lot of enslaved people. He is writing now and he's taken at least minimal legal steps to trying to end the practice.

And he's now made some really bold statements about it. He could have gone in, he could have been like an early abolitionist, right? And might have pushed a lot of the country, like God only knows, right? Given the degree of, you know. We mentioned it in the first episode. I just, I like, I need to get the quote right,

but the one, which we'll probably get to, the one where he was just like, essentially like, if God is who he says he is, we're about to get judged. Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, no, we'll be putting that in its context. We're in God. So the primary reason his condemnations of slavery were cut from the final draft was that South Carolina

and Georgia refused to close their slave markets. Despite the fact that this final draft was compromised, Jefferson's statement in the declaration that all men were created equal and endowed by the creator with inalienable rights took off like a summer brush fire among progressives of his day and not just in the Americas. Before too long, it would be cited by several states who were early to abolish, after the war, it's gonna be cited by like the first states to abolish slavery.

It's like, why? And they're like, well, based on this declaration, we signed, you know? That's what you said. Yeah, the stuff, the one of- Seems like we shouldn't have this. Yeah, Frederick Douglass' Fourth of July speech was just like, bro, this is what y'all said.

Yeah. This one seems, this line seems pretty clear. Yeah. That said, but you know, this is again, generations of abolitionists will take a lot out of that line. Jefferson himself is never really an abolitionist, right? Far from it, in fact.

This is a bit puzzling given where he sits in 1776, because he kind of, it feels like he might've, right? There's a moment here where it feels like he could have tipped that way. Historian David Breon Davis notes, quote, he was one of the first statesmen in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery, which is not, you know, nothing, but in the 1780s, it kind of becomes nothing because he sings a very different tune. During the last years of the 1770s then, he's going to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates

where he championed progressive measures like freedom of religion and a radical free public education system for all white male Virginians. He also crusaded against legally mandated primogenitor, which saw landed estates passed on exclusively to eldest sons. Jefferson had good reasons for all this. He saw inherited wealth as dangerous despite benefiting from it himself, and he opposed

state religion both because it violated individual liberty and, as the Miller Center notes, he also feared that religion would hinder the development of a national elite, a moral and ethical group of aristocrats who would lead the nation." And this is, because again, Jefferson is this, as Ellis says, a sphinx, this gives us kind of an unegalitarian explanation for some of the things he said that seem egalitarian,

and even some of the policies he pursued that were good, which is that he's not a guy who believes everyone is and should be equal. He believes everyone should have an equal shot, all the white men, they should have an equal shot at becoming a part of the aristocracy. And that aristocracy is gonna be based on their natural levels of intelligence and ability, right?

But we need an aristocracy, right? It just needs to be a natural one, right? Yeah, it needs to be one that's not just built on the fact that your daddy came from this place. Yeah. Yeah, that is kind of what he says he's arguing for, right? And he views artificial methods of curtailing membership in this elite as bad.

He also sees himself as a natural member of the aristocracy. Yeah, except for me though. And I should be, you know, I should inherit everything, but like, I'm clearly so capable, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm different. I'm different.

I'm built a little different than these other first sons who got rich, yeah, because of their daddies. I'm built a little different. In 1779, Jefferson was somewhat to his own frustration, elected governor of Virginia. This is a bad time to be the governor of Virginia, because the war, it doesn't look great in 1779, right? Like Virginia's economy is in the shitter.

The British are doing pretty well in the field. There's a counter revolution by Tories, which are these like loyalist assholes. And Jefferson, not a great warrior. He's not like a warrior poet type guy. There's like one campaign that he like supports in Southern Virginia and it's a disaster because he's not really good at that stuff.

No. Now, when he first goes to I think Williamsburg and then he goes to Richmond as governor, he's like the last governor to live in the Williamsburg mansion. Jefferson brings his some of his slaves with him, right? Members of the Hemings and Granger families mostly. And it's from them that we get a lot of the memories of Jefferson during this chaotic time. In January 1781, Benedict Arnold lands in Virginia with a whole buttload of Brits.

Virginia's militia were mostly engaged in conflict with Native Americans and Jefferson showed no aptitude for gathering these scattered forces together and welding them into a functional army, which to be fair is hard, but he doesn't do it. So what he does do is send his family away and he clusters himself in the attic of the governor's mansion with a spy glass. When the British finally came,

it took only a few cannonballs to send every white man in town fleeing for the hills, Jefferson included. Several of his house slaves acted like to kind of protect the family wealth when he leaves them behind. One of them, we get this story from Isaac, who's five at the time, and he describes the British invasion as an awful sight. It seemed like the day of judgment was come,

which is not all that different from how my family members who were there speak of the British invasion in the 1960s. Talking about the Beatles, that was a Beatles bit. Jefferson has fled the scene and he has left behind this enslaved family, including this little boy, Isaac, from whom we get most of the story. And Isaac's father, George, I believe this is George Granger, went through the house collecting valuables,

primarily the family silver, which he hid under, there's like a bed in the kitchen with like a hide a bed under it. And he like hides it underneath that. So when the British arrive, he lies and he's like, my master's fled and he took all the silver with him. I don't know what's going on. And these British soldiers,

they rampaged through the mansion, but they don't find the silver. George then flees, leaving his family behind to find Jefferson's family at Monticello and help them. So he leaves his family to go find and help Jefferson and his family get out of Monticello. And while George is away, his wife and son are taken captive by British forces. What? Now again, this is like, it's no, like this is, it's such a confusing thing because George has,

he's an opportunity, one a decent number of enslaved people take to find his freedom, right? To get himself and his family out of there, either with the British or just by using the chaos to get out. Wow, okay. He doesn't, not only does he not do that, but he like leaves his family kind of trusting

that the British will not fuck with them too much and they wind up getting captured. We're going to talk about all this because he's not the only person this is going to happen to. This is a major part of the history for enslaved people during this period. What happens when they decide to flee? What happens if they go over to the British? We're going to talk about all of that, but first it's time for some ads. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception.

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Yeah. Wow. That's so nice. I lost power for however long I was gone for. Yeah. Well, for the audio people, it'll be nothing. But. For the audio people, don't miss my wonderful remarks. Speaking of losing power, Thomas Jefferson has lost power

because he just had to flee from the governor's mansion. Because the British are coming. Because Benedict Arnold came and got him. Yeah, Benedict Arnold came rolling around there. So yeah, the next couple of months of Jefferson's life are chaotic, with British forces raiding every Jefferson property they could find, and Thomas keeping himself and his family

just barely out of their grasp. This was obviously hard on them, both physically as well as mentally. Their newborn daughter, Lucy, died in April, and the whole constantly on the road thing did not help with that. Jefferson and his men retook the capital after the British left, but when they returned,

when the British come back, he has to flee again. And he makes it, he like flees back to Monticello. He wound up like fleeing Monticello minutes ahead of this group of British dragoons, which is like a kind of mounted soldier. And here again, one of the people that he owned acted to protect his absent owner from the book Master of the Mountain, quote, when the raiders swarmed into the house at Monticello, it quickly became apparent that once again, Jefferson had eluded them, but they knew he

could not be very far off. So one of the dragoons jammed a pistol into Martin Hemings' chest and said he would shoot if Hemings did not tell them where the governor had gone. Fire away then, Hemings replied and refused to say anything else. Martin Hemings was not one of the half-siblings of Mrs. Jefferson. His mother had born him before she began her relationship with John Wales, so his kinship tie to the Jeffersons was not as direct as that of his younger siblings fathered John Wales. So his kinship tie to the Jefferson's was not as direct as that of his younger siblings fathered by Wales.

As the Jefferson grandchildren recounted the story, Heming stood his ground, fiercely answering gaze for glance and not receding a hair's breadth from the muzzle of the cocked pistol. Unbeknownst to the British, another servant named Caesar lay in silence beneath their feet under the floor of the portico with silver he and Martin had just finished hiding when the raiding party rushed in. Wow. Now, yeah, that's like, that's ballsy. Yeah.

Yeah, it's impossible to get into their heads. Like it's impossible, you know, and especially with a modern brain, like it's just, it's impossible. But you can say, you're just another slave master anyway. So like, you're not my rescue. You know what I'm saying? And then you're like, and even if you were,

it's like, well, fuck you for like storming my house. Like, man, you know what I'm saying? Like, I still live here. Like, I mean, fuck this place, but I still live here and you ain't finna just, like, I don't know you. Like, you don't get to do this. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, like, if we gonna tear this place down,

we gonna tear this place down. You won't get to tear this place down, you know? Yeah, I do wonder, cause obviously you don't get, you know, get this guy's writing on like what he does with George's. I do wonder, cause the British do offer freedom, but it's again, we're not talking like, they're not putting this out over the internet or whatever.

Everybody's not looking at this. Like how much of that information, and also as we're gonna talk about, their offers of freedom are extremely dangerous because just the biological realities of the time, like fleeing and being held in a British camp, even if they're promising you your freedom is not safe. Yeah, and it's like, well, where are you gonna take me?

You gonna take me back to Britain? Right. So I gotta get back on that boat? Nah, you good, yeah. How much are these people being told and by whom? And what are they being told by guys like Jefferson, right? Yeah, and you're all the same. You just never really know to an extent.

Yeah, that's how you're all the same. Like, oh. I'm at least gonna like shore up my situation with this guy who I know, who's not an unknown quantity to me. I don't know no fucking Dragoons, right? I don't know none of y'all. And like still like my mom and daddy, my sister, my brother, my cousin, like these are people I know.

So if anything, it's like I'm protecting the people I know. Like, yeah, it's like I said'm protecting the people I know. Like I don't, yeah. It's like I said, it's impossible to get in his brain. Yeah. Their comfort because we're in the house is very tied to the success of this guy. So if I defend him and his wealth, that's kind of taking care of my people too, you know?

These are complicated things happening here. This whole episode of like fleeing repeatedly from the Capitol, just barely ahead of British forces is a black mark on Thomas's wartime career. He gets attacked for this a lot, right? He's pilloried for failing to defend his state because he's the guy in charge and he just keeps running away.

You're the governor, bro. And it doesn't matter if it's like, you didn't have a lot of options, you know, what else was, like he doesn't find a better option He doesn't build a militia into something that can fight these guys and like you could you can argue whether or not it's reasonable enough To go after him for that, but people do right man. Yeah slaying that turkey didn't do much for you. Did it? No, no Yeah, they're a little harder

Deal with the dragoon. Yeah, they're a little harder. So in June of 1781, Jefferson resigns as governor and the man who replaced him proved to be better at the stuff he'd been bad at, raising a functional militia to assist Washington's army. While the war entered its end phase, Jefferson head out in a place called Poplar Forest and did what he was good at.

He wrote, the work he did on the run would later make up his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia. And if you are a poly-sized student, you just shuttered a little bit. Yes. You have to read this son of a bitch in college. Yeah. The book was started as a response to questions sent by the French legation in

Philadelphia for like all of the different states. They reach out to representatives in each of the colonies and are like, Hey, here's 23 questions about like geography and law and like, what's the culture like here, right? And Jefferson, he answers all of that, but a lot of what he's doing is he's trying to defend his new country to the French

because he has this feeling that French intellectuals see Americans as a bunch of dumb yokels, right? Like they're backing us, they're backing our play in a big way, but they don't think much of us as an actual people, right? And Jefferson is kind of trying to defend what becomes the American, right, as a person. There's this strain of thought among naturalists in Europe

that the plants and people in the new world are inferior somehow to the plants and people in the old world, right? A lot of this comes out as racism against Native Americans, right? But there's this widespread belief that even white people become less intelligent when they migrate to the new world. One French thinker, Abbé Raynal, cited this as proof of this fact that quote or cited as proof of this fact that quote America has not yet produced one good poet Of course, they're being made dumb by the land. They don't even have poets over there

Yeah, I know your music don't even slap bro. Yeah. Yeah, that's hilarious And it's Jefferson his argument against this is funny because he's like man It took how long did it take the fucking Greeks to make a poet, right? Yeah, like they had a long time. We're new. Yeah, first of all Brandt. Yeah. Yeah. He's like England was around a while before you guys got a Shakespeare. You gotta give us some time, you know More or less right about that. It takes a minute. I guess so after This is like 1781. We've been a country for five years.

Yeah, we have barely, right? Not even really, because we're fighting this war. Yeah, it's not even done yet. Yeah. Yeah, what do you expect? That's hilarious. Maybe they just haven't published yet. Maybe they're still working on their craft.

Have you read all of them? I don't know. It's hard to get paper. Great roast. He's right. When he rebuts this kind of stuff, he's right. But he has a harder time rebutting the other valid allegation that the French make

of American savagery, which is, well, you guys have slaves. Right? Well, that's fucked up, huh? You're definitely ass backwards with this one, guys. Yeah, yeah. And to discuss how he tries to kind of answer this, Henry Wynsek writes, having accused King George of attempting to enslave them, American leaders laid themselves open to the charge of hypocrisy by their failure to end slavery in their own country.

Samuel Johnson jibed, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? Slavery had been outlawed in England's homeland, though not in its colonies, in the landmark 1772 Somerset decision by an activist judge who concluded that enslavement was such an egregious denial of rights that slavery had to be specifically authorized by law and parliament had never done so. When there were calls for parliament to pass enabling legislation for black slavery, the proposal was derided in a widely circulated joke, which was eventually published in the

Virginia Gazette. If Negroes are to be slaves on account of color, the next step will be to enslave every mulatto in the kingdom, then all the Portuguese, next the French, then the brown complexion English and so on until there be only one free man left, which will be the man of palest complexion in the three kingdoms. It's just your old boil chicken. That's all that's left is the boiled chicken. They're like, this is absurd guys. Like, this just doesn't make sense.

It is interesting because this is before scientific racism is starting to be a thing at this time. And it's, you don't get enough of like that, of just like some regular guy writing as a columnist in a newspaper being like, you guys see how ridiculous this is, right? Yeah, like just like, I can't, I don't know, like I don't know none about y'all book learning, I'm just saying, this sound dumb. How far are we taking this?

Yeah, yeah. How far are we taking this? Cause it seems like you can make a case for basically everybody under this, right? Yeah, essentially, yeah. So speaking of scientific racism, this is the heel turn moment really for Jefferson because while he's writing notes on the state of Virginia,

which he does, we'll talk about in the next episode, he does include a plan to end slavery in that, but he also starts his first kind of dipping into like scientific racism, right? And this is a big pivot from the all men are created scientific racism, right? And this is a big pivot from the all men are created equal guy, right? And so the hoops he has to jump through to do this are worth laying out.

He starts by admitting that slavery is a horror, right? But he cites as one of its evils and you kind of take from this, he sees this as the worst evil is what it does to young white men, right? Because it makes them lazy, right? He writes- Oh, okay.

Yeah, not that it sears their conscience. No, no, no. Yeah, not that it distorts their understanding of morality and how the earth works. It makes them lazy. It does a little bit, because he does say like, "'The man must be a prodigy

"'who can retain his manners and morals "'undepraved by such circumstances. And he's talking about like growing up with like a slave that's raised next to you, that's like you're raised to be your servant, right? That that's going to like, how can you not have your morals warped? But then he does go right into like,

it makes white men lazy and it forces them to be tyrants. They have to be tyrants when they're raised this way. It's just this focus on what it does to white people that's so like off-putting in this. Like, you're kind of burying the lead here, buddy. Like, where, that's what you draw from this? Okay, yeah. It's interesting to me that this argument does put him

at odds with some pro-slavery advocates of his day because there are people arguing in like newspapers and whatnot at the day that part of why slavery has to remain in the new country is that working is too hard for white men. We can't do it. That's actually, we can't do it. Yeah. Winesack cites a series of letters to a Virginia paper during this period in which one man argues, general utility is the basis of all law and justice and on this principle the right of slavery is founded. Well, it's really useful for me

People super convenient Here I hear everything you saying bro. I hear everything you saying but like counterpoint Yeah, it's really it really's really good for me though. Yeah. Have you tried to work eight hours? It's like really, it sucks ass man. Have you actually tried to harvest tobacco like this? It's really hard work. It's hot out there.

Doing things man, sucks. Yeah. There's another letter that Wynsett quotes that's to a newspaper in Pennsylvania where a Southerner argues that abolitionists are quote, totally blind to our ease and interest. The certain consequence would be that we must work ourselves. Come on.

Yeah, man. Come on. Yeah, of course. Yo, that is my patron saint, Ricky Bobby, when he was like, when Cal Knot Jr. was like, how about, how about, how about, how about I, you let me win sometimes. He goes, okay, yeah, I hear you.

But if, if you win, then that means that I don't win. I gotta lose, yeah. But like, and you know, you know how I roll. Ain't first or last. Like I can't, but if you're first and I'm not first. So we can't do it. Yeah. It is, I like reading stuff like that

just because it's like, okay, so that is as blatantly selfish and evil as the reality was, right? That's a guy, there's no dressing that up. He's like, yeah, but I'd have to work if we didn't have slaves. Yeah, but I don't work, bro. Like, do you wanna work?

Oh, okay. Like, there, yes. It's like a point that's made often in both of our shows is that history is us. These are just regular, there's nothing uniquely evil or there's no unique malady about they are just, they're us. That is the most regular degular answer

that anyone would give today to where you're like, well, I don't wanna pick the fruit. You know what I mean? Well, I don't know, you know what I'm saying? I wanna go to the store and buy it. You pick the fruit. You know? That's such an awful thing.

What they're saying is so awful. And it's so much uglier than Jefferson's flowery prose. But they're honest and he is full of shit. And this is really, this is the full of shit stuff that comes out. Because since he's not going to make that, well, I don't want to work, you know, argument, he's going to like have to dress it up.

And he has these, it's this, notes on the state of Virginia is weird because he has these moments of like, where he'll land kind of in between racism and some kind of actual wisdom. Like he takes on the common argument by white people that black people if they're freed, they're inclined to criminal behavior, right?

And he actually makes a good argument here, which is like that disposition to theft with which they have been branded must be ascribed to their situation and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others.

Come on. Well, if the law says your property, why are you gonna give a shit about the law? Yes, like, again, just this like dizzying, like, yes, yes, Tommy. That's right, yes. You're right. Yeah. Yeah.

Now this descends very quickly though into what again is kind of proto-scientific racism. Jefferson doesn't, he does argue that he believes, he states his belief that black people are inferior. But he also, he hems, he's like, well, I'm a scientist. And right, we don't have conclusive data yet. I'm just saying this might be what's happening, right? But he does state his belief that black people

and white people are fundamentally different with differences that are, quote, fixed in nature. Now, what he actually means by this is pretty shallow. His scientific justification is like, well, they look different. Yeah, well, look at them. Like, yeah. And he's like, white people have flowing hair

and more elegant symmetry of form. And then he gets into the real racist shit where he's like, white people have flowing hair and more elegant symmetry of form. And then he gets into the real racist shit where he's like, black people inherently prefer to have sex with white people. And he makes a comparison to how orangutans prefer to have sex with human beings. Which is not true about orangutans either. Number one.

Very racist in so many ways. Yeah, yeah, you're beating the dog and you're like, he likes it, see, look, he has a right of way, the dog likes it. Yeah, yeah, it's bad. And that orangutan phrase is like the one you'll encounter most often when you read the sections of Jefferson's racism, and it deserves to be read.

But in his book, Wynsek brings up another point about this passage that I had not considered. Jefferson probably summoned up the fantastical image of an ape mating with an African woman to deflect attention from the actual reality of Virginia society, the pervasive rape of black women by white men. And I hadn't thought about that, but yeah.

That makes sense. I'm like, that's exactly what it is, to be like, but they like it. And I'm like, no, they don't. They are property. Do you like, which is obvious, like shit that none of us have to explain, which is obvious, like shit that none of us have to explain,

which is like, they don't have agency, what are you talking about? And you are raping them and for their own safety and the safety of their children, they gonna pretend like they like it. Yeah. You know, but of course they don't like, what are you talking about?

What are you talking about? Yeah. I think one of the things I think about when I read Jefferson's writing here, cause he very much frames this as I'm trying to look at this like a scientist. I'm trying to analyze these different relations between the races scientifically.

I think a little bit, you've heard that story about that guy who studied like wolves and wrote this about like alpha wolf behavior and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And he gave us this idea of the alpha male and then realized this later like, oh, I was just he gave us this idea of the alpha male and then realized this later, like, oh, I was just looking at wolves in prison, basically. They're all in captivity.

And they act differently in prison than they do in the wild. Yeah, totally. They don't actually do this in the wild. Right? He is, Jefferson is analyzing people that he owns and that other people around him own and their behavior. And he's attributing all of their behavior to like natural distinctions and always ignoring like,

well, but they're enslaved Well, they're enslaved. Not always not always but yeah Yeah, yeah factual and yeah, this is like this is really this is the big heel turn moment This is when he commits this is when it becomes kind of impossible Ideologically for him to ever wind up on the side of abolition, right? Because he is fundamentally Defending slavery and when he defends slavery, he does so by of abolition, right? Because he is fundamentally defending slavery. And when he defends slavery, he does so by being racist, right?

One of his complaints is that people with black skin are better at hiding their emotions. Now, that's not true. But what's happening here is number one, he doesn't pay attention to them, right? Cause he owns them, you know? And so he doesn't understand them as much as he understands white people, right?

And the other thing is that if you are enslaved, you probably get good at hiding certain feelings because they're dangerous, right? Absolutely, like the idea that, which is completely normal of self-preservation and making decisions that are going to, yeah, again, like, because we are in fact humans that are gonna try our best to protect our children.

And if that means I gotta do a little shuck and jive to make sure that you feel placated, it's gonna stop the overseer from coming over here. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it's one of those, this kind of belief again, that he does not analyze in any way, right? Yeah. And yeah, it's one of those, this kind of belief again, that he does not analyze in any way, right? It culminates in a very fortunate set of conclusions for him, which is he decides like,

well, it just seems like black people don't feel as much as white people, right? We know they don't need as much sleep because we don't let them sleep as often. We know they're less sensitive to the heat and the cold. You just don't listen when they complain and they don't feel like they can. And especially with you saying, well, like them saying,

well, we, I mean, you kidding me? We couldn't handle this, like, and they're handling it. So I guess, you know, yeah. They haven't done that. We wouldn't stand for this. We would look, we would not stand for this. And apparently they're standing for it. So yeah.

So it must be cool. Yeah. He starts, be cool. Yeah. He starts, he's one of the first people to make the argument that they don't feel pain in the same way, which exists, I mean, less consciously, but like that's still a problem in medicine today. He writes, their griefs are transient. In other words, they feel sad when they lose family members,

but not for a long time. They forget things quickly, right? Now, he also, he has to acknowledge equality in a few areas, right? He says that they have an equivalent memory to white people, right? Because he employs black laborers doing complicated tasks, right?

He can't not see that, right? There can't be any use as workers. Yeah, number one, yeah. Yeah, but he also has to argue, but that means they don't have any they don't they lack reason And they can't imagine things. They really can't want anything better and Part of his argument for this is I've never met a black person who could understand Euclid's writing. It's like Do you let him read Euclid? Do you teach him like math? Yeah, you know, like yeah, have you tried?

About that. Yeah, how about that? Is it, and also like, is it, are there a little white people who haven't heard about Euclid, right? The most of the country that's not, can't read, and that certainly doesn't know, fuck it, Euclid. Is it maybe a matter of access to education? Maybe. Which you understand

is valuable, you know? Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, anyway. Wow. Yeah, he's pretty bad. There is one moment here where he's like, it's possible I'm wrong about this, You know? Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. He's pretty bad. There is one moment here where he's like, it's possible I'm wrong about this because maybe enslaved people feel they have to lock up

their faculties and talents to endure. So he has the ability to realize what's going on here. He even hints at it. He just can't accept it. Those frustrating moments when you're just, when somebody, when he just peeks up and says, I mean, I could be tripping because, I mean, clearly we're beating him to death and.

Yeah. Nah, it's gonna be. Could be wrong about this very obvious thing. Yeah. So nevertheless, he concluded that these differences weren't the result of the fact that slavery gave few chances for creativity or intellectual achievement He decides nature had produced the distinction and he gives himself out again. He's like, that's just what I think

I you know now maybe there will be some more evidence later But yeah, I consider that kind of like I don't know a little cowardly actually it's very cowardly because of like yeah, it's the implications of the like Freud of, it's the implications of the like, Freud of it all, like the subconscious continuingly to peek out, like, you know you're wrong. Like, you know you're wrong, you know what I'm saying? Somewhere in there, like, you know you wrong,

but you also know you not trying to change your way of life. You know, and like you said, the full of shittery is on full display here. You're too good a writer to not bring this up because you just inherently make good arguments, but you have to clamp it down. You can almost feel him shoving that back down inside of himself in order to make this work.

And we'll talk a lot more about this kind of stuff and even a bit more about notes on the state of Virginia. But for the end of this episode, let's just bring it to the end of the Revolutionary War, which the US wins at Yorktown while Jefferson is still scribbling away. In 1783, a peace was negotiated and the US gained its independence. Notes on the state of Virginia was published in 1785 and then republished several times. And it formed a meaningful part of the backlash or counter swing to a wave of abolitionist sentiment

that gripped the new country around the time of its independence, right? Because of the declaration, because there's actually starts to be this argument. There's even some will argue Virginia might've been on its way to abolishing slavery, right? Weeks before Jefferson turned in his draft, a member of the Virginia state legislature

submitted a draft constitution that would have ended hereditary slavery in the state. It argued that men were born equally free and independent and that no compact could deprive them of their rights. The legislature though, added a line that men only gained these rights when they enter into a state of society and slaves were defined as not part of society.

Still, that's pretty fucked up. Yeah. Like these people are literally what your entire society rests on. But. Damn, yeah. It makes it that much more like human and like heinous to where it was like, bro, it was like right there.

It was like right there. Like y'all knew. It just was like, ah, we'll cut that part out. Like, yeah. And it's, it's still, this is not an even pro a few years after the constitution in Virginia is changed or a few years after this happens, the constitution in Virginia is changed to include black people as citizens if they've been freed. And if you were observing all of this, like these debates and these pushbacks and whatnot,

in trying to predict the future, you might've guessed in the mid 1780s, well, maybe Virginia's headed to abolition. Wineset kind of argues that it was, and that it's Jefferson who plays a major role in wrenching it away from that course. Quote, at this critical moment, Jefferson broke from the dominant progressive thinking of his time to construct an image of the black person as the other, a being with no place in American society. Putting a scholarly sheen on the rationalizations of slaveholders, Jefferson made himself the

theorist and spokesperson for the reactionaries. Jefferson was not as torn as he has taken to be, writes the historian Michael Zuckerman. He was not as confined by his culture as his apologists have often claimed. In regard to race as in regard to so much else, he was a leader. And that's part two. I love that.

Maybe leaders are a bad idea. Yeah, maybe leaders are a bad idea. Yeah. Maybe race leaders are a bad idea. Yeah, maybe, yeah. Maybe don't be like, I'm smart, I read stuff. Yeah. Maybe race leaders are a bad idea. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe don't be like, I'm smart. I read stuff. Yeah, it might be a little more to it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

He's such a little kind of a little shit. Yeah, he's a bitch ass. He's yeah. I mean, at the end of the day. Yeah. At the end of the day. Yeah. At the end of the day. At the end of the day. It's like you could cover it up. You're like like flower it up, man. Like twist your brain into a pretzel.

Say that you like what I'm doing it, but I'm not like those dudes. And it's like, bro, like, I mean, I like I think of so many modern things. I think of like, this may feel very TMZ of it, but like I think of like P Diddy and his apology and was just like, I was really in a dark place, man. I've gone to therapy and bro, don't worry I won't hear about your therapy. You know what I'm saying?

We do not care. Yeah, and I'm like, and the like, okay, like there was a lot of lightly dim places that you was in before you got to the dark one that we saw, brother. Like you don't wake up and get to that homeboy. That's a really good boy. You understand what I'm saying? That's not a light switch big dog.

Like you was building to this homie. You know, and then I think the like, you know, like why, like it's like, if I could grab America by the cheeks and be like the face cheeks, okay. And be like. I'm glad you clarified. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like why you ain't join the ICC, big dog. Like why you don't want to.

Yeah, we didn't want to say like, tell me, tell me why you don't want to call it. Call this a genocide. Tell me why you don't want to. Tell me why you don't want to accuse anybody for crimes of crimes against humanity. Yeah. What's the same? Why is why Jefferson does everything he does here is like, well, because it would mean making your life a little less comfortable, right?

And it would mean that like- It would mean making some sacrifices of things you value. That maybe people will peek at you and be like, exactly. So I'd like, why won't America do this to Netanyahu? Well, because I don't want y'all to look at our centuries of crimes of humanity. So I don't wanna, you know what I'm saying?

Like it's so obvious. We got some access to like, we really use their airspace a lot. Like there's a number of things. There's a number of reasons why. It comes down to, yeah. Yeah, like. I don't want to, it'll be hard for me.

It comes down to your lyric, Prop. It comes down to, I don't hate America, just a man she keeps her promises and she doesn't. And she don't, just like, dude, be who you said you was gonna be. And Jefferson is like, he has, because he's this big, I am the prophet of freedom guy internationally,

he has to write to these dudes in France, we're going to be the people, a lot of the people who were involved in the French revolution and who are these like, and he has to explain, how am I still the prophet of freedom while owning people? And that's a big part of what's happening here. And the answer is that like,

well, they're not really the same kind. And there's a lot of problems. Like I agree, slavery is bad, but we really have to look at this very carefully because of all of these biological differences, right? Which is all he's doing is he's scientificizing the shit that every slave owner would say, which is like, yeah, but I don't wanna work.

Neither does he, you know? He's a farmer, but he's not a farmer, you know? Exactly. He's literally every butt guy. He's the, I don't hate women, but he's that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's kind of like, but look, look, look, look,

if you let me finish, if you let me finish, I would tell you it's like, all right, bro. He's every guy I don't want to talk to at a bar. Right. Oh, times. Yeah. All right. Right. Oh, Thomas. Yeah, like how? All right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, those are the guys you have to like, they got all these big words, but you just, it's almost like, you know, like a toddler out of control. Like I have to, you just have to just keep them in focus and be like, hey man, here's the cornerstone question. How can you be the prophet of freedom

while keeping someone enslaved? Yeah. Like, no, no, no, no, no, that's all we talking about. That's like, you can give me all, how are you the prophet of freedom? Yeah, exactly. And he's gonna have to, we're gonna talk about his time in France

because he's the basically the ambassador. Yeah. That's the whole time there is he's like having that argument with people. We'll get to that, but first prop, what's your pluggables? Where are they? When are they?

Man, when are they? They are whenever you want on, do you believe the internet's dead? I think large chunks of it are, right? Like, you know, that's kind of something like a third of old Wikipedia links or whatnot are dead. Like it turns out it's not a very good place to store things. No. But on this, you know, on the, on whatever's left of the internet,

you can go to prophiphop.com and that'll get you to all the other places. Little politics with Prop Man, you know, we're, I feel like this has been probably one of my best seasons. If I do say so myself, yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, we kind of hit a stride here. There's some good things coming too. Dude, super good things coming.

Hit a stride, man. I'm really excited about this. So yeah, Hilla Politics with Prop with the Cool Zone crew. You know, yep. Yeah. And for us at Cool Zone media and all the things and for you Robert anything

No, no Nothing Portland diaper bank behind the bastards go fund me we're doing a go fund me Diapers for people who can't afford them always a good thing Always good to help people have diapers who can't afford to buy them. Otherwise, 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 podcasts. Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception. I'm Andrea Gunning, and now we're sharing an all new story of betrayal.

Justin Rutherford, doctor, father, family man. It was the perfect cover to hide behind. Detective Weaver said, "'I'm sure you know why we're here. I was like, what in the world is going on? Listen to Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero and I'm Stephanie Beatriz. You may know us from television. Nine, nine. And now we're here with our very own podcast, More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. Join us as we take on topics like listening to yourself, the challenge of self-care,

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