Disturbing History - DH Ep:34 Lyndon Johnson's Obsession with Power—and His Pants

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

This week on Disturbing History, we dive into the unsettling life of Lyndon B. Johnson, America’s 36th president. Rising from poverty in the Texas Hill Country, Johnson clawed his way to power through manipulation, intimidation, and a relentless drive for control. His legacy remains a paradox: groundbreaking civil rights achievements on one hand, and the catastrophic Vietnam War and bizarre personal behavior on the other.We explore Johnson’s infamous “Johnson Treatment,” his ruthless rise in Washington, and the humiliations he endured as Vice President before seizing the presidency after JFK’s assassination.From crude phone calls about custom pants to dominating senators face-to-face, Johnson’s methods reveal a man who bent democracy itself to fit his outsized ego.This episode paints the full portrait: a leader capable of compassion and cruelty, progress and destruction, leaving behind a legacy that forces us to ask how much one man’s ambition can reshape a nation—for better and for worse.

Some stories were never meant to be told. Others were buried on purpose. This podcast digs them all up. Disturbing history peels back the layers of the past to uncover the strange, the sinister, and the stories that were never supposed to survive. From shadowy presidential secrets to government experiments that sound more like fiction than fact,

this is history they hoped you'd forget. I'm Brian, investigator, author, and your guide through the dark corner, of our collective memory. Each week I'll narrate some of the most chilling and little-known tales from history that will make you question everything you thought you knew.

And here's the twist. Sometimes the history is disturbing to us. And sometimes, we have to disturb history itself, just to get to the truth. If you like your facts with the side of fear, if you're not afraid to pull at threads, others leave alone. You're in the right place.

History isn't just written by the victors. victors. Sometimes, it's rewritten by the disturbed. On a sweltering August afternoon in 1964, the most powerful man in the free world picked up the phone in the Oval Office. President Lyndon Baines Johnson had nuclear launch codes at his fingertips, the fate of nations in his hands, and the Vietnam War escalating under his watch. But at this particular moment, the leader of the Western world had something far more pressing on his mind. His crotch was uncomfortable. comfortable. Mr. Hagger, the president, drawed into the phone, reaching Joe Hager of the Hager clothing company. What followed was perhaps the most bizarrely specific, anatomically detailed

clothing order ever recorded in the annals of presidential history. The president of the United States proceeded to describe in excruciating detail exactly how much extra room he needed in his pants, complete with belching sounds and crude anatomical references that would make a sailor blush. Down where your nuts hang, Johnson explained matter-of-factly, is always a little too tight. So when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there. Uh, because they cut me. He continued with graphic precision. It's just like riding a wire fence.

This wasn't some leaked private moment. Johnson was recording himself, as he did with nearly every conversation, adding to the roughly 650 hours of tape that would one day reveal the strangest, crudest, most manipulative. President America had ever seen. A man who would routinely conduct meetings while sitting on the toilet, who would swim naked in the White House pool with horrified advisors, who would physically intimidate senators by looming his six feet four inch frame over them while grabbing their lapels, breathing in their faces and poking their chest until they surrendered to his will. This was Lyndon Johnson, a man whose obsession with power was matched only by his obsession with

his own anatomy, whose political genius was inseparable from his crude vulgarity, whose progressive achievements were built on a foundation of manipulation, paranoia, and an almost pathological need to dominate every person in every room he ever entered. This is the disturbing history of how a poor boy from the Texas Hill country became the most powerful man on earth, leaving behind a legacy of groundbreaking civil rights legislation, devastating war, and some of the most of the most bizarre behavior ever exhibited in the highest office of the land. Lyndon Baines Johnson entered the world on August 27, 1908, in a small farmhouse near Stonewall, Texas, in the impoverished hill country that would shape his ruthless ambition and deep

insecurities for the rest of his life. The first child of Sam Ely Johnson Jr. and Rebecca Baines Johnson, young Lyndon arrived in a place where the 20th century had barely begun to intrude. No electricity, no running water, no paved roads, just endless miles of harsh, unforgiving landscape that broke as many dreams as it did backs. His father, Sam Jr., was a man of grand ambitions and spectacular failures, a state legislator who could captivate a crowd with populist rhetoric but couldn't manage his own finances, dragging his family repeatedly to the edge of ruin.

His mother Rebecca was a college-educated woman of reform. fine sensibilities, who found herself trapped in rural poverty, pouring all her frustrated ambitions into her eldest son, while making it abundantly clear that he was her only hope for redemption from the crude world into which she'd fallen. From his earliest days, Johnson absorbed contradictory lessons that would define his character. From his father, he learned the intoxicating power of politics and the humiliation of failure. From his mother, he inherited both a desperate need for approval and a sense that he was destined for greatness. If only he could escape the poverty that surrounded him like a cage. The poverty was real and grinding. Young Linden watched his

father's various business ventures collapse one after another. Cattle speculation, cotton farming, real estate deals, each failure driving the family deeper into debt and Sam Jr. deeper into the bottle. The boy wore patched clothes to school, worked from dawn to dusk during harvest season, season and learned early that in the hill country, you were either the one with power or the one at power's mercy. But even as a child, Johnson displayed the characteristics that would one day carry him to the White House, an almost supernatural ability to read people, a desperate need to be the center of attention, and a willingness to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. His childhood friends recalled a boy who had to be the leader in every game, who would quit if he couldn't

make the rules, who could charm adults with precocious political talk one moment and throw volcanic tantrums the next. At Johnson City High School, yes, the town was named after his ancestors, a fact he never let anyone forget. Linden emerged as a master manipulator. He was the teenager who somehow convinced his classmates to elect him senior class president, even though he was only a junior. He was the student who would do anything for a teacher's approval, staying after class to help, volunteering for every task, ingratiating himself with an intensity that bordered on desperate. In 1927, after a brief unsuccessful stint in California doing odd jobs, Johnson enrolled at Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos, a small, underfunded school that was

itself looked down upon by the University of Texas. Here in this backwater institution, Johnson would perfect the art of power politics that would one day make him the most effective Senate majority leader in American history. Within weeks of arriving on campus, Johnson had identified the real power center. Not the student government, not the faculty, but the office of college president, Cecil Evans. Johnson literally camped outside Evans' door, volunteering to carry his briefcase, run his errands, deliver his messages. He made himself so indispensable that Evans eventually gave him a job that came with something even more valuable than the meager salary. Access. As Evans' assistant, Johnson had his hands on the levers of power at the college.

He could influence who got campus jobs, vital for poor students, who received favorable mentions in presidential letters of recommendation, who got called into the president's office for praise or punishment. Johnson wielded this proxy power ruthlessly, building a policy. political machine on campus that would have impressed Tammany Hall. He founded a secret society called the White Stars, positioning it as the champion of poor rural students against the more established black stars. In reality, it was Johnson's personal power base, a network of students who owed him favors and feared his retribution. He would stay up all night in the dormitories, moving from room to room, talking, persuading, arm twisting, until he had the votes he needed for whatever scheme he was pursuing. His classmates later recalled the intensity of these late-night

sessions. Johnson would physically corner them, his face inches from theirs, his hands grabbing their arms or shoulders, talking non-stop in a torrent of words that mixed flattery, logic, emotional appeals, and veiled threats until resistance seemed not just futile, but almost immoral. This was the prototype of what would later become famous as the Johnson treatment. In 1928, needing money to continue his education, Johnson took a teaching job in Kutla, Texas, a small town near the Mexican border. He was assigned to the Well-Housing School, a segregated institution for Mexican-American children, some of the poorest students in one of the poorest regions of Texas.

What happened in Kutla would become a cornerstone of the Johnson legend, a story he would retell countless times throughout his political career. And unlike many Johnson stories, this one appears to be largely true. The young teacher threw himself into the job with characteristic intensity. He arrived before dawn to prepare lessons, organized debate teams and spelling bees, convinced the school board to buy sports equipment, and badgered parents to keep their children in school. But even in this seemingly noble chapter, Johnson's methods were revealing. He was dictatorial in his classroom management, demanding absolute,

obedience and punishing any deviation harshly. He made students who spoke Spanish sit in the corner, not out of cruelty, he later claimed, but because he believed English was their only path out of poverty. He worked his students relentlessly, keeping them after school, assigning extra homework, pushing them with an intensity that was equal parts dedication and domination. One student, Juan Ortiz later recalled, He spanked us good. He was strict, but we loved him.

It was a pattern that would repeat throughout Johnson's life, the combination of genuine care and controlling manipulation, the ability to inspire both fear and devotion, often in the same person, at the same moment. After graduating from college in 1930, Johnson taught briefly in Houston before fate intervened in the form of Richard Claiburg, a wealthy congressman who needed a secretary. Through a connection engineered by his father's political contacts,

Johnson got the job and headed to Washington in December 1931, age 23, with one decent suit and burning ambition. Washington in the Depression era was a city transforming under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and Johnson positioned himself at the center of this transformation. Within months, he had figured out how power really worked in the Capitol. It wasn't in the marble halls or formal hearings. It was in the back rooms, the cloak rooms, the bathrooms where deals were. were made and information traded. Johnson became legendary among Congressional Secretaries for his work ethic and his intelligence network. He would arrive at the office before 7 a.m. and stay

until midnight, seven days a week. But more importantly, he cultivated relationships with everyone from elevator operators to senior senators. He learned who drank too much, who was having affairs, who needed money, who had ambitions. Information was power and Johnson collected it obsessively. He organized the Little Congress, an association of congressional secretaries, transforming it from a sleepy debating society into a powerful network that he controlled absolutely. Through the Little Congress, Johnson built relationships with future power brokers and learned the intricate rules and unwritten customs that governed Capitol Hill. In 1935, at just 26 years old, Johnson was appointed Texas Director of the National Youth Administration,

making him the youngest state director in the nation. The NIA was a New Deal program designed to provide jobs and education for young people during the Depression, and Johnson saw it as his chance to build a statewide political network. His tenure at the NIA showcased both his genuine compassion for the underprivileged and his ruthless political instincts. He fought tirelessly to get programs for African American and Mexican American youth at a time when such efforts were politically dangerous. in Texas. He created roadside parks, built schools, and provided jobs for thousands of desperate young Texans. But every good deed was also a political investment. Johnson kept meticulous records

of everyone he helped, creating a vast network of people who owed him favors. He made sure local politicians knew exactly who was responsible for the federal money flowing into their districts. He cultivated relationships with wealthy Texas contractors who would later become a major campaign donors. Most importantly, he caught the attention of President Franklin Roosevelt himself. During a visit to Texas, Roosevelt met the young NYU director and was impressed by his energy and political acumen. I've just met the most remarkable young man, Roosevelt reportedly told an aide. He's going to be president someday. In 1937, when Congressman James P. Buchanan died suddenly, Johnson saw his chance to leap from bureaucrat to elected officials.

The special election for Texas' 10th congressional district would feature eight candidates, and Johnson started out as a long shot, young, relatively unknown, and running against established politicians. But Johnson had advantages his opponents couldn't match, the organizational skills he'd honed at the NIA, the network of supporters he'd built across the district, and most importantly, an absolute willingness to do whatever it took to win. He positioned himself as the only candidate who would support FDR 100%, a risky strategy in conservative Texas, but one that set him apart from the field.

The campaign showcased Johnson's emerging political style. He worked 18-hour days, driving from town to town in a car equipped with a loudspeaker, giving the same speech dozens of times a day until his voice was completely gone. He would grab voters by their arms, stare into their eyes, and make them feel like, like they were the most important person in the world for those few seconds. He promised everything to everyone, federal projects to businessmen, farm supports to farmers, jobs to the unemployed. Stay tuned for more disturbing history. We'll be back after these messages. Behind the scenes, the campaign was less inspiring. Johnson's team engaged in what would become his

trademark tactics, spreading rumors about opponents, making deals with local political bosses, and most controversially engaging in vote buying and ballot manipulation that would follow him throughout his career on election day Johnson won by 3,000 votes heading to Congress at age 28 Johnson arrived in Washington as FDR's boy the young congressman who had tied himself completely to the New Deal agenda it was a brilliant strategic move within days of taking office he had maneuvered himself into a meeting with Roosevelt using his NIA connections and his electoral victory as a Roosevelt supporter to gain access to the most powerful man in the world.

Roosevelt always attracted to young energetic politicians who reminded him of himself, took an immediate liking to Johnson. Here was a tall, gangly Texan who understood power the way FDR did, not as an abstract concept, but as a tool to be accumulated and wielded. Roosevelt began inviting Johnson to small dinner parties, strategy sessions, even personal meetings, that senior senators waited years to receive. Johnson leveraged this relationship brilliantly. When his district needed rural electrification, electricity was still a luxury in the Hill Country.

Johnson didn't just lobby for it. He made it a personal crusade. He haunted the rural electrification administration offices, called bureaucrats at home, and when necessary, invoked the president's name to break through obstacles. When the lights finally came on in the Hill Country, Hill Country, Johnson made sure everyone knew who was responsible. But Johnson's congressional years

also revealed his darker tendencies. He was brutal to his staff, demanding they worked the same inhuman hours he did, calling them at all hours with demands, humiliating them in front of others when they disappointed him. One secretary recalled that Johnson would call her at 2 a.m. to take dictation, then berate her for sounding tired. He was also developing his notorious bathroom habits. Johnson would routinely continue conversations while using the toilet, forcing subordinates and even other congressmen to stand in the bathroom while he defecated, using their discomfort as a power play. It was his way of saying, I'm so powerful, I can make you stand here while I take a shit, and you'll do it because you need me, one aide later recalled.

In 1941, Johnson made his first run for the U.S. Senate in a special election following the death of Senator Morris Shepard. Running against popular Governor W. Lee Pappy O'Doniel, Johnson employed every trick he knew and invented some new ones. He raised unprecedented amounts of money from Texas contractors who had benefited from federal projects

he'd steered their way. He blanketed the state with radio ads, hired planes to drop campaign leaflets, and pioneered the use of helicopter campaigning. The election was so corrupt on both sides that it became known as the theft that failed. Johnson appeared to be winning on election night, but over the next few days, mysterious ballot boxes kept appearing in O'Daniel-friendly counties. Johnson had been out stolen.

He lost by 1,311 votes and learned a crucial lesson. In Texas politics, it wasn't enough to steal votes. You had to steal them last. After Pearl Harbor, Johnson, who had been a vocal supporter of military preparedness, felt compelled to back up his words with the action. He became the first congressman to volunteer for active duty, receiving a lieutenant commander commission in the Naval Reserve. His military service, however, would become one of the most controversial and mythologized periods of his life. Johnson spent most of his military service on inspection tours, using his congressional position to avoid actual combat. However, on June 9, 1942, he did fly as an observer on a B-26 bombing mission over the United States.

New Guinea. The plane came under fire from Japanese fighters and had to turn back before reaching its target. For this single combat mission, which lasted a few hours, Johnson would receive the Silver Star, personally presented by General Douglas MacArthur. The circumstances of this decoration remain murky. None of the other crew members received medals, and some historians have suggested MacArthur awarded it to curry favor with a congressman on the Naval Affairs Committee. Johnson would wear the silver star ribbon on his lapel for the rest of his life, transforming his brief military service into a cornerstone of his political identity. Johnson finally made it to the Senate in 1948,

in an election that would define his reputation for ruthlessness and corruption. Running against former Governor Koch-Stevenson in the Democratic primary, which in one-party Texas was the real election, Johnson pulled out all the stops. The campaign featured Johnson's first choice. use of a helicopter for campaigning, the Johnson City windmill, as he called it, allowing him to visit multiple small towns in a single day. He would descend from the sky like a deity, give a speech to amazed farmers who had never seen a helicopter, and fly off to the next town. It was political theater at its finest, but the real action was happening behind the scenes.

Johnson's campaign managed by future Governor John Connolly organized a massive vote-buying operation. They paid poll taxes for thousands of poor Texans, ensuring they could vote, and ensuring they knew who had paid for that privilege. They made deals with South Texas political bosses who controlled Latino votes through a combination of patronage and intimidation. On election night, it appeared Stevenson had won by a narrow margin. But then, six days after the election, a miracle occurred in Jim Wells County. Election officials discovered 203 additional votes. 202 of which were for Johnson. Remarkably, these voters had all signed in alphabetical order and in the same handwriting,

some of them apparently rising from the dead to exercise their civic duty. This transparent fraud gave Johnson an 87-vote victory out of nearly a million cast, earning him the mocking nickname Landslide Linden. Stevenson challenged the results in court, but Johnson's lawyers, including future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortis, managed to get a friendly federal judge to issue an injunction stopping any investigation. Johnson was going to the Senate. Once in the Senate, Johnson began his meteoric rise to power. Within two years, he was Democratic Whip. By 1953, at age 44, he was minority leader.

When Democrats regained control in 1955, he became the youngest majority leader in Senate history. His secret was what became known as the Johnson treatment. A combination of physical intimidation, psychological manipulation, and political horse trading that was unlike anything the Senate had ever seen. The Johnson treatment was a full-body experience. Johnson would tower over his target, leaning in so close that they could feel his breath. His face just inches away. His hands would be in constant motion, grabbing lapels, poking chests, draping an arm over shoulders in a gesture that was simultaneously friendly and imprisoning. He would alternate between cajoling and threatening, between offering favors and promising retribution,

all in a stream of consciousness monologue that left his target dizzy and overwhelmed. Senator George Smathers described it. Lyndon got me by the lapels and put his face on top of mine, and he talked and talked and talked. I figured it was either getting drowned or joining. Another senator said, when Johnson wanted something, he never let up. He was like a storm that wouldn't pass until you'd. gave in. But the treatment wasn't just physical intimidation. Johnson knew everything about every senator, their electoral vulnerabilities, their financial needs, their personal weaknesses. He knew

who drank too much, who was having marital problems, who needed campaign funds. He would use this information strategically, offering help with one hand while making it clear that opposition would have consequences. Johnson transformed the majority leader position from a large, largely ceremonial role into the most powerful position in the Senate. He controlled committee assignments, determined which bills came to the floor, and managed the legislative calendar with an iron fist. He installed a sophisticated intelligence network, with staffers reporting on every conversation, every meeting,

every rumor circulating in the Capitol. His workday was legendary. He would arrive at the Capitol before 7 a.m. and often not leave until after midnight. He had telephones installed everywhere, in his car, in bathrooms, next to his bed. He would make dozens of calls a day, each one calculated to advance his agenda or strengthen his position. His staff was expected to match his pace, leading to a constant turnover of exhausted, burnt-out AIDS. The pace took its toll. On July 2, 1955, Johnson suffered a massive heart attack that nearly killed him.

For days, he hovered between life and death at Bethesda Naval Hospital. The attack forced him to confront his mortality, and temporarily at least, to moderate his behavior. During his recovery at his Texas ranch, Johnson fell into a deep depression. Without the constant action of the Senate, without the daily exercise of power, he seemed to shrink into himself. He became convinced his political career was over, that he would be seen as a weak, sickly figure. Lady Bird, his long-suffering wife, later said it was the only time she ever saw him give up. But Johnson's need for power was stronger than his fear of death.

Within months, he was back in the Senate, working the same brutal hours, though now with a carefully managed diet and a pocket full of nitroglycerin pills. If anything, his brush with death made him more determined to accumulate power while he could. The personal cost of Johnson's ambition was borne most heavily by his family. His wife, Lady Bird, whom he had married in 1934, after a whirlwind two-month courtship, was subjected to his volcanic temper, his constant demands, and his numerous affairs. Johnson was a serial philanderer who made little effort to hide his activities. He would brag about his conquest to male colleagues and even force Lady Bird to socialize with his mistresses.

His daughters Linda and Lucy grew up with a father who could be warmly affectionate at one moment and coldly dismissive the next, who would humiliate them in public if they disappointed him, who measured their worth by their contribution to his political career. Both would later struggle with the psychological damage of being Lyndon Johnson's children. The 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles was supposed to be Lyndon Johnson's moment of triumph. He had served as the most powerful majority leader in Senate history. He had passed more legislation than any predecessor. Surely the party would recognize that he, not the young, inexperienced senator from Massachusetts,

deserved the presidential nomination. But Johnson had fatally miscalculated. While he had been mastering the inside game of Senate politics, John F. Kennedy had been mastering the outside game of public campaigning. Kennedy had spent years traveling the country, building support among party activists, winning primaries, and most importantly, capturing the imagination of a new generation of Democrats, who saw Johnson as part of the old guard. When Kennedy secured the nomination on the first ballot,

Johnson was devastated, but not entirely surprised. What happened next, however, shocked everyone, including Johnson himself. Kennedy offered him the vice presidency, and after a night of frantic negotiations, arm twisting and soul-searching, Johnson accepted. Why did Johnson, the master of the Senate,

accept relegation to what his predecessor John Nance Garner had called, not worth a bucket of warm piss. The reasons were complex. Johnson knew his hold on the Senate was tenuous. Younger liberals were increasingly challenging his authority. He also calculated that Kennedy, with his health problems and risky lifestyle, might not survive his presidency. Most importantly, his outsized ego convinced him that he could transform the vice-presidency just as he had transformed the majority leader position. He was catastrophically wrong. From the moment Johnson took the oath as vice president, he entered what his biographer Robert Carrow would

call the years of humiliation. The man who had dominated the Senate, who had made senators beg for his favor, was now reduced to begging for scraps of influence from Kennedy's inner circle. The Harvard educated Eastern establishment types, who privately mocked him as Uncle Corn Pone and Rufus Corn Pone. The Kennedy's Jack, Bobby, and their coterie treated Johnson with barely concealed contempt. They excluded him from important meetings, ignored his advice, and gave him make-work assignments designed to keep him busy but powerless. He was sent on goodwill tours to countries of minimal strategic importance. He was made chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council and the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, positions with

impressive titles but little real authority. The lowest moment came at a White House reception when Bobby Kennedy, the Attorney General and the President's brother, publicly humiliated Johnson in front of other guests. Bobby, who had opposed Johnson's selection as VP, and never forgave him for accepting, needled him about his Texas ranch, his clothes, his accent, until Johnson, the man who had made grown Senators cry, was reduced to red-faced silence. Johnson's behavior during this period became increasingly erratic. He would drink heavily at social functions, sometimes becoming maudlin and self-pitying. He would corner anyone who would listen and deliver long, rambling monologues about his accomplishments in the Senate, desperately trying to remind people,

and himself, that he had once been somebody important. At one particularly pathetic moment, Johnson tried to maintain his Senate office in addition to his vice presidential office, even attempting to preside over Democratic caucus meetings. The senators, his former subordinates, quickly made it clear that he was no longer one of them. Stay tuned for more disturbing history. We'll be back after these messages. He was the vice president now, an outsider, a ceremonial figure, a nobody. Nothing illustrated Johnson's marginalization more starkly than his treatment during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.

As the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war, as Kennedy convened the Executive Committee of the National Security Council to decide, humanity's fate. Johnson was barely there. He was included in the meetings, yes, but as a silent observer, not a participant. The Kennedy inner circle, McNamara, Bundy, Rusk, Bobby Kennedy dominated the discussions while Johnson sat quietly, occasionally nodding, rarely speaking. When he did venture an opinion, it was often ignored or dismissed. In one telling moment captured on the secret recordings Kennedy made of these meetings. Johnson suggests a course of action only to have Bobby Kennedy immediately contradict him, not even addressing Johnson directly, but speaking

about him in the third person, as if he weren't in the room. The former master of the Senate, the man who had controlled the legislative branch with an iron fist, had been reduced to a piece of furniture in the executive branch. Privately, Johnson was seething. He confided to close associates that he had ideas, strategies, solutions, but no one wanted to hear them. He believed, probably correctly, that his experience in negotiating with difficult personalities in the Senate could have been valuable in dealing with Khrushchev. But the Kennedy saw him as a regional politician out of his depth in international affairs. By the fall of 1963, Johnson's political future looked bleak.

There were persistent rumors that Kennedy would dump him from the ticket in 1964. possibly replacing him with North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford, or another moderate Southern Democrat who didn't carry Johnson's baggage. Johnson himself believed these rumors, confiding to friends that he expected to be forced back to Texas in disgrace. It was in this context that Kennedy decided to make a political fence-mending trip to Texas in November, 1963. The Texas Democratic Party was split between conservative and liberal factions, and Johnson's inability to unite them was seen as evidence of his weakness. The trip would include stops in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas,

a city known for its virulent anti-Kennedy sentiment. Johnson dreaded the trip. He knew he would be blamed if anything went wrong, if the crowds were small, if the fundraising was disappointing. On the morning of November 22nd, 1963 in Fort Worth, Johnson attended a breakfast where Kennedy spoke. Witnesses recalled that Johnson seemed particularly morose, barely touching his food, lost in his own thoughts. Later that morning, the presidential party flew to Dallas.

Johnson was in the motorcade, two cars behind Kennedy, when the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. In an instant, everything changed. The man who had been politically dead was suddenly, horrifyingly, about to become the most powerful person on earth. At 12.30 p.m. on November 22nd, 1963, as the presidential motorcade made its way through Dealey Plaza, three shots changed the course of American history. Johnson, riding two cars behind Kennedy with Lady Bird, heard what he later described as a sharp, cracking sound. Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood immediately threw himself on top of Johnson, pushing him to the floor of the car and shielding him with his body.

Within minutes, Johnson's car was racing to Parkland Hospital. In the chaos that followed, Johnson's behavior would become the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation for decades to come. According to multiple witnesses, Johnson seemed simultaneously shocked and oddly prepared, devastated and determined, grieving and grasping for power. At Parkland Hospital, Johnson was sequestered in a small room while doctors worked frantically to save Kennedy's life. Various accounts describe him as pacing nervously,

making phone calls, and at one point, according to one witness, muttering, he's dead, he's dead, even before the official announcement. When Kennedy was officially pronounced dead at 1 p.m., Johnson was already moving to consolidate power.

What happened next remains controversial. Johnson insisted on being sworn in immediately, on Texas soil, before returning to Washington. He demanded that Jackie Kennedy, still wearing her blood-stained pink suit, stand beside him for the oath-taking photograph. Some saw this as a necessary show of continuity. Others saw it as a grotesque political opportunism,

using the grieving widow as a prop. The famous photograph aboard Air Force One, Johnson with his hand raised, Lady Bird on one side, Jackie Kennedy on the other, captures a moment of profound transition. But it also raises, questions that persist. Why the rush? Why not wait until Washington? Why insist on Jackie's

presence when she was clearly in shock? Almost immediately, suspicions began to circulate about Johnson's possible involvement in or for knowledge of the assassination. These theories, while never proven and dismissed by official investigations, have persisted for decades, fueled by Johnson's past, his personality, and a series of suspicious circumstances. The most The motives seemed clear to conspiracy theorists. Johnson was about to be dropped from the ticket and possibly prosecuted for his involvement in the Bobby Baker scandal,

a corruption case that was getting uncomfortably close to the vice president. His political career was effectively over unless something dramatic happened. And Johnson had both the connections and the ruthlessness to orchestrate such a plot. Theorists point to several suspicious elements. Johnson's behavior in the motorcade.

Some witnesses claimed he ducked before the first shot. His insistence on Kennedy making the Texas trip despite security concerns. His relationships with Texas oilmen who hated Kennedy. His connections to organized crime figures through his protege Bobby Baker. And his immediate seizure of Kennedy's body and evidence. One of the most persistent claims involves Johnson's relationship with Malcolm Mack Wallace, a convicted murderer who some researchers claim was Johnson's personal hitman, Wallace had been convicted of killing a golf pro who was having an affair with Johnson's sister,

yet mysteriously received only a suspended sentence. Some researchers claim Wallace's fingerprint was found in the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the Texas school book depository, though this claim has been disputed. There's also the strange case of Billy Saul Estes, a Texas businessman involved in a massive agricultural fraud scheme with connections to Johnson. Several people who could have testified about Johnson's involvement died under mysterious circumstances, including Department of Agriculture official Henry Marshall, whose death was ruled a suicide despite being shot five times with a bolt-action rifle.

Johnson's own behavior after becoming president raised eyebrows. He immediately seized Kennedy's papers and recordings, had the presidential limousine cleaned and rebuilt, destroying potential evidence, and pushed for a quick investigation that would conclude. Oswald acted alone. He personally selected the Warren Commission members and maintained tight control over their investigation. Perhaps most tellingly, Johnson himself seemed to believe in conspiracies, just not ones involving him. In later years, he would tell various people that he believed Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, variously blaming Cuban operatives, the CIA,

or South Vietnamese agents. Was this genuine belief, or was Johnson pointing fingers away? from himself. Whatever the truth about Dallas, Johnson's actions in the immediate aftermath demonstrated his political genius and his psychological understanding of power. Within hours of taking the oath, he was on the phone with congressional leaders, cabinet members, and foreign heads of state, assuring them of continuity while subtly establishing his own authority. His masterstroke was invoking Kennedy's legacy to push through his own agenda. Let us continue, he told Congress five days after the assassination, transforming Kennedy's unfinished business into a sacred trust that only he could

fulfill. It was brilliant political jiu-jitsu, using the martyred president's memory to accomplish what Kennedy himself had been unable to achieve. Johnson also moved quickly to neutralize potential rivals. He persuaded Robert Kennedy to stay on as Attorney General, keeping his enemy close and preventing him from becoming a rallying point for anti-Johnson forces. He retained Kennedy's cabinet and staff, making them complicit in his administration, while gradually replacing them with his own people. Behind the scenes, Johnson was already exercising power in his characteristic style. He had phones installed everywhere in the White House, including in bathrooms.

He would call senators at all hours, cajoling, threatening, deal-making. The Johnson treatment, dormant during the vanguard, vice presidency was back with a vengeance. Free from the constraints of the vice presidency and armed with the moral authority of Kennedy's legacy, Johnson unleashed a legislative blitzkrieg that transformed American society. The great society programs he pushed through Congress between 1964 and 1966 represented the most ambitious expansion of federal power since the New Deal. Johnson's approach was vintage LBJ, a combination of vision, manipulation, and political power. He would call senators at 3 a.m., wake them from deep sleep, and launch

into impassioned monologues about the poor children who needed head start, the elderly who needed Medicare, the cities that needed renewal. When inspiration failed, he turned to intimidation, threatening to withhold federal projects, committee assignments, or campaign support. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 showcased Johnson at his best and worst. Publicly, he He framed it as a moral imperative, telling Congress, we shall overcome. Privately, he was horse-trading votes like a ward boss, promising judge ships to some senators, threatening investigations to others. He told Southern Democrats that he would destroy them politically if they filibustered,

while simultaneously assuring them he would protect their other interests if they stood down. His conversation with Senator Richard Russell, his former mentor and the leader of Southern opposition to civil rights, was typical Johnson. Dick, you've got to get out of my way. I'm going to run over you. I don't intend to cavil or compromise. I'm going to pass this bill, he said, while in the same breath offering Russell influence

over military-based decisions in Georgia. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 saw Johnson at his most manipulative. After the violence in Selma, Johnson seized the moment, but not before carefully orchestrating the political theater. He privately encouraged Martin, Luther King Jr. to continue the protests, knowing the violent response would create the political climate necessary for passage, while publicly calling for calm. It was cynical, calculating, and effective.

Medicare and Medicaid were pushed through Congress with typical Johnson excess. He signed the bill in Independence, Missouri, with Harry Truman present, linking his achievement to Truman's failed attempt at health care reform. But the ceremony was pure Johnson, oversized, oversized, Overdone, with Johnson dominating every photo, his tall frame looming over the elderly Truman. If the Great Society showed Johnson's genius for domestic politics, Vietnam revealed his catastrophic limitations in foreign policy and his pathological inability to admit error or tell the truth. The war would ultimately destroy his presidency and his reputation,

but not before revealing the darkest aspects of his character. Johnson inherited a limited commitment in Vietnam. Vietnam, 16,000 advisors and support personnel. By the time he left office, over half a million Americans were fighting in Southeast Asia, and over 36,000 had died. Each escalation was accompanied by deception, each failure by a doubling down on failed strategy. The Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 exemplified Johnson's approach to the war. Using a confused and possibly fabricated attack on American destroyers, Johnson put through Congress a resolution giving him essentially unlimited war powers.

He knew the evidence was questionable, privately calling it those dumb stupid sailors shooting at flying fish, but used it anyway to get what he wanted. Johnson's conduct of the war was schizophrenic. He would micromanage bombing targets, personally selecting them in the White House basement, while simultaneously claiming he was letting the military run the war. He would proclaim optimism in public while privately expressing doubts.

Most damningly, he would systematically lie about troop levels, casualties, and the war's progress. The credibility gap, the chasm between what Johnson said and what was true, became a defining feature of his presidency. He would announce pauses and bombing while secretly planning escalations. He would claim to seek negotiation while rejecting any compromise. He would say American boys weren't being sent to do what Asian boys should do for themselves, while sending hundreds of thousands of American boys to do exactly that. His treatment of war critics was vintage Johnson, but now with the full power of the federal government behind him. He ordered the FBI to surveil anti-war leaders, had the CIA spy on American citizens, and used the IRS to harass

opponents. When senators began questioning the war, he would call them traitors, communist sympathizers, or worse. He told one senator who opposed the war that he was pissing on American soldiers. As president, Johnson's personal behavior became even more extreme. The White House became a stage for his peculiar form of dominance politics, where every interaction was a power play. Every conversation, a contest he had to win. The bathroom conferences reached new heights, or depths. Johnson had special oversized toilets installed in the White House

to accommodate his 6-4-inch frame. Stay tuned for more disturbing history. We'll be back after these messages. He would routinely summon advisors, cabinet members, even congressmen to continue discussions while he defecated. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy found himself discussing nuclear strategy while Johnson sat on the toilet. Press Secretary George Reedy was forced to take dictation in the bathroom, so often he learned to write without looking at the pad. The swimming pool incidents became legendary. Johnson would often swim naked in the White House pool, and he expected his staff and guests to join him.

When female reporters were present, he might wear a swimsuit or might not, depending on his mood and what kind of power play he was making. One young woman reporter, asking about rumors of skinny dipping, was told by Johnson, why don't you come on over and find out? Then there were the helicopters.

Johnson would use Marine One not just for transportation, but for intimidation. He would take congressmen for rides, flying low over their districts while explaining what federal projects might, or might not, come their way. He once landed on a congressman's front lawn unannounced, emerging from the helicopter like an avenging angel to demand a vote. His treatment of staff was borderline sadistic. He would humiliate them in front of others, berate them for minor mistakes, and make impossible demands.

He once made an aide by him the exact same type of showerhead he had in the White House for his Texas ranch. then berated the man when the water pressure wasn't identical. Another aide was forced to stand outside Johnson's bedroom door all night in case the president needed something. The phone calls became an obsession. Johnson had phones installed everywhere, in his cars, boats, the swimming pool, even on a raft in the middle of his ranch's lake.

He would make over 100 calls a day, some lasting hours. He would call senators at 2 a.m. to discuss legislation, reporters at midnight to complain about coverage and staff at all hours with demands and assignments. And then there were the pants. Johnson's obsession with his clothing, particularly his pants, reached almost pathological levels. Beyond the famous Hager call, he would regularly summon tailors to the White House for fittings that could last hours. He insisted on specific measurements that accommodated his anatomy, which he would describe in graphic detail. He had pants with extra-large pockets to hold the numerous items he carried,

multiple pairs of glasses, pills, pens, notes, and sometimes a pistol. By 1968, Johnson's presidency was collapsing under the weight of Vietnam, racial unrest, and his own psychological deterioration. The Tet Offensive in January shattered the administration's claims of progress in Vietnam. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April led to riots in over 100, cities. Robert Kennedy's entry into the presidential race represented his ultimate nightmare, a Kennedy returning to reclaim the throne. Johnson's behavior became increasingly erratic. He would rage at his staff, sometimes throwing objects. He became more paranoid, convinced that Kennedy

forces, the media, and even his own cabinet were plotting against him. He would stay up all night watching the three television networks simultaneously on a special console he had installed, screaming at the screens when he saw negative coverage. The pressure was taking a physical toll. Johnson looked haggard, aged far beyond his 60 years. He was drinking more, sleeping less, and taking various medications. His mood swings became more extreme, manic energy followed by deep depression, grandiose plans followed by paranoid withdrawal. On a lot of On March 31st, 1968, Johnson shocked the nation by announcing he would not seek re-election. The speech was vintage Johnson, dramatic, self-pitying, and manipulative.

He portrayed himself as sacrificing his political career for peace, though in reality he knew he might lose the nomination to Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy. Even in withdrawal, Johnson couldn't let go of power. He continued to manipulate events from behind the scenes, secretly supporting Hubert Humphrey while undermining other candidates. He sabotaged the Paris peace talks to prevent Nixon from claiming credit for ending the war, even as American soldiers continued to die. He bugged his own administration's phones and had the FBI continued surveillance of his enemies.

Johnson's return to Texas in January 1969 was a dissent into depression and desperate attempts to control his legacy. The LBJ Ranch, which he had always called his Little Piece of Heaven, became his prison, a 2,700-acre monument to his rise from poverty, and a daily reminder of his fall from power. Without the constant action of the presidency, Johnson collapsed into himself. He would spend hours sitting by the Peternalla River, chain smoking despite his heart condition, drinking scotch despite his doctor's warnings.

He grew his hair long, A shocking sight for those who remembered the carefully groomed president. His weight ballooned as he gave up any pretense of controlling his appetites. But even in exile, Johnson couldn't stop exercising power over anyone within reach. He turned the ranch into a bizarre fiefdom, where he was still president. Visitors were subjected to marathon monologues about his achievements. He would force guests to accompany him on dawn tours of the ranch, driving at breakneck speeds while providing commentary on every tree, every cow, every fence post.

The ranch tours became legendary for their combination of pride and pathos. Johnson would drive his Lincoln Continental at 90 miles per hour down dirt roads, a cup of scotch in the console, terrifying his passengers while boasting about his conservation efforts. He had a special car equipped with a bar and a public address system, which he would use to broadcast orders to ranch hands or commentary to guests from hundreds of yards away. He installed a sophisticated communication system that rivaled the White House, with direct lines to major newspapers, television networks, and former associates.

He would call reporters to complain about coverage of his presidency, sometimes keeping them on the phone for three or four hours, relitigating every decision, every controversy. Johnson's obsession with his legacy manifested much. most clearly in two projects, his presidential library and his memoir. Both became exercises in control, manipulation, and score settling that consumed his final years. The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum at the University of Texas was conceived as a monument to Johnson's greatness. He involved himself in every detail, the architecture, the exhibits, the placement of every

photograph. He wanted it to be the largest presidential library, the most of the most most impressive, the most visited. When he learned that the Kennedy Library might be bigger, he ordered changes to make his larger. More significantly, Johnson knew the library would house his secret tapes, the hundreds of hours of recordings he had made as president. But he wasn't ready to let history judge him yet. He placed the tapes under a 50-year seal,

ensuring they wouldn't be released until 2023, by which time he assumed his reputation would be rehabilitated and his enemies dead. His memoir, The Vantage Point, was an exercise in revisionist history. Johnson hired a team of writers and researchers but drove them to distraction with his interventions. He would dictate for hours,

then reject everything and start over. He insisted on portraying himself as a misunderstood visionary, betrayed by the media, undermined by the Kennedys, and sacrificed for peace. The book was also a vehicle for settling scores. Robert Kennedy,

who had been assassinated in 1968, was portrayed as an ambitious, ruthless operator. The anti-war senators were traitors or dupes. The media were liars and sensationalists. Even some of his own cabinet members were thrown under the bus for various failures. Even as his health deteriorated, Johnson couldn't resist exercising what power remained to him. He would summon politicians to the ranch for audiences,

making them wait for hours before seeing them. then subjecting them to lengthy monologues about his achievements. He tried to influence the 1972 presidential race, privately supporting various candidates while publicly maintaining neutrality. His relationship with Nixon was particularly complex. He despised Nixon personally but saw him as a fellow victim of the Eastern establishment and the media. He would secretly advise Nixon on Vietnam, encouraging him to bomb more heavily, to resist pressure for withdrawal.

It was as if he needed Nixon to succeed in Vietnam to vindicate his own failures. One of his last public appearances at a civil rights symposium in December 1972 showed both his continued power and his physical decline. Ignoring his doctor's orders, he delivered an emotional speech defending his civil rights record. But observers were shocked by his appearance, overweight, gray-faced, breathing heavily. The giant of American politics was dying. The end came on January 22nd, 1973. Johnson, alone in his bedroom for his afternoon nap, was struck by a massive heart attack.

He managed to call for help, but by the time the Secret Service agents reached him, he was dead. He was found on the floor, clutching a telephone, a fitting end for a man who had used the phone as an instrument of power for so many years. Lyndon Baines Johnson died as he had lived, alone despite being surrounded. by people, grasping for control even as it slipped away. The man who had dominated American politics for a generation, who had bent the United States Senate to his will, who had transformed American society with his great society programs, and who had destroyed his presidency with his lies about Vietnam, was gone.

His funeral was a gathering of the American political establishment, a bipartisan acknowledgement of his impact on the nation. But even in death, Johnson Manor, managed to exercise control. He had left detailed instructions for his funeral, who would speak, what they would say, where they would stand. He had chosen the hymns, the prayers, even the specific Bible verses. It was his last performance, choreographed from beyond the grave. The release of the Johnson tapes, beginning in the 1990s and continuing to this day, has provided an unprecedented window into his psychology and methods. The recordings reveal a man of

extraordinary complexity, capable of genuine compassion for the poor and minorities, yet also capable of shocking cruelty to those closest to him. A political genius who understood power better than perhaps any American politician, yet who was ultimately destroyed by his inability to admit error or show weakness. The tapes also confirmed what many suspected, that Johnson was crude, manipulative, and sometimes grotesque in his personal behavior. The recordings of him belching, discussing his bodily functions, and bullying subordinates have become infamous. Yet they also reveal moments of surprising tenderness, particularly in conversations

with Lady Bird, and genuine anguish over the casualties in Vietnam. His civil rights legacy remains his greatest achievement, though even this is complicated by the recordings showing his use of racial epithets and his cynical political calculations. He transformed America's social safety net with Medicare and Medicaid. Yet he also created the credibility gap that poisoned American politics for generations. Vietnam remains the dark shadow over everything else. Over 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese died in a war that Johnson privately knew was unwinnable, but couldn't bring himself to abandon. The war destroyed the public's trust in government, divided the nation in ways that persist today, and ended the consensus that had governed

American politics since World War II. The conspiracy theories about his involvement in Kennedy's assassination persist, fed by his documented ruthlessness, his desperate political situation in 1963, and the convenient timing of his ascension to power. While no credible evidence has ever emerged directly linking Johnson to the assassination, the fact that such theories seem plausible speaks to the dark reputation he earned through decades of political warfare. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Johnson's legacy

is what he reveals about power itself. He showed that in American democracy, power flows not just through formal institutions, but through personal relationships, intimidation, and manipulation. He demonstrated that the difference between a transformative leader and a destructive one might be nothing more than circumstances and choices. He proved that someone could simultaneously be a champion of the oppressed, and an oppressor of his own staff,

a visionary leader and a paranoid bully. Johnson's obsession with his pants, that bizarre, compulsive need to have his clothes accommodate his oversized personality and anatomy, serves as a perfect metaphor for his entire life. Nothing off the rack would do for Lyndon Johnson. Everything had to be custom made to fit his enormous ego, his overwhelming presence,

his insatiable appetites. He needed more room than normal people. more space to maneuver, more fabric to cover his outsized ambitions. In the end, Lyndon Baines Johnson's disturbing history is the story of American power in the 20th century. Its possibilities and perils. Its nobility and corruption. Its capacity to transform society and destroy lives. He was America's political-eyed unleashed, crude, demanding, brilliant, destructive, occasionally magnificent and always, always, grasping for more.

The boy from the Texas Hill country who had watched his father fail, who had known poverty and humiliation, who had clawed his way to the highest office in the land through will, genius, and ruthlessness, died as he had lived, reaching for power, even if that power was just the ability to summon help in his final moments. The hand that had signed the Civil Rights Act that had escalated the Vietnam, war that had grabbed countless lapels in the Johnson treatment, died clutching a telephone, that ultimate symbol of his reign, the instrument through which he had commanded, cajoled,

threatened, and controlled. His last words, according to the Secret Service agent who found him, were, send Mike immediately, a final order from a man who could never stop commanding, never stopped demanding, never stopped trying to bend the world to his will. Even in death, Lyndon Johnson was giving orders, exercising power, being exactly what he had always been, the most disturbing, complicated, and consequentially human president America has ever known. The ranch is quieter now, a national historical park where tourists come to see where power lived and died. The Peternal's River still flows past the house where Johnson was born and the cemetery where he is buried. The telephone lines that once carried his midnight harangues and early morning command,

are silent. The special toilets have been replaced with standard models. The swimming pool where he conducted naked diplomacy is filled in. But the questions Johnson raised remain. How much manipulation is acceptable in service of noble goals? Can someone be both a champion of justice and a practitioner of injustice? What is the price of power and who pays it? These are the disturbing questions that Lyndon Baines Johnson's life forces us to confront. questions that echo through American politics to this day. In the end, perhaps Johnson's press secretary George Reedy said it best. He may have been a son of a bitch, but he was a colossal son of a bitch.

A man whose appetites, ambitions, and contradictions were as vast as the Texas Hill country that created him. A man whose legacy, like his custom-made pants, will never quite fit comfortably into the conventional boundaries of American history. This has been disturbing history. Thank you for joining us on this journey through the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a man who proved that in America anyone can rise to the highest office, and that sometimes that's exactly what we should be afraid of.