Grubstakers - Episode 193: Nelson Rockefeller feat. Tobi Olowe

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

This week we look at Nelson Rockefeller and his time in U.S politics. We briefly cover the Rockefeller wealth and will take a longer look at that on a future episode. On this episode we dive into the policies of the republicans of this brief era and how some of them were more progressive than what democrats propose today. For this discussion we are joined by special guest Tobi Olowe the host of Impressions of America. At one point to take the focus off the US we spend a moment to discuss the UK’s Priti Patel. Enjoy! The following was mentioned by Tobi to add to our description. I think listeners should consider the biography On His Own Terms by Richard Norton Smith. For the early CIA stuff although we didn't get into it as much but Gerard Colby's Thy Will on Rockefeller political interests in Latin America. For the Rockefeller family perhaps the PBS documentary. Impressions of America is a history podcasts about US History since the 1960s. We have covered key conservatives including Nixon, Reagan, William F Buckley, Ayn Rand and their effects on American life. Follow him on Twitter @Dontigga

We find people that basically can't make enough to eat before they go into the fields. I don't believe that. I think that you're looking at other places that are not Central Romana. People actually who focus on and who like getting an orgasm never get one. Pull up your socks and figure out what you're going to do. Any chance we'll ever get to be a complete red state? Oh, yeah. Well, the future's always uncertain. But more uncertain than ever.

Listen, Blue Ivy is six years old. Beyonce did. She tried to outbid me on a painting. Everybody in Atlanta right now has a Louis Vuitton store. If you black, don't go to Louis Vuitton. That's why you need to take a meeting with Kanye West, Bernard Arnault. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Grubstakers,

the podcast about billionaires. Today, we're going to be taking an extended look at Nelson Rockefeller, the grandson to John D. Rockefeller, the oil magnate that has ruined the world for in more ways than one. For this episode, I'm joined by my wonderful oil co-hosts. Sean P. McCarthy. Steve Jeffers. And today we are also joined by a special guest, a podcaster from across the pond. He's one of the co-hosts of Impressions of America, a podcast on modern American history. Please welcome me in joining Toby Alouet.

Hi, guys. I'm very happy to be here. And Toby gracefully sent us the suggestion of talking about Nelson Rockefeller, and we decided to take him up on it. And yeah, we're very excited to have him on our show. But before we talk about Nelson, I think that we should give our listeners a brief overview of the Rockefeller family and John D. Rockefeller, the original patriarch himself. Yeah, well, it should just be noted that John D. Rockefeller is by many accounts the richest American of all time. You know, depending on if you want to adjust it for inflation, people will say he's worth about

$400 billion at his peak. At his peak, he controlled 90% of all oil in the United States. And that's through his company Standard Oil, which in 1911, the US Supreme Court broke up. They ruled that it was in violation of federal antitrust laws. And Standard Oil was broken up into 34 different companies, which included companies that have become ExxonMobil and Chevron, which, you know, remain two of the largest oil companies in the world. So that kind of gives you an idea of the scale of his wealth. And of course, Nelson Rockefeller was his grandson. So this is like, it's just that kind of money that just goes on generation to generation and never stops. Yeah, Toby, real quick here. I know you're

familiar with our show. What made you think to mention Nelson Rockefeller? A sweat about him springs to mind most when it comes to his negligence in the American political system? I think the central thing about Nelson Rockefeller is I think that in American history, he sits in the time where American wealth was used for, I think, more noblesse oblige. There was a sense that the robber barons like his father, John D. Rockefeller, who much of the antitrust and progressive legislation was founded to tackle things like the Sherman Antitrust Act or the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Nelson Rockefeller grew up with a sense, because of what had happened to John D. Rockefeller

and because of the Great Depression, that his wealth meant that he needed to give back to the public in terms of public service, not just philanthropy, but also in terms of politics. He supported anti-discrimination laws. He supported the Civil Rights Act of 64, 65. He supported free tuition at CUNY University in New York. And there is a sense that following on from another sort of very wealthy progeny like FDR that Nelson sort of sat in a moment in American history

where rich people were very, very terrified of the specter of communism and socialism. And so what they did is they went into the center and they tried to make sure that their wealth meant that they had a responsibility to the common people. So, yeah, I think it's a flash in time. And Nelson Rockefeller's life also says a lot about the arc of the Republican Party and how it's changed since that time as well. But before we get into Nelson Rockefeller, I did just want to give kind of a 30-second encapsulation of John D. Rockefeller, the grandfather. We'll probably revisit it in more depth later, but I've been reading this great book called Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips,

and he makes the argument that most of the legacy fortunes in America that, you know, go from generation to generation can be traced back to some sort of wartime procurement, whether it's the Revolutionary War, whether it's the Civil War or World War I. It's just, you know, war breaks out and the U.S. government starts throwing money at anybody who can supply the military or anybody who can do whatever. So there's a lot of money to be made. And, you know, my basic reading on John D. Rockefeller is, of course, he's born in 1839. In 1859, he went into a produce business where he was able to borrow, at the time, $1,000 from his father.

So he had a well-to-do father back in 1859 um they're they're you know they're making good money but of course the u.s civil war breaks out you know they found it in 1859 the u.s civil war breaks out and john d rockefeller is rich enough that he's able to uh hire substitute soldiers to go fight to go fight with the Union in his stead. So of course he doesn't have to get his limb sawn off in the Civil War. That was a very common practice

for wealthy Union households. He's not an outlier in that regard. I like some of his justifications for it. He was basically in a startup but I like some of his justifications for it was he just he was basically like in a start-up and he had to like yet to manage his new business right there's there's literally no replacement for him in the business so yeah it was too valuable human capital for him to be out there but yeah

just like from the from the Wikipedia apparently in his first and second years, he netted about contemporary 17,000 US dollars worth of profit. And then their profits soared even more with the outbreak of the American Civil War when the Union Army called for massive amounts of food and supplies. And you know, you can imagine having a rich father, like first of all, just being in the produce business helps when you have a giant standing army to feed. Yeah, of course. But also having a rich father gives you the political connections to get various government contracts.

And it's basically just this giant fortune he makes off the Civil War allows him to go into creating Standard Oil and just buying up all these oil and gas properties. You said $1,000 in 1859? Yes. properties you said a thousand dollars in 1859 uh yes that for our inflation nerds that is 31,315 42 cents today so that is the level of money that he had access to to avoid war to hire supplemental soldiers i mean that's like that is the ultimate rich person move to be like oh i have to go to war what if i could just outsource my allegiance to the country and person move to be like oh i have to go to war what if i could just outsource my allegiance to the country and allow myself to avoid death yeah and it's funny because um john d rockefeller has been framed by many people as a sort of rags to riches figure it's almost a

there will be blood figure who rises uh doesn't go to, drops out of high school, gets a job as a bookkeeper, and then finds his way into the oil business. And a lot of people frame it as his father was a little bit of an itinerant, crazy guy, but in truth, John D. Rockefeller actually came from money. His father was a businessman and and and i think that i think there's a a theme that runs through and in many ways many of these kinds of figures is that they they they generally come from the middle class or the upper middle class but that for the american dream to really work, they always have to be framed as underdogs.

Definitely. I think that one thing I thought before we started this podcast was that Bill Gates seems rags to riches only because he became the richest person in the world, but a family that lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the area he's from and also being able to afford to send their son to Harvard is by no means a person that is rags to riches whatsoever. Exactly. And just before we go to Nelson, we also note that J.E. Rockefeller's money in the oil business was made from documented espionage against competitors, price wars, creating fake competitors in order to discombobulate some of his competitors, and then also control of the railway and courtroom evasions.

And this all came out in Ida Tarbell's book, this tome about the Standard Oil business, which was one of the first great muck-raking journalist stories of the time, and really set Theodore Roosevelt, who was the patriarch of the Republican Party at the time, against Standard Oil at that moment. And Rockefeller was one of the most hated men in America. And he had a passion to not only dominate all of America, but dominate all in the whole world, really. And I think there's a sense that once you get to John D. Rockefeller Jr., Jr.'s task really is to try to change the family's image.

And I think that's the context that Nelson sort of emerges from. Yogi, Steve, wasn't one of you saying that the rockefeller family goes all the way back to the mayflower and with some links to the king or something yeah i looked up uh the um genealogy on the rockefellers and what i found was that that they were descendants of a mayflower passenger william brewster and their family tree includes numerous connections to royalty, including a descendant from King Edward I and to the current royal family through the late Princess Diana. So, I mean, you know, we looked at this with Meg Whitman, who made her money from eBay and Goldman Sachs a little while ago. And even her, like, family tree runs back 18 trees, like, links, generations. And generations and you know i don't even know who my

grandparents parents were like there's no amount of fucking like oh i mean i know you know 18 history generations back what they were doing no there's no information like that that exists we've cited some research before as this shows it's very uh if two generations prior to you they had they were in had middle class or higher incomes then it's like a strongly positively correlated that you will also have a high income pretty much regardless if your if your grandparents were rich 100 almost you are rich yeah so like came over on the mayflower descended from the king what do you think that's like a nine out of ten self-made score on forbes or does he get the full 10 out of 10 i think 9.9 i think that 0.1 takes them taken off they were

on a boat that they willingly got on you know that's kylie jenner level um but yeah we will cover more of the rockefellers in the future but um from some of the research i found the you know the oil empire that rockefeller had the throne to before the supreme court ruled that it must be dismantled in 1911 i mean like you know it it's unheard of i mean it would be dismantled in 1911, I mean, like, you know, it's unheard of. I mean, it would be as if, like, you know, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Sony were one company to a certain degree. Like, it just, there's no comparable comparison to the level of monopoly that Rockefeller was running at the time.

Yeah, and it changed America forever, really. America's industrialization came after Britain's, but once it started up and once you had companies like Standard Oil who dominated the oil market in the world, America turns from this sort of dream of the white man's Jeffersonian dream of tilling his own land and being an individual to these octopusesuses these great monopolies that they change american politics forever i did want to note one more thing about rockefeller's

charity before we move on to nelson rockefeller which is you know the rockefeller foundation and also the carnegie foundation um they're treated as these great charitable entities and they did of course some charitable works, but both of them were linked to the eugenics movement, both in the United States and in Nazi Germany. It's an interesting thing with John D. Rockefeller. The guy was a real social Darwinist, as many capitalists are, where he thought, you know, if you're poor, it's because you didn't work hard enough, and if you're rich, it's a reward for hard work and so both the rockefeller and the carnegie foundation um funded some of the quote-unquote science behind the uh eugenics uh sterilization movement in the united states where

a lot of uh u.s states would pass laws saying that um people with low iqs or disabilities had to be forcibly sterilized. And they also, the Rockefeller and the Carnegie Foundation, would fund similar quote-unquote research in Nazi Germany and fund several scientists who are directly linked to and involved in the Holocaust. Not the Rockefellers. Sorry, Toby, go on. Now, much of that late 19th century sort of tilt of many of the elites was towards social Darwinism. It came out of Herbert Spencer's belief that the strong survive. And even Nelson Rockefeller's other grandfather on his maternal side, Aldrich, who was a senator and a millionaire, he also believed in a sort of Darwinian view of society. But I think that just before getting into Nelson, I think that the change happens in American life once you get the Sherman IT Trust Act, these interstate acts, and Theodore Roosevelt creating government departments to regulate

and deal with these monopolies. And then there's a sense that we go from social Darwinism to a new elite sense that it's through these, creating these giant departments and internalizing a lot of the monopolies so that we go towards a more sort of collective view of society. And I do think that, and some people will say, you know, you had the 1920s, but really, between the end of the Wilson administration and then the Roosevelt policies of the 1930s. They're only like a decade. So really, the way that Rockefeller lived in the 19th century could not really be replicated in the early 20th century,

which is why you have people like Nelson Rockefeller taking a much different path towards being a rich person. Yeah, the quote that is on Wikipedia about social Darwinism Rockefeller taking a much different path towards being a rich person. Yeah. The quote that is on Wikipedia about social Darwinism for Rockefellers, the growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest, which is the worst, like simple propaganda you can do. And lastly,

I will mention that he did start the trend of being born in New York and then dying in Florida. So, you know, fuck that. Toby and I were speaking before we started recording about how, like, he just looks like a fucking ghoul. Like, I mean, for a man that was immortalized probably several times for being the prominent figure he was, his face is just stretched back at the most unrealistic fucking level. It almost as if someone put a mask on his face and stretched it back and was like,

yeah, yeah, yeah, this looks good for the photo I'm taking of you. Horrendous. I think in the 19th, no, when he was in his 50s, he started to lose his hair. And so he went all bold. that and that's why he looks sort of ghoulish oh yeah that makes sense yeah some people said that you know like physically

he paid for a lot of the the crimes that he's done and i mean like we'll cover this on uh later episodes but yeah the the entire rockefeller family would have tragedy and strife throughout their entire life after the John D. Rockefeller success. But like Toby mentioned, I mean, it is something that could never happen ever again. And Nelson Rockefeller's turn to a more political idealized way of gaining power in the United States is indicative of what was the change in the United States. Yeah, so the change in the United States really happens in first through Theodore Roosevelt and then the 1912 election, the Progressive Party. And then in the 1930s, where you have acts like Glass-Steagall, you have the increase in income taxes, marginal top income taxes to 90%, and even banks like the Morgans that have to split commercial banking from investment banking.

So things really change, and you just can't have these kinds of, you can't make this kind of money anymore. But part of it is because of the Great Depression, and then there's also the fear emerging in Europe of the specter of communism and a lot of wealthy people, a lot of people in American government, a lot of people who've inherited wealth are really really scared of communism so you end up with people like Nelson Rockefeller who who grows up, you know, John D. Rockefeller Jr. makes sure that they spend a lot of money on philanthropy, during Rockefeller Center, the Momo Art Gallery. Nelson Rockefeller is really interested in bringing modernist art to New York, they bring Cezanne, Matisse, Pollock, and they sort of try to really do a lot of public service. And Nelson Rockefeller ends up working in government for Franklin Delano

Roosevelt during the war as a head of, or secretary for Latin Affairs. And in his position as Secretary of Latin Affairs, he actually does a lot of work with Argentinian fascists in order to stem the spread of communism. And in fact, Nelson Rockefeller is the reason why the world has Henry Kissinger. Because Nelson Rockefeller found him. He was a little bit shy. He wasn't really like Rockefeller, but Rockefeller sort of brought him into his orbit. Rockefeller.

But I think the essential thing to know about Nelson Rockefeller and the essential thing that connects him to the Republican Party is that after Roosevelt, the Republican Party was shit scared. They thought they would never, ever get back into power. They had this guy, Robert Taft, who was the son of the Taft who had been president in the 1910s. And he was a conservative stalwart. He was like any, you know, he was like Rand Paul. He was basically, you know, a normal conservative

talking, you know, was like Rand Paul he was basically you know a normal conservative talking you know about sort of retracting the new deal but what essentially happened is that that they couldn't really win with someone like Robert Taft so they had to get people like Wendell Wilkie who were much more northeastern had policies that supported the New Deal. And then you had people like Thomas Dewey, he came from New York, who was also basically a moderate Republican. So it's almost like what happened with the Democrats after the 1980s, where they just knew they couldn't win anymore, so they had to move to the center. The Republican Party never stopped being a conservative party.

It just had an electoral map strategy that meant that its candidates had to be moderates and that's why the Nelson Rockefeller comes to dominate part of the Republican Party and it's also why Eisenhower basically is a moderate. He carries on many of the Keynesian counter-cyclical policies of the 1950s and 1940s, and that liberal Republicans come to dominate the Republican Party. So giving us Henry Kissinger, another charitable Rockefeller act we can thank them for.

That's crazy that Kissinger is linked to the Rockefellers. Like, I wouldn't have put that together on my own. But, of course, a man of just the utmost destruction that Kissinger is was connected to the most amount of money that an American has ever put together in his own life. So we'll continue with what Toby was talking about with the conservative right becoming more central. When would this be, Toby? This would be like the 1950s? Yeah, so in the 1950s, the Republicans were much more centrist.

There wasn't a massive extension of civil rights legislation or welfare programs, but there was a sense that they were not attacking those programs. And Eisenhower did help bring the National Guard to help in civil rights struggles in a number of places. Actually, Nixon's platform in 1960 was actually quite progressive on civil rights. Much of that had to do with the influence of Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon actually, he had the denomination shored up. Rockefeller had some support. Nixon was running as a moderate.

He had control of the establishment. And Rockefeller begins to see, even as early as 1960, when he goes to Dallas, that many people who are conservatives do not like him. They see him as a member of the Eastern establishment. Many young conservatives are becoming much more conservative than they were in 1940s and 1950s than they were allowed to be it's really only uh democrats in dallas that they're like him and any and he starts to see that the republican party is turning but nixon doesn't recognize this so nixon does go to rockefeller for some advice on what the platform should be. And there is a push for increased civil rights legislation. There is a push for working to preserve the welfare programs and social security programs.

But on the other side, Rockefeller was much more hawkish than Eisenhower was. In fact, the Eisenhower speech about having a military control, the military industrial complex speech, a lot of that was inspired by a pushback against Rockefeller. The Rockefeller brothers wanted, they thought that they had a missile gap with the Soviet Union, and they hated the Soviet Union. Like, Rockefeller hated the Soviet Union. He hated communism. And he wanted to make sure that America had more missiles than the Soviet Union, he hated communism, and he wanted to make sure that the America had more missiles than the Soviet Union, and so Eisenhower pushed back against that, but in the end, that kind of rhetoric got into Nixon's platform. So you had a mix, which is really where Rockefeller was, between know civil rights and more social programs

but also with the increased military spending in the 1960 program and then in New York Rockefeller does bring in a lot of anti-discrimination laws there's a lot of work on increasing spending for education, free tuition at the state universities, increasing the New York University system. And so he is, in many ways, a liberal of that period and more progressive than even politicians in the Democratic Party like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama to something, if you actually look at his record domestically.

Yeah, it does make me angry that you're describing a man who's more liberal and less hawkish than the Democratic nominee for president today. Yeah, and I think once you get get to 1960 things are changing um i mean uh rockefeller jfk thought that he was going to run against uh rockefeller but when rockefeller's marriage ended um there was a lot of negative press about his divorce and remarriage and so uh jfk thought he was going to run against Goldwater, who he thought he could beat all ends up. But then JFK dies and Lyndon Johnson becomes the president.

But still you have this dynamic where it's Rockefeller who's leading the Liberal Republicans, really the last remnants of the Liberal Republicans, and then Goldwater who's leading this new conservative wave and rockefeller and goldwater are quite interesting because goldwater it was not from you know a billionaire background he was a sort of small business owner type and he represented a sort of emerging class or lower middle class people who kind of liked um the anti-communism mccarthy they like the anti-communism nixon and they did not like the northeastern establishment

of money and they didn't really like the northeastern noblesse oblige they were much more um you know like cowboys they they felt that they were self-made and people should have personal responsibility and work hard and they kind of they kind of hated nelson rockefeller and they go up against each other and goldwater beats him and goldwater gets about 32 and nelson gets you know in the in the 20s and a lot of it is because of the the great skill of f clifton white but a lot of it is also because of very, very crazed groups like the John Birch Society, who just go around and canvas areas like it's a, like, conservatism is this big religion, and at the RNC convention, Rocky goes up, you know, just to give a concession

speech and to talk about, you know about the coming campaign against Lyndon Johnson. And the Goldwater people are like, they're talking about, we want Goldwater, we want Goldwater. And it's drowning out Rockefeller, and Rockefeller looks really pissed off. And so he makes this long speech about extremism in the Conservative Party and in the Conservative movement at that time. And then Goldwater gets onto the podium, especially because Rockefeller wanted Goldwater to denounce a lot of extremists.

And Rockefeller in the campaign saw Goldwater as extremist because Goldwater was talking about making social security voluntary.water was talking about making social security voluntary. He was talking about increasing or getting out of the UN. He was talking about increasing military arms to untold amounts.

Rockefeller wanted Goldwater to denounce this kind of extremism. Goldwater goes on the podium and he says that extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice so he was basically doubling down on this kind of extremism and really like this is a really important moment in Republican history because the Liberal Republicans would never get that close again it was it was in many ways that the torch had been passed

intellectually and culturally. A lot of the Northeastern Republicans that Nelson Rockefeller came to be emblematic of, a lot of them were sort of wealthier and well-to-do, upper middle class, and they were losing power in the conservative movement. William F. Buckley and this new group of conservatives, people like Ayn Rand, Goldwater, were coming to power.

And I think that this is a sort of essential moment in the history of the Republican Party. And then when you go to 1968, Rockefeller loses again to Richard Nixon. But this time it isn't necessarily the economics it's Nixon's law and order plea and it's also like part of the southern strategy Nixon didn't win the deep south but he won the border states in the south and he was able to run again on law and order

against Lyndon Johnson's sort of failure to keep order. There was a lot of riots and there was the Vietnam War. But Nixon steals Kissinger from Rockefeller, which is how the Kissinger-Nixon partnership comes up. Now, in terms of Nixon's foreign policy, you know, the attacks on Cambodia, the bombings of Laos, all of that was endorsed by Rockefeller. Rockefeller thought that you needed this kind of powerful... And it's kind of different from the foreign policy that the Bushes had, which is more neoconservative. Kissinger saw foreign policy from, really, from a more sort of battle of nations type strategic foreign policy that was really Machiavellian and,

at its core, really amoral. It was not like a utopian vision of foreign policy that the Bushes would have and the neoconservatives would have. But it was of foreign policy that the Bushes would have and the neoconservatives would have, but it was the foreign policy that Rockefeller thought was best to deal with the threat of communism and he pushed Vietnam very hard at that time. So you have this mixture in Rockefeller's life between someone who is very rich and feels a sense of public service and he supports all these welfare programs and then someone who on the foreign policy end is very, very hawkish and is probably complicit in many of the great crimes of Kissinger and the Nixon

administration. Yeah, and we should just mention that he was the governor of New York from 59 to 73, and then eventually he would springboard from that into the vice presidency. Yeah, so he was the governor of New York for about 1959, 73, as you said, and he defeated Averill Harriman. He really did it because on that level he could spend more, he spent about 400 million to become the governor of New York, spend much more money than anyone else at the time. But his New York administration was an administration that spent a lot of money on, you know, on

education. It invested in public parks, especially with Robert Moses, who was the head of the Parks Administration at the time. They created all the freeway systems, subways. They really did a lot of work trying to help the incoming African-Americans who were coming from the South, many of them poor, a lot of work on housing, a lot of work expanding Medicare, once Medicare was set up under Lyndon Johnson, into people who did not have access to care before. A lot of work on investing in Social Security. So it was, I mean, New York,

people need to really look at New York in the 60s and 70s. It was almost a little socialist state that was being created by Rockefeller and the mayors at that time, especially mayors like John Lindsay. And so, yeah, on the municipal level, as governor, especially at that time, especially mayors like John Lindsay. And so, yeah, on the municipal level as governor, especially at that time, he was seen as someone who was very well liked. He was reelected

very easily. He won handily in his first election by 500,000 votes. I mean, he was well liked and well respected. Yeah, I'm not even being sarcastic when i say all of those people became democrats like yeah the rockefeller republicans are just democrats now yeah the rockefeller yeah exactly the rockefeller republicans that if you look at the the their foreign policy you know i mean hillary Hillary Clinton talked about, you know, meeting Kissinger, for example. Like, it's not, like, Kissinger was, like, he wasn't a neoconservative. He wasn't a conservative. Right, right.

Like, and I think the Democrats, the modern Democrats are a little bit different because the modern Democrats, they didn't have the New Deal. They sort of had the defeat that they faced um under reagan in 80 and then really 84 when you know the the mondale was defeated handily and i think it's the same thing in england really in 83 the labor party was the was crushed so basically the the democrats had to become sort of pseudo-Republicans. It was really what happened to the Republicans and the Conservative Party in England in the 1930s when they had to move to the center.

So the Democrats had to move to the right, basically. And so the difference really between Rockefeller Republicans and the Democrats is the Democrats are further right on economics they you know they absorbed a lot of the more neoliberal view of economic policy things like monetarism from move away from a fiscal fiscally concerned and generous policy to more sort of managing the economy using monetary policy. And so basically, yeah, and it's like, you know, Barack Obama's been called a Rockefeller Republican before. And he is. He is a Rockefeller Republican.

And Rockefeller himself was not someone who believed sort of handily in the Goldwater personal responsibility or we should get out of the UN or, you know, things like that. He was an internationalist liberal politician, basically. Now, going back to what you were mentioning about Nelson and the Vietnam War, do you think that the push for war efforts was somehow linked to the fact that, you know, I don't know exactly how the shakeup of the standard oil becoming Exxon and Chevron would become, but the oil interest for the Rockefeller family,

do you think that influenced Nelson's decisions to push the war? You know, I'm not sure on that point. I would say that he was ideologically attached to dealing with any kinds of communism in that region. I mean, he was very, very close to Kissinger, for example. In terms of the Rockefeller, I think that side of the business was handled by people like John Rockefeller III, who was sort of passed over as the first son in many ways,

and then people like David Rockefeller, who was a sort of chasteman at Manhattan. So, yeah, I'm not completely sure if the Stan et al. influence spurred Rockefeller in Vietnam. Well, what I would say, and I think it's interesting where the Rockefeller family and, you know, kind of similarly the Kennedy family, these are wealthy families that have scions who go into, quote unquote, public service and have a sense of public service. But certainly with the Rockefellers, there's definitely a conflict of interest there because, you know, and we'll talk about this in a minute, Nelson Rockefeller had copper interests in Chile. He was linked to mining interests in Brazil. And, of course, U.S. foreign policy would intervene and have some coups in those two countries. an international business portfolio and you have a bunch of resource wealth in third world countries if socialists or communist governments come to power in those countries and start seizing your resource wealth then people might get

the idea in other countries you know the kind of domino theory so I could see how I'm sure he has plenty of it he had plenty of ideological justifications in his in his own head but kind of probably his anti-communism uh would have been at least partially linked to his own pocketbook and his own fear of I make a lot of money having kind of pliable strong men in the third world to give me fair business deals and it wouldn't be wouldn't be good for me if uh people started nationalizing those things. Yeah, most definitely. And Nelson had worked partially with Standard Oil. He had also worked at Chase Manhattan, for example. He always kept the family interests in mind. And I think in his work when he was working for Roosevelt

in Latin America that he did work with fascists in in order to stem the the communist threats I mean and he did work with the CIA developing close relations with many prominent Latin American politicians and increasingly advocating for military dictatorships. Toby, how do you feel about comparing Rockefeller republicanism that we already went through to sort of there's a few remnants of them in the Republican Party who occasionally can exert some influence still. Yeah, I think when you compare Rockefeller republicanism to Murkowski, Collins, and McCain, I think Murkowski, Collins, and McCain

all on the state level have some reasons for being more centrist than other Republicans. But I do think that Rockefeller Republicanism, ideologically, if you were to compare it to the contemporary time, is much more liberalism. And I never really saw john mccain as a a liberal really he was someone who liked to be described as a maverick um i mean when he ran in his campaign with sarah palin there wasn't a push for, you know, more generous Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Yeah. It was, you know, it was lighter language. It was being nicer. It was the hope of bipartisanship.

Yeah, I think. But then to also get to your point, if someone like H.W. Bush, because H.W. Bush was also a conservative, but when H.W. Bush ran against Ronald Reagan in 1980, he talked about how Ronald Reagan's economic views were voodoo economics, right? If H.W. Bush had been president in 1972, H.W. Bush is very similar to Nelson Rockefeller. He was a scion of a rich family. His father was a senator. He had fought, you know, again, this sense of noblesse, oblige, and public policy. He was head of the CIA. So the context is super different. By the late 1980s, the Reagan revolution happened, the Reaganomics happened, so he's super conservative.

And that's why McCain and Murkowski and Collins would be fairly conservative. But in the 1972, if they had been president, they would have been more moderate. And I think you could see this with Mitt Romney as well. George Romney, his father, was a liberal Republican. In 1968, he ran as a little Republican. Rockefeller saw him as a stocking horse, but George Romney was kind of stupid. He went to Vietnam and said that the generals had hypnotized him into thinking something different and then his campaign just ended but George Romney was a liberal. He was a liberal Republican and and Mitt Romney when he was in Massachusetts

He had a something similar to Obamacare So there is a the link there is the context like once these people come out of their state-based context and into the national scene they have to become conservatives because there is there is no liberal republicanism for them to to join to or to be a part of yeah it's interesting parallel it's like i think mitt romney might be a bit closer of a representation than murkowski or susan collins was. And yet still, when he got to the national stage, I think he's a senator now, you don't hear any more about Romney care, that's for sure. Or any of his other kind of redistributive policies as a governor.

Yeah, and it's a super really good point because supposed liberal Republicans, people like David Frum, they adored Romney because they saw what he did in Massachusetts, but they couldn't do anything on the national stage. policies the you know the the heritage foundation like to the hoover foundation and the the cokes it wouldn't that that that moment of liberal republicanism it just doesn't there's just no place for it really if i had to guess as to why i would say it's because they're getting slotted into the new the then new economic paradigm of neoliberalism in the late 70s that took off and so like that that sort of cultural language of redistribution didn't have anywhere to live basically in that economic framework exactly it affected the democrats and the republicans and you can see this in the 1976 and 1973 once nixon i mean, Nixon was a moderate Republican.

If you look at the EPA, if you look at his work on affirmative action, if you look at the fiscal policies, the Institute, obviously the context was he had a Democratic Senate and House, but he was a moderate Republican. He'd always been a moderate Republican. Nixon goes, in 73, you have Gerald Ford, who brings Rockefeller in

as his vice president. But once you get to 76, Rockefeller has to go off the ticket because the Southern Republicans, they don't like Rockefeller. They don't trust him. They haven't trusted him since 64. And so you have to get someone like Bob Dole, who's

much more of this new kind of Republican in the tradition of Goldwater, in the tradition of Reagan. And that Rockefeller Republicanism, which really, like, it was a defensive move. Obviously, some people like Rockefeller

really believed it, and this no-believes-a-pleasure, they really did believe it, but it was a defensive move by the party because the party could not win elections in the 40s and 50s running as a conservative party. It was a conservative party in the 1920s, but it couldn't be a conservative party anymore. And that's why Rockefeller Republicanism existed.

And that's why by 76, you know, it had ended and you have Cheney and Rumsfeld and Ford who was a conservative himself. And then finally Reagan

taking off. And then Jimmy Carter who wasn't even on the left. He was very good on foreign policy. But he was in the center because Rockefeller publicism just didn't exist anymore.

It is interesting to discuss these political figures and look at them and how they're more mixed than we previously believed. You know, from the way we look at the past, it does seem that some people

are so one way or another at least how that's how they're framed for popular media today and i think that also exaggerates why modern day uh liberals and conservatives seem to be so beholden to the beliefs of the past because it's framed as if like no no a fucking reagan was right all the way over and and same with uh many other figures when the reality is that they have more bipartisanship than currently. Yeah, I think it's super true.

I think a lot of politicians, if you look at Pelosi and Schumer, they live in constant fear of 1984 because they experienced it. They ran Mondale, who was a you know was a liberal he was well loved by the the by the the labor element in the you know led by walter ruther in the democratic party but he was completely destroyed because the the political demography and sociology just meant that that kind of politics just people weren't interested

in any anymore at that time but people like that have lived and live today in 2020 like it is the 80s it isn't you know things have changed but the just like the republicans who feared fdr the the democrats have feared feared that Reagan revolution and feared those numbers in 84 and 88 and 80 for a whole generation. And it's really skewed the party to the right. Yeah, I did want to mention, so there's a book about Rockefeller called The Imperial Rockefeller by Joseph Persico. It was written, I think, 1982. I found a UPI write-up of it. And it mostly makes the allegation that while Nelson Rockefeller was Gerald Ford's vice president from 1974 to 77,

he was basically left with not much to do. Like he ended up cut out of most important decisions. Like there was a big tax cut that was announced that he wasn't even consulted on beforehand. But I did like from this UPI write up, apparently, Nelson Rockefeller dreamed up a scheme but never made it public to have the United States buy Greenland, because it was becoming an economic strain on Denmark. And I just love that it's like you know of course this is donald trump comes up with this again and he's treated like the stupidest person on earth but you know genius nelson rockefeller also hatched this one up in

the 70s um but yeah like i did want to also mention and one of the most interesting things i think the most interesting thing that rockefeller does while he's vice president is chair the Rockefeller Commission on the CIA in 1975. And this is, there's this very rare and, you know, never happened again window in US politics where Congress actually starts investigating the CIA in the 1970s. And the Rockefeller Commission, I think is even a mainstream, you know, doesn't accept the double Oswald's conspiracy theory historian will tell you that the Rockefeller Commission was a limited hangout. I think Gerald Ford in his memoir said something to the effect of all this bad information about the CIA was coming out and I didn't want to damage it operationally so we set up the commission to try to limit limit the damage so essentially Nelson Rockefeller chairs this commission on the CIA and it's mostly a whitewash

I actually found an article from Howard Zinn of, the author of People's History of the United States. He wrote an article back in 1975 that I think is very prescient, where, you know, in 1975, the Rockefeller Commission releases its one report on the CIA, and the New York Times headline at the time is, quote, Rockefeller inquiry clears CIA of major violations, unquote. And Howard Zinn points out this is kind of a conflict of interest to have Nelson Rockefeller investigating the CIA, both for his own ties to the CIA, but for his business interests. He talks about Salvador Ande, of course, the CIA overthrew in Chile. The CIA even paid to carry out the assassination of the leader of the military in Chile who didn't want to go along with the coup. And I'm quoting from Howard Zinn here.

American corporations don't like Salvador Allende because he stood for nationalization of Anaconda Copper and other businesses. Anaconda Copper owed a quarter of a billion dollars to a group of banks led by Chase Manhattan,hattan whose chairman is david rockefeller nelson's brother and then he continues but the circle is still not closed the cia action to overthrow allende was approved by the 40 committee whose chairman is henry kissinger and it was kissinger who recommended that rockefeller had the commission to investigate the cia and there's also allegations at various points that roeller, Nelson Rockefeller, was paying money to Henry Kissinger. So you could just see where it's like, OK, Henry Kissinger overthrows Allende, and then he appoints Nelson Rockefeller to chair the commission investigating the CIA. Phoenix program, which was a CIA assassination program that has admitted to murdering in cold blood over 20,000 Vietnamese civilians executed without trial from 1967 to 71. So there's just

like a whole bunch of stuff in this report that's just completely left out. And it's pretty blatant the reason why that was done. You know, in this time period, there also is an Epstein connection I found today. And this is with David Rockefeller, Nelson's brother, from this report I found. It's been said that David Rockefeller was one of Epstein's first clients in 1982. Rockefeller would have just retired from being CEO at Chase Bank at that time. So Epstein was part of the Trilateral Commission. So the Trilateral Commission was founded by David Rockefeller, the brother to Nelson in 73. And he was also served as the CFR chairman, as well as Epstein being on the board

of the Rockefeller Institute. So during the 70s in this time, there is a minor Epstein connection to the Rockefeller wealth. But yeah, just so this episode can be used in classrooms, we will not go too far into the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. We're going to hide our power levels on the Rockefellers. Yeah. And I would just have to say that as you've just gone into, Rockefeller was always connected to the CIA. He worked with a guy named William Cameron Townsend, who was the founder of an ultra-conservative group called the White Club Bible. And they worked in Latin America to unseat a lot of communist leaders, to install military dictators. Dwight Eisenhower's work, you know, thinking about pushing back against the military industrial

communist, pushing against the CIA, much of it was spurred by his antagonism to people like Rockefeller. And, you know, Rockefeller pushed almost all of the anti-communist wars. We see Rockefeller gathering political power and building a vast business empire in Latin America, working with the CIA, developing close friendship with famous Latin American politicians and businessmen, and increasingly advocating military dictatorships with many ultra-conservatives that supported him. So, which is the real connection between Rockefeller and much of the, you know, sort of conservative movement in foreign policy in American life.

So, yeah, on that level, and it's really the same with H.W. Bush. H.W. Bush was a moderate Republican and somewhat close to Rockefeller in terms of ideology, but it's on the level of anti-communism where that conservatism really comes out in these kinds of figures, especially, I think, because it was a window in time where they could not, you know, like conspicuous consumption and rapacious wealth was less looked up upon in American life than it had been because of the New Deal and what the New Deal meant for domestic politics. Yeah, and there's no way to look at the history of the CIA without noticing this kind of hand-in-glove relationship with big business, the large American fortunes. You know, I believe there are allegations that Rockefeller companies have been used as CIA fronts,

have been used to help gather information for CIA purposes. And then, of course, you know, we mentioned Allende in Chile and the business interests that, you know, I'm sure motivated the CIA to help overthrow that government there. But I did also just want to mention the case of Brazil, just from SpartacusEducational.com. In 1964, one of Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller's law firm's most important clients was M.A. Hanna Mining Company. And a guy named João Goulart had become president of Brazil in 1961, and he began to talk about nationalizing the iron ore industry. So the CIA began making plans for his overthrow. Apparently, a psychological warfare program was approved by Henry Kissinger around this time. And in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson gave the go-ahead for the overthrow of Zhao Goulart, which is codenamed Operation Brother Sam. So again, you know, you just kind of circle back again and again, there's no way this guy should be chairing a committee investigating the CIA. And it ultimately was not successful at heading this off, because later on, the church committee would be set up later in the 70s,

which remains to this point the most thorough investigation ever attempted of the CIA. But it should be noted, and I probably should have mentioned this earlier, that the entire reason the Rockefeller Commission came to be needed was the journalist Seymour Hersh was at the New York Times at this time. And in 1974, he broke the story that the CIA had been experimenting on U.S. citizens without their knowledge or consent under Sidney Gottlieb and, you know, what's become known as the MKUltra program. They were, among other things, dosing people with LSD, again, without their knowledge or consent. So there's this kind of public fear.

What, it's wrong to be cool, Sean? It's wrong to have a party, bro? Come on, man. What do you think that goes down at Skull and Bones at Harvard, man? They're just trying to have fun, man. What do you think that goes down at Skull and Bones at Harvard, man? They're just trying to have fun, bro. I do like, you know, dosing people with LSD without their consent. Originally tried by the CIA and then refined by the Legion of Skanks podcast. It's funny. All those Skull and Bones clubs, especially in the 1940s and 1930s,

they were just fronts for cia um sort of internships you know william f buckley was in the cia on one of those things as well then they just they always took from the sort of like the best families all these rich families for young cia operatives at that time get them while they're dumb and young. In addition to the Zinn stuff, apparently there were documents declassified in 2016, just according to nsarchive.gwu.edu. These documents declassified

in 2016 showed that not only had Dick Cheney, as part of his role in the Gerald Ford White House, he had selectively redacted documents to show to the Rockefeller Commission that were based on the coup the CIA had done in Guatemala in the 1950s. Not only that, but apparently Dick Cheney and the Ford White House removed an entire 86-page section on CIA assassination plots.

And there were plenty of, apparently you can even see that the, Dick Cheney's handwriting is in the marginal notes of these, these 86 pages that were removed. So he just kind of went through with, you know, a black pen, a Sharpie and crossed out everything.

So they just dumped a whole bunch out of this report, even though it was itself kind of a whitewash and a limited hangout. Wow. I can't believe Dick Cheney would be so cruel. And so just to finish up on Rockefeller, because towards the end of his political career, especially as governor in New York, he becomes more conservative,

especially after Nixon's Law and Order victory in 68, which really sets the conservatives up as the Law and Order anti-crime party. And Rockefeller feels that if he's ever going to have ambitions of becoming president, he needs to become more conservative. He doesn't really become more conservative fiscally because he believes in a lot of the social programs. But what he does are things like the Rockefeller drug laws in 1973, which really instigated mandatory life sentences without the possibility of plea bargaining or parole for all drug users and dealers, and those convicted of drug-related violent crimes, and a $1,000 reward for people who bring in drug dealers,

which really hurt a lot. It wasn't just about the drug pushers anymore. People who were taking drugs recreationally were going to prison for this. And it really, really violently led to high

levels of African American inmates in New York prisons. It really ravaged that community in New York. And then the other thing was the Attica prison riots. Right. So, and I think if people have seen the film Dog Day Afternoon,

you have Al Pacino saying, Attica, Attica, Attica. New York's crime increases in the late 60s and early 70s. And fiscally, the city is dealing with a lot of problems. And within all of that, you have the Attica prison riots where prisoners sort of capture guards and they want Rockefeller to come in and talk to them and negotiate with them. And because Rockefeller feels the pressure of the conservatives and he's also getting a little bit more conservative on law and order,

he has the National Guard go in and they shoot loads of people 39 people died in the assault right so this pressure from the conservative party is turning and sort of nominally liberal governor into this almost uh this like on the level of law and order, very conservative and very unempathetic when it comes to drugs and criminal justice. And much of that pain in New York has just sort of gone through for many generations and affected many people. And then by 1975,ckefeller is vice president

new york has its uh fiscal crisis where it can't pay its uh debts to many of the bankers who had been so creating um because it was constructing all these loans for for new york and new york had been meeting these loans but because uh a lot so because of some of the work Rockefeller did, because of some of the work Robert Moses had done in creating the New York transit system, a lot of white families are leaving the city into New York State and they're not getting taxes from those people anymore. They're getting taxes from more disadvantaged people in general.

And then when New York has this big issue rockefeller their man the governor is in the white house and so new york goes to gerald ford seeking assistance but for but rockefeller tells ford that um no we can't have um the the government helping new york obviously rumsfeld and cheney didn't want to help new york at all but that was the governor of new york who had been governor for for decades and he didn't want to help new york so new york you know there's that big story new york job drop dead and now new york can't pay its debts and for a generation you have conservative government in New York under the mayoralty and in the government level which ultimately leads to Giuliani. So the pressures on Rockefeller from the conservative movement, the growing conservatism and his

own strategic positioning means that he becomes more conservative and he causes some things that have really damaged the city, in my opinion. Yeah, and I think your thesis is pretty good where it's, you know, when the guy Nelson Rockefeller is born and comes of age, it is a time where socialist and communist movements and labor unions are representing a real threat to capital. But as he's getting older and approaching the 70s, you know, the labor unions are in retreat, we have inflation, we have kind of a situation where capital recognizes that it has the advantage now, and this kind of Nelson Rockefeller republicanism is no longer necessary. That's exactly it. It's the same thing in England. You go away from sort of Manchester style economics, which was very social Darwinist, and there wasn't a lot of social programs or cheap and poor laws. But in the 40s and 50s, instead of those kinds of leaders, you get people like Churchill and Macmillan

who are basically like they're like Rockefeller there's no bleezo bleach they're great warriors they're fighting communism and fascism but in their own countries the domestic policy is nice and it's social democracy

it isn't until those pressures no longer exist that those kinds of people sort of age out, and then you get conservatives coming back into power. One thing I wanted to mention about the Attica prison riot is apparently afterwards, you know, 80 people being wounded, 39 people dying in the assault. In a telephone call with President Nixon, Rockefeller would explain the deaths by saying, that's life. You know, that classic Frank Sinatra hit, that's life. 80 people wounded, 40 people dead, basically.

What are you going to do? But just devoid of empathy and reasonable leadership that should have been taken place by him. According to the recent book Poisoner in Chief about Sidney Gottlieb by Stephen Kinzer, apparently William Kobe, the then director of the CIA, had been very frank with the Rockefeller Commission about CIA assassination plots. And he had actually informed the commission that, the CIA had conducted LSD experiments that resulted in deaths unquote and then when referring to the assassination plots Nelson Rockefeller attempting to prevent the CIA director from revealing too much buttonholed Colby later

quoting Bill do you really have to present all this material to us unquote unquote. So Nelson Rockefeller was actually asking the director of the CIA to give them less information so that they could be a more effective limited hangout. One last rant about the Rockefeller Commission. So some of the members of it included Ronald Reagan, Lyman Lemnitzer, who was the absolutely psychotic chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1960 to 1962. This is the guy who wanted to start a nuclear war over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And it also included a guy named David W. Bellin, who was the former counsel to the Warren Commission. And I just wanted to quote from the Rockefeller Commission, quote, Numerous allegations have been made that the CIA participated in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The commission staff investigated these allegations on the basis of the staff's investigation. The commission concluded that there was no credible evidence of any CIA involvement, unquote. So I don't know about the rest of you guys but i'm convinced when you tell me those kinds of heavy hitters looked into this stuff there's no more questions unanswered there well we want to uh thank our uh guest uh toby aloua uh before we run out here toby uh how about in 30 seconds you tell us everything we need to know about preetyel. If you could do that real quick, that'd be great. Well, I think Preeti Patel is sexy as shit. She's hot. Oh, my God.

Yeah, I mean, Preeti Patel, it's interesting because I recently was working for a conservative, for the London mayoralty, Rory Stewart. And I feel like a lot of conservatives don't really like her. And she has really bad PR, in my opinion. She always cut, like, on the newspapers that we get of her, it's always her doing something

almost unspeakably mean to minority groups and vulnerable people. Always. I just don't understand. Like, on some level we have politicians who are just as bad as her legislatively.

I mean, just look at johnson and um a number of other people in in the government who are worse than she is but her pr is so poor like it's just i mean as a as someone who's you know worked in that sphere before it's just it for me it's just irritating professionally it's like how is she failing on this level constantly i think it's the smirk i think that conservatives that are bigots but just conservatives in general just see her be satisfied with her misdeeds and are just like i know she's on our side but i don't trust her it's it's like, it doesn't make any sense. It should just be noted,

in terms of the ends of Rockefeller's life, he dies in 79. Apparently around the time of his death, the family was close to the Shah of Iran, and Henry Kissinger had been talking to Rockefeller about, you know, of course the Shah of Iran had to flee because of the Iranian revolution. Nelson Rockefeller had said that he would put the Shah of Iran up in his mansion, but then he died. Nelson did did and according to his biographer joseph persecco um um when nelson

rockefeller died he was in his manhattan townhouse in the company of a young woman aid megan marshack the official account said that the official account said that they were working on an art book, Rockefeller's last project. And then, quoting from Joseph Perseco, there is no way that Nelson Rockefeller was working at 10 o'clock on a Friday night in his office. He had a lot of female fans throughout his life. He had to leave his first wife because of it, married happy, but still, he still, he was, I mean, he was a rich guy

who was governor and stuff. Did you guys read about how his son was eaten? No. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, looking for art. Yeah, Nelson's son. There's a documentary about it.

Right, and he, like, if the Dutch hadn't shot at this group in, I think it's New Guinea, maybe, then his son may still be alive. But they, yeah, that dude was eaten to death. That's so funny because when you say he was eaten, it's like, well, that results in a dozen other questions on my part. Like, was he eaten by a crocodile? Was he eaten by a tiger? Yeah, I mean, the Rockefeller family had various companies

in order to get primitive art out of a number of countries, Japan, New Guinea, and Nelson's son went over there on a primitive art exposition as normal people do, apparently. And yeah, he was eaten and Nelson went over there. They couldn't find him and he just had to come back. It was one of the great tragedies in Nelson's life. Yeah.

Yeah, I did want to note for any of our listeners who find themselves in new york you can actually visit the rockefeller mansion in uh kika uh mount pleasant new york it's just a short train ride from new york city my wife and i actually went up there but you can see like the the television that nelson rockefeller would watch football games on and you can go to the basement and see his art collection it's got a bunch of war halls and um a bunch of items that his son was eaten in order to acquire it's a pretty pretty nice tour if you uh if you find yourself in new york i recommend it listen if michael rockefeller wasn't eaten by people in new guinea as revenge for what the dutch government did we might have another Kissinger. You just never know.

I just think that the New Guinea population should be thanked for the amount of nuclear wars we've avoided because of their handiwork. I mean, it's super true because once the Nelson Rockefeller generation sort of died, you just had people. I mean, in the 1980s like you you see polls of um young people like you know they they said in polls that they wanted to be rich a lot of people under the age of uh 35 voted for ronald reagan and so like rich people did they they you know they changed and you know they the the that ro That Rockefeller generation

was just no longer there. So someone like Michael Rockefeller, who was like his father, I mean, Nelson had been director at the Museum of Modern Art, which his mother founded. He could very well have become a very difficult Reagan conservative,

very easily. Unfortunately, he was dinner instead. Yeah, he became a nutritious meal. We were fucking laughing at cannibalism. Social Darwinism. Yeah, this is survival of the fittest in action. It's what he would have wanted. Well, we want to thank our special guest, Toby Alouet.

Check out the podcast he hosts, Impressions of America, a podcast on modern American history. Toby, thank you very much for joining us. And with that, I'm Yogi Poliwal. I'm Steve Jeffries. Oh, sorry. I'm Steve Jeffries. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. Thanks for joining us. Check us out on Patreon

And thank you to our guest Thanks guys Really enjoyed being here Wonderful Alright stop your quarters guys Did you have a Did you get all your plugs in Toby? We can give you another second if you need

You guys talked about the Impressions of America podcast. Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of sort of similar guests. Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House did an episode with us on the weather underground a year ago. People from QAnon Anonymous came to talk about the extremist groups in the 60s, John Birch Society episodes on sort of detailing the changes in American politics between the 1960s and today. And yes, it's a great show that we've been able to do. It's a real privilege to do with a lot of interesting guests.

And yeah, we'd love to have some of you guys listen to us as well. Thank you so much for joining us today. So your family has always been so private and so under the radar. They have always chosen to speak through their philanthropy. What is it like to have this much exposure and to have people paying so much for your family's stuff? Well I think there's a time for private life and then there's a time for public life and to step forward and this was really my grandparents vision and so it's an amazing time and it's so exciting to see the public's you know reception and appreciation of this

incredible sale and Christie's has done just an amazing job curating it and you know protecting our family's privacy but putting it out to the public in just a spectacular way now everyone's wondering well what does the family think about especially the younger generations that so much stuff is being sold off didn't they want that stuff? All the family members including yourself were allowed to choose some items of your grandfather David Rockefeller's up to a million dollars. What did you choose? Well I was very happy to keep a beautiful bracelet that my grandfather

had picked out for my grandmother and I was happy to wear it to the Met Gala on Monday and honor my family's you know legacy and tradition and to be able to keep that sentimental piece among some other things and it's been it's been wonderful to see my grandfather's vision come to life for the collection. And you are an equestrian athlete, very, you know, have won so many events. You also have your own design company. You're very entrepreneurial.

Do you think some of your great-great-grandfather's entrepreneurial genes have been passed down to you? I think so. You know, there's such a, um, a value of having a work ethic in my family and of working at working hard at whatever it is we choose to do and focus on. So I definitely try and honor that. And I love to work hard and, uh, I'm excited to have founded my own business and, uh, to carry on in my grandparents' tradition,

carry on in my grandparents' tradition, carry on in my grandparents' tradition.