Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 362 - Watergate: When Faith in American Politics Was Destroyed

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

On August 9th, 1974, Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States of America, while serving his second term (after winning in a landslide), became the first and still only American leader to resign from office. Why? In a word, "Watergate." But Watergate was only the tip of the corruption iceberg. Through the televised Senate Watergate hearings, other members of government and the American public learned that having men break into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Office Complex  was but one of many, many illegal things Nixon had either outright authorized or at least tacitly endorsed. 69 people would be indicted and 48 of them would be convicted for various crimes related to this scandal, with many of them serving time in prison. So what happened? We break it down, today, on Timesuck! Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp tickets are ON SALE!  BadMagicMerch.com Get tour tickets at dancummins.tv Watch the Suck on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/5iEnlaokMr8Merch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits

And now for another topic, our Patreon supporters, our dear space lizards have demanded that I sucketh Watergate. Who, if anyone, is above the law? In a perfect utopian society, of course the answer would be simple. Me, finally, the evil king comets, can do as he pleases, and the world will bow down to bear evil and cooperate it. But seriously, who is above the law? In a perfect society, no one will be above the law. Everyone will be treated the same by the legal system, rich, poor, and in between. Every race, every nationality, identity, people of every kind of job, from the menial labor to the leader of the nation.

But we don't live in a perfect world. And sometimes it does sure seem like there are people who are literally above the law. Like really wealthy people. A 2018 study showed that wealthy people are more likely to believe that they are above the law than the rest of us. Dacker Keltner, a psychologist and professor from the University of Berkeley who has spent years studying the effects of wealth, power and privilege, told the Washington Post that the negative impact of power is the most reliable law of human nature. How unfortunate. What's that saying? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. Keltner's research has shown that holding a higher social class is a major predictor of increased unethical behavior. What about him? In a 2012 study, study he did a calculator observed a four-way stop and found that people driving more expensive vehicles

were more likely to ignore the traffic laws of a four-way stop and take the right away, even if there were pedestrians needing to cross or in the process of crossing than other people. Another study asked 129 individuals to compare their finances with people with lower or higher incomes. While the participants did this, the researchers brought in a jar of candy that they said was meant for children in another study, but that the participants could take some if they wanted. The researchers observed that participants who felt richer and more proud of their financial status took more candy than others.

And you know what they deserve it they worked their fucking ass out the rich and it'll take as much candy as they want to King Commons will take all of the candy give me the children's candy let me devour the pleasure but seriously that's so messed up aside from broad demographic groups there are also various individuals who seem to believe the law doesn't apply to them. People for whatever reason who act is though they will never get caught. Maybe they think they're too powerful to ever be taken down.

For many years, Richard Nixon was definitely one of those people. Like we have audio evidence of him saying shit that proves that. Lots of audio evidence in addition to so many witnesses. The California native who first came to Washington DC in the 1950s as a representative in Congress, then grew in power and influence, eventually capturing the presidency in 1972. He was not only a career politician, a former member of the Navy, and a devoted husband and father, and also a brilliant man in many ways, but also someone who acted criminally, potentially for decades, without getting caught.

Not only didn't get caught, but grew in power was rewarded for taking shortcuts. But then finally, the public found out what he'd been up to when a scandal broke that tricky dick just couldn't quite totally slip out of. Not that he didn't do everything in his power to get out of it. After a group of men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972, the American public was initially confused. Who were these men? What were they doing?

Who sent them? Over the next two years, with investigators and journalists edging ever closer to the truth, Nixon would do his best to cover up the breaking that he had ordered, and a laundry list of other crimes he'd committed as well. In the end, it would be Nixon's own secretly recorded White House tapes. Tapes he himself had ordered to be made. Tapes uncovered in the course of the Senate Watergate hearings that would go further to reveal the truth about the Nixon Presidencies'

illegal actions and about Nixon himself than anything else. In the end, he bugged himself and damned that bite him in the ass. The tapes revealed that America's president was, as he had denied specifically over and over again, are crook. And maybe just maybe the biggest one in American political history, which is really saying something.

The story of Tricketyk and Watergate right now on a political scandal, slick dick centric addition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Welcome to the cult of the curious. Open your mind. Open your mind.

Um, Dan Cummins, sir, Saksala guy who shames the kink of passing out in front of an acquaintance, and hoping they bugger you, mispronunciation master. Then you were listening to time suck. He'll never know how to heal. So fena praise beat about jangles and glory be to America songbird. Triple M. Be sure, check out my new stand of special trying to get better drops this Sunday, August 27th, 4 p.m. Pacific time, for free on YouTube. Watch it, like it. Most importantly, share that motherfucker.

I am very proud of it. Couple more quick announcements. And then today's show, a second pack of 500 free Bad Magic Street Team Stickers have been sneaked into the BadMagicMarch.com store, because the first 500 went so fast Check quick if you want them before these are also gone because this will be the last pack this season And thanks again to everyone who's who's getting sticking

Get into sticking You know one of those are grammatically correct Now for this week's merch announcement Inspired by the recent suck on Shakespeare Introducing The Billy Shakespeare and luxury wall art. The most accurate rendering of alleged mass killer, William Shakespeare, to date. Some would say it looks a little like me, but I'm not sure I see it. You be the judge.

Amazing oil portrait, illustration of Billy Shakespeare's holding the classic skull from Hamlet or isn't. Head on over to BadmiredDickicmurch.com and check it out. I love that music. Okay, now on to a story that I imagine almost all of us had heard of, but very few of us actually know much about. I certainly did not know all the details. I didn't know almost any of the details.

Even though I've heard of Watergate countless times over the course of my life, but those details, the devil is in them and that devil today is tricky dick Why exactly did Watergate happen what led to it? Why did five men break into the Watergate hotel the night of June 17th 1972? Why did it turn out that Nixon long-favored resorting to something illegal to get what he wanted? Why did he seem to believe that he could play immensely powerful agencies like the CIA and the FBI off one another? And why would he risk all he had accomplished? And he did accomplish so much in his years in Congress and his president over breaking.

The story of Watergate is actually a lot of different stories. It's a story of how we, as participants in the American political system, saw that the president was not above the law, that he could be charged with crimes just like any other person. But also in the end, be forgiven in a way us regular folks never would be forgiven. It's a story of how Congress and the presidency

went to war with one another, fragmenting the US government and ending decades of relatively peaceful cooperation. It's a story of how one man was able to convince too many for too long that he wasn't corrupt, but instead the press, the professors, the establishment, the system was corrupt. And he was just being punished for standing up

to this corrupt system. It's a story of one man's rise and fall propelled to the peak of American society by his massive ego and then brought down by the same damn thing. It's a story of how believing you're the target of a conspiracy pretty much never works out for you. How paranoia and bias can destroy even a really smart person.

And it's a high story that includes everybody from CIA agents, to campaign staffers, to journalists, to a secret informant. Nobody knew the true name of four decades. And most importantly, it's a story the circles around doodam richer, a dick, a tricky dick, not a clean wing, a dirty slick dick. This is our first dick centric suck since episode two of seven the vampire sacrameno serial killer Richard Chase. It's our fourth dick centric suck and first that is not about a serial killer. I haven't

sucked a dick in a long time. I'm sucking a dick this week. Also, this story not only involves a slick tricky dick, also involves a secret agent known as deep throat. What's not to like? What's not to like about a story that revolves around a dick getting deep-throoted. Good things are going to come. They're going to come so hard, you guys. So let's go on a quest, a dick quest. Let's head to the theater of the American political system. Watergate. As a scandal, Watergate would be so big, it would give us the gate suffix that we've come to call scandals by today. There's an entire Wikipedia list of them. According to that list,

these suffix has now been used for years going back to shortly after Watergate, of course, to embellish a noun or name to suggest the existence of a far-reaching scandal, particularly in, although very much not limited to, politics in the government. As CBS News noted in 2001, the term may suggest unethical behavior and a cover-up. Just two years after Watergate, in 1976, there was Korea gate, a scandal involving South

Korean influence peddling in the U.S. Congress in the 1980s. There was what we now call the Iran Contra affair when the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran and diverted the proceeds to contra rebels in nicaragua reporters termed it contra gait since then there's been nanny gate a two thousand six Swedish scandal over the non-payment of employment taxes of nannies and obligatory television fees by members of the ryan felt cabinets and two thousand fifteen's pony tailgate that's a great name. In which a young waitress claimed prime minister, the prime minister in New Zealand, John Key, pulled at her hair, her hair's ponytail

the number of times over several months, while visiting the cafe. Even after being requested to stop by her and his wife, that is so fucking weird. Just stop pulling my ponytail. I don't want to, I like it. There was 2012's porn gates, 2016's Pizza Gate. Somebody gates. Clearly Watergate left an enduring mark on how we talk about politics, culture, and scandals in America. But why? Certainly wasn't America's first political scandal. So what made it such a big deal?

Well for starters, the discovery of what had happened at the Watergate Hotel in 1972 and why it had happened. The many, many years of illegal shit that led up to it led to the first and still only resignation of a US president, Richard Tricky Dick Nixon. On August 9, 1974, the American people watched on TV as a helicopter, touched town at the White House lawn, to carry away Richard Nixon and his family and take them back to civilian life in disgrace. It was a humiliating end to a decades-long political career, very successful political career for Nixon. A humiliation to the office of the president in general, a role that had with Nixon's predecessors, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy seemed like the pinnacle of respectability.

Okay, maybe not 100% with Kennedy. With Kennedy, the White House was essentially turned into a porn set for all of his daddy inses. But the American public didn't know how active JFK's tricky dick was back when he was seemingly trying to fuck every beautiful woman alive. Since he was a handsome war hero, a great speaker and a champion for the working man, he was beloved. Actually, no president has ever had an approval rating as high as JFK ever since JFK. In the 1940s and 50s radio program, Mr. President, America Chief Executive was described as the elected leader of our people, our fellow citizen and neighbor, Nixon in the end proved

himself to be pretty much the opposite of that, a criminal and a liar, a person who had lied to the American people over and over again, who had gotten his cronies to do almost every illegal act under the sun, short of murder murder and murder was also discussed to get him to stay in power and then all these cronies are fucking punished and he just you know gets to walk away. In terms of the government, Watergate was so important because it triggered a constitutional crisis. For the first time in American history, Congress and the Supreme Court were a war with the

executive branch as Nixon refused to hand over incriminating tapes, citing his executive privilege. That would end on July 24, 1974, when a unanimous Supreme Court decision effectively ended the Nixon presidency by ordering the release of the Watergate smoking gun tape and other recordings. The justices held that not even the president was above the law. And this and Nixon's removal would kick off an era of political turbulence that in many ways has never left us. The nation was already distrustful and disoriented after the racial and cultural conflicts of the 1960s and the revelation that their government under President Lyndon Johnson have been hiding

the truth about the Vietnam War. Nixon then put the country through a constitutional crisis and left the Oval Office in disgrace, seemingly overwhelmed by the office and its challenges. The presidents that followed Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter found themselves unable to win re-election. Well, they were also just shitty presidents, in many ways. So yeah, they couldn't blame Nixon entirely for the losses, but what he did to the image of the Oval Office sure did not help them.

The press now focuses attention on unmasking whatever the president and presidential candidates might be hiding Congress too became suspicious and wondered if it had ceded too much power to what was supposed to be a Equal branch of government Simultaneously the Watergate scandal shined a negative light on the entire legal profession Many of the participants in the scandal were attorneys or politicians who had gone to law school and many of them faced some type of legal proceeding In which it was shown how unlawfully they had behaved wait wait what shady lawyers no that's that's a thing there are lawyers who are unethical what after watergate most law schools in the United States required courses about professional

responsibility and the American Bar Association actually rewrote its responsibility code the post watergate years also saw the beginning of the era of celebrity investigative journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward both in their late 20s when they began looking into Watergate for Washington, for the Washington Post. We're pretty much solely responsible for Watergate becoming the big public story it became. After Watergate, the press would be considered more important than ever in breaking these scandals and develop a more contentious relationship with politicians and ever. And that certainly has not changed.

But perhaps the most important legacy of Watergate has been its cultural effects. Liberal voters felt disenfranchised and like their accurate critiques of Nixon's administration had gone unheeded for years, conservative voters felt betrayed by a man who had promised to represent the party authentically and honestly. Cinnical movies dubbed neo-noirs about abuses of power, dominated movie theaters like Taxi Driver and the Long Goodbye portraying a world in which morality was always great, which is actually pretty fucking accurate. And the person who won was usually the person who did whatever they had to do to come out on top

Which is also pretty accurate What word and Bernstein themselves would get in on this with a blockbuster book called all the president's men Which then became a hit film of the same name in 1976 It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and it won four A whole generation of cultural products would come in part from the revelations of Watergate Secret shadowy things going on in the government like easily one of the best shows of all time and if you feel different, you're fucking wrong, the ex files. But the biggest legacy of Watergate is probably something you hold true in your mind without

even maybe realizing it. Today, at least in a certain way of looking at it, we don't seem to seek government experience or the right set of policies in our presidential candidates Instead would Americans seem to long for in their parties representative above all else is authenticity We want a person to trust and believe in Have a hell of a hard time fighting those people, but as we want During campaigns presidential candidates commonly assert that their opponent is ultimately untrustworthy in essence that they're another Nixon commonly assert that their opponent is ultimately untrustworthy in essence that they're another Nixon.

A tactic Nixon himself embraced in his early campaigns. And these kinds of black and white questions about character certainly haven't seemed to seem to have led to more trust in the president public officials or the government as a whole. When Nixon's predecessor, Lyndon, jumbo Johnson, big hawk donkey dick, LBJ, was an office public approval of the government specifically the percentage of people who believe the u.s. government is good and just and does what is right most or all of the time was seventy seven percent

jf k's average approval rating uh... jf k would beat nixon to win the presidency was seventy point one percent america fucking loved him since nixon left office the average approval rating has never been higher than 60.9%. And that was George H.W. Bush, and he did not win re-election. Bush, Obama, Trump, none of them cracked

an average approval rating of higher than 50%. Biden currently hovering around 40% approval. This widespread feeling of disapproval began in large part with Watergate. When you look at charts, trust plummets in the months leading up to Nixon's resignation and it's never fully recovered. And these bottom of the barrel assessments of trust are exactly why politicians now run largely on someone, you know, being somebody who is trustworthy, someone seemingly willing

to stand up to corruption, someone who's supposedly can be bought by lobbyists, et cetera. And if a bunch of people don't feel like you seem trustworthy, you're not getting elected unless your primary opponent seems less trustworthy. That's where I am. A lot of times with elections. Who is less shitty? And this is, you know, this is actually really problematic. You know, what are your fucking policies exactly? That should be what's important. What is your voting record? Questions of policy can be debated in a logical manner, but questions of trust often come down to the feelings, emotions, gut instinct, and that is something we actually can't trust. To be clear, we can't fully blammer to Nixon for all of the

divisiveness and mistrust we see across a political spectrum today, but he and his crimes that he was caught for. I mean, they certainly played a big part. As did Gerald Ford blanket pardon of all of Nixon's crimes. Before we get into all that, let's look at the man of himself, the person's central to Watergate. How did Nixon develop an ideology in which he felt his crimes were defensible, maybe even necessary. On January 9, 1913, Richard Millhouse Nixon was born in New Orleans, California to Frank and Hannah Millhouse, Nixon. Yeah, Millhouse. Yeah, Bart's friend on the Simpsons on that cartoon was named

after President Nixon's middle name. Show creator Matt Groening said the name was the most unfortunate name he could think of. Forget. Yeah, Millhouse. That's a that's tough one. Dick Millhouse. Just parents hate him at birth,

was the second born of five brothers. In 1922, Dix Daddy, Frank Nixon sold the family home and lemon grove in your Belinda, moved the family to nearby Whittier, California. Why? Why are the moon having a lemon grove sounds delightful? But I suppose lemons are a lot of work, when you actually have to harvest them.

You have to fucking take them off the tree. As opposed to just having some bartender, Adam's your drink. My lemon associations are only positive. Lemon wedges and cocktails, tasty lemon bars at bakeries, yummy as lemon meringue pie. Eight years later, 1930, Richard Nixon graduated third in size school class, won numerous awards, including the Harvard Club California Award for outstanding all-around student, which earned him a scholarship to Harvard University. Uh, dude was very smart. But due to the family's limited finances, Nixing had to forego that scholarship and instead attend Whittier College, and that had to have stung.

Not the Whittier is a bad, you know, institution, it's not, it's just, it's not Harvard. I didn't even bother applying to Harvard. I knew I wouldn't get it. What a bummer to not just get in, but be given a big scholarship and still not be able to afford to go. Nixon made the most of his college experience so. At Whittier College, Richard Nixon was elected student body president, founder and president of the ortho-Gonion society.

Some kind of fraternal organization founded on principles of doing your very best, engaging, philanthropy, kind of egg. Basically, it was Whittier's equivalent to Yale's Skull and Bones, or some other secret society, where they had to recruit the best and brightest and try to get them appointed to positions of prominence, post-graduation through alumni networking, is what it seems. Not sure if it's still around or not online info. Pretty scarce since 2017. The website seems to be down. Nixon also joined the debate team acted in several plays to be or not to be a tricky dick. That is a question. He was on the football team. He's a fucking big man on campus, shining star, someone who seemed destined for big things.

And he was destined for big things. Well, or at least he would accomplish big things. He even had his future wife Pat Ryan at Whittier Community Players try out for the play the Doc Tawa. Fairly scandalous. It was a very adult play and the two did develop quite the chemistry. Rehearsing for the programs pen ultimate asked to mouth sexy. Sorry, just crack myself up. Added that to notes and imagined how horrified audiences in the 1930s would be to see that shit in the college play. Like people would have literally screamed and fainted. The two would be married two years after they met on June 21st, 1940 at the Mission Inn

in Riverside, California. In August 1942, Nixon will be commissioned as an officer in the US Navy, receiving a battle station assignment for the South Pacific. First at Bougainville Island, and then at Green Island, Wallen Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, Nixon opened a Nix hamburger stand, Nix is a Nixon, I mean, that was pretty cute.

For flight crews on their way to battle missions, also developed a skill for poker, which quickly became a great diversion while on active duty soon Nixon's mind would turn to politics in September of 1945 Republican leaders back in Whittier urged him to run for a seat in the US House Representative who's a charismatic motherfucker smart guy little over a year later in November of 1946 33 year old Richard Nixon defeated five term of veteran democratic congressman, Jerry Voorhees, and was elected to represent California's 12th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He and Pat meanwhile welcomed the daughter, Trisha, and Nixon was a honorably discharged

from the Navy or had been in Congress. Nixon was appointed by the speaker to the, excuse me, appointed by the speaker of the House to a special committee led by representative Christian Hurtler of Massachusetts. Nixon was tasked with traveling throughout Europe and preparing a report on the Marshall plant. And we'll pick up, you know, back up with his political ascend in the timeline leading to Watergate in 1948. But first, let's go a little deeper into who he was, just personality wise.

The personality of the man who would go down for Watergate, along with many of the men who helped him, central to understanding how something like Watergate could have happened What kind of person would commit crimes as president of the US? Probably fucking most of them But he did it, you know, it seemed to do it more than the other ones Who would use his executive authority to cover them up? Well, we already know that Nixon was no dummy, remarkably high at cheating, you know, basically from grade school on, not stupid, not uninformed.

So what was he? Well Alexander Butterfield, best remembered as the man who revealed the existence of the White House taping system, was a presidential aide for Nixon, constantly at the president's elbow, ushered in visitors and preparing talking papers for Nixon's meetings, basically with the exception of chief of staff HR Holdeman, nobody got to know Nixon the president better than this dude. Butterfield remarks to the House impeachment committee in July of 1974 are extraordinary for their insight into Nixon's work habits, his attitudes, and his intolerance of any diversity of views around him. As he testified

on July 2nd, 1974, from my observations from having seen thousands and thousands of memoranda over this period of time, I may be using those figures loosely, hundreds and hundreds of memoranda over this period of time, from working directly with the president and halled-a-men, I know him, Nixon, to be a detail man. But I think any successful person is a detail man to a degree, out degree. The president, often, of course, was concerned whether or not the curtains were closed or open, the arrangement of state gifts, whether they should be on that side of the room or this side of the room displayed on a weekly basis or on a monthly or daily basis. He was

deeply involved in the entertainment business, whom we should get, for what kind of group, small band, big band, black band, white band, jazz band, whatever. He was very interested in meals and how they were served and the time of the waiters and was usually put out. If the state dinner was not taken care of in less than an hour or an hour's time, he debated receiving lines and whether he debated receiving lines and whether or not he should have a receiving line prior to the entertainment for those relatively junior people in the administration who were invited to the entertainment portion

of the dinners only and not to the main dinner. He wanted to see the plans, he the scenarios, he wanted to view the musical selections himself. He was very interested in whether or not salad should be served and decided that it's small dinners of eight or less the salad course should not be served. I mean, fuck, talk about hands on. He was interested in who introduced him to guests and he wanted it done quite properly. I did it for a while and I don't think

I was altogether satisfactory. Sometimes the military aid did it. Then one time Mr. McComber from the State Department did his superb job and he was hired to introduce the president to guest henceforth. That lasted a month or two. Emil Mossbacher, the protocol ambassador, did it for a while. He wanted a professional producer to come and actually produce entertainment, especially

the entertainment, which was for television, et cetera. As someone who's funny to anybody else, like how much fucking energy he spent on White House entertainment and dinners. I mean, who knows? That might be the same way. I mean, I do totally understand not wanting to end up with some band. You know, you really don't like playing at your own dinner when you're the fucking president. I'm kicking off the first president commons White House gala, sir.

We have Lose Del Rio singing the Makarena. Fucking what? Now I hate that song. I hate that song and I can't help but sing along when it comes on. I'm a little like an idiot. I hate to dance too, but I know all the moves and I'm going to start doing them every time I hear it. I mean, so on some level like it But the way this guy describes I just picture Nixon just like blowing off super important responsibilities

To focus on like White House entertainment Mr. President China's Mao Zedong is on the phone He is threatening to join the fight in a much more in your face way and drop bombs on our troops in Vietnam If you don't speak to him right way not fucking now, but I. I'm talking on the other line to do going to it's going very well. And I will not have my own my transfers of getting doped or seeing me hyper birthday. Butterfield continues. Guest lists were of great interest to him. He did review all the guest lists very carefully and no one would put someone on a guest list or take someone off a guest list as a rule without going to the president.

He was interested in knowing how many Republicans or Democrats were on the list. He would review it for that to many or two little and always got his personal view. How many from the South, East, West, North, regions of America, how many blacks, how many ethnics, how many labor members might be invited to this. He would review all of these lists personally and approve them personally. He was very conscientious of criticism of the worship services, yet he wanted to continue having the worship services. There was criticism, especially that he was using them for political purposes. So he purposefully invited a number of Democrats, people who might be considered

enemies. I do use that word loosely. It may be inappropriate, but I mean precisely that because he felt there was some benefit from worship services There were no pictures taken he debated having a worship service on a monthly basis or by monthly or whatever or not at all And he wanted to know who sat where among the VIPs in the first couple of rows And he wanted to see a chart a setup of the worship services He was interested in the press follow-up. He wanted to see a copy of the press coverage He wanted to note who was going to be on hand to record this. Which recorded do you have? He suggested after a while that we nominate a number of anecdotes, color reporters, as we call them, to go to

these events at which some human interest item might occur, little vignettes of human interest. He wanted those recorded for the president's file for history, yet there was a lot of leisure time for the president, but he chose not to take it in the form of indulging. By a wave indulging in recreation. It was my observation that he had no hobbies. The presidency was his hobby. He bold occasionally, very seldom. Once every three weeks at best on average, he meditated, he thought, he pondered, he worked on his yellow pad,

he thought things over, he thought over his schedule. He seemed to me to be preoccupied with the presidency I say that in a complimentary way He seemed to me to be preoccupied with his place in history with his presidency as history would see it perhaps This is normal. I think all of us care a little bit I would guess that the concept is normal, but that the preoccupation probably is not I mean so far This doesn't really bother me right?? I mean, is there one job

in America you want whoever has it to fucking obsess over? Wouldn't that be the presidency? His age will describe him as the man on top, not always in a complimentary way. Tapes of his conversations reveal a president that was deeply conscious of public relations, probably way too conscious, overly preoccupied with enemies, real and imagined, obsessed in a bad way. From his very first election with his chances of winning his second, fixating on trivial matters, constantly compelled to compare himself with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He was too worried about legacy and predecessors. He had his ego wrapped up too much in this, as opposed to just focusing on the job at hand.

He was seen by many close to him as a neurotic micromanager narcissistic, unaccepting of any kind of alternate approach to his own. Consider this memorandum that he sent on June 16th, 1969. I have noted an increase in number of instances and the news reports of columnists indicating that White House staffers privately were raising questions about some of my activities. One of these instances was the Chamber of Commerce speech on student revolt. The other on the Air Force Academy speech. I want the whole staff in the strongest possible terms to be informed that unless they can say something positive about my operations and that of the White House staff, they should say

nothing. I also would like to get your report on who has been responsible for this kind of statement. I mean, sure, this reflects him being unexceptive of dissenting voices, but also if you were the press and staffers were talking shit about you. Wouldn't you want them to shut the fuck up? I don't think there's anyone who as president would be cool with staffers talking shit. A memorandum from October of that year directed his staff to maintain his public image in the press describing it as an image they had to sell. Somebody constantly has to be telling the press unless it runs out of their ears that

the president is working hard, even though he may be at Camp David, Florida or in California. Johnson was away from the White House almost more than any other president. And yet his staff got across the fact that he was the hardest working president in our history. I probably spent less time away than any president in recent history. Oh yeah, I forgot this is Nixon talking. I have probably spent less time away than any president in recent history. Very little golf and no vacations without work. At this story has not been told except I understand from Erlichman or Simmitch who of course

is not read by too many people. I am really quite disappointed that since I have mentioned this on at least a dozen occasions over the past four months, we apparently have not followed up. I hope you will get me an action plan that will reverse the situation. Since on this issue, I know we have a good case to sell. I mean, again, I do understand this frustration.

You know, like you're fucking working really hard. You want people to know about it. I get it slick, you trick dick. But also, holy shit, does this make him seem weirdly insecure and neurotic. You guys need to talk more about how great I am, goddamnit. For example, if someone were to ask you, what you think of me, I would like you to say something and get your notes, right to tell you notes. I would like you to say something like, Nixon reminds me of a mix between Atlas, the

Greek Titan holding up the earth, the way to the world on the shoulders, so to speak, and Albert Einstein, one of the most brilliant men to ever live with a, with a pen just Steve McQueen, get, make sure you get the, pen just Steve McQueen tossed in like, like, what do I think of the president? Well, Richard Nexon is, everybody's cool and handsome as Steve McQueen,

if not cooler and more handsome. And everybody's smart as Einstein, and able to carry the way to the whole world like Atlas, but also humble, like Mother Teresa, but also very tough like General Patton, John Wayne kind of mixed together, but also sexy like James Dean and very fit like Jack Elaine and very funny, very funny like Bob Hope, but without the profanity or the the crudeness, the ludeness, so really funnier, you know, Nixon was also maybe a bit paranoid he continued continually emphasize that there were people against him personally in the press uh... potentially within his own administration

in memorandum from december of nineteen sixty nine he instructed staff to remember that a great majority of the press are opposed to the administration and therefore will subconsciously or consciously be after a story which will be harmful to the administration nixon hated the press uh... nineteen seventy one after white house correspondance dinner traditionally a time for Nixon hated the press. 1971 after White House correspondence dinner, traditionally a time for members of the press

to gather and poke fun at the current administration. Nixon railed the members of the press who received the awards that night were way out-left wingers, who were receiving an award for a vicious attack on the administration. He added that he had to sit there for 20 minutes, while the dr an audience laughed in

derision at the awards citations were read as they were read. Everybody on my staff has the responsibility to protect the offers of the presidency from such and such. And I can't just can make him seem petty but again I get it. I get the sentiment. Don't want to be criticized. Another name dragged to the mud. You know, I fucking sucks.

But also this is exactly why freedom of the press is so important. Why it's included in the first amendment, right? Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances and freedom of the press to let us know, in theory, at least, what the fuck is really going on? Like can the press lie about politicians they don't like, of course. Do they lie about politicians they don't like? Yeah, definitely, sometimes. positions they don't like of course do they lie about politicians they don't like yeah definitely sometimes uh... but if reporter after reporter working for media

outlets not financially tied to one another are constantly pointing out the same politician being corrupt in the same way listing sources providing proof of that corruption should you at least consider that maybe just maybe that they're right that is not a witch hunt that they're not just mocking the office that they they're doing their fucking jobs correctly. I think you should. In this case, reporters, yeah, they were, they were right, not to like Nixon. He in fact, despite his claims to the contrary, was actually a crook. Regarding the White House correspondent to the inter 1971 Nixon also remarked, I am sure that my staffers approved the charade

because it would demonstrate that the president was a good sport. I do not have to demonstrate that. I've done so many times over the past 24 years. It's he's on edge. Next time was particularly angry because the 1972 election was approaching. Something he advised his staffers would be a quote, fight to the death. He said that all the press would be against him, all of them. And would smirk and pander to us for the purpose of getting a story. But we must remember that they are just waiting for the chance to stick the knife in deep and to twist it. And someone is this adamant that an entire class of people are against them. In this case, people dedicated to reporting what is really going on in the White House. Shouldn't you, if you're a staffer think, okay, but why would they be out

to get you? Is there a reason? Huh? Right? I don't know. Maybe they are out to get him. Maybe they have a fucking great reason for being after him. But the staffers didn't have to wonder why the press was out to get next. They knew because they were in on why. Many of them had been in on it for many years. Let's share the dirt they were getting into in today's time suck timeline. Right after a word worked for more sponsors.

Thank you for listening. Now let's dig into Nixon's political rise and how the Watergate scandal was won in the making for a long, long time. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline. A few moments ago, 1948, that year would see Richard Nixon already a representative in Congress representing California's 12th congressional

district rise to new political heights. That year was almost a smack in the middle of what's been called America's red scare or second red scare, uh, period of time when politicians most notably Joseph McCarthy drummed up paranoia about Communists, infiltrating Hollywood, the government, and basically every single American institution. And even both jangles, our beloved three-legged, one-eyed, pit bull demigod, and defender of free enterprise.

Nitorious despiser of anything and everything Communists, anything's McCarthy took shit a bit too far. It was a time of extreme paranoia. Some of you I'm sure saw this being acted on on the big screen recently in Oppenheimer, which was a fucking beautiful movie by the way. During this period, federal employees were analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal

to the government and the House Un-American Activities Committee interrogated anyone accused of having communist ties, often leading to those people being blackballed or imprisoned imprisoned and many of those people were not even communist. It was a terrible time. For many, we'll suck the red scare someday. Yeah, bad, bad days. That all being said, while I don't agree at all with how the red scare aka McCarthyism played out, it was very much witch hunt, you know, BUNung the witch but i do understand the concern i mean the soviet's were in fact sending spies to america many of them they were infiltrating the

u.s. government they did that they absolutely were trying to remake the world in their image as was the u.s. and thankful jangles the world does not look today like some version of stolonism uh... during this period was constant senator joseph mccarthy had a lot to gain politically by portraying himself someone as someone hunting down enemies in our midst uh... during this period was constant senator joseph McCarthy had a lot to gain politically by portraying himself someone as someone hunting down enemies in our midst a fearless commie hunter

uh... well before he became known as america's leading anti red guy nixon was actually the same thing and it was you know helping his political career a great deal in august nineteen forty eight events were sent motion that led to nixon becoming uh... you know unknown prominent commie hunter, defender of American virtues. That month, Whitaker Chambers, senior editor at Time Magazine, was called by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to corroborate the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley, a Soviet spy who had defected in 1945 and accused dozens of members of the U.S. government

of espionage. One official she had named as possibly connected to the Soviets was Alger Hiss. Alger His. Alger His was a well-educated and well-connected former government lawyer and State Department official who had helped create the United Nations in the aftermath of World War II. So this was a big fucking deal. The FBI immediately began probing Bentley's claims to ensure those who were credibly named, including His, did not continue to have access to government secrets or power. After some details, we're leaked to the press about all this, the real meat of the investigation kicked off with the committee's subpoenaing, subpoenaing, uh, Whitaker Chambers. Chambers

who renounced the Communist Party in the late 1930s testified reluctantly on a hot summer day. Chambers was a known communist in 1920s and then was recruited by the Soviets to work as a spy, which he did for most of the 30s Eventually though he started to think that maybe Stalin was less of a revolutionary and men of the people and maybe more of an insane mass murdering to Tolotarian pile of shit and He started to fear for his life rightfully so Stalin was killing a fuckload of people and he started to fear for his life rightfully so installments killing a fuckload of people

uh... he started for his life after refusing to travel to Moscow in nineteen thirty eight he where you might disappear like so many other people connected to the style talk about a paranoid individual uh... he took his family to hide in and then in nineteen thirty nine met with u.s. authorities with an offer to tell them everything he knew about the commonest activities in the u.s. in exchange for protection from prosecution

and also no maybe some protection from being and also, you know, maybe some protection from being killed by a commies. And he shared that there were, uh, there was a big underground cell of communist spies in Washington DC and that his and others had been members of the group on August 5th. His vehemently denied the accusation. His calmly and confidently told committee members, I am not and have never been a member of the communist party. He repeated the statement in his telegram that he had never laid eyes on chambers either and added, I would like to have the opportunity to do so. Let's get to fighting. Well, his performance

and it was a performance was impressive enough to convince most members of the committee that the investigation should just be dropped. Even President Truman wanted to drop, you know, he called the Capitol Hill spy inquiry... hill spy inquiry uh... red herring red herring being in this context something that misleads or distracts from you know something actually relevant so it's a waste of time the house on american activity chamber uh... was now not looking so good like they were just which hunters is burned the which many members were ready to drop the investigation but one member uh... wanted

to press on california congressman slip and slide dick nixon old tricky dick We're ready to drop the investigation, but one member wanted to press on California Congressman slip and slide Dick Nixon old tricky dick He'd accept he'd accepted a seat on the House on American Activities Committee in 1947 And he'd been waiting for a time to make a real name for himself He thought chambers charges rang true and he found his condescending and insulting in the extreme To many observers it was his his Eastern Ivy League pedigree in style that offended Nixon, a Whittier college grad, product of working-class parents.

With some reluctance, the committee voted to make Nixon chair of a subcommittee that would seek to determine who was lying, his or chambers. At least on the question of whether or not they knew one another. And now the House on American Activities Committee soon became the most talked about committee in Congress. Right, this is Nixon's fucking chance to, you know, make a name for himself. And now the House on American Activities Committee soon became the most talked about committee in Congress. Right? This is Nixon's fucking chance to, you know, make a name for himself. August 7th, Nixon's subcommittee meets Chambers at the Federal Courthouse in New York City

to pursue its investigation into the Confess Spies Association with Aldr Hiss. Nixon asked many questions designed to determine whether he knew the things about Hiss that only a close friend would know. Chambers had most of the answers on subjects like nicknames, habits, pets, vacations, mannerisms, descriptions of floor plans and furniture. Then on the question of whether his had any hobbies, Chambers gave an answer that would soon come to haunt his, be his downfall. He said yes he did.

They both, Algerian is wife, a persilver. Had the same hobby. Amateur, ornithologist, bird observers. They used to get up early in the morning and go to Glent Echo on the canal to observe birds. I recall once they saw to their great excitement, a pro-thonitary warbler. Finally, on August 16th, his is hauled back

before the committee, and the questions began anew. Attorney point investigation comes when Richard Nixon asks, what hobby, and you what hobby do you have? Mr. Hiss? His answer that is hobbies were tennis and amateur or mythology. Congressman John McDonnell jumped in. Did you ever see a pro-thonitary warbler and his fell into the trap responding, I have, right here on the Potomac. Do you know the place? Community members were now convinced his was lying based in large part on, on his response about the warbler.

Man, dude has to be the only man in history whose fucking career was destroyed by admitting to having seen a pro-sanitary warbler. Damn you pro-sanitary warbler, damn you to hell. I cursed the day I have a late eyes upon you. Finally the next day, face the face with his accuser, his now admits he did know chambers, just, just knew him by a different name. George Crossley. Now the drama continues, both his and chambers trying to smear each other in a

series of televised congressional hearings, the first congressional hearings ever televised. In America, it was known like several other topics we've covered have also been known as the trial of the century. and Nixon was a big star Then in November of 1948 chambers produced documents showing both he and his had committed espionage Such as images of state department materials that included notes in his own handwriting It was a smoking gun the justice department needed his was charged with perjury He could not be indicted for espionage only because the statute of limitations had run out He could not be indicted for espionage only because the statute of limitations had run out. That's a surprise.

There is a statute of limitations on espionage. An extensive FBI investigation helped develop a great deal of evidence, verify and chamber statements, and revealing his cover-ups. In 1949, the first trial resulted in a hung jury, but then in 1950, his was convicted. January 21, 1950, he sentenced to five years in prison, ending an important case that helped further confirm the increasing penetration of the U. the US government by the Soviets during the Cold War. Richard Nixon now writing high on an all-time historic conviction, right? He helped root out some commies and in a particularly clever way.

No longer just a representative from a California backwater little bird, now he was a prominent commie hunter. And as he would later write in his memoirs his wife pat as a reward for his triumph nearly sucked the skin off his cock jk of course jk i'm a child ironically his actually being inspired he wrote it out might have just been about the worst thing that could have happened in the next and long run

because he would now hold the belief uh... for the rest of his life that subversive forces of bounded in america in the culture in the government forces trying to bring him and the us down bringing down his would go a long ways to making him paranoid carry that paranoia with him for the rest of his political career. But for now Nixon stars rising. 1915 Nixon would be elected to the US Senate defeating democratic congressmen and one time Hollywood starlet, Helen Douglas.

Now things are really often running. Just two years later, July 11, 1952, the Republican National Convention ratifies Dwight Eisenhower's choice of Nixon as his vice presidential running mate. But being tagged to VP led to a problem that nearly derailed Nixon's rising political career. Mayor Wheat before the 1952 presidential election, Nixon was accused of improprieties related to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for political expenses.

The fund was created back in 1950 when his Senate campaign manager, Murray Chotner, and campaign chairman Bernie Brennan proposed a year-round campaign for the next six years, leading out to a re-election bid for the Senate in 1956. This was because Nixon quite simply wasn't being paid enough as a senator to be able to fund any vote gathering tours. Nixon received an annual salary of just $12,500,

which is equivalent to about $158,000 today. While he received an expense, an expense allowance of over $75,000, more than most senators received thanks to California, being one of those popular states, that money went to pay his staff of 12 people and to cover the cost of stationary. Telephone service, telegrams, and other office expenses. Also paid for the one set of round trip airline tickets between Washington DC and California that Nixon was allowed to buy for himself and his family at the taxpayer expense, each

congressional session. So they would need to raise additional money for his reelection campaign. campaign. Nixon's Southern California campaign, Treasurer Dana Smith, suggested what became known as the fund. administered by Nixon, which would pay for Nixon's political expenses. And Smith wrote to one potential contributor, or as he wrote to one potential contributor, money donated to the fund was to be used for transportation and hotel expenses to cover trips to California more frequently than his mileage allowance permits. Payment of airmail and long distance phone charges above his allowance, preparation of material to send out to the people who have supported him,

defrain expenses of his Christmas cards to the people who worked in his campaign or contributed financially, paying for getting out material for radio broadcasts and television programs, and various other similar items. Contributors were drawn only from his early supporters and contributions were limited to a thousand bucks a person equivalent to a little over 12,000 bucks today. Nixon was not to be informed of the names of contributors. However, the fundraising letters stated that Nixon will of course be very appreciative of your continuing interest. By October 30th, 1951, some $16,000, roughly $200,000 in today's

money, have been raised of which Nixon had spent approximately 12,000 or 150K in today's money, principally from contributors in the LA Los Angeles area. Cut to Nixon being nominated for Vice President, Nixon had actually previously promised his support for a presidential nomination to the California's favorite or two Californiaifornia's favorite candidate governor url warren but then of course warren doesn't get the nomination and now warren supporters alleged that nixon worked behind the scenes to nominate eyes and hour despite his pledge publicly to support warren perhaps he thought his chances of being a vp were better with eyes and how are

and now a disgruntled warren supporter from pacadena leaks the fun story to several reporters, right? Typical backbiting, mudslinging, dirty political shit. Soon the New York Post puts out a story under the headline, secret rich men's trust fund keeps Nixon in style far beyond his salary and refers to the fund donors as a millionaires club. And now not surprisingly, he really starts to hate reporters. Headlines about the Nixon fund scandal quickly spread across the country, Nixon issued a written statement

explaining that the fund was to pay political expenses in lieu of charging them to the taxpayer, but reporters don't buy it. And they publish increasingly lurid accounts of the fund in Nixon claiming he used it to buy shit like a house for himself, like a fucking maid service. Right tricky dick now feeling pretty limp. Sector is stomach. These allegations could absolutely destroy his political career. Right as it is beginning to reach new heights, you know, big heights. It was looking like Eisenhower was going to drop Nixon from his campaign. On August 19th, 1982, Eisenhower publicly called upon Nixon to release all documents relating to the fund, somewhat to the dismay of Nixon's campaign campaign manager mary chattener

who wonder what more does the general require than the senator's word uh... on the notes to the public eyes and how i was having his eight secretly tap a new vp william noland nixon was in deep shit is dick was about to be knocked into the dirt he needed to uh... do something to turn the optics on him around and fast if you wanted to save his career. On September 20th, 1952, Republican National Committee official Bob Humphries suggests that Nixon give a televised speech to the nation so he can explain himself. Meanwhile,

Nixon's aides are trying to get him to resign from the ticket. Eisenhower is contacting every lawyer he can to find out the legality of the fun. And the phone call with Nixon expresses his regret if Nixon were to leave the ticket. Sandy felt he should get a chance to make his case before the nation so nixon does make his case uh Eisenhower uh staff uh secured 60 NBC stations to telecast the speech a hail Mary speech that will go down in history as the checkers speech Monday morning September 22nd, 19 52 nixon flies to the LA, making notes for his speech on the plane. He recalls the phala speech, which FDR, sarcastically responded to Republican claims that he had

sent a destroyer, like a warship to fetch his dog phala, and he remembered the dog his children had recently received. A Texas traveling salesman named Lou Carroll had read a report that Pat Nixon said her children, Trisha and Julie, long for a dog and his own dog in American Cocker Spaniel just had a litter. So after telegram exchange he created the puppy, shifted by rail to Nixon's and six-year-old Trisha Nixon named the dog Penny Pooper. Wait no that's one of my dog's names. Trisha named the dog Checkers. That'll be a good story to tell Nixon decided. So he told it. So, September 23, Nixon gives a speech. Over the previous days, he'd refused to tell

the media anything about what he might say. He wanted all eyes on him. That day, Eisenhower staff calls him up. After thinking more about it, Eisenhower feels the speech has to end with Nixon's resignation. Nixon's not going down without a fight, though. Nixon's speech begins with, my fellow Americans, I come before you, tonight as a candidate for the vice presidency, and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned. Not one cent of the $18,000 for any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be

charged to the taxpayers of the United States. It was not a secret fund. As a matter of fact, when I was on meat the press, some of you may have seen it last Sunday. Peter Edson came up to me after the program and he said, Dick, what about the fund we hear about? And I said, well, there's no secret about it. Go out and see Dana Smith, who was the administrator of the fund.

He said that nobody who contributed to the fund got special treatment. Then explain salary and office allowances for senators. He said that some senators could simply bear the burden of campaign costs themselves since it came from wealthy backgrounds, but Nixon couldn't. Another way was to put one spouse on the congressional office payroll as he stated, his democratic rival, Senator John Sparkman, had done. Nixon did not feel comfortable doing that himself with so many deserving snogs uh... stenographers in washington eating work

that we said pat nixon is wife was a wonderful sonographer and sometimes helped out in the office of volunteer at this point the camera turns and reveals past the beside him nixon then talks about how he grown up lower middle class and worked through college in law school he said we live rather modestly four years we lived in

the apartment in park fairfax, in Alexandria, Virginia. The rent was $80 a month. And we saved for the time that we could buy a house. Now, that was what we took in. What did we do with this money? What do we have today to show for it? This will surprise you because it is so little, I suppose, as standards generally go, of people in public life. Now, he details their assets, their mortgages, liabilities, the home in California he owned, but was occupied by his parents. He talks about inherited furniture,

and he says, well, that's about it. That's what we have, and that's what we owe. Then he went for America's Heartstrings with the dog story, fucking great closer. He said, one other thing I probably should tell you, because if we don't, they'll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something, a gift, after the election. I'm Aaron Down in Texas. I heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would

like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip, we got a message from Union Station and Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spananiel, and it crates, that he'd spent all, that he'd sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted, and our little girl, Trescio, the six year old, named it Checkers. And he know the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this right now that regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep it. He then stated that people of modest means needed to be able to run for office to ensure democracy. Was, you know, something for everyone.

And that's all he was trying to do. And he said he would not resign. He told his audience, I am submitting to the Republican National Committee tonight through this television broadcast. The decision, which it is theirs to make, let them decide whether my position on the ticket will help or hurt. And I'm going to ask you to help them decide, wire and write the Republican National Committee, whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off.

And whatever their decision is, I will abide by it. Well, this speech was a fucking smash hit. He was perceived as being so honest, so forthcoming, so unpretentious, so deeply touching about his family life and what he was trying to do in politics, it was hard not to believe him. Practically everyone wanted him to stay on the ticket. Maybe Eisenhower, Dwight's wife literally in tears when she listened to this speech. Crowds and cities across America literally chanted, we want Nixon, we want Nixon.

However Dwight Eisenhowerhower still not entirely convinced. When he sent a telegram to Nixon, requested a meeting, Nixon's celebratory mood turned to fury. He typed up a note, resigning from the ticket, saying that if that wasn't enough, nothing would be. But then an aid took that note and secretly ripped it up. Had that aid not done that, I probably wouldn't be doing this episode right now.

Nixon probably wouldn't have ever become present. Right, I love little historical moments like that. One aid being like, like, I don't think we should fucking send this thrown in trash can and changes history. Meanwhile, telegrams, the RNC ran 75 to one in favor of keeping Nixon. More than four million people who would write in, right? Holy shit. Over four million people were like, you know what? I need to send a telegram on behalf of that great man to save his political career. That's what I want in America. And they actually did that. Newspaper switchboards were jammed with calls from people seeking the RNC's address, checkers, the Cockers menu was seeking a food the last of the year, and hundreds of callers,

leashes and toys. Praise for jangles. Eisenhower was now sold and Nixon was fucking back, baby. Eisenhower was now sold and Nixon was fucking back, baby. He later wrote in his memoirs that Pat was so proud of him. He said, she got me to a bunch of butt stuff. I had heard of his boy, but was too bashful to ever actually ask for. She dressed up in a variety of costumes, playing some roles so authentically. I actually started to sweat and feel guilty, ashamed of myself for having an affair. Where'd my wife would find out? But I was still with my my wife with her in ways.

I didn't think we're even physically possible. JK again, of course. But, I was happy for him. He switched the narrative in the media, deepening his obsession with the press and reporters, the address was an unprecedented demonstration of the power of television to galvanize large segments of the American people to act in a political campaign. And also further convinced him that the press was the enemy, that the media was evil and against him.

And he needed to be on watch 24 seven to manage their attacks. Eisenhower Nixon swept to victory in November with the Republicans also narrowly taking both houses of Congress, great election for the Republicans. They could get some shit done. Speech had earned Nixon supporters throughout America, throughout middle America, which he would keep for the rest of his life. Well, he would keep at least some of them for the rest of his life. In the summer of 1955, Nixon gets a presidential preview. President Eisenhower suffers a heart attack in his absence.

Vice President Nixon presides over regular cabinet and national security council meetings and tricky dick is fucking rock hard. If you want more of that. The 1956 Eisenhower wins a second term. Nixon gets four more years of experience in the White House. And in the spring of 1958, Nixon and Pat make a good will trip to South America. They visit Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Venezuela, the vice president and second lady, narrowly escaped death after a violent communist mob attacks their motorcade

In that moment, I'm sure this scared the shit out of them politically though fucking great for his career made his star rise even more right more Battling out with the commies and winning They could not take out slick medium length decent girth, but nothing to write home about tricky dick and More commy battles were soon to come. July 24th 1959 Nixon goes head to head with Soviet premiere Nikita Khrushchev. On the merits of freedom versus communism with the American exhibition at Moscow and what became famously known as the kitchen debate. The American national exhibit was a fair sponsored by the US to show these Soviet people how

Americans lived as both nations were trying to become a little less cold warry after all the McCarthyism shit and more went down to u.s. to show the soviet people how americans lived as both nations were trying to become a little less uh... cold warry after all the McCarthyism shit and more went down in the fifties uh... stallion dialed back or excuse me stallion died back in nineteen eighty three and after six years of someone else i run in the show in the u.s.s. r. who was not uh... a total bloodthirsty psychopath tensions were less than between the two world powers

the kitchen debate was an unscripted series of exchanges between the two leaders about both the merits and flaws of their respective economies and political systems. And one exchange came during a visit to the model American kitchen featured in the exhibit. For Nixon, it was yet again a chance to dunk on the fucking commies, fucking shadow the backboard. The encounter offered an opportunity to praise American technology, capitalism, and the high standard of living in the U.S. He observed that the debate itself showed the power and importance of free expression as well.

Seemed like if things kept going the way they were going, Nixon was going to be a shoe in for the presidency in 1960. And he probably would have been, if it wasn't for one fucking, especially Karr's manic dude. But then, you know, some happens, handsome warrior hero with a great head of hair and a captivating oratory skill... skill set jfk john canary rife and see the announces canisie in jenuary of nineteen sixty

nixon immediately worried by this uh... you know million dollar small mother fucker how is going to be them well he decides to attack what he perceives as his main weakness the one thing many of the people in the american public did worry about when it came to JFK his ball sack It was fucking weirdly small Like the size of a sack of marbles if the sack only had two very small marbles not much bigger than a pair of raisins No, his religion is what he attacked JFK was Roman Catholic and some Protestant ministers and prominent figures expressed a lot of fear That if we put a fucking Catholic in the White House, uh, Pope's going to be running America,

right? Well, Kennedy denied this, uh, at the Democratic National Convention in July of 1960, Kennedy surprised everybody when he picks Lyndon B. Johnson as his runny mate with Johnson, a big gruff-looking Protestant Texan that decide it was assumed Kennedy would be able to hold the Southern States where his religion was most in question. Two weeks later, the Republicans nominated Nixon with running mate, Henry Cabot, large junior, Eisenhower's prestige was as high as it had ever been and they hoped to ride the tides of Republican approval to inauguration day, but they knew it was going to be a fight.

1960 presidential campaign was the longest, most intensive ever held up to that point in the US. Chris crossing the country on planes, trains, automobiles, Nixon and Kennedy were speaking, shaking hands, conferring with politicians from coast to coast. For most of September, all the October and seven days of November preceding the election. There was also four televised debates, though significant, they weren't really like today's debates. They were more like a joint press conferences with reporters asking questions.

They did, however, provide reporters with an opportunity to compare the two candidates. And they would feed into one candidate's continuing negative obsession with the media. Or this would feed. September 26, 1960, for the first time in US history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is broadcast on live TV. Kennedy emerges the apparent winner from this first to four televised debates, partially owing to his greater ease before the camera, the Nixon, who unlike Kennedy, seemed nervous to climb to wear makeup, meaning his perpetual five o'clock shadow was front and

center. And just let's be honest, JFK for presidential candidate was handsome motherfucker. He was also only 43 years old. Nixon was, Nixon was only 47, but he looked at least 55 and not nearly as attractive. JFK looked like the star quarterback who dated the prom queen, who just showed up at his 20 year high school anniversary for a fucking victory lap.

Nixon looked like that guy's former assistant principal, who showed up at the same reunion to the great dismay of many of the female classmates who found him creepy. And when it comes to political elections, looks, they do matter. Probably doesn't seem like it today, in a nation stuck with Trump and Biden for so long. Not exactly two fucking models.

Not exactly two handsome boys, the time of the elections, but it does matter, at least for men. Sadly, I think it might work against women because of how US society struggles to understand how female beauty and Exceptional leadership capabilities could inhabit the same physical form Although Nixon showed a mastery of the issues in his in his debate or in this debate He just could not match Kennedys on camera charisma couldn't couldn't match the rock star vibe When voters went to cast their ballots on november seventh the cut contest was close nixon ran a campaign and actually had a better political pedigree than

kennedy but he didn't quite win nixon lost by a hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred twenty seven votes out of sixty eight million votes cast uh... hairs breath point seventeen percent margin how fucking mad do you think that made him in the electoral college kennedy captured three hundred three votes thirty four more than was required to win nixon one two hundred nineteen but again the popular vote so close so close in so many states

and was close to spite kennedy have in the advantage of seventeen million more registered democrats than republicans at that time big loss for tricky dick also impressive that he almost beat him, but still lost. Nixon, like many politicians, loved to do today, did not accept the loss. He later said in his first memoir, six crises, or six crises that he did, but his top aids in the Republican Party waged a campaign to cast doubt on the outcome of the election,

almost certainly with his backing, launching challenges to Kennedy's victories in 11 states. Morton led the charge on November 11th, just three days after the election, Kentucky Senator Thrusten B. Morton, chair of the Republican National Committee, and a dude, yes, named Thrusten, not Thrusten, Thrusten. The fucking Thrusten son of a bitch, announced proceedings to question the electoral results in Illinois, Texas, and nine other states. At one point, Morton claimed the RNC had received 35,000 letters in telegrams with anecdotal accounts of fraud. Days later, Hall and Finch deputized staffers to carry out with the associate oppressed dubbed field checks in eight contested states, essentially poking around and seeing whether they could find suspiciously pro-candidate totals in any precincts.

Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee Chair Henry L. Jackson called it a fishing expedition on a grand scale. Former President Harry Truman called the whispering campaign about rampant fraud. A lot of hoey. That's his quote. What do you think, Mr. Fred? A lot of hoey. I said Republicans were just a bunch of poor losers.

Soon this would all come to reflect back badly on Nixon, who sought to distance himself from this. So he seemed to lie telling journalists that eyes now are told him to contest the election, but the he personally never wanted to do that. He's too classy for that. I don't buy that. In the end contest in the election didn't amount to much by mid-December the Nixon group ran out of options, but Nixon and his aides had known that it probably wouldn't work from the very beginning as the speculation. It just cast a doubt over Kennedy's victory in viewing the presidency with a whiff of illegitimacy that could help them in future elections. Right? Does this sound familiar?

US politics today, a lot like US politics yesterday. I can hear the cries back in the early 60s of not my president. And I find all of this weirdly reassuring actually. My current problems can seem so novel, but they rarely are. Mostly the same old shit us meat sacks have been dealing with generation after generation. Nixon now spends some time wandering out in the proverbial wilderness. 1962 he writes his first book six crises also runs for governor, California against incumbent governor, uh, Pat Brown and loses. So back to back losses from 1963 to 1967. He probably cries a lot.

And he's just a regular ass citizen, but he's not done. He travels across the globe meets world leaders, campaigns tirelessly across the country for Republican candidates in 1964 and 1966 elections, not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He's keeping his name out there and the zeitgeists staying relevant Still has presidential ambitions And on August 8th 1968 Nixon is nominated for the presidency by the Republican Party for the second time

Nixon would always regard his acceptance speech for this nomination as one of his best Right, it had a powerful illusions the American dream of okay a young boy grown up in the hinterlands Who found himself in the hinterlands who found himself in the verge of the nation's highest office. The shattering of Nixon's presidency, exactly six years later in the subsequent conviction of his attorney general, in parts a special irony to his remarks about law and order. He said,

and tonight, in this time for some honest talk about the problem of order in the United States, let us always respect as I do our courts and those who serve on them. But let us also recognize that some of our courts in their decisions have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces in this country. And we must act to restore that balance. Let those who have held the responsibility to enforce our laws and our judges who have the responsibility to interpret them be dedicated to the great principles of civil rights But let them also recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence And that right must be guaranteed in this country

And if we aren't to restore order and respect for law in this country, there's one place we're going to begin We're going to have a new attorney general of the United States of America I pledged you that our new attorney general will be directed by the President of the United States to launch a war against organized crime in this country. Because my friends, let this message come through clear from what I say tonight. Time is running out for the merchants of crime and corruption in American society. The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future and the United States of America for as long as I Batman range supreme over Gotham City. I don't know, it's like Batman vibes

of the other. Be afraid, America. Be afraid of all the crime and despair. To be fair to Nixon, America's violent crime rate had increased by 126 percent or did increase, excuse me, by 126 percent between 1960 and 1970. So it's rising, it's going up when he's given the speech. Crime is on people's minds. October of 1968, Nixon might have done some tricky diction. South Vietnamese president, Wynne Van Tou, refused to join the opening of the 1968 Paris peace talks that would end the war in Vietnam.

Tou's refusal created a major major crisis with uh... his american ally previous this u.s president linda johnson had been under the impression that president win was a hundred percent on his side win win refuse linden thought pat fucking say jack was behind that dirty mother fucker now he thought roi probably killed his mom disney was behind

now he of course he thought Richard Nixon was behind it. Today, Nixon's alleged plot is known as the Anna Chinat affair. As part of the conspiracy, Nixon supposedly tapped Anna Chinat, the Chinese-born widow of wealthy businessmen, Claire Chinat, to serve as a back channel to the South Vietnamese president, via his ambassador to the US, Bui Diem.

Anna Chinat was a wealthy socialite renowned hostess to Washington's elite. After her husband's death in 1958, she retained control of his aviation company, which had substantial contracts to haul cargo from America to South Vietnam. Given her contacts with South Vietnam's top leaders, she was an invaluable source of information

about the country. In 1967, Nixon asked her to provide insights on the conflict and to act as a liaison between himself and the government there. Impressed by Nixon's state of desire to win in South Vietnam, Chen out agreed. Nixon was trying to prevent a last minute political bombshell by Johnson, the cessation of bombing in North Vietnam, that would have swung the election to the Democratic Party candidate, Hubert Humphrey. Since most of the public was anti-Vietnam at this point, anti-Vietnam war, Democrats bringing

about a turn towards any of the war would have been bad for the Republican Party, thus bad for tricky, greasy cocknixen. The unmasking of the supposed plot occurred early on October 29, 1968. A source of the Nixon campaign told economists, Alexander Sachs, that Nixon was trying to convince Saigon not to attend the Paris talks. Sacks passed the information to National Security Advisor Walt Rothschild, who passed it to President Johnson, when two suddenly refused that same day to participate in the Paris talks, Johnson connects the dots, orders the FBI to wiretapped Bui-Diam and to follow

Chanalt to discover any plot they may have with Nixon. On the night of Halloween, October 31st, just after Johnson had announced a bombing halt of North Vietnamese nominant exchange for the opening of talks in Paris with the North Vietnamese, Chanalt will say she received a phone call from Nixon advisor John Mitchell. He called to express his concern about the impact of the announced bombing halt on the election. Mitchell said that he was speaking on behalf of Nixon,

and that he wanted her to communicate the Republican position to the South Vietnamese She claimed she was upset by Mitchell's demand as it would have changed her role from a Nixon advisor to someone advocating a policy change Two days later and probably the only really damning piece of evidence collected the FBI recorded a call from Chinat to Bui, Diam She advised him that her boss wanted her to give personally to the ambassador a message to hold on We are gonna win My boss she claimed or by boss she claimed she meant Mitchell, but Johnson thought she meant Nixon When you learn to the back channel communications president Johnson called the effort treason

I'm sure he said a lot of other things. Fuck it. Fuck it. Trason However, he never made the information public fearing the damaging damaging the president, fearing it would damage the presidency, as well as having to admit that he used government agencies to spy on genitals and the South Vietnamese still not known exactly what happened during the genital affair, but considering what would come next, it certainly looks shady, right? In the closing weeks of the 68 election, Nixon's campaign evidently accepted about a half-million dollars from the brutal military junta, money funneled from the Greek intelligence service

k-y-p provided a critically needed infusion of cash as democratic nominee hubert humpfrey closed the polling gap throughout the fall the john's administration decided not to make any noise about the administration amid the campaign but in the years ahead the ticking time bomb of the greek donation caused the most anxiety for the longest period of time for the nixon administration wrote watergate historian stanley c. Despite perhaps always worried about when his enemies are going to strike next, Dixon, Dixon, Nixon wins. He's inaugurated to the presidency January 20th 1969. So this is the the beginnings of speculation of like, what's he doing? What's he doing behind the scenes? Come July, President

Nixon makes the longest long distance phone call in history as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took mankind's first steps in the moon, a huge moment. November of 1969, he receives overwhelming support from the silent majority following a televised address announcing his plan to honorably end the Vietnam War. Things are looking good. Dick is hard. Rockhard, throbbing. His approval rating, hovering around the mid to high 60s almost as high as JFK's

The majority of Americans think he's doing a great job in many ways. He was doing a great job But behind the scenes the White House horse started as soon as July 1970 White House horse is the term that historians use to describe the variety of illegal things that Nixon did during his presidency Many of which were revealed after watergate a little over a year into his presidency, Nixon would quickly mobilize any forces he felt he could to combat the people he thought were his enemies. In this case, I described the report to Chief of Staff Holderman, a growing number of new left-wing congressional staffers who are associated themselves more and more closely with the

activists, peace-loving groups on the Hill. According to the memo, these staffers are becoming a more effective group through the intellectual guidance of the new weekly seminars conducted by Brookings and the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies. Seminar structure includes a rank-and-file government in exile and serves members of the Department of State and Defense. With regard to the above, you should go after Brookings and the Institute for Policy Studies. You should have the internal revenue make some discrete inquiries. Yeah, if you just caught that next and is sending the fucking IRS against institutions, he thought we're against him or at least trying to fucking politicians. I do wonder how many other ones have done some similar shit and just not gotten caught. The Brookings Institute by the way, founded in 1916 by Robert S. Brookings, country's first independent organization devoted to public policy research.

And because they didn't like everything Nixon was up to, they were his enemy. July 16th, 1970, White House aid, Tom Charles Houston sends in memo to chief of staff, Holderman. Excuse me, Holderman, I keep putting an R in there. He writes that making sensitive political inquiries at the IRS is about as safe as a procedure as trusting a whore. The truth is, we don't have any reliable political friends

at IRS, whom we can trust. And as I suggested, nearly a year ago, we won't be in control of the government and in a position of effective leverage until such time as we have complete and total control of the top three slots at the IRS. Trying to fucking stay to cool with the IRS, trying to shore up more power for Nixon so they can wield that power like a club against their enemies. At the same time as all this is happening, Tom Charles Houston begins to put together

a 43-page report, an outline of proposed security operations known as the Houston plan. Based on his perception of his so-called enemies, Nixon wants to track and assemble domestic intelligence on so-called left-wing radicals and the counter-culture era anti-war movement in general. He assigned Houston as a White House liaison to the Interagency Committee on Intelligence, a group chaired by Jay Edgar Hoover, FBI Director. Houston worked closely with William C. Sullivan, Hoover's assistant, and drawing up the options listed in what became known as Houston plan. The plan called for domestic burglary, illegal electronic surveillance, and even opening

the mail of these so-called radicals. So, it called for a huge anti-American invasion of privacy. At one point, it even called for fucking camps in western states where anti-war protesters would be fucking detained like re-education camps, type camps, like the ones they have in China, right? This kind of shit is terrifying. These motherfuckers are ready to destroy what makes America great in order to supposedly save it, what they think it needed to be saved or how it needed to be saved, you know, because only they knew best. There are still a lot of these people around today. Too many people, you know, so-called patriots dead set on censoring this, taken away. That freedom in the name of protecting America.

People who don't seem to have a fucking clue or don't care that they're setting dangerous presidents for some of their own freedoms to then be taken away later. In mid-July 1970, Nixon ratified the new insane he was to propose and they were submitted as a document the directors of the fby cia defense intelligent agency and the uh... national security right the nsa uh... bad dick bad dangerous dick dead set on fucking over freedom

uh... only one person objective to this plan it might surprise you who j-agre hoover uh... hoover gain the support of then interity general john michael Only one person objected to this plan, it might surprise you who, Jay Edgar Hoover, Hoover gained the support of then and turn to general John Mitchell and then both men pressured Nixon to rescind the plan. So Nixon did asterisk. Several of its provisions were still implemented, like lowering the age of campus informants, thereby expanding the surveillance of American college students, major tenant of the original Houston plan, right?

Shut these anti-war activists down or these counterculture hippies, even though I get well, even though Nixon was, you know, stopping the war. Throughout 1971, the FBI would also reinstate its use of male covers, having post-legends record information on the outside of letters, and they continued to submit names of possible fucking hippie dissident threats to the CIA male program. The Houston plan will be one of the many things later revealed during the Watergate hearings that would create a reaction in the American public of, uh, fuck what? I'm sorry, what was that?

Excuse me? Uh, February 16th, 1971, Nixon makes a move that will come back to bite him in the balls. That day, the US Secret Service at the request of Nixon installs new recording devices in the White House. First devices were installed in the Oval Office in the cabinet room. Over the course of the next 16 months, new locations are added, including the president's office and the executive office building. Telephones in the Oval Office, the EOB office, the Lincoln sitting room,

finally, recording devices set up at Camp David, including the president's study in Aspen Lodge and telephones on the president's desk and study table. Interestingly, President Nixon was not the first president to record private conversations in the White House. President Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower also experimented with recording select meetings and press briefings. Then JFK took things further, extensively recording meetings, then LBJ continued that practice, expand the scope of the recordings. During the 1969 transition, Nixon learned that Johnson had recording equipment installed in the White House to record meetings and telephone conversations. And according to the President Chief of Staff, again, H. Haldeman, Nixon, abhorred the idea

of recording conversations at first and had the equipment immediately removed. However, over the next few years, Nixon changes mind about a recording system in response to a number of challenges in fully documented, excuse me, in response to a number of challenges in fully documenting his presidency with the accuracy he desired. He wanted his legacy as one of the best presidents of all time to be recorded in great detail. Nixon wanted a complete record of his presidency so he could write more effective memoirs later. That seriously was one of his main objectives. And not alone there, LBJ found many White House recordings very helpful in writing his

memoirs, very lucrative for presidents and for the ego, you know. And also there's value, you know, just for the American public to see what they thought about the presidency. Before the extra recorders, Nixon tried a couple of other things first, like having notetakers in meetings or having Nixon take notes himself or having a note takeer outside the obelophess catching participants leaving asking him about how things went also Nixon was concerned that his meetings were not always reported accurately by participants and he wanted to ensure his private

discussions were not misconstrued publicly to the benefit of others during his administration again some paranoia unlike his predecessors and thanks to evolving technology, Nixon had a voice activated system installed. The secret service maintained the system would be responsible for replacing tapes, turning the system on and off based on the location of the president. To that end, the taping system was tied into the secret services, presidential locator system. When the president entered a recording area, the presidential locator was updated and an

agent was set the recorder switch for that area to now start to record conversations. Whatever the voice, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, the voice operated relay microphones in that area would detect sound the microphones would begin recording. Uh, uh, the machines would continue to record as long as sound was detected and then stop after 20 to 30 seconds of silence. Uh, notably, the cabinet room was the only room not automatically turned on with voice activation, which makes sense. You know, they got to have some place to discuss

classified shit and not have to worry about it ever getting out to the public. Or I'm sure just talk shit, say things I don't want the public to know. The recording system went live on February 16, 1971 in the cabinet room and in the Oval Office. First set of microphones placed in the Oval Office, five in the president's desk, one on each side of the fireplace, two in the cabinet room and in the Oval Office, first set of microphones placed in the Oval Office, five in the president's desk,

one on each side of the fireplace, two in the cabinet room, under the table near the president's chair. And man, all of this will come back to Haunt him. On April 6th, the president's EOB office, four microphones in his desk, telephones in the Oval Office and Lincoln State Room, added to the system, finally,

the president's office and two telephones in Asman Lodge, at Camp David began recording May 18th, 1972. Although Nixon was initially reluctant to record all his conversations, once the system was in place, he did want a complete record of conversations, which far exceeded anything his predecessors had done, right? And what followed was an almost complete record of the president's daily conversations until the system was shut down in July of 1973. Backing up a little now, early 1971. Nixon apparently is worried about his legacy

lining up with JFK's. Right, he's worried about how he's gonna compare to the guy who once beat him. On April 15th, 1971, Nixon complains to Kissinger and Haldeman saying, Kennedy was cold, impersonal. He treated the staff like dogs. He alleged that Kennedy's staff created the impression of warm Sweet and nice to people read lots of books or philosopher all that sort of thing. That was pure creation mythology

As you often did a next and then complained that he wasn't get enough credit for his virtues. He claims the staff He says for Christ sake. Can we can we get across the courage more courage boldage, boldest guts, God damn it, that is the thing. He rants on fishing for reassurance, asking Kissinger. What is the most important single factor that you come across out of the first two years? Guts, absolutely, guts. Don't you agree, Henry? Kissinger literally just says totally. And then it just goes on and on like that for a while.

I picture Kissinger yawning, checking his watches, nicks and rants, just you know chiming it with like, uh-huh. Oh, yeah, totally. Definitely. Right, obos, 100%. Also totally normal for Nixon to talk some shit. I imagine literally every president in history

has talked at least a little shit about other presidents. In the summer of 1971, Nixon does some shit that I do not imagine every president doing. I hope not at least. He became convinced that Jewish employees and the Bureau of Labor Statistics were undermining him by negatively, negatively altering labor numbers. Paranoia. So his chief of staff, HR, Haledamon, special counsel Charles Colson, and aide Fred Malik, a compartmentalist of 13 employees of the BLS with Jewish sounding surnames, along

with their political affiliations. And in a letter to Nixon, subsequently referred to as the quote, ju-counting memo, Malik identified 25 Democrats and 13 other employees who fit the other demographic criteria on the was discussed. All 13 employees considered to be Jewish were demoted and sent to other positions within the U.S. Department of Labor

where they were deemed to be at lower risk of causing issues to mix that it's so fucked up so fucked up This story would not become a matter of public record until 1988 at the time another one of filthy Wayne's tricks Something big would be coming up soon. Let's change course for a moment and talk about the Pentagon papers soon, let's change course for a moment and talk about the Pentagon papers. The Pentagon papers officially titled report on the office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force was a history of the US's political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The Vietnam study, Task Force, had been created in 1967 by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who didn't tell President Lyndon Johnson or Secretary of State Dean Rusk what he was up to.

Privately, he began questioning the decision-making process that led to such deep involvement of the US and Vietnam. Involvement so deep, it seemed like the war was going to go on forever. Under the direction of Defense Department official Leslie H. Gelb, 36 analysts, half of them active duty military officers, the rest academics and federal employees, worked to produce 47 studies answering a list of 100 questions, such as how confident can we be about body counts of the of the enemy. We're programs to pacify the Vietnamese countryside working.

Did the US violate the Geneva Accords on Indochina? The study consisted of 3,000 pages of historical analysis and 4,000 pages of original government documents and 47 volumes and it was classified as top secret sensitive This is because it contained revelations that although President Johnson stated that the aim of the Vietnam war was to secure an independent non-Communist South Vietnam a January 1965 memo stated that the real aim was not to help a friend but to contain China Right cold-wored domino effect concerns.

And I do think valid concerns. And also revealed that the US government had been indirectly involved in Vietnam's affairs for years by sending advisors or military personnel to train South Vietnamese soldiers. More specifically, the US sent $28.4 million worth of equipment and supplies to help the non-communist regime strengthen its army and then the u.s. would overthrow the leader of the non-communist regime regime uh... no dyn dium

creating what the pentagon papers described as an essentially leader this leaderless vietnam and as since the pentagon papers revealed the u.s. had expanded its war with the bombing of can body and los, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which have been reported by the American media. Historian John Prado sums up the deep betrayal that people felt upon hearing about the papers and their conclusions. The Pentagon papers represented a body of authoritative information, of inside of inside government

deliberations that demonstrated beyond questioning the criticisms that anti-war activists had been making for years not only were not wrong but in fact were not materially different from things that have been argued inside the u.s. government but this wouldn't become public without the help of one man. Daniel Ellsberg Ellsberg was at the time a political activist working for the RAN corporation a nonpartisan American nonprofit global policy think tank and research institute. After he'd spent two years working alongside the military and Vietnam, putting together a study Ellsberg's support for the war turned to staunch opposition.

Hoping that if members of the public learned what the study revealed, they would have a similar conversion. He began a campaign to make the papers public. Over the course of several weeks in the fall of 1969, Ellsberg managed to sneak out and photocopy the study with the help of another former random ploy. After moving to the MIT Center for International Studies, he made the final decision to leak it to the press. In March of 1971, he turned over a copy to Neil Shean of the New York Times or Shean of the New York Times, holding back four volumes concerning negotiations in order to not interfere with ongoing efforts. After lengthy examination of the material and a fierce internal debate, the Times decided

to publish a study as a nine-part series, beginning June 13, 1971. It was an explosive series. And now quickly, it was all systems, let's fucking go for Nixon and his team. How are they gonna deal with this? In the Oval Office, June 17th, 1971, the president conferred with his inner circle of closest aides on the best way to respond to the leak

of the Pentagon papers. White House Chief of Staff, right? Holderman suggested blackmailing Nixon's predecessor, President Johnson, on the Vietnam issue that nearly cost Nixon the 1968 presidential election, the bombing halt. Uh, this went back to an issue that Nixon believed represented yet another conspiracy against it back in 1968, less than a week before the election, Johnson, in order to complete halt to American bombing of North Vietnam and exchange for secret military confed, uh,

concessions by Hanoi and the start of new peace talks between North and South Vietnam. Republicans, Nixon among them charged that Johnson had stopped the bombing to bolster the presidential campaign of Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's vice president, although the later declassified record would show otherwise. Still, Haldeman thought they could use some declassified records to take the potential heat off Nixon by showing how Johnson played politics with national security. Nixon immediately perked up. Then he stunned his aides with his next suggestion. He told them to implement the Houston plan, right? The whole thing about illegal break ins, fucking wiretaps, mail opening against domestic terrorists. But instead of terrorists, Nixon wanted to use the

plan against former Johnson administration officials. And where did he believe their secret files might be at the Brookings Institute? And here's a conversation I had between a Holdman and Nixon and so a Holdman says the you can maybe blackmail Johnson on this stuff What? Holdman says you can blackmail Johnson on this stuff and it might be worth doing how? Aldman says the bomb and halt stuff is all in the same file or in some of the same hands. Oh, oh, that's how I wonder incidentally All this is it isn't in this it isn't in the papers, but the whole bombing halt file. No, do we have it? I've asked for it You said you don't have it Henry

Holden says we can't find in the National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger times in with we have nothing here mr President or dammit. I asked for it. I need it Kiss me says yeah, but Bob and I have been trying to put the damn thing together for three years. Holdman says we have a basic history of it constructed on our own, but there is a file on it. Well, where? Holdman says, Houston swears to God,

there's a file on it in Brookings. Kisnian says, I wouldn't be surprised. So Nixon says, all right, all right. All right. Holdman, in the hands of these same kind, Bob, the same people, Bob, now you remember Houston's plan implemented, right? That fucking shady ass plan. Kister says, but couldn't we go over now, Brookings has no right to have classified documents. I mean, I want to implement it on a

thievery basis. God damn it. Get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it. Voice recordings of the president asking that a burglary be conducted for his political game. Responding to the Pentagon paper simultaneously and former publicly Nixon also filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction to halt further publication after the newspaper declined a request to do so voluntarily. Daniel Ellsberg then gave a copy to the Washington Post, which began a similar series as the Times. On June 18, the second lawsuit, the judges in both cases, ruled against the government's request for a temporary restraining order, but in

each case, the ruling is stayed to permit an appeal. This makes Nixon to put up mildly mad as fuck. June 29,, he says over the phone. If you can get him, you talk about Daniel Ellsberg. Tied in with some communist groups, that will be good. June 30th, so he wants to fucking smear him. June 30th after the two circuit courts reach conflicting results. The Supreme Court convenes immediately

to hear the case rather than wait for its October term. In the end, it's a six three decision. The court dissolves the restraining order, allows the times to continue publishing the Pentagon papers. The three paragraph lead opinion noted that any system of prior restraints comes to this court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity. And the government thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition

of such a restraint. In this case, the government had failed to carry the burden, but many of the judges believe the Pentagon papers should be published for different reasons. On one hand, Justice Hugo L. Black argued that only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception to government. I like it. Justice William Douglas agrees with him. Justice Byron are white, although specifically rejecting the idea that in no circumstances

with the First Amendment permitted injunction against publishing information about government plans or operations refused to grant censorship authority to the executive branch without the authorization of congress. Similarly, justice is a potter Stewart and Thurgood Marshall argued separately that in the absence of specific guidance by congress, the court should not grant the executive office, you know, a branch broad censorship power. And Justice William Brennan, Jr. didn't see how the publication of the Pentagon papers would harm national security. Couple of important things to talk about here. Three of the six judges who voted in favor of publication did so because they didn't want to see one of the three branches of government acting

unilaterally. They were following a principle known as checks and balances. The system designed by the founding fathers to prevent any one branch of the government, legislative, judicial, or executive from having too much fucking power. But Nixon, believing of course in his own presidential supremacy, fucking hated this. It only fed him to his idea that there was some kind of plot against him, and that he was engaged in the battle of a lifetime to protect both his presidency as well as the nation. Though the Pentagon papers didn't actually implicate him and shit, they ended before his term began.

He believed the leak was clearly the result of a conspiracy, a conspiracy that might be coming for him next almost certainly was coming for him next. And it seemed he would have no backup in the Supreme Court for other political avenues when it did come for him. So he resolved to fight back with every tool at his disposal, making the fateful decision to break the law as he had been for many years to achieve his goals. He felt it was time to put together an all-star team of rulebreakers to help his political ambitions now.

Later, these men would be known as the plumbers, created to stop security leaks, and to investigate other sensitive security matters. In reality, however, they would just gather and then leak information about people that Nixon suspect they were conspiring against him. For Nixon, the plumbers, there was his means of matching the tactics of his perceived enemies and the deviousness of their conspiracy against him. And the first task of the plumbers would be to break into the Brookings Institute and look for that classified document on Lyndon B. Johnson.

But first, he needed to find somebody to run the team. plumbers would be to break into the Brookings Institute and look for that classified document on Lyndon B. Johnson. But first, you need to define somebody to run the team. In a phone call between Nixon and Hall de Menn from 8.45 AM to 9.52 AM to live first, 1971. Nixon speculates about who he should get to run the team, tasking Hall de Menn with finding their guy. Get to John O'Leakman. Now will you please get, yeah, we did that.

I want you to find me a man by noon. I won't be ready to One o'clock to 12 30 a recommendation of the man to work directly with me on this whole situation. You know what I mean? I've got to have I've got to have one. I mean I can't have a high-minded lawyer like John Erlichman or you know John Dean or somebody like that. I want a son of a bitch. I want somebody just as tough as I am for a change. Just as tough as I was I would say in the outer his case where we won the case in the press. These goddamn lawyers, you know, all wanting about, you know, I'll never forget that they were also worried about Charles Manson's case. I knew exactly what we were doing on the Manson chase. You got to win some things in the press. These guys don't understand. They have no understanding of politics. they have no understanding of politics they have no understanding of public relations

michael that way uh... uh... uh... oh wait sorry no this is still uh... uh... uh... fucking nixon uh... john michael that way john in the nixon pounds on the desk john is always worried about it is it technically correct do you think for christx the new york times is worried about all the legal niceties they sons of bitches are killing them

they said some unclear shit about leaking the press. This is what we've got to get. I want you to shake these. Say something unclear up around here. Now you do it. Shake them up. Get them off their goddamn dead asses and say, now this is what you should talk about.

We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy. They're using any means that's banging on the desk for emphasis. We are going to use any means. Is that clear? Haldemagnologists. Did they get the broken institute rated last night? No. We are going to use any means. Is that clear? Halt of acknowledges. Did they get the Brookings Institute rated last night? No.

Halt of minutes says, no, surely didn't. Get it done. I want it done. He started paying out the fucking desk again. I want the Brookings Institute safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that makes somebody else says someone clear stuff. Two men will now lead the plumummers. It's a fucking crazy

But again, I wonder how much does this go on just kind of perpetually? But two men will lead the Plummers Eagle, Bud, Kroge, and David Young. Two other high up Plummers would include a E Howard Hunt and G Gordon Litty The Brookings Institute breaking that would never happen. But Nixon would mobilize his Plummers to take care of something else Activist and document-leeker Daniel fucking Ellsbury is fucking crazy. What he wanted to do breaking though would never happen. But Nixon would mobilize his plumbers to take care of something else. Activist and document leaker, Daniel fucking, it is fucking crazy. What he wanted to do to this guy, he felt Daniel was a real problem. July 22nd, 1971, a month and a half after the first New York Times article about the Pentagon papers, Erlichman and US undersecretary of transportation, Bud Crowe, Plumber Leader,

discussed their chances for being able to paint Ellsberg as a crazy radical. Reporting to Nixon, special counsel Charles Colson, Erlichman writes, as we discussed earlier this week, I met today with Bud Krobe, and reviewed with him what he has done to date and what his immediate plans are. We both agreed that the major task at hand is to pull together all the information that is available in justice, defense, CIA, state, and outside. We must determine whether we have a case that can be made public with respect to Ellsberg and any conspiracy, all caps with conspiracy, with his colleagues. To paint Ellsberg black is probably a good thing, to link him

into a conspiracy, which suggests treasonous conduct is also a good thing. But the real political payoff will come only if we can establish that there is what the national review is called a counter-government, which is deliberately trying to undermine U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. position in the world, and that it is the president who stands against this counter-government, who conquers them, and who rescues the nation from the subversion of these unsavory characters. This is all fiction. We must be certain we can direct this effort in a way that gives us the political positions we need and ties our political opposition into the enemy camp.

Illuminati, right? We must paint Ellsberg as a member of the fucking deep state, a shadowy cabald of nefarious puppet masters. These fucking assholes, what a legacy, shit like this has left us. And we wonder why people believe in things as ludicrous as Q&A. This is why decades of cultural manipulation. The plumbers also plan to use the upcoming congressional hearings in the Senate and the House on the revelations of the Pentagon papers to nail our perspective democratic opponents in the upcoming election. Fun. Who cares about what's actually best for the American people?

Let's do his best for us. And a road a lot of the public's faith in government while we're at it. July 28, 1971, CIA officer Howard Hunt, another plumber, send special counsel Charles Colston a memo. In this memo, he proposed a skeletal operations plan aimed at building a file on Ellsberg, that will contain all available, overt, covert, and derogatory information. This basic tool is essential in determining how to destroy his public image and credibility. This is a fucking real person they're talking about.

Someone whose life, they are willing to completely destroy for their political agenda. The memo continues. Items. Obtain all overt, press material on Ellsberg and continue its collection. Request CIA to perform a covert psychological assessment slash evaluation on Ellsberg. Interview Ellsberg's first wife. Interview Ellsberg's Saigon contact. Request CIA FBI and CIC for their full holdings on Ellsberg. Examinate Ellsberg personnel files at ISA, Pentagon, and the RAND Corporation, including clearance materials. Obtain Ellberg's files from a psychiatric analyst.

Inventory, Ellberg's ISA and RAND colleagues determine where they are and where, whether any might be approachable. I realize that as a practical matter, not all the foregoing items can be accomplished, even so they represent, uh, dec- desiderate, oh my God, it is desiderate, desiderate. Anyone else never heard that word, fucking set aloud. It's like desi, d-e-s-i-d-e-r-a-t-a.

Desiderate. It means something that is needed or wanted. Fucking Scrabble World, Scrabble World, that is. Okay, anyway, these assholes are methodical and thorough in their character assassination. Right, imagine someone doing this shit to you. Look into all of your records to find anything they can use to paint a very distorted picture of you

and then publicize that caricature to the nation. Look into all your friends and acquaintances see if they can find some fucking dirt. At the same time, Colson authorized onto Trapleton Wingland to seek potentially scandalous information on Senator Edward Kennedy. Plenty be found there, subject for another day perhaps. Haunted UCLA disguises and other equipment, but the mission eventually proved unsuccessful

with little of any useful information uncovered. While Haunted was unsuccessful on his Elberg Witch Hunt, he did lay groundwork for Watergate. There's going to be some crazy, more crazy stuff now with Ellsberg. On September 3rd, 1971, the plumbers get to plumbing. They break into the Los Angeles offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, who was Daniel Elberg psychiatrist. This is crazy. This is Gestapo Shit. This is KGB stuff. Or I guess to be fair, CIA stuff, but it's scary. Obviously, highly legal in the moral. The four plumbers, Bud Kroge, David Young Howard Hunt, G Gordon Liddy sent operatives to break into the office to look for records

of Elbergs' motivations, intentions, possible co-conspirators. This time, nobody gets caught. Historians consider this a major precursor to Watergate. Later that month, Howard Hunt forges and offers to a life magazine reporter, uh, two top secret US State Department cables designed to prove that President Kennedy had personally and specifically ordered the assassination of South Vietnam president, no Dendi M and his brother during the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. Key word here being forged. Give them manufactured bullshit.

Bullshit that again will erode the American public's faith in government just to help nixon's political career he's already the fucking president two years later hunted midst of the said senate watergate committee that he had fabricated the cables to show a link between president candy and the assassin a should be a a catholic to a strange catholic voters from the democratic party i got by September nineteen seventy one nixon's mind is focused on his next campaign for the presidency.

The plumbers still, of course, alive and kicking an important reelection tool. One of their new targets, CBS News reporter Daniel Shore. August 1971, Shore had been invited to the White House to meet with the president's staff assistance to discuss an unfavorable analysis he had made of a presidential speech, which is, you know, totally normal. If when a reporter says something about you that you don't like, you obviously invite them into your office and have your goons berate and try and intimidate them. But again, I bet a lot of politicians do something like this or have done. The meeting slash confrontation doesn't go well. Therefore, shortly thereafter, Hall of Men and Strucks' chief aide, Higby,

to obtain an FBI background report on shore. The FBI conducts an extensive investigation of shore interviewing 25 people in seven hours, including his friends, employers, and members of his family. When press reports reveal that the investigation has taken place, the president's aides fabricate and released to the press, the explanation that shore is being considered for an appointment as an assistant to the chairman of the council on environmental quality, they fucking love him. We're just vetting the So we can destroy his career. So we won't be able to criticize another speech. Nixon personally approved the cover story. Another person Nixon and his goons went after with journalist Jack Anderson.

In December of 1971 after Anderson published classified documents revealing to the public that he was a criminal. And he said, I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal.

I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a criminal. story. Another person, Nixon and his goons went after with journalist Jack Anderson. In December of 1971, after Anderson published classified documents revealing to the public that the president was secretly army in Pakistan. In a December 1971 war with India, despite the White House's claim that the US government would remain neutral, Nixon becomes obsessed with destroying this motherfucker's life. Right? Why do these weasels keep trying to point out his lies to people who may not vote for them

next time? Nixon hated Anderson, had hated him for a while. Back in 1968, Anderson reported on a secret loan from Howard Hughes to Nixon's brother, which Nixon believed was the reason he lost the election. In one conversation, January 3rd, 1972, Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell talked about their determination to criminally prosecute Anderson for publishing classified information. Mitchell says, I would just like to get a hold of this Anderson and hang him. God damn it, yes.

Nixon replied, so listen, the day after the election, win or lose, we've got to do something with this son of a bitch. According to tapes of their conversations, Nixon and his A's became convinced that Anderson was being aided by a Mormon conspiracy inside the government. They came to believe that Anderson was being fed classified documents by fellow Mormons, working for the administration. And why would they think that Anderson was part of some kind of Mormon illuminati? Well, the paranoia here actually does have a small grain of truth.

Anderson's chief source for the India Pakistan documents was Charles Radford, a Navy Yomon who had been working as a military aid. Sorry, I forgot that, uh, uh, Navy term pronouncing correctly, uh, but working as a military aid inside the White House and it previously worked as a clerk at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. Radford was also Mormon. He became friends with Anderson when their wives bonded over a common interest in Mormon genealogy. And then after White House investigators identified Radford as the leaker of finding later confirmed by Pentagon investigators, Nixon now sees a wider conspiracy. And he says in another phone call,

are those Mormons and the Indian embassy are really turning out to be a bunch of scabs. Scabs? Union pick-up line breakers, okay. Nixon's obsession soon intensifies after Anderson gets hold of a smoking gun memo written by a Washington lobbyist, tying a $400,000 political contribution to help underwrite the cost of the 1972 Republican National Convention to the Nixon Justice Department's decision

to drop an anti-trust investigation of ITT telecommunications conglomerate. Nixon and his age were furious, talked about discredited Anderson by planting a false White House document with Anderson and then if the column is published it proving it was a forgery something again that was pretty legal don't we have some spirit stuff that we can give to Jack Anderson Haldeman asked at a March 18th meeting captured by the secret White House tape recorder we got a whole plot concocted yesterday replies Charles Colson referring to the plan to secretly provide him with falsified White House documents. Even if it's not true, he'll print it.

Hall of Fame replies, oh, I got just the scheme for that. Said Colson. The two men and Nixon then discussed the idea of digging up information that Anderson and another reporter who worked for him, Britt Hume, were gay lovers. Hall of Fame asked, do we have anything on Hume? I thought there was some taint on him. We're doing aaint on him. We're doing a check on him.

We don't have it yet replied, Colson. And then Hold up and says, it would be great if we could get him on a homosexual thing. Nixon Chimes in referring to a referring to unsubstantiated rumors about the sex life of Anderson and his former employer, columnist Drew Pearson. Anderson, I remember from years ago, he's got a strange, strange habit out of,

I think Pearson was almost actually, too. I think he, I think he and Anderson were. Was he just comparing a being gay to a strange habit? That was a weird fucking 1972 thinking. I don't think have a strange habit of such. Like, maybe he smokes, what is it? Maybe he smokes wacky to back it. Or maybe he mushers everything up together on his plate. He eats his dinner and sort of eating things separately with more dignity. Oh, oh, wait. No, I remember now.

He has a habit of sucking on penises until he retort gasses him. And he has another habit of having his own penis sucked if I recall, required by someone else who possesses a penis, a strange habit. The campaign to destroy Anderson culminated that spring in the decision to call in the top two plumbers, Howard Hunt, Gordon Liddy, Hunt Liddy put Anderson under surveillance,

stake out his home. And again, just because you know, they don't like this guy. No, like he's critical of Nixon, critical of the government. That March, they arranged a lunch at the Hayes Adams hotel with a recently retired CIA poison expert. Oh, what? This is what I was thinking of earlier when I thought about more shit with Ellsberg. This is a fucking crazy thing. It was Anderson, not Ellsberg. Okay, so they have this meeting with this retired CIA poison expert and they discuss ways

to eliminate Anderson as in fucking kill him. They discuss planting a special poison in his medicine cabinet, like replacing his prescription pills with fucking poison. Or, it's my favorite, putting massive doses of LSD all over his steering wheel, not kidding. So that he'll absorb it through his skin while driving and die in hallucination crazed auto crash. This really happened. They truly consider straight up fucking murdering this guy with LSD in his steering wheel. And Hunt will confess to all of this on his deathbed.

And one interview, he confessed to journalists that Colson ordered the plumbers to locate Anderson's home and examine it from the outside for vulnerabilities. He said this was high on Chuck Colson's list of things to do. That was when the idea of putting a drug-laden pill and a bottle that Anderson was taking medicine from. Liddy had an idea that by wiping poison on a man's wrist, we could kill him that way. Fuck. Liddy would also later confirm that, yeah, they wanted to assassinate Anderson. But it never happened.

They never killed the White House plumber soon got distracted by a more pressing mission, breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. But before we get into that, let's talk about a shady, Nixon task force, another one, a creep. In January of 1972, one of the plumbers, G Gordon Litty, would be transferred to the committee to reelect the president, the unofficial name for this committee was creep. The committee was first organized in late 1970, opened his Washington DC office in the spring of 71, and it would be responsible for its own laundry list of crimes. The first surrounded campaign donations. 1972, there was no law requiring a political campaign to disclose names of individual donors.

As a result, the amount of money and identities of individuals donating that money to creep was a tightly held secret. In addition, corporations secretly and illegally were donating money to the campaign. President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, kept a list of donors in a locked drawer. Her list famously became known as Rose Mary's baby, little nod to the popular 1968 horror movie, but they didn't only take contributions. They demanded them over the course of two months, a handful of so-called pick-up men, gangsters, crisscross the country taking in massive donations in which in what amounted to a shakedown scheme in which creep members told individuals and corporations that Nixon would win

and they better fucking get on board or you know probably going to get audited by the IRS and it won't be good for you. So now they're just doing fucking straight up extortion. This is a mafia protection money, racket shit right? Just fucking straight up gangsters. And that wasn't all in May of 1972, members of Nixon's committee to re-elect the president, creep, broke into the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters, stole copies of top secret documents, and bugged the office's phones. Try to. Didn't work though.

So a new plan was drawn up for a new break-in in June. Well, why would they want to do something like that in the first place? That is actually something of a historical mystery. Even five decades after the events, historians still wonder what the hell exactly they were doing there. It's a question that has long bothered even key players in the scandal. In 1979, former White House aide John Erlichman and his wife, Christy, happened to run into Nixon campaign security director James McCord at the Seattle airport.

Christy blurted out, why did you fell into the water gate? The most simple explanation is that it was yet another one of Nixon and his plumbers, ill-conceased plans to help him win the 1972 reelection. Right, by bugging the DNC offices, they hoped to probably just dig up dirt that would give them something, some kind of advantage in the campaign. Dirt they didn't even know for sure existed. They just hoped it did. They were just going fishing, might hope that they can reel something in.

That possibility seems to make the most sense to most historians who studied this. The Nixon White House was deeply paranoid, expected the worst from its enemies. Often assumed that everyone else was engaged in the same dirty tricks they were doing, right? Good old psychological projection, fucks Nixon here, right?

Because you would do something in a certain way. You assumed that others would do it thats Nixon here, right because you would do something a certain way You assume that others would do it that way as well, right because Nixon and his goons are doing a lot of shady shit Nixon assumes the opponents are as well and probably rationalize They were doing things in the same way right other guys are doing it if we don't do it back. We're fools Except maybe the other guys weren't doing it to the degree Nixon was. If they were we sure do not have the proof we have a Nixon. This projection seems to be confirmed in January 3rd 1973 tape made the Oval Office when Nixon wonders allowed what the Christ with the burger is looking for. They he says he doesn't say the

burger is but just to make it have it make sense. Chief of staff Haledman replies they were looking for stuff on two things. One on financial and the other on stuff they thought they had on the Democrats were going to what the Democrats were going to do to screw us up because apparently a democratic plot must have been in furz exist. Haledman then adds cautiously, I don't know any of this first hand, I can't prove any of it and I don't want to know The center planner of the burglary Jay G

Gordon Litty the highest ranking Nixon White House official actually charged with a break in Seemed also confirmed this motive when the deputy campaign chief the highest up position at creep Jeb McGrooter Ordered Litty's squad into the watergate on June 12 He told Litty to have the team photograph everything they could get their hands on. At that point, according to Liddy, McGruder gestured to his own file drawer where Liddy knew McGruder kept the campaign sensitive to rawgatory information on democratic candidates and told Liddy, I want to know what O'Brien's got right there, right? Because they had illegal character files.

They assumed the other side must have them as well. Regardless of the reason Watergate would go down five days after Lydia received his orders June 17, 1972, that day early in the morning, a group of five burglars are recruited by the plumbers that have been recruited by the plumbers enter the Watergate hotel. The five men were Edward Martin, Alias James W. McCord from New York City. Martin would later say in court that he retired from the CIA two years before the break-in.

City was presently employed as a security consultant. Rest of the team was from Miami. Starting with Frank Sturgis, later FBI check on Sturgis showed that he had served in the Cuban military, army intelligence in 1958. Recently traveled to Honduras and Central America and was presently the agent for a Havana salvage agency. Uh, Eugenio Martinez licensed real estate agent, notary public and Florida, uh, uh, uh, Virgil Gonzalez worked as a locksmith at the missing link key shop.

His boss there said, uh, he thought Gonzalez came to America around the time for Del Castro. He came well known began working for missing links, uh, sometime in 1959. Uh, last guy was, uh, Roy Disney, Walt Smarter was brother, or maybe Dick Quest. That motherfucker could survive a night in Central Park with his rope connected to his dick, right? Connected his neck to his dick, a dildo on his cowboy boot, and some methods in his pocket, he could certainly steal a few files. Listen to the Malaysian flight 370 stuff if you're very confused right now. It wasn't Roy Disney or Dick Quest, it was Bernard Baker.

Barker, excuse me, Bernard Barker. He had apparently told his wife to call his lawyer. If he didn't call her by three in the morning, she would make that call, because he would not call. As the Prollers were preparing to break into the office with a new microphone in security guard, notice someone had taped over several of the building's door locks, the guard, 24-year-old Frank Will's.

Remove the tape, not thinking a lot of it at first. You know, maybe somebody needed to carry something back into the building and not worry about the door locking them out or whatever. But when he passed by about 10 minutes later, another piece of tape, and we'll put back on. Put on when no one should have been inside. So Will is called the police, or excuse me,

Will's called the police, three officers from the tactical squad respond and enter the stairwell. From the basement of the sixth floor, they find every door leading from the stairwell to a hallway of the building has been taped to prevent the door from locking, all of them. We bit suspicious. And on the sixth floor, or the stairwell door leads

directly to the Democratic National Committee offices, they find the door had been jimmed, as in somebody without a key had broken in. So they began searching the suite. And almost as soon as they enter an office, one of the suspects jumps out from behind a desk, puts his hands in the air and cries out, don't shoot! And then the rest of the burglars reveal themselves. The burglars, all caught wearing surgical rubber gloves, right, and caught red handed.

The responding police officers know from the start that something is very strange about this burglary. These men are older, dressed in suits, have a bunch of odd equipment on them. Police count at least two sophisticated devices capable of picking up and transmitting all talk including telephone conversations. The men also had with them a walkie talkie, a shortwave receiver that could pick up police calls, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35 millimeter cameras, three pen size tear gas guns. Not fucking typical equipment for a,

let's break it and see what kind of shit we can steal. You know, operation. In addition, please find lock picks, door jimmies, about $2,300 in cash, most of it in $100 bills, with serial numbers in sequence. You know, most burglars don't bring a bunch of cash to the breaking. Near where they were captured were two open file drawers, one national committee source conjectured

that the men were preparing to photograph the contents, but not immediately clear who would send them or why. According to later questioning, the burglars, some of whom spoke little English and seemed genuinely befuddled by their purpose, believe they've been recruited to uncover the Democratic party's links to Fidel Castro. Indeed, three of the men were, you know, Native born Cubans. Another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for rural activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. So what the fuck is going on? A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee said that the records kept in those offices

are not of a sensitive variety. Although there are financial records and other such information, maybe they thought there were sensitive documents in there, but who would have told them that? A proper investigation is now launched. With an hours after the arrest, the suite was sealed off and scores of metropolitan police officers directed by Acting Chief Charles Wright, FBI agents and Secret Service men assigned to the investigation. The US Attorney's Office obtained warrants to search the hotel rooms, read by the suspects,

room 214 and room 314. They find another $4,200 in $100 bills of the same serial number sequence as the money taken from the suspects, more burglary tools and electronic bugging equipment, stashed in six suitcases. Investigators also found out this was the third such incident at the DNC offices since May 28. On that day, an attempt was made to unscrew a lock on the door between 11pm and 8am. And at least some of the burgers caught on June 17th had been staying at the watergate, you know, or near there, May 28th. Or staying there, excuse me. So things are looking more and more suspicious. Meanwhile, all of the men

are charged with felonious burglary and possession of emblements of crime. All but Martin are ordered held in $50,000 bail. Martin who had ties in the area was held on $30,000 bail. Um, what was going on back at the White House? The morning after the break in Nixon is found lying in a puddle of his own blood and shit hysterical bleeding from his eyes.

He had tried to stab his fucking eyes out with pointy pieces of his own shit. He had a full psychotic break. He tried to cut off his penis with a butter knife. He tried to remove his fingerprints with the cheese crater. He'd asked his wife Pat to dress up like the lone ranger and shoot him with a cult revolver. Or none of that happened.

He was just fucking nervous. The morning after the break-in, Liddy told his bosses at creep that his men had been arrested and his bosses, you know, were horrified. Attorney General John Mitchell immediately issued a statement of the press denying that the CRP had any connection with the breaking. He said that McCord, you know, Martin,

and the other men involved were not operating on either our behalf or with our consent. There is no place in our campaign for this type of activity. We will not permit or condone it. Why would he do that so quickly? I feel like that makes him look guilty. Like, you know, thou protest too much. It's like someone telling you that a

mutual friend has just had their house broken in, broken in due. And instantly like, wow, well, I didn't do it. Definitely wasn't me. No, sorry, Bob. I would literally never do that in a million years. Do they think it was me? Because I have an alibi. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I can't go to prison. I just can't. So in the Nixon team would be mobilized to cover it up. Meanwhile, Nixon team would be mobilized to cover it up. Meanwhile another team was getting started uncovering the long history of the White House horse

June 19th, 1972 the Washington Post reports that a GOP security aid was among the Watergate burglars McCord aka Edward Martin was Nixon security chief for creep The FBI had also discovered that a check a check in the bank account of one of the Watergate burglars, Bernard Barker, was written by Nixon's Midwest finance chairman. Nixon's Midwest finance chairman. So, oh, but although the first piece of news was reported in the Washington Post, most of the nation's media had lost interest after the White House labeled the events a third rate burglary. Oh, check, come on.

This is a third rate burglary. Some come on. Here's a third rate burglar. Some papers even jokingly refer to it as the Watergate Caper. You know, content with Attorney General John Mitchell's denial that there was no link between the Nixon campaign and the burglar. I mean, they said there wasn't. But at least two people in the press don't think this is all a big joke. Their names are Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, both reporters for the Washington Post. They would continue tracking down leads and investigating sources,

not knowing, but maybe having a hunch that this is going to be one of the biggest stories of the 20th century in American politics. Let's talk about these fuckers for a second. Robert Bobbert Woodward, born March 26, 1943 in Geneva, Illinois, raised in nearby Wheaton, son of a Republican lawyer and judge Woodward, uh, uh, I think a lot of time it sounds pronounced wooded, but a woodward attended a Yale University on an ROTC scholarship, graduated with the BA in history and English 1965. He then served as a communications officer in the US Navy in Vietnam 1965 to 1970. After leaving the service, he contemplated attending law school but then decided to seek reporting jobs with the Washington Post or the New York Times. Turned down for a lack of experience, he spent a year as a reporter for the Montgomery

County Sentinel in Maryland before getting a position at the post in 1971. At the time of the Watergate break in, Woodward had been at the post less than nine months and had worked as a reporter for less than two years. His partner, Carl, Bobbert Bernstein, both of these guys, middle names were Bobbert. Born on February 14th, 1944 in Washington, D.C. raised in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland, Peter Mann's middle name, of course, is Bobbert. Carl's parents were social activists and members of the American Communist Party. He began working as a coffee boy at the Washington Evening Star at the age of 16 after finishing

high school, he attended classes part-time at the University of Maryland. Eventually began contributing stories of the star and in 1965 moved to New York City to work as a reporter at the Elizabeth Daily Journal in New Jersey. After one year as a journal, Bernstein returned to Washington, DC, took a reporter position at the Washington Post. These guys, both of whom, are still alive as of this recording, just 28 and 29, when the shit goes down. Can you imagine? At first, the jury reporters worked independently of one another. Woodward was the one who made the link between McCord Martin and Creep, also tracked a phone number in one of the burger's address books to White House consultant Howard Hunt. Bernstein was able to confirm the burger's calls to

Hunt through telephone records, also traced a check in one burger's bank account to the Creep group. With support and guidance from post editors, Barry Susman, Harry Rosenfeld, Howard Simmons, and executive editor Ben Bradley, Woodward and Bernstein then combine their efforts to further explain the breaking, seeking information from hundreds of administration officials, campaign workers, White House staffers, and other sources.

For several months, Woodward and Bernstein worked non-stop on the story. Continually wrote front page stories, exposing links between Watergate and Creep, hoping to eventually tie Nixon himself to the breaking. At a press conference, June 22nd, President Nixon himself denies that the White House was involved in the incident. Right, fucking case closed. June 23rd, Bob Haldeman presents Nixon with a plan to cut off the investigation by the FBI into the Watergate check before it leads back to him. Haldeman and Chief Domestic Advisor John Erlichman will tell the CIA to ask the FBI to stay the hell out of this.

The plan was to make it seem like the FBI was about to unearth some secret CIA activities. When an actuality of the FBI was about to learn potentially incriminating info about Nixon's reelection campaign, so they're trying to play the CIA and FBI off one another tricky game. Nixon quickly agreed to the plan, never realizing it would cost him his presidency. Here's the conversation. Hall to insane. On the investigation, you know, the democratic breaking thing. We're back in the problem area because the FBI is not under control because Patrick Gray doesn't exactly know how to control them. They have their investigations now leading into some productive areas because they've been able to trace the money, not through the money itself, but through the bank, sources,

Nixon acknowledges this, the bank himself. It goes in some directions, we don't want it to go. Also there have been some things like an informant came in off the street to the FBI in Miami with who's a photographer or has a friend who's a photographer who develops some films don't want to go. Also, there have been some things like an informant came in off the street to the FBI in Miami with, who is a photographer or has a friend who's a photographer who develops some films for this guy, Barker, Bernard Barker, and the films had pictures of Democratic National Committee letterhead documents

and things, so he's got. There's things like the things that are going to, are filtering it, filtering it. Mitchell came up and it's his posse here. They just have it like actually, as he said it, I'm not just fucking struggling to read suddenly. Mitchell came up with yesterday and John Dean analyzed very carefully last night and concludes concur's now with Mitchell's recommendation that the only way to solve this and we're set up beautifully to do it.

In that the net only network that paid any attention to it last night was NBC who did a massive story on the Cuban and then Nixon chimes in. That's right. How the thing and all. But the way to handle this now is for us to have Vernon Walters call Pat Gray and just say, did he have out of this? This is there's some business here. We don't want you going any further on. That's not an unusual development. Mm-hmm, does Nixon? And that would take care of it. What's the matter with Pat? Right.

You mean he doesn't want to? Pat does want to. He does, he doesn't know how to. And he doesn't have any basis for doing it. Given this, he will then have that basis. He'll call Mark Felt and the two of them and Mark Felt wants to cooperate because he's ambitious. Ah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, Holdman says that they'll call them in and say, we've got a signal from across the river. Nixon acknowledges to, uh, uh, put the hold on this. And that'll fit rather well because the FBI agents who are working the case at this point feel that, feel that's what it is. This is the CIA. The conversation will go on with Nixon and Holdman, uh, formulating how to tell the FBI that the CIA is responsible for water gate. It first looks like this plan is going to work.

But then the acting FBI director, Patrick Gray, becomes uncomfortable. July six, he calls President Nixon directly tells him that the president's staff is trying to use the CIA to disrupt his work. So fuck, that is what Nixon is thinking. We hear, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, back. Oh, fuck'm gonna fuck pack From then on the FBI continues his investigation of the burglary

So that plan doesn't work to pit these agencies against one another meanwhile the White House busy keeping the burglars from talking this is a huge mess obviously White House counsel John Dean met with attorney general John Mitchell and two other creep staff members the morning of June 28th to discuss how to keep the burglars from talking Later in the day he meets meets with hall admin and Erlichman. They agreed to raise at least $100,000 to give the burglars, right, to fucking bribe them to stay quiet. And that's going to be given to them and return for them agreeing to plead guilty and not disclose anything about the break-in. Again, these guys are fucking gangsters. No better than organized crime leaders. Nixon has spent so much of his political life vowing to take down. They recruit Nixon's personal lawyer, Herb Combach, to help raise the money. First bundle of $50,000 is delivered to Dorothy Hunt, wife of Howard Hunt. But then that's

not enough, she said. By the end of August, creep and Combach raised and delivered a total of 154,000 now to the burglars. And now let's back up a little. August 1st, 1972, the Washington Post reports that the check to Barker was for sure written by the Nixon campaign, which the FBI had known about for five weeks at this point. And now the public knows too, Nixon more worried than ever. Tricky Dick, not only limp, he's fucking he's tiny. He's retreated back behind the balls. He's almost gone inside the body under the belly button.

Tricky dick is damn near tricky micro-ping. September 15th, 1972, hunt and liddy, along with the five burglars all indicted on new charges. A federal jury charged them with conspiracy, burglary, violation of federal wiretapping laws, all the men except for liddy and maccord plead guilty. And then for a moment, it seems like that's the end of it. The burgers are jailed, nobody can make the connection to Nixon.

The story seems to kind of die, but the Washington Post not done making connections. October 10th, the Washington Post reports that Attorney General John Mitchell controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence gathering operations against the Democrats. Reporters Bernstein and Woodard report the activities according to the information in

FBI and Department of Justice files were aimed at all the major Democratic presidential contenders. Since 1971, represented a basic strategy of the Nixon reelection effort. During their Watergate investigation, federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns intelligence work is normal during a campaign and is said to be carried out by both political parties. But federal investigators said that they that what they uncovered being done by the Nixon forces is unprecedented

in scope and intensity. They said it included following members of Democratic candidates families and assembling dossiers on their personal lives, forging letters and distributing them under the candidates letter heads, leaking false and manufactured items to the press, throwing campaign schedules into disarray season confidential campaign files and investigating the lives of dozens of democratic campaign workers. Uh, I do like that the reporter said that both political parties carried out intelligence work on their opponents.

I'm now thinking for a second that the Democrats were also doing some kind of shady shit, but Nixon and his team they just they took it to a new level digging up dirt on your opponent. That's part of the game. Four gene letters written on the other team's letterhead, leaking lies to the press, well, that's cross in line. Letting the public know what a candidate has truly done, okay, manipulating the public to believe a candidate has done something they have not.

Well, that's fucking illegal. There's a good reason that's illegal. Happens all the time in politics. It truly is such a fucking dirty game, which is unfortunate. The public isn't voting based on the facts when it's played this way. The candidate isn't just slanted in cases like this. The entire voting population has manipulated and cheated, right? Democracy itself, fucking been over and fucked.

Not in a fun way. These were explosive revelations. How did Carl and Bob get their hands on them? They had done their due diligence as reporters, of course, but some of this was highly classified info. Info that it wouldn't be easy for anyone to get. So where do they get it? From quote, deep throat.

Deep throat had the inside tricky dick scoop. Deep throat knew all about dick. Deep throat had been sucking dick for years. Deep throat was a high up, anonymous, government official. Howard Simmons, the managing editor of the post, was actually the one to come up with the name for the source. He based it on the deep background status of the informant and on the widely publicized 1972 porn film Deepthrope,

starring Linda Lovelace, as a woman who finds out that she's been unable to achieve an orgasm because her clitoris is actually deep in a throat. Luckily, a well-hung doctor is able to work with her and help her learn how to have neck orgasms. That really is the plot. It was a big film at the time. And what a saint that doctor was. Anyways, for two years deep throat would feed the reporter some dick. He would share information with them about Nixon's team's criminal activities

and his best-selling book, All all the president's men published in 1974 on June of 74 about the Watergate scandal. Woodward described how he would signal to deep throat that he desired a meeting by moving the flower pot with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment. When deep throat wanted a meeting, he would let Bob know by giving a guy an intense aggressive blowjob on the sidewalk below Bob's apartment. Now he would make a special marks on page 20 of Woodward's copy to New York Times. He'd circle the page number, draw a clock hands to indicate the hour. They would then often meet on the bottom level of an underground garage,

just over the key bridge in Roslyn at 2 a.m. Like something out of a pulp detective novel. Like something that the suck versus greatest criminal mind, sunny Hollister would do. Sunny Hollister here again meets eggs. Cheesecake Factory store detective. If you think deep throat, chose a slick meeting spot.

Well, buckle up, buttercup. I got a story for you. Years ago when I was working at the Nordstroms rack beat, I had a CI help me crack Years ago when I was working at the Norge Trums Rack Beat, I had a C.I. helped me crack a ring of winter coat thieves. Weed me to the men's bathroom handicaps, though. He'd let me know he was in there by walking by me on the floor and wishling dixie. Then I'd give him a few minutes.

Once he was in the stall, he would continually tap his feet to the rhythm of Michael Jackson's smooth criminal. To let me know that it wasn't fact him and not some other buffoon in the same meeting spot. I would then enter the stall next to him, slide under the divider into his stall once I had my door locked. Then we'd take turns urinating into the toilet, muffling our discussion with some proverbial sword fighting, both standing and crouching on the toilet then, as now be heard or seen. When heat flush, I'd slide back, then I'd flush, unlock the door, and bang, bang, chicken and shrimp. We just had another meeting, and no one was the wiser.

I called my informants, the porcelain becker wood, and with his intel, after six months of dedicated investigation, I busted two rush of 19 year olds for misdemeanor shoplifting. Ha, not bad. Until next time, you keep listening to True Crime, and I'll keep stopping it. Stay sunny, everybody. Fucking sunny man, what a legend. I don't know how relevant that was to the story actually.

Anyway, the garage deep throat would meet with Woodward at was located at 1401 Wilson Boulevard. As to who deep throat really was, that will remain a mystery for 30 years. In the meantime, for Woodward and Bernstein, there were explosive articles about Nixon's right. Of course, the Nixon administration would deny that anyone was true, informed the general contents of this article, the White House referred all comments to the committee for the re-election of the president. A spokesman there said the post story is not only fiction, but a collection of absurdities. As to discuss the specific points raised in the story, the spokesman,

DeVan L. Shumway, refused on grounds that the entire matter is in the hands of the authorities. Okay, remember Nixon's election campaign? Let's check it on that. November 7th 1972, Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history. Dude took in more than 60% of the vote crushed democratic nominee, Senator George McGovernor, South Dakota. He won 60.7% of the popular vote, 520 electoral votes to McGoverns, 37.5%, 0.5% and 17 electoral votes, fucking annihilated him. So how did Nixon win in the midst of all these damning allegations? Well, for shitting on the press for starters, right? It's all fake news.

Don't believe these crooks, that kind of thing. Then you use exact terminology, but same thing, you know, fuck facts. They're inconvenient and annoying. Also, Nixon undercut McGovern's main issue, a call for the immediate end of the Vietnam War, by promising to replace the draft with an all volunteer force and by steadily drawing down the number of US troops engaged in the conflict. During the campaign without ever mentioning the government by name and public, Nixon also portrayed the government a World War II bomber pilot as a left-wing, comedy extremist. He wasn't, but again, fuck facts when it comes to politics. The government was actually a war hero.

Through 35 missions over German occupied Europe from a basin, Italy, among the medals he received was a distinguished flying cross from making a hazardous emergency landing of his damaged plane and saving his crew's lives. He also had fucking crazy liberal ideas that included taking some money away from the military industrial complex. And instead of letting arms manufacturer CEOs

make even more millions and billions, he wanted to let the bottom blue collar runs with the working class receive a benefit in the form of either paying zero income taxes or actually receiving money instead of paying income taxes and he wanted wealthy and massive corporations to pay more taxes to make up the difference uh... he wanted i don't know like life to be better for more people in the land of

the free what a fucking joke fucking radical fucking for trying to stand up for the working class. It's anti-American to let coal miners and factory workers and fast food and retail employees off the hook. Why should they keep to get to keep more of their money? They're making money that's never gonna allow them to buy a fucking house or escape the trappings of intense poverty. Why should these impoverished cock suckers get to keep Jeff Bezos from building another megaliot

where he can maybe fuck a few Instagram models once or twice a year. Anyway, McEvern's campaign never recovered from revelation. After the Democratic National Convention that his running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri had undergone psychiatric electroshop electroshock therapy multiple times as a treatment for severe depression. So yeah, that was revealed to the Democratic National Convention. And American not comfortable having the guy one heartbeat away from the presidency, away from let's launch some nukes, be someone with a serious mental illness.

And as much of an advocate for mental illness as I am, I do get the concern. I mean, would you want say a paranoid schizophrenic in the Oval Office back in 1972? Not their fault they have that brain chemistry, but back in 1972, treatment, not what it is now, certainly would have presented a security risk. So McGovern did not properly vet his running mate and he really didn't, and he paid for it. Winning seemed to give Nixon more fire, more fire to protect his image, denial of the accusations against him, hold his presidential office solidly once and for all. Look like for the first few months, uh, following Watergate, he's going to put the scandal

behind him. But then Watergate roars back to life in the public consciousness in 1973. After a 16 day trial in January, plumber, G Gordon Lydie and burglar James McCord slash Edward Martin are convicted on January 30th of conspiracy, burglary, and bugging the Democratic parties watergate, uh, watergate headquarters. The jury found them guilty on all charges in under 90 minutes. So the jury found them super fucking guilty. Liddy along with Howard Hunt was found guilty of supervised in the burglary from a neighboring

hotel room, sentenced to 20 years in prison. Hunt along with the four other burglars had pled guilty early in the trial to all charges against them in exchange for lesser sentences. And all of a sudden, new doubts are raised as to who else might have been involved. Hint, hint, tricky dick. When FBI director Gray testifies at the White House Council, James Dean or John Dean had sat in when Watergate witnesses were being interviewed and that he had turned over the FBI's Watergate files to Dean. Why would John Dean need to be there? Why did the White House need a rep with the investigation? Now the US Senate forms a select committee on presidential campaign activities, chaired by Senator Sam Irvin, a Democrat from North Carolina. Meanwhile, other

of Nixon's men are somehow not done committing crimes. January of 1973, presidential counsel, John Dean hires Donald H. Sogrady, a California attorney to conduct political espionage and sabotage against democratic presidential contentors. Dude, I want to slow down on this shit. So great. Trying so hard not to say a bunch of weird shit and then Antonio Banderos right now was paid $40,000 by Nixon's personal attorney Herbert W. Combach. Nixon seems to think he can outsmart everyone, just not be touched by any of this. Behind the scenes, a Watergate cover up also ramping up in a meeting March 22nd 1973 in the Oval Office with Holderman, Erlichman, Mitchell, and Dean present. Erlichman tells Dean to say that nobody in the White House was involved and Nixon chimes in saying, that's right. They discuss

using executive privilege to limit questioning by the Senate committee. And Nixon makes it clear that he wants the cover up to continue saying, I don't give a shit what happens. If you want, I want you all to stonewall it. Let them plead to Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else. If it'll save it, save the plan. Part of the plan was to continue to give money to Howard Hunt to keep him quiet. Nixon and his staff agreed to pay Hunt's continuing demands, like paying for his legal

fees and sending him hushed money to his family. Also agreed to promise Hunt and McCord slash Martin Clemencey, aka early release. But even with money, the promise of Clemencey McCord slash Martin decides to talk. He writes a letter to Judge Sir Sirica stating that political pressure had been on the defendants, witnesses had committed perjury and people higher up than Liddy were involved. When judge Sirica reads McCord's letter in court March 23rd 1973, the cover up falls apart. Nixon is now desperately trying to seal off the Oval Office at the spread of Watergate. Hold on to his presidency. Before a national TV audience, April 30th, he accepts

the responsibility, but not the blame for the actions of overzealous subordinates, absorbed in the business, the important business of run of the country, he explained he just failed to properly monitor his subordinates' activities. And you know what? That is a smart cover story. I mean, if I'm here in this, I can believe that. As someone who has now had employees for over

six years, it is easy to be so focused on what you're doing that you lose track of what they're doing. It happens all the time. Nixon also announced that the resignation of John Erlichman and HR halled them in to the finest public servants. It has been my privilege to know former presidential counsel John Dean also leaves the staff under pressure from Congress, even close friends nixon Now points special prosecutor Harvard law professor archibald cox and

Promise him complete independence to investigate the watergate affair So weird how politicians can do this right help pick the investigator who investigates corruption that might lead to them Rest of us don't get to pick who looks into our possible crimes Why should the president get to be I'd fucking love love to do that. You know how you get arrested? You're like, oh, I'm gonna have my buddy, fucking Paul look over things. That everybody Paul is gonna preside. And I'm gonna have the jury be a lot of my friends.

May 18th, 1973, the Senate Watergate Committee begins its nationally televised hearings and soon more than just information about Watergate starts to spill out. The whole list of White House horse that we went over and some other ones we didn't about to be revealed. June 13th 1973, Bob Woodward and Karl Bernstein report that Watergate prosecutors have obtained a memo addressed to John Erlichman that described in detail plans to burglarize the offices of Lewis Fielding Daniel Ellsberg psychiatrist. A memo sent to Erlichman by

former White House aide David Young and Bud Kroge, day to be four of the September 3rd, 1971 burglary of the office of the Beverly Hills psychiatrist directly contradicted a statement. Erlichman publicly made in April of 73 when he said he wasn't told about the break in until after that had taken place. Then former White House counsel, counsel John Dean decides not to be one of Nixon's fall guys, right? Put on his fucking big boy pants and a 245 page statement, which John Dean read on June 25th to the Special Senate Committee investigating Watergate,

he implicates Mitchell, Halledermann, and Erlichman, and acts of perjury and obstructing justice. And President Nixon is implicated. Dean gave prosecutors more info about Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist office being broken into. And Dean alleged that Erlichman had authorized the break-in members of Dixon staff now testify under oath that Dean is lying Without concrete evidence the prosecutors can't prove what has really happened yet at this point

Nixon could still get away with everything, but then the other shoe drops Friday, July 13th the private investigation with Alexander Butterfield reveals the existence of Nixon's taping system in the White House Alexander thought he was just corroborating information that everybody already fucking knew. But they didn't, but now they do. Now the tapes, you know, were to become part of the investigation by the Senate and the special prosecutors. But then Nixon's still not out of tricks tries to stop it.

Immediately after Butterfield's testimony, Nixon directs the Secret Service agents to not give testimony regarding their duties. Oval Office trying to overpower the FBI now, but that's not going to work. July 23rd, the committee votes unanimously to subpoena the tapes, which required the president to now deliver them to the committee, but the president says, fuck no, essentially, won't do it. Now special prosecutor Archibald Cox has to get a subpoena.

Two days later, July 25th, Nixon informs District Nixon informs district court judge john syrica he will not comply with coxas subpoena siding presidents would show that presidents could be could not be subjected to compulsory process from the courts next day the 26 president nixon also writes the senator erving denied the committee access to the tapes citing executive privilege and separation of powers let's talk real quick about executive privilege. In 1792, President Washington and the very first cabinet decided on a policy of producing documents in response to congressional document requests only if the executive considered it in accordance

with the public good. Washington continued to follow that policy and he also did not procure documents when he deemed the request not in accordance with the constitution. And this will eventually become known as Executive Privilege. The doctrine of Executive Privilege defines the authority of the President to withhold documents or information in his possession or in the possession of the Executive Branch

from the legislative or judicial branch of the government. Although there are various interesting components to Executive Privilege, the Privilege's foundation lies in the proposition that in making judgments and reaching decisions, the president and his advisors or her advisors must be free to discuss issues candidly, express opinions and explore options without fear that those deliberations will later be made public. Basically the president and his advisors have to be able to talk about shit without needing to inform the world of what shit that shit might be and shit.

But to this day, the exact parameters of the privilege are still very much in doubt, because the overwhelming majority of the executive privilege claims have been resolved by negotiation rather than court order. Nixon is kind of great. Nixon claims executive privilege to keep the tapes in his hands. Now the committee on Watergate, you know, stumped for the moment. What are they going to do? Vice chairman Howard Baker, Tennessee Republican suggests that they sue the president. So that's what you do. August 9th, the committee

sues the president in federal court. But the case is dismissed due to a lack of jurisdiction. Right. This is all like fucking weird gray area. The decision is upheld upon appeal. The country now faced with a full blown constitutional crisis. Who has authority? How do you make a president obey the law? Does the president even have to obey the law in the circumstance? The special prosecutor in the president's lawyer Charles Allen Wright meet in court to duke this shit out August 22nd. Judge Siriccan now decides that the special prosecutor does have the right to make the president hand the tapes over.

Who cares about the lawsuit and fuck your executive privilege But they still won't do it the administration appeals its decision stating they will only comply with the same decision from the highest court in the land October 12th is a circuit court of appeals rules and favor of the special special prosecutor as well saying the president turn the fucking tapes over to judge sharekka Right, they stated that the president is not above the law But also they plead with both sides to make an out of court settlement. Nixon's conundrum now is to find a way to comply with the order without incriminating himself. How's he gonna turn over the tapes

and not reveal all the legal shit he's done? Nixon proposes a compromise that they create transcripts of relevant tapes, give those to judge Shereka, subsequently a, also fires Cox. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and informed the president he will resign if that's what is plan is the president's new chief of staff Alexander hay poses the idea of using john c

stennis to verify the president's and transcripts that all the fucking trying to wiggle out of this the next administration portrays this as an acceptable method to allow access to the tapes wall redacting personal details or national security information before it's submitted to the court. Of course, they claim that the sections of tape they redacted, you

know, they don't have anything to do with Watergate. It's just a national security, guys, you know, but what have we learned from tricky digs so far? He's fucking weasel. The kind of politician that makes so many people, myself included distrustful of politicians in general. The Nixon administration's October 16th suggestion of a third party to verify transcripts rejected two days later by Cox. Furthermore, the Nixon Administration only wants to allow the special prosecutor to receive

tapes regarding the breaking and cover-up. Cox wants tapes that are relevant to other areas of interest in the investigation. On October 20th, Nixon now orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the special prosecutor. Fucking give it to this guy. He's making me do things that will get myself in trouble. Richardson won't, so he resigns and protest. Then assistant Attorney General William Ruckleshaw also resigns and protest, rather than carry out the same order.

What great theater this is, so much high stakes drama. Finally, the third in command, solicitor general Robert Bork agrees to carry out the order because Robert Bork, as everybody knows, was a spineless, grubby, power-hungry, little bitch-wissel. Or something like that. This series of events known as the Saturday Night Massacre may have delayed to release the tapes for a time,

but now with another scandal on their hands, it actually ensured that all the tapes will be released. Because now everybody wants to know what the fuck is going on. Right? This is like front page news day after day. Why is the White House acting so damn guilty? Saturday night massacre leads to a firestorm of disapproval in Congress and around the country

for the Oval Office. Tides are returning against old tricky slick side wonder dick. November of 1973 noted attorney and law professor Leon Jaworski except the position of special prosecutor and with the backing of a Senate that is now more fired up and more Confrontational he has more independence and protection than his predecessor Right it was time for dick to be taken down Cox couldn't take down dick with this fucking Polish guy Will time to fucking dunk him in cold water and shrinking down a size so they can remove from the noble office Soon afterwards a special prosecutor was informed that two tapes requesting are missing

and that a tape from June 20th, 1972, has an 18 and a half minute cabinet. How weird! I bet nothing insanely incriminating was on that missing tape. Missing footage, no way Jose. The Nixen administration states that the er, a racer was surely accidental.

And the president's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed she does inadvertently erased the portion of tape on this very fucking important tape. Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes you spill a cup of coffee on a letter. Other times you intentionally erase evidence of presidential treason. November 17th, 1973, Nixon famously declares, I am not a crook, maintaining his innocence in front of the treason. November 17th 1973 Nixon famously declares, I am not a crook,

maintaining his innocence in front of the American people. November 26th lawyers for the president released seven tapes to judge Sareka. After listening to the tapes, Sareka releases a portion of them to Jaworski, December 21st, the tape segments despite the missing shit still are enough to prove helpful in corroborating a case against administration. Grand jury now indicts a number of the president's aides and in May, Hague is informed by Jaworski. Jaworski, that the president himself has been named an unindicted Coke and Spiritor.

On April 16, 1974, special prosecutor Jaworski issues a subpoena for the 64 additional tapes. And the president, once again, opposes the subpoena in court, citing, again, executive privilege and separation of powers. Dude, we're just not gonna fucking go down with that if I he's just clawing, hanging on to the Oval Office. How many an acid tablets do you think fucking tricky, greasy, greasy dick was living on around this time? From all the stress induced heartburn,

I bet he was practically living on tums, probably not sleeping well either. April 30th, the White House releases more than 12-100 pages of edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes to House Judiciary Committee, but the committee assists like, no, dude, we didn't fucking ask for transcripts. Give us a goddamn tapes.

Judge Sirrica rules against the President made 20th, 1974, which gives the administration until May 31st to comply or appeal. And the president, fucking just won't stop appeals. Jawors, he asks the Supreme Court, come on. Can you just make this dickhead give us the tapes? June 4th, Colson pleads guilty to obstructing justice now in a watergate related case involving

Daniel Ellsberg, in which he ran a smear campaign seeking to discredit the government, contractor, who leaked the Pentagon papers. As for Nixon operative and attorney, Donald Cigretty, after the Watergate investigation revealed the full extent of his activity, he pled guilty to charges of distributing illegal campaign literature, spending four months in prison.

And he'll keep a little profile after his release. People are fucking going down next to Nixon and get closer and closer. John Erlichman convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and perjury. He serves 18 months in prison John Dean charge of obstruction of justice and serves four months in prison Moves California becomes an investment banker Holdman who we've talked about so much tried and convicted of perjury conspiracy and obstruction of justice He spends 18 months in prison and then goes into real estate interests and actually gets into fucking sizzler, the sizzler franchise in Florida.

Jebs Stewart McGruder convicted of perjury spends seven months in prison. John Mitchell attorney general convicted for his role in the conspiracy serves 19 months in jail. He would tell a reporter covering the trial. It could have been a hell of a lot worse. It could have sent me to spend the rest of my life with Martha, referring to his wife from whom he was separate. And oh my gosh, there are so many interesting side roads I could have gone down in this

episode that I didn't. There wasn't time. Martha is one of them and I do want to go down this with just a little bit here because this is fucking crazy. Martha, the Attorney General's wife, was a bit of a celebrity at this time. She was known to have cocktails in the evenings and she would eavesdrop on her husband's political discussions and then spill the tea, share gossip with with reporters. Seriously, like became known for this. We'll go on talk shows. When I'm laughing as well due to her fame of being a blabber mouth,

her nickname was mouth of the south. She was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Doug, one of DC's most influential women and she was allowed to run her mouth for a long time because her views were consistently pro-republicant But then when she found out her husband was involved in watergate after her daughter daughter's bodyguard and driver It was one of the men arrested for the breaking She read details about the arrest new that her husband and the White House was Covered up with a bunch of bullshit. She was pissed at her husband, and her mouth now became a problem. And she threatened to spill the tails to the press.

That would be very damaging to the oval office. Real damaging. And so her husband, excuse me, so she calls her husband, the attorney general, tells him she's trying to do this. He wants her to shut up. Then she calls her husband's favorite reporter, Helen Thomas, starts to spill the tea,

and then the line goes dead. After the reporter hears Martha tell someone to get away from me. Days later another reporter, Marsha Kramer of the Daily News, tracked Martha down to a motel room found a beaten woman covered in bruises. She was fucking kidnapped by men working for Nixon, who beat her badly enough to require stitches, injected her with a tranquilizer, when she became hysterical. She was afraid for her life.

She was initially ridiculed, thinking that she made all this up, but she did not. A few years later, her husband admitted that he had her fucking kidnapped to keep the scandal quiet. My God. In total, there were 69 people and died. 49 people convicted due to the Watergate scandal, at least one woman beaten and kidnapped. 48 people going to jail and or being fined for doing shit

to help Nixon get reelected and preserve his legacy. July 8th, 1974, the special prosecutor and the president's lawyer, James St. Clair, present their arguments before the Supreme Court. US versus Nixon, a unanimous 80 decision. Associate Justice William, Renquist, recused himself, US versus Nixon a unanimous 80 decision associate justice William Renquist ex-requte himself Handed down on July 24th the decision effectively ended the presidency of Nixon when it allowed the special prosecutor access to all the Fucking tapes. He's been refusing to give over

Including the June 23rd 1972 tape which will be called the smoking gun tape There's a conversation on the tape between Nixon and Halederman and they talked about how they would convince the FBI that the CIA was behind the watergate breaking and not to metal. The audio proved unequivocally Nixon was lying to the American people for years and he was behind one of the biggest cover-ups in US political history and you know he was a dirty fucking power-hungry naughty boy pecker July 27th, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee passes the first of three articles of impeachment, charging obstruction of justice. On the evening of August 8, seeing the writing on the wall finally knowing that true impeachment is just inevitable, knowing he has lost the trust the American people forever has gone from being

beloved to hated Nixon gives a televised address during which he announces his intention to become the first and still only president in history to resign. Just before noon the next day, Nixon officially ends his term as the 37th president of the U.S. in disgrace. Before departing with his family and a helicopter from the White House lawn, he smiles farewell. Inigmatically, raises his arms in this weird victory or peace salute. This now infamous image has been reproduced endlessly. It's a hundred percent when I

picture my mind's eye when I think about Nixon. Helicopter Dorbs closed. Nixon family began their long journey home to San Clemente, California. Minus later vice president Gerald Ford is sworn in the 38th president. Just a month later Ford pardons Nixon, saving him from almost certainly being convicted of criminal charges. Ford said by taking this action, I hope that I will have hasten the start of the process of healing, which is so desperately needed in America. No, you fucking didn't do that. You fucking made it worse. Why pardon him?

I'll share my feelings more about this in a bit. Nixon would go on to write about selling books, speaking to one, speaking to her, be a millionaire, never spend a day in jail despite all he did despite everyone who went to jail for him would die in 1994 at the age of 81. One more thing before we get out of here, what the hell or who the hell was deep throat for 30 years deep throats identity remained a mystery. Then May 31st, 2005 11 years after Richard Nixon's death, Vanity Fair revealed his identity former FBI associate director, Mark Felt. We heard about him earlier in the episode on some conversations.

That was deep throat. By then, Felt was suffering from dementia, had previously denied being deep throat, but Woodward and Bernstein confirmed the attorney's claim. Felt reportedly said, I'm the guy that each called deep throat. So why would he decide to leak the stories to the post? Well, in his book, The Secret Man, would were described as felt as a loyalist, an admirer of long-time FBI director and moral crusader,

not always the best moral, but moral crusader, nonetheless, J. Edgar Hoover. After Hoover's death, felt was angry and disgusted when Patrick Gray, we mentioned him earlier too, a career naval officer and lawyer from the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, someone with no law enforcement experience was appointed as the director of the FBI overfelt, who

was a 30-year veteran of the FBI. Felt was very unhappy with Grace Manifestal, which was markedly different from Hoover's, felt aided Woodward in Bernstein because he knew Woodward personally, having met him years before when they both went to the Navy. Over the course of their acquaintance, Woodward would often call Felt for advice instead of seeking out prosecutors at the Justice Department or the House Judiciary Committee charge with investigating Imprisoned shall wrongdoing felt was methodically solicited by Woodward to guide the investigation while keeping his own identity and involvement safely concealed with the deep throat handle Well good job Mark

Way to deep throat some tricky dick and share what you found with the nation to open our eyes to how the game has really played some times in DC. Even your actions, even though your actions were motivated by personal grievance, you still still did a really good thing. And with that, let's get out of this very lengthy I Know Time Suck timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. What a tale. What interesting dick quest.

I'm glad we went on it. I think all I really knew about Watergate before was that Nixon had some good and spy on the Democrats, so chances of re-election. And then lied a bunch to try and make this candle go away. And that was about it. I was familiar with Nixon's drug policies before today, as many of you have heard me rant and rave about those. I would need a true war on drugs episode to further flesh out his policies and my thoughts on them. I didn't know prior to this week how truly popular he was and he also did some

great things which I'll get to in the takeaways. I didn't know about those either. I didn't know almost anything about the man and we would need several episodes on him to truly get our heads around Nixon the person. I barely mentioned his post presidential life, for instance, but I still learned so much. I didn't know how this scandal changed how Americans viewed our politicians. To be clear, a lot more went down in the 70s and watergate that eroded public faith in US government, like so many congressional hearings, bringing, you know, shady shit to light like project MK Ultra, something we sucked years ago. many congressional hearings, bring in shady shit to light like project MK Ultra, something

we suck years ago, and previous to all this in the 60s, of course, the Vietnam war, civil rights issues and more steadily were eroding faith in government for many. And of course, many minorities had not ever trusted the US government for very valid reasons. Of course, people have had problems with the government for as long as we have had our government and before that, people had problems with the British government. We Sachs, always have problems with all governments, of course. I mean, who loves being told what you can't, it can't do by people you don't even fucking know. That being said, Watergate's still a very significant scandal, right?

It led to the leader of the United States, a leader who won reelection in a landslide, resigning previous to Watergate. Most US citizens for years and years, based on polling that we discussed, felt like their leader mostly had their best interests in mind, and that was changed by the Watergate scandal, right? What a fucking bummer. How nice would it be for most of us to maybe not like our president, but at least not just assume that they're a fucking crook.

Some historians and political experts think that what really fucked American politics what really left a bitter taste in the mouse of many of us that has never totally left was Nixon being pardoned, right, forgiven in the sense for all his sins. Dozens of his minions would spend time in jail or prison, but not him. And that's just unfair. It's on a basic human level, it's unfair. You know, what if he had been punished, like sent to prison? What would politics feel like today?

Speaking only for myself, I would feel a lot better about the office of the presidency, right? If I knew that sometimes the president could go to fucking prison, right? Currently, I feel like the US president could probably kick a fucking baby down the street. And worst case, being peaked, but then pardoned. And then make millions off books and speaking engagements

and he just talk about how he's framed by the other side to make a look like he kicked a baby down his street, but really, he was fucking trying to carry that baby away from wolves or something. How are we as a nation supposed to believe in justice if we know our presence, never have to face it if they fuck up? If we wanna rebuild faith in leadership

and reduce at least the perception of corruption, maybe we should actually hold our leaders accountable for a wild idea. Time now for today's takeaways. Number one on June 17th, 1972, police caught five men breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, DC. The men had a lot of recording equipment and cash on them. Obviously, they were not your standard robbers, so who were they? As it would turn out, they were robbers hired by Nixon's plumbers. The true motive for Watergate is still unclear, but thought that the robbers were instructed

to photograph documents and to wire-tap the offices to give Nixon an advantage in the 1974 election cycle, which he wouldn't even, he didn't even need. Number two, in late July 1974, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the US versus Nixon that the president had the surrender tapes made within the White House to a special prosecutor. No more executive privilege, right? And with that ruling, Nixon's political career was effectively over.

Number three, presidential aide Alexander Butterfield disclosed a taping system that had been put in the White House to help Nixon remember the contents of his meetings and someday write his memoirs. These tapes would reveal just how far Nixon had gone to cover up the Watergate scandal and the other White House horrors that had come before it. Number four, Nixon was brought down by the very things

that had propelled him to the presidency, drive, determination, and ego. These were the things that helped him save face during the checker scandal, which he was accused of improperly fundraising money for his campaign, helped drive him to the presidency, but over the course of his political career,

Nixon became overly obsessed with enemies real and imagined. And he used every dirty trick in the book to get to them before he felt they were going to get to him. And in doing so, he essentially took himself down. Number five, new info. I was pretty hard on Nixon today, but also despite what he, you know, did that we talked about, despite my own feelings about him in a variety of ways. He was in a lot of other ways ways kind of a great president. Here are

some good things he accomplished. During his first term, Nixon successfully achieved voluntary desegregation of schools in seven southern states. Nixon radically re-oriented the federal Native American policy, becoming the first president to encourage tribal self-determination. In 1970, Nixon established the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon abolished voter discriminatory tests, which mostly aimed to prevent black Americans from voting by extending the Voting Rights Act in 1970. In 1972, Nixon signed Title IX, a civil rights law that prohibits gender bias ecologists and universities receiving federal aid.

Tricky, slippery, greasy dick, not always a cock. He was like almost all of us, you know, nuanced and complicated. Time, suck, top five takeaways. Watergate, the scandal that destroyed faith in American politics has been sucked. Thank you to the team here at Bad Magic. Thank you again to producer Sophie Evans for her initial research today. Uh, thanks to Tyler C, the suck range of recording, editing this episode. So you can watch it on YouTube in addition to listening to it if you want. I keep forgetting to mention YouTube, where you could also watch this special. Trying to get better Sunday, August 27th. Next week, let's go cult, cult, cult.

Let's examine a very different kind of cult than we've sucked here before. A communist cult, sort of. One's still operating here in the US. And June of 2023, very recently, a reddit post appeared on the Brooklyn in New York, subreddits, warning the public about a shady, seeming group. Beware of CCMP, canvassing in Brooklyn. The header warned, they are a cult. CCMP is an acronym for a group called the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, a group that ostensibly connects society's most vulnerable members with medical practitioners that want to volunteer their services to the public. Sounds harmless, right?

Maybe even beneficial, not so fast. In their post, a writer described their time in the group saying I was approached by volunteers for the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals at a grocery store in Brooklyn, ended up volunteering with them for about a month. Long story short, they pressured me to give up more and more of my free time, up to 12 hours a day, before revealing they are staffed by full-time volunteers who worked there 12 hours a day, seven days a week with no pay. Perspective full-time recruits are encouraged to drop out of school, quit their jobs, move into CC MP dorms, where they have no safety

net nor outside support system. And if that sounds like a cult to you, there's a lot more that comes from. The coalition of concerned medical professionals is only one organization in a spider web of volunteer organizations under the direction of a shady group known as the National Labor Federation. Or natal fed, I can't't find out how it said as an acronym. Natal fed has been around for a long, long time and was probably never legitimate. Started by a man who called himself Eugenio Perente, a man pretending to have Mexican heritage, whose real name was Gerald Dodon throughout the 70s and 80s. Natfled was a, or natal fed was a, was at the top of a large pyramid with many shell organizations

beneath it, it claimed to be helping and povers people across the country, you know, access needed medical resources, legal resources, food, shelter, but just as the Reddit poster described, not that simple, many pressure to give up their lives outside of the group, buy into revolutionary rhetoric as well. There was even a prediction of a revolution day. A day when natal fed would basically be handed the country to rule according to Communist principles. And within Nathilovid was an even shadier organization militants known as the Communist Party USA Provisional Wing, a militant group that stockpiled weapons for a coming revolution at three brown stones in Crown

Heights Brooklyn. So what became of Nathilovid, how has it succeeded as a strange and secretive cult, hiding in plain sight in America's largest metropolitan area for so long? You have to tune in next week to find out as we return to New York City for another non-religious cult suck. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. Get your time, sucker updates! A super anonymous sack has some great dick for us, a magnificent dick. He writes, Hi Dan, really enjoying the Shakespeare suck. Since this is a particularly dick heavy suck, it seems like a great time to tell you about possibly the best real life dick you'll ever come across.

Meet Sergeant Richard Swallow of the Indiana State excise place. I first met him when he was doing a routine inspection and handed me as a business card. It took everything I had to keep a straight face and not annoyed the guy inspecting my records. Honestly, he's a nice enough guy. Very dry. I don't think he would appreciate me laughing to his face. He has oversight of my industry. So if you happen to read this on air, please do not read my name. the name is so insane. I've attached proof three out of five stars praise book jangles. Wow. Well, thank you for the the proof with the pic. Yes Sure enough legal name Richard swallow dick swallow What the fuck are your parents thinking when they name you dick swallow? Are Are they pranksters, idiots, mean-spirited?

What a world. Now a shout out from a survivor sack. Kim Vincent, who writes, hi Dan, I was hoping to get a shout out to my olive oil-so-hot father Daddy Greg, wait, ew, or we could call him my amazing partner of 13 years and the father of our children, seven and 11 years old. He turned 40 on August 16th, so happy belated birthday. August is incidentally our anniversary month because we don't remember our actual anniversary date. What's my anniversary month too? By the, I do know, minds of 13s.

Not trying to be upstage you. We've been scared of death and times like fans for a couple of years, thank you. We missed the first summer camp. So in the summer camp tickets for this year went on sale. I knew that would be the perfect, if a little belated birthday bash. So yeah, we got our tickets. We got excited.

Told everyone in voila, the perfect gift. Anywho, cut to May of this year and I find a lump in my breast. What is big deal? It turned out to be breast cancer. I'm 36. What's the food, right? Well, cut to now and I'm getting dose dense. Chemotherapy and immunotherapy, and I gotta tell you, it's not cute.

Not three out of five stars, do not recommend. But I do it anyways because 36 is too young to beef it, gosh dang. Because my treatment will be occurring well in the late October, we were forced to cancel camp. It was a huge bummer to both of us. Birthday and anniversary plans destroyed, like an ass in front of Albert Fish that fucking well played there. The amount of times we say that's how they do it in Hollywood and showbiz is innumerable. But a giant reason I get out of bed every morning and live my life is

because of Greg. His optimism always pulls me through my dark moments and he has stepped up to the plate by children a lot of my responsibilities around the house. Our families especially my parents are of tremendous help as well. But having my other half always there for me means more than he'll ever know. He still is my bald-headed ass, and I am just as in love with him as ever. If you could please show him some love for his birthday,

I know it would mean the world to him. Sorry, I'm just a late entry. I know you're recording advance. Can I pull the cancer card and say it was chemo brain? I can say that, and I'll be an asshole, right? By the way, laughter is the best medicine and you can't cry about it so you might as well laugh, right? Anyways, thanks for the content you put out.

It's always thought provoking and entertaining and a weird ass escape for Greg and I. Stay wild, cool and interesting, Kim. Kim, you fucking champion. You keep fighting for yourself and for Greg. Load the Greg. Aim the Greg, fire the Greg. Greg, I hear eating pussy strengthens immune systems.

So get to lick it, you son of a bitch. Like Kim's health meter, like, lick Kim's health meter back to honor for said, it'll work, it'll work, I'm a doctor. I went to a really good medical school in my imagination and got an invisible certificate and everything, I was a valedictorian. But seriously, keep supporting,

keep loving one another, keep fighting, fight like fucking fighting man, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, take that melee sort, cut that cancer in half. Yeah, Nimrod and Lucifer and Bojangles, they are all pouring their strength into Kim. Triple M is going to be there to sing you to you, Kim, about your remission. I love your spirits. And, uh, yes, stay strong, you two. Southern Bell and knowledge share now, Flossy Apple sent in the following. Dear Suck Master, I know you didn't mean any disrespect, but oh my God, Emmett's mother was Mamie.

Pronounced Mamie, you kept pronouncing your name like Mamie. A Mamie was a slave used as a surrogate mother for white kids, Yikes. Also, my Mamie is an old Al Jolson song that he famously performed in Blackface makeup, double yikes. Again, I know you didn't mean any disrespect, but when I heard you calling Mami, Mami, I gasped, I think I'm still cringey. It's a small mistake, compared to the good you are doing by bringing attention to the incredible and tragic story of Emmett Till's murder and its role in the civil rights movement. I suppose it's possible to name Mami is not that common in other parts of the country, but it's well known as an old fashioned name in the deep South.

Please make the pronunciation correction in a future episode. It would be appreciated. Well, thank you, Flossy. Yeah, that term not even remotely fucking common. On the Pacific Northwest, to my memory, I have literally never heard it before my life, like a Mamie. That is the eternal struggle with episodes when it comes to, you know, no one finding out what I don't know. Thinking I know something and not knowing it. You know, I didn't know either one of those negative associations for whatever reason.

I just, I don't know, thought I had the name down and I looked at it. Now I know it's Mamie. I do like the sound of that as a name, forget any connotations. I like that just as a sound, better than what I was saying. I appreciate you understanding

that I did mean no disrespect. I like the way you brought it to my attention. You know, with the time-stack, there's no writers room. There's one researcher alone doing preliminary research. Then they email the research to me, we put in the drop-box. Then I also alone work out my own research on the computer, react to a room naturally, gonna react to the story,

try and add some character mythology as it hits me, throw in some silly jokes, misdirects, fake ads, whatever, then record. The whole research process is pretty silent. I do look up a ton of words for pronunciations, download any script from the time I happen, you will see that, but sometimes you know you think you have a word and you don't, and that's all it is. So, rest in peace, maybe you are more than a mother, you are a fucking warrior who turned an immense amount of grief into an intense lesson in empathy for the rest of us, Hail Nimra. And now, Royal Genealogy fact checker, Catherine Cole,

has a fact that needed checked, made my head spin for a while. Uh, Catherine writes, hello, Grand Suck Master. My husband and I are a big fan of the Time Suck podcast. We have seen you in concert twice, enjoy your content. Thank you. As we're listening to the most recent Time Suck episode, I'm not a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a fan of the fact that I'm a She had four kids, Francis, Eleanor, Henry, and Lord Henry. After blood of Mary, Mary Tudor, croaked of suspected tuberculosis, Elizabeth Tudor became queen. When it was time for Elizabeth to pass on the throne, she chose James I as she did not have children of her own.

James I was the son of Mary, steward, queen of Scots, a Catholic queen that was Elizabeth's cousin. Mary was imprisoned in England for alleged attempted murder. For the small price of his mother's head, James became the successor to Queen Elizabeth. The same James from the King James Bible. Mary, Queen of Scots, be headed during the end of the Elizabethan era,

James first became King. My husband said this customary for the author of these emails to use profanity and their submissions. My mom raised me better than that. However, my husband's mom did not, and so he says to go fuck yourself. Sorry for the long message. 3.25, 3.25 out of 5 stars.

Thank you for reading my message, Catherine Cole. Well, thank you, Catherine. Holy shit, I had to pull the fucking notes out for Shakespeare and really took me on to figure out what the hell I did. And you know what, the whole confusion, and I got a couple of the emails, all based on the addition of one fucking word. I had my genealogy correct except when I said the King James was the son of Bloody Mary.

I should have said Mary, which was what originally was in my notes, but I just added the word bloody because I like the sound of the word fucking bloody Mary. And I didn't know that when I'm putting this together, there was a Bloody Mary who lived 30 years apart from Mary, Queen of Scots. So my bad, also fucking royals. They keep sharing the same goddamn names over and over and over. And that doesn't mix well with a guy who likes

to add nicknames to everybody. So yeah, sorry for the confusion, other than my bloody addition, I think the rest of it was correct. I do strive for accuracy, and I do appreciate it when you intelligent listeners set the record straight. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did.

Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scared to death, time suck each week, the secret suck for space lizards. Please don't try and stick the IRS on your political enemies this week and definitely don't put LSD on anyone's steering wheel Because you just don't like their you know ideology. Just take curious keep learning keep sharing what you learn and keep on sucking Unmogic productions. Let me just say this, when I want to say this to the televised audience. I made my mistakes, but in all my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. And in all my years of public service, I have never obstructed justice.

And I think too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination. Because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got. Well, I'm joking. I have kind of a crook. But you know what?

Who isn't? You think you're better than me? Go fuck yourself, you hippie scum pot head drug addict. I've got. My old drink hey, I have kind of a crook, but you know what? Who isn't? You think you're better than me? Go fuck yourself, you hippie scum pothead drug addict.