Part Two: John Schmitz: The First Trump

Our tale of Orange County bastardry reaches it's apex in John Schmitz, the conspiracy maniac who ran against Nixon from the Right and blazed the trail that led us to Donald Trump

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media that sound Listeners was me opening a bottle
of my very favorite productivity beverage, club Mate, which you
can get now in the US in some places. It's
it's effectively a Yerba Mate soda that I started drinking
in Berlin because you get dehydrated when you're doing ketamine

(00:25):
and then eventually you get tired when you're at one
of those like underground sex clubs that's open for four
days in a row. And club Mate it's really really
really hits the spot.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I like how they let you in the club and
not Elon Musk Robert.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, because I didn't. I didn't bring my phone, you know,
right right let me in.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
You weren't wearing a dumb ass Zoro mask, they were, Yeah,
yeah you had.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
I can be separated from Twitter occasionally. Yeah. Now, speaking
of guys who are not allowed in German sex clubs,
John George Schmidt, it's uh that is the best too.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Whenever we go out, the people below way shout they go.
John George Smith is a piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
La la la la. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's pro.
He's got to be related to John Jacob Jingleheimer. You know,
they both have the Schmitz at the end, more or
less so. Our John Schmitz was born on August twelfth,
nineteen thirty, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the very mouth of
Hell itself. Now, there are unfortunately few details that I
ran into on his very early life. His mother was

(01:33):
named Wilhelmina, which is a red flag right that name
in nineteen thirty. That name means I love Kaiservillehelm or
at least my parents did. And his father was Jacob John.
There you go, there he does basically between them and
his dead Jacob John Schmitz. You're okay, no, no, that's him, baby.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Where's the jingle Heeimer? Or was that just like a
like a sort of unknown s s officer.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Look, nineteen thirty, you still did get some people who
were anti German racists. I would not be surprised if
Jingleheimer was a slur, like specifically, really it's like sausage eater. Yeah, totally, totally,
totally schnitzelheads. Yeah. They were devout Catholics. John would remain
a devout Catholic his entire life. And again we don't
know nearly as much about his childhood, but his family

(02:21):
seemed to have been comfortable middle class or upper middle class.
There's some hints that he may have had a degree
of family money, but it is unclear whatever it was,
either it wasn't that much, or his parents still wanted
him working a job, and he did have a job
as a young man, scrubbing out vats of beer. That
will be relevant for a very stupid reason. Later his
family was again comfortable enough that he's able to go

(02:42):
straight from high school into college, where he received a
BS at Marquette University in nineteen fifty two and subsequently
joined the US Marine Corps. He qualified initially as a
jet fighter pilot and then as a helicopter pilot. From
what I can see, he didn't do any combat tours.
He was instead stationed in North Carolina and then Japan,
flying F two H four Banshees and F nine F

(03:05):
eight cougars. Part of why I think he doesn't actually
get sent anywhere because obviously the US during the time
he's in the military is in Korea, and then kind
of while he is still in the military, we start
being in Vietnam. But he is in the Marines and
he is part of like kind of an experimental Marine airwing.
The Marines really hadn't had like that previously to the

(03:28):
same extent that they did at least with jet fighters,
and so his unit is not sent anywhere because they're
still trying to figure out if like that's a thing
that they think will work for the Marine Corps. His
career is then of little note but for one fact,
which is that after he retires from active duty in
nineteen sixty and transitions to being a reserve officer, he
volunteers to teach a class on communism for the Fleet

(03:50):
Marine Force Pacific Leadership School, which is based at the
El Toro Marine Corps Base. And the El Toro Marine
Corps base is in you guessed it, or County, California. Now.
Doing this series of anti communism lectures seems to have
basically been an excuse for Schmidz to rant about Communist
plots to conquer the world and how piece is impossible

(04:12):
with the Soviet Union in China to an audience of
young men who then went over to Vietnam and did
the kind of things that you did in Vietnam, most
of which you're not very nice. His lesson plan seems
to have been deeply inspired by Frederick Schwartz's. Again a
lot of Schwarzy names flying around here, very frustrating, but
Frederic Schwartz's anti communism school. And so given the mood

(04:36):
at the time, the fact that this dude is doing
basically the version of this big public anti communism school
that the Knotsbury Farm guy is funding, and that this
Australian fascist is doing the lesson planned for the fact
that John Schmidz is like doing a class on communism
for the military, it makes him fit in really well

(04:57):
with this whole whole fucking zeitgeist, right.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Leaving active duty in nineteen sixty, he became a history
and philosophy professor at Santa Ana College. He quickly became
a fixture in the arch conservative Orange County political scene.
He joined the John Birch Society. He also attracted the
attention of local far right businessman, including Carl Karcher, the
founder and namesake of the Carl's Junior fast food Empire.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Everything truly, everything.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Really really a remarkable set of things there, right, not
very far I love the both very Farm and Carl's
Junior are funding the fascist movement.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, seriously, what else? Like like the giraffe from toys.
R us is just is a fucking oh like.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Oh he he he. He actually is in Leavenworth still
for crimes he committed during the Vietnam War. Jeoffrey went
went went too far for even yeah, for even even
the army in that period. That's right, Yeah, Geoffrey. Geoffrey
is the name of the giraffe. Has been just a
mountain of blood behind him.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, he had the Melai massacre was his idea.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
He invented the concept of saturation bombing. That was him.
Geoffrey the giraffe.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
He's made of agent orange like what other loved it.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
They got it from glands in his skin and folio
aided the jungle. If only I could blame a giraffe
for all of our country's worst crimes. Alas so we'll
blame the Schmidt's. You know. He gets out of the military,
he becomes a history and philosophy professor at Santa Ana College,
and he quickly becomes a fixture in this political scene. Right,

(06:40):
and he's working with the Carl's junior guy, with the
nots Berry farm guy. He had married while he was
still in the Marine Corps to a significantly younger woman.
I'm not sure exactly. But one newspaper I found from
when he was like in his forties described her as
youthfully pretty in contrast to him. So I'm gonna guess
a decent bit younger Mary is just as conservative as

(07:02):
her husband and almost as hungry for power. But I'm
getting ahead of myself here. So in nineteen sixty two, right,
the family Schmidts get their first daughter, a young girl
named Mary Kay. And we will be talking about who
Mary Kay Schmitz becomes a little bit later, because I
think it might surprise you, not that Mary Kay.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Not the call leader, not that Mary Kay.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
No, no, no, don't forget she exists though, because boy howdy,
it's going to really be a satisfying end to this series. Now.
The same year that Mary Kay is born, her father
would carry out an act of probable heroism that helped
make him into a local celebrity. He was leaving the
Marine Corps base one day after a long day of
screaming about communism to teenagers when he encountered a man

(07:48):
stabbing a woman by the roadside. Quote. With nothing more
than the sheer authority of his voice. According to the
La Times, Schmids disarmed the assailant. Right, So the story
is he finds this man stabbing a woman and he
yells at him, and that his voice is so commanding
that it disarms this guy. Now, that is I think

(08:10):
literally what happened in that this guy Schmid's yells at
this guy and he stops the attack. I think that
the casual descriptions these sources get tend to minimize a
crucial detail. And I want to make it very clear
that that details that the woman dies. Right. This is
not a case where he saves a life by stopping
an attack. This is a case where a man stabs
a woman to death, probably in a fit of rage,

(08:32):
and then someone yells at him and he realizes what
he's done and he stops. Right, He doesn't. He doesn't
commit a spree killing, because most killers aren't spree killers.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
He murders this woman for some specific reason, and then
someone yells at him and he realizes, Oh my god,
what have I done? Right, He says, Hey, don't stab
that lady.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
He knock it off.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Knock it off, Hey, knock it off. You you crazy kids.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Hey that's enough, She's not enough. You did it again.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
I'm not saying he didn't do anything bad, but like
you should. In fact, if you see someone getting in
stabbed at least yell at the stabber.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Sure you know at least you can do.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
But it's framed us like he disarmed this man, and
I really don't think that's exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
They didn't talk about the thirty seconds he spent watching
it happen and then was like, all right.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Buddy tweaking his nipples. Yeah. Well, it's also the thing
that's really weird because I will I'll shit on him
for everything, but this isn't a bad thing. But the
way the news describes it, they always talk about how
cool it is that he disarms this guy with his
voice and then just casually announced, oh, yeah, the lady died,
Like the La Times just summarizes it this way. Although

(09:41):
the woman died, Schmid's his reputation as a hero was
made just like, yeah, she died, but what a cool
thing this guy got to do. Very funny. I love
that all of the newspapers write at the same way.
It's just as afterthought. I find that darkly interesting.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
That is funny. It is it's it's so unremarkable that
like it only is remarkable. If she lives, it's not remarkable.
If she dies, is everyone we get that right?

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Stop something? Yeah? Yeah? Or if he's like stabbed multiple people,
and then you could genuinely say, yeah, maybe he somehow
stopped more people from getting stabbed. But I'm seeing here
as she came upon the end of a murder.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
You witnessed the very end of a murder. But I think,
if I can put my conspiracy hat on, I think
what's happening here is that, like Schmitz is a pr
savvy guy. He has a degree of charisma, He knows
how to spin things, and as soon as he realizes
what's happened here, like this is too good a story
to waste, I can really make this work for me.
And by nineteen sixty four, Schmitz had become one of

(10:44):
Orange County's leading political lights. He is still working as
a professor of philosophy and political science at Santa Ana University,
and he's already he's become very active in the John
Birch Society. His support for the Carl's Junior Guy and
several other wealthy conservatives ensured that he had enough donation
to run his campaign. So Schmidts, who regularly joked that
he joined the John Birch Society to get moderates to

(11:06):
vote for him, comes out blazing in this like local
state Congress election with a raft of absolutely bug fuck
policy proposals. He wants to ban sex set in public schools.
He wants to encourage citizens to carry loaded handguns in
their cars, which the corollary to that is he wants
citizens to leave loaded handguns in their cars whenever they

(11:29):
leave their cars. He wants to sell all California state
universities to private corporations so they can use violence to
crack down on student protests against Vietnam. That's why he
wants to privatize colleges so that the corporation can use
security guards to beat up students. This all occurred during
a very special time for the United States when the

(11:49):
most prominent Republican is again Barry Goldwater. Barry is such
for an idea of how freaked out people are about
what a fascist this guy is when Goldwater is running
like is in this campaign. This is lbj's re election campaign, right,
gold Well not reelection because he was never elected the
first time. But you get what I'm saying right. LBJ
has been president a little while since the Kennedy assassination.

(12:11):
He's running to continue to get to be president, and
Fidel Castro sends a private letter to LBJ basically saying, hey, man,
I really want you to win reelection. If you need
to bomb us a little bit right so you can
brush up your anti communist credentials for the election, I
get it. You just give me a heads up before
you fuck with us, and I won't respond like I

(12:34):
love you, bro, like good luck. That's it is because
like Castro is a rational actor. He's like, yeah, man,
Goldwater my fucking nucas, Like he's this guy might actually
be crazy. Like Goldwater is the namesake for what's called
the Goldwater Rule, which is this rule where if you're
a mental health professional, you cannot diagnose a presidential candidate

(12:55):
that like you know, isn't coming to you for medical
help or whatever. Because there were so many people in
media being like Goldwater may actually be insane. Like that's
how crazy we think his policies are, and he is.
It's also worth noting Goldwater a big reason people think
he's crazy is that he is one of these guys
like Henry Kissinger, who thinks low yield nukes should be

(13:15):
used tactically in battlefield situations, like we need we need
to win this battle in Vietnam. We should drop a
little nuke on him.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
So Goldwater's rule is you can't diagnose someone running even
if you're should not absolutely saying insane shit.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, you should not use that to diagnose someone with
a mental health.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Condition someone else or this candidate, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
This candidate. Like basically, if someone's running for election, you
shouldn't say if you haven't like worked on them or whatever,
and can't. You shouldn't be like, this person has this
mental illness.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Right, So we can't say Trump, yeah, as a sociopathic
narcissist because we don't know clinic Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Is yeah, yeah, you're not gonna get. You're not gonna get.
A psychologist should say that, right, that's the Goldwater rule.
It's fine for regular people to say, I think that
guy's a fucking psychopath. Right, I think we've gone Yeah,
that's probably good.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, yeah, we might have jumped the sharkody. So I
feel like this a few people.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, I know it's always debatable, but it tells you
how crazy people think. Goldwater is. Right, you have a
whole rule about not declaring presidential candidates crazy because of
how crazy everyone fact this guy was. Now. Another big
thing that Goldwater is a proponent of, and this is
a less controversial thing than the nukes, is the idea
that positive change for people who aren't white men means

(14:33):
that society is in collapse. Right, Goldwater opposes the Civil
Rights Act, as does John Schmidz and the rest of
Orange County. And this is the beginning of a new era,
one in which you can't be as racist.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
You can't say I don't want the Civil Rights Act
because I hate black people.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Instead, you have to say, I love everybody, but my
property rights are more important than that right. And if
you're saying we have to integrate the school like private school,
so you're saying private schools can't be whites only, that's
bad for property rights. Or if you're saying I have
to serve black people at my restaurant, that's a violation
of property rights. And so I don't oppose the Civil
Rights Act because I'm racist. I oppose it because it's

(15:14):
a violation of property rights. And that's the most important
thing in the world. Yeah, this all comes down to
like fair housing, right.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yes, exactly, and schooling and their education yep, access. I mean,
but again it's sort of what's running cover for what
Your libertarianism running cover for your racism, and then your
religion running cover for all of it, like just like
blanketing the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, And this kind of comes to a head in
California politics in nineteen sixty four because there's this proposition
backed by the California Real Estate Association to rescind the
Rumford Act, which is a state law that makes it
illegal to discriminate housing based on race, right, And the

(15:59):
proposition to like say no, we want to be able
to be racist in who we let buy houses places
is obviously like Orange County had kept black people out
for a long time by doing shit like that. So
the mobilization for Prop. Fourteen to let people discriminate when
they sell houses and shit, that's hugely centered around Orange County.
And I'm going to quote from the book Suburban Warriors here. Indeed,

(16:23):
one activist Tom Rogers of San Juan Capistrano, who served
as the campaign finance manager for John Schmitz's state Senate
run in nineteen sixty four, and who shortly afterwards served
as co editor of that Catholic traditionalist paper, The Wanderer,
asserted years later that for him and many others, Proposition
fourteen was what the movement was all about. Goldwater's frequent
references of freedom of association, his belief that prejudice is

(16:44):
the immoral issue that cannot be legislated, and his strong
advocacy of property rights placed him firmly on the side
of those opposing the Rumford Act. Moreover, Goldwater's determination to
fight lawlessness, his references to rising crime rates, and his
linkage of crime to lawlessness of other sorts a reference
to the civil rights and students movements, appealed to the
white middle classes in Orange County. So Goldwater does not

(17:07):
succeed in his dream of becoming the president. But Schmidtz
does get elected to the California State Senate representing Orange County,
and he is the first member of the John Birch
Society to make it into local California politics. He immediately
gets to work being the loudest, craziest asshole in the Capitol.
The first full year that he served, nineteen sixty five,

(17:29):
is the year of the Watts riots. Now, if you
know anything about anything, you know that this becomes like
a massive political issue for the right in California. His
attitude is not, well, this was a response to generations
of abuse by the local government and by the police.
This was a communist operation. He's so incensed that he

(17:51):
sponsors a bill to investigate the backgrounds of every public
school teacher in the state for communist affiliations. Like his
response to the Watts riots is we need to have
build a CIA basically to go after school teachers and
make sure they're not communists. That's clearly what this case is.
John develops. Yeah, he is just a maniac. Now, what's interesting,

(18:12):
We've been talking a lot about how Reagan is such
an important development for like the far right getting increasingly
into legitimate conservative politics in this country. John Schmiz hates Reagan,
so do a lot of Birchers, because they see Reagan
as a compromiser right, and a compromiser is the same
as a communist sympathizer. Schmidz is the only Republican Senate

(18:36):
member who votes down Governor Reagan's nineteen sixty seven tax program,
and his issue is that as much as they'd cut
taxes are still too high, and I'm going to quote
next from an article on cafe dot com by David Kerlander.
Over the next three years, Schmiz took many, often lonely,
far right stands. He argued for eliminating state income taxes altogether.
He sponsored a bill to repeal fair housing laws. He

(18:58):
argued that there should be no sex at you education
in public schools. He led an successful effort to censure
University of California, Berkeley for allowing black panther leader Eldridge
Cleaver to speak on campus. He fiercely spoke out against
abortion in women's rights. He also continued to buck fellow
conservative leaders. Schmids declined to endorse a presidential candidate in
nineteen sixty eight, telling the press, George Wallace is too

(19:21):
moderate for me. Hubert Humphrey is taking a dive, and
if I endorsed Richard Nixon, he might repudiate it the
next day. Like again, George Wallace is like the guy
who became famous for loving segregation as a governor of Alabama.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
But that's what they want, I mean, that's effectively what
this sounds like.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
They can't They've never gotten over it. And here's what
I've realized. Now we're in part two, could we say,
as a native Californian myself, I mean not like you know,
native to the land, but someone who's born and raised
in California obviously nor cal for life, but that these
are a kind of transplants that ultimately the OC is
a blight, is an anomaly, that it's not really California.

(20:02):
They're all from somewhere else. It's it can me disign
the OC, is what I want to know.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
I feel like you can't, because I think a crucial
aspect of Californian culture, at least over the last going
back two hundred years or so, is the gold Rush mentality. Yeah,
the idea that the culture in this area, and this
is big thing in North cal too, right, it's a
big part of northern California San Francisco culture is like

(20:29):
a bunch of the people who live here now are
descendants of folks who rushed here to try to grab
a bunch of money from a social phenomenon that had
a ticking time frame to it, right, right, These upper
middle class and rich people who fill out the OC,
and who are you know, these kind of fascist maniacs
running the defense industry. That's a gold rush. That is,

(20:49):
one day there's nothing, the next there's all the money
in the fucking world, and you get a sprint over
there as fast as you fucking can to pick it up.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Totally, It just depends on the industry. Like Silicon Valley
and the dot com.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Coon Valley is another gold rush, righty, same idea, same
cultural and so is the pod industry as a matter
of fact.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Right, Oh, I thought you said the pod like the
podcast No.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Well, yeah, I mean actually a little bit, right, that's
less geographically centered than weed or the tech industry, the
defense industry.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Gold yeah, true, true, a little bit less harm less harm.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
But it is. You know, California is a state of
like a lot of our culture is gold rushes, and
these people embody it right. Yes, it's not a pretty
part of Californian heritage, but it is. It is very
much part of it, I think. Yeah, although you know,
you don't need to jettison them as much because things
have gotten better. We'll see if it lasts, right, there's
there's always.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
We noticed a little bit in the beginning. Okay, so
two so not right wing enough for the Birchers and Schmidts.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
They hate Nixon. They don't like Reagan much better. They
do like him better than Nixon, but not a lot.
So Schmidz is he's one of these guys where he's
such a howling fascist, but the Republican Party in this
period is not nearly as inviting of that. So most
as much as he yells about the left and socialism,
all the people he really fights hard in his political

(22:09):
career are other Republicans, right, Like he is constantly going
to war with Republicans now. His wife Mary is really
interesting too, because she uses her husband's newfound power and notoriety,
the fact that he's gotten elected. He's making all these
waves as this just kind of arch Bircher in California Congress,
she becomes one of the first female far right media influencers.

(22:32):
Right she gets on local TV, she has Eventually she
gets like a permanent place on a TV show that's
like a politics roundtable. She is just like a frequently
wanted speaker. She gets speaking fees in things, going around
supporting different candidacies. If she were around today, she'd have
a podcast in a blue check Twitter account, and she
would make seven figures working at the Daily Wire. She

(22:53):
is the prototype for that kind of like woman in conservatism.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Her handle, like her bio would be like like mom
wife American flag cross, yeah, you know, and she'd have
like really nice arms, which is always the most annoying
thing about right wingers is they all have the same
trainer and they all have the like just sort of
strong arms, which I don't understand. And simultaneously cut it.

(23:23):
People know what I'm talking about. You guys know that
right wingers are terrible, but the women have great they
have their arms are great.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
Only spoken truth.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Right, And you're like, I don't know, you definitely can't
fight like they're not fighting.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Arms I'm thinking of I'm thinking of Ann Coulter. Yeah,
and what in Ann Coulter like the celebrity that I
would compare her to positively, I think this is actually
a compliment for her. Is Jack Skellington? Yes, no, no, no,
we should probably cut all of that.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Don't cut that. She would she would take it as
a as a w she she appreciates it.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
Well, we got our go to an ad real quick.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
We sure do, we sure do. Speaking of Jack Skellington,
he would want you to participate in capitalism well passed Christmas. Yes,
he doesn't actually like Christmas all that much, does he. Anyway, whatever,
here's ads ah and we're back. So Mary schmidtz is

(24:25):
to give you an idea of like how people view
her in the conservative movement. Her nickname is the Phylish
Schlaffley of the West. So this family, they're just bad. Yeah,
that's horrible. Oh god, two real powerful right wing ghules. Yeah,
oh lord, very soon these people, you know, there's state
level figures right now, but very soon they're going to

(24:47):
be in the halls of real power throughout this whole
time mid sixties and stuff. The Senate representative for the
district that John and Mary live in for for you know,
the district that covers Orange County, is this lunatic right
wing hero named James b Utt, which yes, does look
like James, but when you type it all out, that
is that is the man's name. It is ut with

(25:09):
two t's. I know, I know, like that's like a
joke you would see some dude with a comic make
on Twitter. Yeah no, no, it's his real fucking name,
that is real.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
No, it's b uh James b You know what when
your name is James, b utt. You keep the bee
because you want people to think it's butt like you.
You relish the buttons because you're you want to be
a little you want to be an ass.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Clearly, yeah what you know what you're going to become,
so James. But his pet theory is that quote a
large contingent of barefooted Africans had been snuck into the
United States by the United Nations, which is a communist
organization from takeover the country. And that's where the Watts
riots were. Not a black people born and raised in

(25:53):
the United States. They were Africans snuck into southern California
by the United Nations to it destroyed the United States.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
But this is the same shit. This is the same
shit we talk about now, right, and it generally is
like the Jews have done this, but it's right. It's
like sneaking. They sneak in the elites, sneak in migrants
to rile up the blacks until they want their rights.
You know, they're fine with black people as long as
they're in their place, as long as they're happily in

(26:23):
ghettos and prevented from you know, owning homes anywhere near
Orange County of course. Yeah, but yeah, it's the same shit.
My god, it's the same shit. And it's crazy how
like they don't see how much they recycle this stuff.
And I think mister Butt should get more credit.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, no's that's what we all feel about mister b Utt.
So Ud was the son of a rancher. He'd won
his seat representing Orange County by attacking his opponent for
preaching the gospel of socialism. He believed that the music
of the Beatles had inflicted artificial neuroses on young people
and given them brain damage. He was I will say this.
He was occasionally on the right side of issues, always

(27:00):
for the wrong reasons. He opposed the annexation of Hawaii,
not on any kind of anti colonial grounds, because the
islands had too many non white people and they would
inevitably breed with white people. That yeah, he is in
his kill them all.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
No, I don't want it.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, then I don't want to admit here. When his
grandson decided to oppose the Vietnam War, Ut said that
he would have rather seen the boy die overseas. Oh,
he is just a giant piece of shit. This is
the Congressional the National Congressional representative for like the district
that Schmidz lives in. Yeah, and he's he's just just

(27:40):
a real bad guy, but extremely popular. He wins an
Orange County by a two to one majority. Utt is
one of the few men in politics who is extreme
enough for John Schmitz's tastes. He's basically the only dude
who could hold that office and be sure John would
not run against him. But then in nineteen seventy, tragedy struck.
James b Utt died to complications from being a huge

(28:01):
piece of shit. In literal terms, he has a heart
attack in church, which you might read as God's striking
him down if you're inclined to that sort of thing.
But while one lass dead Butt is generally good, it
also created opportunity for John Schmitz. Schmidz runs for the
former representative seat and wins. Now his camp the slogan

(28:23):
that he uses to like, win this special election, it's
impenetrable today. It's when you're out of Schmidz. You're out
of gear. That doesn't mean anything to you, does it?

Speaker 2 (28:32):
What is it?

Speaker 1 (28:34):
No? Well, it's because he works at the cleaning out
beer steins in a beer company, and there was like
I think the slogan was when you're out of Schlitz,
you're out of beer, like for some Milwaukee beer. But
like he he takes this slogan that's very much this
like Milwaukee area beer slogan and he repurposes it for

(28:56):
a campaign in southern California. I don't know how this worked.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
And the rule of puns it does not work.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Such a weird idea.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
You can only change one side of the pun. It
can't be both. It can't be when you're out of
Schmidz you're out of gear. When it's if you're out
of Schlitz, you're out of beer. You got to keep
Schlitz or beer in there.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, yeah. Otherwise it's just it's just nuts.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
No one knows what you're talking.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
But he wins the special election. It works. So now
this fucking guy is in DC and is a full
on ass congressman. He moves his wife and family to
the Capitol and he gets to work extending his unique
brand of god awful politics nationwide. His biggest enemy in
government again is not some leftist but his actually Richard M. Nixon,
who schmid saw you guessed it as basically a COMMI

(29:44):
sleeper agent from that article in Cafe dot Com. Matters
were made more tense given that he was President Nixon's
congressman representing the Orange County district containing San Clemente. Schmitz
was particularly critical of Nixon's rapprochma with China, telling the press,
I have no objection to Richard Nixon going to China.
I just object to him coming back, which is actually

(30:04):
pretty good. That's not bad. Schmid's vocally backed Ashbrooks attempt
to primary Nixon in nineteen seventy two, and so this
is something that pisses off Richard Nixon. Schmids has made
it his business to become a thorn in his side,
and he starts to expand in this period of time
outside of harboring these kind of economic grievances and even

(30:26):
grievances against like, you know, communist states, to this more
sort of esoteric conspiracy theory conservatism. In nineteen seventy one,
he writes an introduction to Gary Allen and Larry Abraham's
None Dare Call It Conspiracy the book, which was in
hugely This is influential. This is like the center of
Alex Jones's ideology today. The book argued that Eastern American elites,

(30:48):
particularly the Jews therein, were funding global communism. Alan proclaimed,
among other things, that Chase Manhattan Bank president David Rockefeller
had personally fired Soviet Premier in Dakita Khrushchev in nineteen
sixty four. Jesus, you know the Chase Bank guy has
has has the fireda codes for hacking the Soviet Union.

(31:12):
Who could be more influential in Soviet politics than the
head of Chase Manhattan Bank. Oh my god, it is
so funny.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Again, I mean, who is the head of Chase Manhattan Bank?
Was it a Jew? Again? With these like broad like
anti Semitic thing like just like the history of this,
It's just like and the like superpowers that racists and bigots,
anti Semites apply to Jews is just wild.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, it really is.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Then he hacked into that, I mean again, and it's
just the Jewish space laser. Marjorie Green, the Rothschild, the
same shit, same shit.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Absolutely. Now, if you know anything about Dick Nixon, and
I know an unfortunate amount about the man, you do
you know that his chief personality trait was that he
could not let go of a grudge, right, that is
the main thing that defines Richard Nixon. If he is
angry at you once, he is angry at you for
all time. Now Nixon again, he remembers his fucking enemies.

(32:07):
And so in nineteen seventy two, Schmids has just finished
backing an attempt to primary Nixon. He's been yelling at
him the whole time, two years he's been in Congress.
Tricky Dick is like, well, this guy's up free election.
I'm not gonna let that son of a bitch fuck
with me anymore. He turns his petty manchild laser on
John Schmitz and he blasts his career at national politics
to smithereens. John loses the primary nomination to a tax assessor,

(32:31):
which is basically I kind of wonder if Nixon did
that on purpose, because there's no one worse you can
lose to as a libertar an a tax assessor.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
I'm happy about this. Yeah, fuck this guy. I mean yeah,
I mean like Nixon, but no, but you know.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
No, no, no, but I respect Nixon's ability to both
be petty and wheeled power effectively enough to squash this
motherfucker like a bug. Right, Yes, you just have to
take some satisfaction in it, like absolutely Nixon beat everybody else,
but at least this son of a bitch didn't get
a fucking like hand up on it.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
That's the other thing is that I feel like the
right now is like, oh god, maybe I should cater
more to the John Birch society, or maybe I should
cater more to the far right, or maybe I should
change up my tune. And it's like, eh, you know,
it takes a certain sob to be like, no, fuck you,
I'm the president, I'm doing what I want, and yeah,
I'm gonna kill your career there you go, Like, I

(33:29):
don't know. I respect that. I respect that more than
I respect someone who's like just gonna be yeah, cajoled
by the most extremeist elements of their own party and
literally stands up for nothing and cannot lead. And I'm
not even talking Trump. I think just broadly the Republican
Party what it's become.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least Nixon there was this like
animal cunning at work with the man. You had to
at least respect in the same way you respect a
tiger in the woods, you know, as opposed to just
like a horde of of fucking hovelina that have gotten
drunk on prairie wine, which is how I feel today.
So Schmitz was adamant that this was all a conspiracy.

(34:09):
You know, when he loses his reelection and Nixon had
flexed his influence and done it specifically to embarrass Schmitz,
and that is probably what happened, right, Schmitz is like
the president had his henchman come out and get me.
And honestly, this is the one conspiracy Schmitz believed in
that like, oh yeah, there is no world in which
Dick Nixon did not destroy this man for hitting him
from the right. That is totally in character for Richard.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Nixon, and you would have done the same.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
So now the thing here, this is really a case
of you've got Schmitz fucks with Nixon. Nixon being a
petty bitch, like destroys his chance at getting re elected.
And then but the thing is, like Schmitz is also
extremely petty. So when Nixon knuped his hopes of staying
in Congress, John Schmitz starts scheming. Fate presents him with
an opportunity in the form of a bullet which an

(34:57):
assassin fired in the body of George Waller, the segregation governor.
Wallace is badly hurt and he has to drop out
as a presidential candidate for the American Party. Now, I
know what you're saying, Francesca. The American Party isn't a thing,
but it was, it did used to be. Yeah, yeah,
this is now deep political lore here for the country.

(35:20):
But it was a third party that was formed entirely
to support the ambitions of George Wallace. Right, Like, if
the fact that Goldwater isn't just saying slurs on stage
doesn't means you don't trust Goldwater, and if the fact
that Nixon isn't completely out of his mind means you
won't vote for Nixon, the American Party has got your back, right,
thank god, we love you.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Just a little slur, only a bit of.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Slurs, Yeah, more than a bit. This is George Wallace.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
So now Wallace is to the right of Goldwater, even
to the.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right, I don't know, even to the right. Like they're
just kind of saying he's just cruder, right, I think
is probably a better way. He is more. I don't
think Goldwater like he is more directly motivated by racism.
But they are both. They're both of their campaigns are
pretty race baby, right y, yeah, yeah. And the American
and this is you know Goldwater, I think is sixty four,
This is sixty eight. And in the sixty eight well,

(36:11):
the sixty eight election is when the American Party runs
for the first time and it does really well. They
get ten million votes in the nineteen sixty eight election, right,
And that's that. This is it comes to something it's
kind of relevant today, which is that you know, we're
starting twenty twenty four, which is this presidential race is
going to be the first race in a very long
time where a third party candidate seems likely to win

(36:33):
a lot of votes, right, talking about RFK, the Kennedy
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, the new Kennedy that we got
up in politics. He's going to get only enough like
certainly not enough to win the presidency, but more like
he is polling better than a third party candidate has
in a time like since I've been you know, aware
of politics, right, that's.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yes, yeah, I don't know. I think we're going to
find his vax card at some point, he's got a
vax card. Possible, it's all going to be over.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, anything could happen. It's January, as you know. But
I it is like at the moment right now, he
is more a bigger factor in the election than a
third party has been in quite a bit, right sure,
But I'm bringing this up because I want to talk
about how significant the American Party was for a brief
period of time. They get ten million votes in the
sixty eight election. Today, the Libertarian Party in the US

(37:24):
has seven hundred and thirty two thousand registered voters. The
Green Party and Constitution Party together are another three hundred
and fifty thousand. Right, Ross Perot got about twenty million
votes in nineteen ninety two, but he was a billionaire
and he had the money to finance a sizeable campaign,
and the next election he barely he barely broke eight
million votes. So while this is American Party, it's not

(37:46):
going to win the election, but it can it can
spoil the election for a Republican ten million votes. That
kind of potential. Having done that in the previous election,
that's not something to scoff at, right, No, Yeah, so
you know, now that's interesting. So the American Party is
not this inconsiderable thing within US politics at the time,
not entirely, and any candidate who could perform at the

(38:09):
level Wallace had might be able to take away enough
votes from Nixon to assure his re election. Schmids wanted
to be that man, the fact that he might be
able to wrench the Republican Party for the because again,
you know, if you force Nixon out, right, if you
make him lose the election, then the fact that you
got that many votes might is going to convince a
lot of Republican leadership. Okay, we need to speak to
some of the issues that this guy has adopted. Right,

(38:31):
that's I think his assumption, right that I can wrench
this party to the right and I can hurt Nixon,
who I hate and who is a communist. Anyway, he
gets the nomination for the American Party at that party
convention that year, and he's you know, I'm actually going
to read a quote from that Cafe dot Com article
again about like how he kind of frames his campaign.

(38:51):
Schmidz continued to tie himself to conspiracy theories. He made
much use of his connection to none dare call it Conspiracy,
which by election season had blown up selling five million copies.
Gary Allen even came aboard the campaign, providing his mailing
lists accumulated from the book's success. He also suggested Arthur
Bremer Wallace's would be Assassin was part of a cadre
of killers, which also included Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earrolray,

(39:14):
and Sir Hans Siran, that was secretly funded and trained
by left wing groups like the Students for a Democratic Society.
Schmid summed up his basic presidential campaign pitch. I boiled
down our platform to a two plank platform. There's a
foreign plank that says, never go to war unless you
plan on winning, and a domestic plan that says those
that work ought to live better than those who don't, right,
which is both not politics and also real. Easy to

(39:37):
see why that spreads among a certain chunk of the country. Right, Oh, yeah,
so cool stuff. You know what else is cool?

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (39:44):
I know, it's cool.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Ads. Sure, the nice cool breeze of capitalism blowing down
our backs and we're back. How you feeling, Francesca about
all this republican ting.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, it's a lot of republican ing. I'm feeling overwhelmed
but fascinated by all of this. I wish we had
the countervailing force on the left to do shit like this,
but we don't. But I love Yeah, the evolution of
the rights thinking really hasn't evolved at all.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeah, I mean this is really the evolution of the
rights thinking, right, Like the evolution of the modern right
is so much where this guy was back then. But
the broader Republican Party adopts a lot of those attitudes
in part because Schmidt's it kind of cracks that wall
between Orange County and the rest of the country.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Right, well, because it's simultaneously it seems like Orange County
is it is just so isolated from the rest of
the country that is turning on things like the Vietnam War,
that is for things like not just integration, but like
civil rights exactly, like actual civil rights, and.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Certainly more so than oc is.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
And an awakening, and just more culturally, like there is
a backlash of course against like conservatism of your parents
and whatnot. There's like free speech movements, you know, like whatever,
you know, hippie movement, drug culture, whatnot. Like there's a
whole rejection of this bullshit, which is why Reaganism was
such a fucking blow. So was Nixonism, Nixonianism, so is Dixism.

(41:26):
But yeah, it it is is interesting to have schmids
come in here and get that many votes and then
also with such a simple play. I believe in money,
money number one, and white people, I mean private property.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah, money, but just for the people who are already
rich exactly, and bombing people who do not live here
like that's that's his plank. Right, It's a.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Perfect encapsulation of right wing isolationism, you know, which is
if you're gonna fight a war, make sure you win it,
which is the if you're gonna go to war in
the Middle East, take all the oil. Right. It's that
like it's voted as isolationists, but it's really not. It
really is as we talk about, like super pro war.
Just kill them all dead, deader than.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Dead, Yeah, kill them all, take their stuff.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Now for a running mate, he picks a guy named
Tom Anderson, who is a farm magazine publisher who was
far right, but also not the kind of guy who's
going to detract attention from the main show.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Mostually, I take pictures of cows. Cows lounging is livestock, yeah,
just looking.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
It's like a right wing livestock magazine. I think it's
an early homesteading magazine, right, and you're saying we need
to go back to the land to drop out of society.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
Because like, like a guy who takes pictures of cows.
I would that that sounds like a cool dude this
but that sucks.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, he got drawn into this mess.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yeah, yeah, poor guy.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
What a bomber.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
So his campaign manager is Dan Smoot, who's a former
FBI agent who's obsessed with the Council on Foreign Relations
and because this was fun in California, his finance director
is actor Walter Brennan, who had won three Best Supporting
Actor Oscars. So that's this guy's bench. Yeah, what a crew.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
They had better celebrities though, I feel like all the
celebrities you mentioned are like at least at least they
won Best Supporting.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, he seems to have been an actor. I don't know.
I can't recall anything he was in.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
But Gina Carano now or.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Fucking uh no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Tim Brewer, Jim Brewer, whatever the name is.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, it's Jim who cares what happens Jim. Yeah. So
the campaign was immediately aggressive, filled with wealthy, small business
owning middle aged men who were just desperate to get
to feel like they were like insurgent revolutionaries. One American
Party official told a journalist, this party is a distillation
of the John Birch Society, the Christian Crusade, and the Minutemen.

(43:53):
We're revolutionaries. We're getting together to try to work through
the system. But I'll say this, we'll have constitutional government
in this country, and if we don't get it through
a ballot box, we'll get it in the streets.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
That's what the constitution would want.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Again, that's very much that like J six attitude. Yeah,
it is.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
We're going to work through all of our daddy issues together.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
If we lose an election, we have the right to
kill people, right Like, That's what he's saying. And Schmids
knew that he had an uphill battle in getting elected, or,
more to the point, stopping Nixon from getting re elected.
His brand of paranoia utterly fantastical conservatism was not popular nationwide,
but he was tailor made for media sound bites, which
helped to keep him in the news. He told ABC,

(44:35):
the Nixon family motto is be sincere, whether you believe
it or not. He presaged both Donald Trump with his
meaner lines and the presidential campaign and personal brand of
Ronald Reagan with folksy right wing witticisms like this, do
you know why a newborn baby cries because he's naked,
he's hungry, and he already owes the government fifty nine
hundred dollars in taxes, Which is funny because like, well,

(44:56):
that baby already owes private corporation of dollars for being born,
because that's what it costs to be fucking born. And
this system you people insist on continuing to have for.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Us and Jesus for dying for its sins. According to them, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
In Cafe dot com, David Kordlander writes, quote, The Wall
Street Journal offered a piece entirely devoted to Schmidz's rhetorical flourishes,
entitled keep them Laughing as the motto as John Schmitz
runs for president. The piece even referred to Schmid's as
sort of the Bob Hope of the ultra right. Oh God,
what an unappealing series of words. His mix of jokes, conspiracies,

(45:34):
and righteous indignation at everything he deemed the political establishment
garnered decent returns. He managed to get himself on the
ballot in thirty two states, even as Wallace refused to
formally endorse him, and in the decades to come this
kind of style of far right populist conspiracy messaging. Really
the fact that he is marrying outright conspiracy theories to

(45:55):
an attempt at mainstream politics. This is now dominant, right,
This is the dominant for conservitism, and be honest, it's
not not dominant on the left as well, just in
a different direction. But like, conspiracism is so mainstream now.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
And we all get together in the Epstein conspiracy that's
where we meet. Yeah, that's the Serengetti for a little while,
and then we all go.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Then we decide we want to be angry at specific
people on that plane. Differently, Yeah, I do think we
should do a squid game for all of the people
in the Epstein books and to pretend whoever survives didn't
do anything wrong or.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Their children, you know, send their children there, sort of
like the Hunger Games, but for the rich.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
I do, like, I do think it'd be fun make
a lot of money as a TV show.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Oh yeah, I mean, God, don't get me started on
that TV show. And Netflix is awful, but I would
I love them, But I do want to hear what
Chompsky has to say, because he apparently was also as associate.
But no, more importantly, I want to hear what Kate
Blanchette has to say. I really actually want to hear
what she has to say, Like what the hell, my girl?

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Yeah, I want them all to have to say all what.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Yeah, I mean he did do Epstein did do a
lot of flights to like anything that would get famous
people on his plane, to like different galas and shit overseas.
But I don't know, maybe can't, I can't. I have
trouble imagining Cameron Diaz wanting to buy whatever he was selling.
But who knows, who knows.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
I think it's just like everyone who was famous in
the year two thousand and two.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
That is a lot of them, But a lot of
those people are also sex creates. It's a mix.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
This is it's a really it's a grab bag anyway,
we're getting off topic. But but but the conspiracy theory, yeah,
that wasn't It's interesting that it also is the media
because he and his wife are also media figures. So
it's the marriage of the media figures good sound bites,
which is what you need, or at least what the
media wants and the conspiracy.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, it's one of those things where he has predicted
where things are going, but also at his time, the
Republican Party is not ready for that.

Speaker 5 (48:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
He does not succeed in his time because it's just
not You can't win nationally, even among Republicans doing that
quite yet. That's not really going to be possible until
you've had a few generations of Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart, etc.
Propagandizing to the masses. That's it. He doesn't do badly.
He takes in one point two million votes, which is

(48:30):
an amount vastly higher than nearly any third party candidates
get today, but also well short of what Wallace did.
In his concession speech, Schmidts aptly identified that Republican influencers
would use his techniques to win support of the dedicated
maniacs who made up his base in the future. We
got one million votes enough to strike fear in some
hearts in this country. He's not wrong there. He saw

(48:54):
this as a good start. He was at the time
the seventh most successful third party candidate in US political history,
and his plan was to double down, get back into Congress,
and weld together a coalition of the deranged that could
lurch the Republican Party to the right and act as
a constant thorn in Dick Nixon's side. They were not
aware at this point that Nixon was going to get shitcammed.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Coalition of the Deranged is beautiful.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah, yeah, well that's what's going on here. Right. While
he plotted, his wife organized her campaign against the Equal
Rights Amendment and scored a job on TV as a
political pundit. Things were going great for the Schmitzes. They
had power, money, and growing influence. Soon in nineteen seventy three,
John Schmitz, who's again a family values candidate. Right, that's

(49:39):
a big part of this degeneracy and modern era. Our kids.
Oh yeah, we want to know what comes next. Oh
he gives himself a mistress. Yees. Yes, this guy is
both a creepy politics dude but also a professor. So
of course his mistress is one of his former students,
much younger, Carla Stuckel. He is like fifty now, he's

(50:00):
like in her late twenties, And he starts sleeping with
his student, Carla Stuckell, former student, and then he fathers
two children with her over the space of a few years.
And while he's doing that, Mary Schmidz is doing her
phillish laughly routine. She's going on TV, she's organizing the
fight against the equal rights and then that are helping
to you know. And while you know, he is seeing

(50:23):
his mistress and she is becoming a media influencer. You
know what, no one is doing watching their fucking kids.
And this is going to end in tragedy. One August
afternoon in nineteen seventy three, both parents are out and
their daughter, Mary Kay, a sixth grader, had been put
in charge of the baby.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Philip time out, time out. First of all, that's totally
not a nod. You can totally do that. No, this
is family one, family two. What are we talking about.
We're talking about mistress's family. We're talking about Mary.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
No, No, his his family one family og Fang, his
daughter from family one, Mary Kay, who I told you
to keep an eye on for this. Although this plays
into why you need to remember Mary Gay. They have
her watching the baby while he is having sex with
his former student, and Mary is on TV. Right, and
I'm gonna quote from the La Times here. The baby

(51:13):
was a fearless three year old and when he took
off his life jacket and stepped into the deep end
of the pool. Not even the diligent Mary Catherine, playing
the shallow end with their older brother Jerry, noticed the
tiny splash only after their mother began looking for Philip.
Was he found lifeless on the bottom of the pool.
So that's bad. Yeah, pools not great. And I mean.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
People who are not wealthy enough to have this problem
don't know, but like me, but apparently, Yeah, pools are
total death traps. There's like one of them leading killers
of babies.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Of course it is, they're not that's not even surprising.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
I mean, guns are really trying.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
It's just a thing for a small person to drown it.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, guns are truly trying to Like I
think it might be no, might actually begun to this point.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
But pools, oh, I think I probably beat him at
this point. Yeah. Those are much more affordable than al
everybody gun.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
I know, if only pools were as accessible, we.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Could be drowning in case, we could really up those numbers.
So you know, this is tragic, obviously, and it brings
Schmidt's a lot of sympathy, partly because nobody knew that
the reason he had not been there to watch his baby.
Is that he was having sex with a woman not
his wife, who was also his former student. You know,

(52:36):
if people had known that he was a fraud as
a moral paragon and that his son had maybe died
in part due to his ambitions, they might not have
felt as positively about him, though. But this doesn't come
out immediately, right, and through the mid nineteen seventies to
the early eighties, Schmids, you know, continues to run. He
gets back into state Congress. He's in California Congress for

(52:56):
another term. He makes another national level campaign, and he
becomes more comfortable broadcasting openly racist remarks on the campaign
trail after lawyer Gloria Already gives him a leather chastity
belt during a state Senate committee on abortion, and Gloria
is like making fun of him. He's they're doing. They
have a state Senate committee in California on like abortion laws,

(53:18):
and obviously she's Gloria already she thinks it should be legal,
and that he is being a howling fascist about it
and saying no, women shouldn't have the right to have sex,
all right, And so she gives him a chastity belt, right.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
I love it, which which actually he needs.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
It's like a joke.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
She doesn't even know that he's fathered.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
He literally does. She has actually anticipated a real need.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
He issues a press release calling Gloria and other pro
choice activists quote a sea of hard Jewish and arguably
female faces. There is there. He said it. Yeah, he
did it everybody, And there's a backlash to this. Even

(54:06):
in the seventies, you can't say this, like, so there's
a backlash. In his response to the backlashes, basically they say,
I don't hate Jews. They're like everyone else except more so,
which is still pretty racist.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
They're like everyone else, except.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
They're not like everyone else. I mean, it's something people
used to say it about the Japanese too. I think
it's like a classier way of saying they're not like
regular people. I think it's what you say too when
the group you're afraid of has a reputation at least
for like being powerful in an industry or in some

(54:42):
other way. Right, you know, Japan is a military power.
When people are saying that about Japan, there's this widespread
attitude that Jewish people run certain and I think that's
kind of what he's saying, right.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
So it's the polite company bigotry.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yes, yes, it is the polite way of saying I
think the Jews run the media, right, That is basically
what he's saying. He also he did not just confine
himself to talking about Jewish people. He said of Latinos,
I may not be Hispanic, but I'm close. I'm Catholic
with a mustache, which is what a wild thing to say.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
Say.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, that's what a dad or that's what a guy
on Sinco de Mayo says. Yes, yes, a nacho bull
like sombrero. Yeah, and calling every waiter pedro.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah. He also called Martin Luther King Junior a notorious liar.
He had regained a Senate seat in nineteen seventy eight,
but he failed in two campaigns to win election to
the US Senate. By nineteen eighty two, he had been
thoroughly relegated to the status of a local headache. And
then in nineteen eighty two, a month after losing yet
another primary election, the news broke that Schmidt's had fathered

(55:50):
two children with his mistress. Now you want to know
how this news broke, because this is a fucking story.
Oh yes, kay, it's may It involves a penis injury,
so not a good one. This is a child's penis injury.
So nobody laugh. You're not allowed to laugh if you
just had laughed before, feel bad about it right now? Yeah,

(56:11):
you're thinking about thirty seconds reflect on your crimes. Yeah, yeah,
you sick ohs. So his also, this is kind of
a sicko thing. He names his second son out of
wedlock after his father. No, which is a weird move
for your kid. You're gonna deny the rest of his life.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
But okay, like you have to have a little bit
of deniability, like if your wife finds out, but like,
that's not my kid.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
It's like, yeah, it's after you're dad.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Named after your dad.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Are you kidding me? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Its name is Snitzy Ditsy, Like come on now.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, and it's you know, the reason this all comes out.
So he's got this kid, John George, who is a
baby at this point, and the baby gets booked at
an oc hospital for an injured penis. The injury is
very peculiar. A piece of hair had been wrapped and
it's described as being wrapped in a square knot around

(57:11):
I think the head of the penis so tightly that
it had nearly severed the member. Right, So the baby
has to have surgery. He it's fucked up, but the
baby's fine, like it does, he does recover, right. But
the incident prompted obviously an investigation. Right, that's the kind
of thing that looks like it could be something intentional. Right,
someone hurt this kid, you know, I think they're perfectly

(57:31):
reasonable to look into this. Detectives threaten to arrest the
baby's mother, Carla Stuckle, if she didn't tell them who
the father was. And I think this is the police
assume if someone's abusing this child, it's probably the dad.
So we need to figure out who the dad is,
right yeah, yeah, And they're like, look, we'll arrest you
if you don't tell us. And that's how Schmidt's get
his name gets out, right because he's famous, Right, he's

(57:51):
there local, he's been there wrapped a couple of times.
He's this big figure.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
So mom, so I know, like I see all these
Instagram posts and some of them are like careful with
you know, stray hairs, because I guess hairs. Yeah, you know,
when like a hair gets like wrapped around your finger,
like that can happen, and it can be hurt, and
it's hard to like cut it or break it. Just
random thing reasons for parents to worry, random shit, but
like getting it out of your dick. Like I don't

(58:18):
believe in God, but I'm pretty sure God put that
piece of hair around.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Oh God, that is kind of the shitty thing God
would do instead of just strike John Schmidt's down, make
a baby suffer to ruin his career, fucking asshole like
that is is a very old testament God. So you know,
the story breaks. I'm sure the police just can't keep
their mouths shut or whatever. But like it breaks, and

(58:43):
it creters John as a political figure. This is the
end of his like meaningful public life. He makes another
congressional run in nineteen eighty three, but he loses by
more than fifty points. The affair was such a scandal
that it also ends Mary Schmidz's career on TV, which
is a kind of evidence of some massada, right because like,
this isn't her fault, right that her husband cheated on

(59:04):
her with a lady, but she loses her job on
TV as a right wing shithead anyway, I guess it's
unjust she does suck, so you know, take you think
about that how you want. I guess the two separate,
but they get back together. True to his nature's human garbage,
Schmids never supports Carla Stuckle or helps to support their

(59:24):
He refuses to pay right. He is like this his
whole life. When the police question him, he tells the
police straight up, I do not and will not support
him financially. Because the police are like, do you want
to help pay the bill with the hospital for your son?
He's like, I will not pay any money. It is
her responsibility to take care of him, not mine. Replicans

(59:45):
party of personal responsibility.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Yea, indeed, I mean at least I will give him this.
He didn't, like, you know, advocate for stealth abortion the
way other Republicans do with their mistresses. Right.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
No, he has the kid and then he I mean
he was anti abortion, but he does have his kid, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
And then allows them to live a life of like,
you know, a shitty life where his dad doesn't hug
him or support him or love him the way Republicans
want in order to breed more Republicans.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
Guess what, You're head of the game again, Francesca. Okay,
these kids have a nightmare life. Carla Stuckle is left
to support both children on her own. This is actually
did you watch The House of Usher?

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Oh, well, these two kids have literally the background of
the kids. I honestly wonder if that's who what's his
name was thinking of what? Anyway, So Carla is left
to support these kids on her own, which she does
until nineteen ninety three when she dies due to complications
from type one diabetes. She had been like working barely
keeping it together to take care of these two on

(01:00:51):
her own, and then she dies. Schmids refuses to take
either of his children and they're sent to an orphanage.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Oh John Smith's god, it's fuck a piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Yeah. Yeah, he just like, not my responsibility, not my job.
Her body made him fuck her like it's it's that's him.

Speaker 5 (01:01:12):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
He lives on increasing increasingly angry, interrational until two thousand
and one, when he dies of prostate cancer. The Journal
of Historical Review, which exists Tony the Holocaust, called him
a good friend in its obituary. He's a just a
cool guy. He is, by the way, a Holocaust denier.
He attends a vince held by the Journal of historical review.

(01:01:35):
Of course he has. He had to get the Bengo.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Guard, Yeah, exactly to complete it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Yeah, and that's almost the in Francisca, because we got
one bond on this episode. Yes, Sophie, just read it
at the start. I mentioned at the start. Remember his
daughter Mary Kay. Yeah, right, Schmids the daughter that he
had with his wife, right, who starts there when her

(01:01:59):
baby brother dies, Yeah, which probably fucks her up somewhat.
So in between John getting exposed as a philandering fraud
and dying while he's still alive, something else happened, not
to him, but to his daughter, Mary Kay. She becomes
a middle school teacher and she marries someone. I want
you do you want to guess what the last name
of her husband is becomes her last name? No, no,

(01:02:26):
Mary Kay Laturno, that's John Schmitz's daughter. Now, depending on
how much you know about this story, so you are saying,
oh shit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
I actually don't know this story.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
But yeah, in like the mid nineties, Mary Kaylaturno. I
think it's the mid nineties, Mary Kay Turno gets famous
because she starts she's a school teacher, a middle school teacher,
and she repeatedly statutorily rapes one of her twelve year
old male students and has two children with him. Oh
my fucking gets public and she it is a massive

(01:03:04):
national news story. This is front page news on every
household for weeks for.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
The first female teacher is a predator.

Speaker 5 (01:03:14):
And you've probably you've probably seen the clips of like
them when they're older and her being like, oh is
the boss and him being like what the fuck and like, yeah,
it's because.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
They go on to like get married and yeah, well
she's I mean she in prison and then makes Yeah,
it's it's really dark.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
It's my gosh, fucked up story.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
She died horribly though, so that's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
She does die really badly, so yeah, that's John Schmitz's
primary legacies are that he helped create the modern Republican
Party that we're all desperately hoping doesn't kill everybody today.
And he gave birth and raised Mary Kayla Turno, who
became one of the most famous pedophiles in this country's history.

(01:04:02):
So oh, I was not see that one coming, did you?

Speaker 5 (01:04:11):
Was not ready for that last paragraph?

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Surprise pedophile in the fourth quarter, baby, Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
Thank you for knowing what the fourth quarter is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Wow, they breed, this is these are the kinds of
people they breed. This is what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Yeah, I mean if you I mean, you know what
I will, Mary Kayla Turno is a bad person. But
having your parents fist who neglect you and kind of
put you in a situation where you were responsible for
your infant brother or your child brother's death, couldn't have helped.
Like that didn't make the odds of her turning out
healthy better? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
No? And also like we don't know whatever, like some
other ship might have happened, you know what I mean, Sure,
someone who knows exactly like something else might have happened.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
She is bad and so is he.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
She's bad, She's very bad. She's curse. They're so cursed.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Also sounds like a dog shit family.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
It's a very dog shit family, Robert.

Speaker 5 (01:05:14):
I think this is the first time in like a
really long time that I've been extremely surprised at the
end of.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Yeah, you didn't say that one coming at all, did you?

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
So?

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
I wish I was more up on my on my
child rapists.

Speaker 5 (01:05:28):
There's a there's a there's a lot of clips going
around because there's a Netflix movie that's loosely based based
off the story called me Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
Good stuff, good stuff. I just know this is one
of those episodes that, like the instant I said that
across the country, like hundreds of thousands of people all went,
oh fuck, really you know I did not like it was.
It's such a funny bookend for this. Not funny because

(01:05:59):
like an actual child was deeply, deeply harmed here, more
than one. A lot of children actually armed in this story.
But just it was not not what you expect the
first ninety percent of this story, right, It's a.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Fun distraction from the rest of it, which was like
the origins of like the fly right and mano, Like
that's I like, you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Really refreshing, Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Really exactly cleanse my palate from all the other stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Mm hmmmmm. It's like that sip of water when you're
doing a wine tasting. For sure, this is probably not
a road to go down.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
No, no, no, do not. But hey, look they got
a Netflix show, I mean movie, so.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
Oh yeah, no, I'm gonna be watching that tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Yeah, poor Schmidz doesn't get a special.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
So Francesca Fiorentini, you have a podcast Habituation Room, which
people should listen to. I have been on it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
You have you were great, you were there in person.
I'm doing another live show on January twenty eighth, seven
pm at the Gateway Theater in San Francisco, is a
part of SF Sketch Fest, and Miles Gray is going
to be there, and thank you so much. And now
I'm gonna just sit in shame that I didn't know
who Mary Kayla Turno was and I was just now
it's okay, it's okay, double knew it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:20):
I double knew it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
So we made up.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
You've got time before Sketch Fest to really really work
on some Mary kay laterno jokes. You know what, if
you just find David Letterman's monologues from back then you
can steal some one.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
To steal them, and Kat Williams will call me out
for it. It'll be great. Yeah, it's just been a.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Pleasure so much. Anything else you want to tell people, no, man.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Just listen to the Situation Room and there's a comic
and uh oh yeah, there's always a comedian. There's always
an expert or and activists. We talk politics and kind
of big what the fuck are we going to do
in twenty twenty four stuff. So it's good.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Yeah, yeah, And I think that's it's useful. You're thebituation
Room has a style that is cathartic to it, and
if you think you need that right now as we
start to head into twenty twenty four, it's a great
place to get it. So you listen to some of
that relax. I feel too bad for laughing about the Yeah, no,

(01:08:23):
you never know where Married Kay Laturno is going to
be heading in an episode, so best I could do
that any day.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
I'm like, my face is a different shade.

Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
That's how shocking.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Yeah, so it's like how you know, you I may
have American history before j six and after we're like,
oh wow, now a coup could just happen at any time.
It's real to us now. The possibility of being confronted
with Mary Kay Laturno is going to be lurking in
the back of your mind every episode, Sophie forever.

Speaker 5 (01:08:51):
It's been five or six years, and this is the
first time where I couldn't close my bow.

Speaker 4 (01:09:02):
The pure shock of the Mary Kay Turno draw.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
See, it's a good way to four.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
It is.

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
I feel like I feel like I gotta go, like
hug a dog in this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Episode, What Yeah, Yeah, Bye, all right, everybody, Bye bye bye.

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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