Part Two: Lee Atwater: The Political Dirty Tricks Artist Who Gave us President(s) George Bush

Lee Atwater graduates high school after a brief stint in an insane fraternity then becomes a college Republican leader and starts his career as a dirty tricks expert for political campaigns.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Schumer.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I hardly know where Welcome back to Behind the Bastard's
a podcast that just started, the worst way a podcast
can start.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I think we can all agree.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
I didn't like that.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
It's compulsive, Like Lee Atwater. I can't control it, you know,
so you can't be angry at me for it, you know,
just like we can't be angry at Lee Atwater for
all the people you hurt. That's the way it works anyway.
I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, part two
of our series on Republican strategist Lee Atwater, the guy
who invented modern presidential elections. My guest today, as with

(00:39):
the last episode, Garrison dav Iss. So that if there
are any two year olds in the audience, they can't
spell your last name, Garrison, they don't know what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
I was going to do this whole episode as another
extremely successful political operator, a Chuck Schumer, but then I
realized I don't know what Chuck Schumer sounds like like.
So now I'm just stuck with these glasses falling off
my eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I think it's something likely doo up Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
That's that's basically it.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
I do not think that is how he said.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
That's pretty close.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
I've certainly heard him speak before, but I think it
sounds like that. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
It's however, you imagine a like like if somebody was
made of stone trying to speak.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, like that's that's what exactly what I did. You're right, Sophie,
thank you for praise. I appreciate it. I live off
of it. We'll return to this topic later, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Now, last episode, we closed out with our friend Lee
atwater Front, friend of the pod, Lee atwater has just
done a fucking fake school election for his friend who
depending on the source, some say his buddy didn't even
know that he was like putting him up for election
until like this magazine comes out where he's like rating

(02:01):
he like mimiographs this fucking zine, basically being like he
won this comedy he's the funniest kid in school based
on you know this, it's unclear like how this ranking
was done, and you know, promising free beer on tap.
He's got his little fucking student ss out kicking people, right,
and the first part of this the fact that he
starts it with like this fake pole basically that he's

(02:23):
handing results to people. It is noteworthy because fake poles
are going to be key to Lee Atwater's adult political style.
Now today we call a fake poll conducted by an
independent pollster, funded by a campaign or a dark money
operation not legally connected to a campaign for the purpose
of pushing a political agenda a push pole. And what

(02:43):
Lee's done here isn't quite a push pole yet, because
the goal of a push pole is to propagandize a
voter under the guise of polling them. So you they
call them and say, hey, we're doing a pole. If
you were to find out that Canadate X was a pedophile, would.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
You still vote for them?

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Right? And you're not accusing them of being a pedophile,
But also it makes people think about them that way, right,
And it's usually you can get a little more direct
than that, But that's the basic idea, right, is it's
a poll where you don't actually care about the result.
What matters is you're trying to subtly propagandize to people
when their defenses aren't up because they don't think they're
being subjected to a political ad right. And that's it's

(03:23):
not exactly what he does in high school with his
friend because again he just releases the poll. But this
is going to like, this is going to work so
well that it kind of gets him. He's always he's
always a guy who's going to do a lot of
what he does through different kinds of bullshit polls. And
part of the reason why is that after this election happens,
he notices that like kids that he didn't even know

(03:43):
keep coming up to him and telling him jokes or
like cutting up in class and then looking at him
to gauge his reaction. One kid even wore a plastic
display bottle of soap for an entire day, and they're
trying to they want Lee to see them because they
realize that he is the guy publishing this list of
the funniest kids in school, and they want to get
on the list. They don't realize that it's a completely

(04:04):
bullshit list, right, Lee writes, quote, it took me about
an hour to realize they all wanted to get into
the comedy ratings. So he keeps publishing the flyer, and
he expands it. He adds a bad Breath of the
Week award, and he adds fake ads for a dial
a slut service, which he claims, is run by one
of his female classmates. So as a kid, he's learned

(04:28):
how to use the media to manipulate his classmates, to
hurt people, to help a campaign. He's already figured this out,
and he's like, not yet eighteen or just about turning.

Speaker 5 (04:39):
Eighteen, Kyle a slut service.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
He's a prodigy in the evil arts of politics.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, suir, He.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Would later recall, nothing taught me more cleanly and clearly
that people like to see their names in the paper,
and people liked me number one at something. I always
remembered that lesson.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
I mean.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
He also has discovered the inherent charm of the DIY magazine,
which it's addicted, which everyone usually around eighteen falls victim to.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Right of course, everyone, Yes, absolutely, Garrison kids love DIY magazines.
Some kids do, yeah, yeah, the cool kids and the
Lee at Waters. It's a real mixed bag. If you're mimeographing,
you're going to go one of two ways. Lee himself
was never featured in the paper that he put out.
He wrote, by not being involved, I could have a

(05:27):
lot more fun with it. I learned back then that
I was just going to cool it and stay out
of the scene. So he's also figured out, I don't
want to be in politics.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
I don't want the spotlight on me.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
He wants to be behind it, but I want to
be folky. Yeah, I want to be behind the spotlight right,
focusing it on people. He's like, he's like the Lauren Michael. Yeah,
he's he's like a less evil Lauren Michael's that's right. Yeah.
So the one area where Lee was weirdly positive and
like weirdly ahead of his time was when it came

(05:58):
to black musicians. When black back bands would play at
his all white school, he would use all of his
manipulative prowess to ensure that his peers weren't shitty towards them.
His friend Debbie Carlson recalled he showed sensitivity toward blacks
that he didn't always show to his good friends, and yeah,
I think it's worth noting this is black musicians right
that he likes. It's not like a general behavior trait,

(06:22):
but he is noted by his white classmates. It is
like he was like the non racist one, right, or
at least the one who was most aggressively anti racist
when there was something he wanted to get out of it, right,
I think that is like an important thing to add
that this is not just happening in a vacuum. He's
not like seeing someone be racist and confronting them outside
of this. It's specifically because I like this band. They're

(06:43):
going to be playing at our school and I don't
want them to get embarrassed. Hmmm, yeah, No, it does seem.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
To be like he is interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
One of the few.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
Things that keeps him from being like at the most
evil that he could be is yes, like love of music,
and how that alters his perception of like racial politics slightly.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
I guess what's interesting is it alters his perception of
racial politics, but his politics are always very racial, and
he gets really angry. The one thing that seems to
bother him is when people call him out for being
racist for the racist things he does, because some of
his best friends genuinely are black musicians, and he doesn't
want to be seen as racist, but he wants to

(07:21):
be allowed to campaign as one. And that's really it.
The fact that he does seem legitimately offended when people
accuse him of being racist while consciously using racial politics
in a way that is undeniably conscious, is really interesting.
To me, but we'll see more of that later.

Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah, I'd like to hear about that in the context
in which it exists.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
In it's a common So he'd gotten his parents to
agree to let him go back to public school by
laying out an ambitious plan for his future. He'd written them,
I think I would like to be a lawyer and
maybe someday go into politics. He told them he had
tended to apply after graduating to the University of South Carolina,
the Citadel, North Carolina State, and Wafford University. And that

(08:04):
last one he didn't really want to go to, but
it was his dad's alma mater. And so he adds
it again, it's part of this manipulation tea, right, he
just can't turn that off. As I noted in the
last episode, as soon as he's out of military school,
he gets back to his old tricks, and in fact,
he is more out of control than ever his Yeah, service,

(08:25):
that's not even like. His high school has an unofficial
fraternity system, and he joins a fraternity who called themselves
the Dark Horseman. And I think you can tell how
what these kids, these dudes are like from that. No, no, no,
I I want to hear more about this.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, theism I'm covering my my drink even though he's dead.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah you do, you want to cover your drink? When
they're mentioned, it's like fucking you see it three times
into a zoom call. They up here behind you.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, they'll fucking roofy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
They viciously hayes their members. When Lee is admitted, he
has to rub icy hot on his balls and then
be paddled for hours. He has to get into like
an hour's long slap fight with a friend where they're
like really hurting each other and like he apologizes afterwards
they both do, but like they're willing to do it
to get into this club, and it's this is going
to be This is not uncommon for fraternities back then,

(09:21):
although the fact that it's a high school fraternity is
kind of weird and an example of.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Like who Lee is.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
So they would pool all of their money to rent
dance halls or warehouses and throw these massive parties for
their high school and when they couldn't afford liquor, Lee
has a great idea for how they get booze, which
is there's this stretch of road outside of town that's
like the dating spot where like people will pull over
to make out slash fuck with their girlfriends, right and
you know, periodically the cops will come by, and so

(09:50):
you'll like toss your liquor out of your car to
like get away so they don't realize that you're like
drunk and trying to have sex in a car. So
he has his friends. They all go out to this
spot and they start searching in like the brush around
the makeout point, and they pull out all these half
full bottles of like beer and liquor and they mix
it together in a barrel and then they fill the

(10:12):
barrel the rest of the way with what is only
described in my sources as purple juice. This sounds this
soundstrensid It sounds awful. The resulting beverage is called purple Jesus,
and it did a spectacular job of giving teenagers alcohol poisoning.
It just sounds like, helly, how that's awful?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Oh my god, you love to see it.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
I mean I didn't. I'm not going to pretend I
did much better, yeah, because we would be just.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
I do feel very alien to this sort of stuff.
Like I enjoy a cocktail every once in a while,
but I'm not rummaging around like this is this is
completely foreign to me. Now.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
There was a period when I was like nineteen or
twenty where we got one of those like big things
of just the raw doctor peppers syrup and we would
just add that straight to ever clear, don't do that
bad idea. That sounds awesome.

Speaker 5 (11:03):
My stomach immediately hurts.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, oh my god, what a nightmare.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
So you won't be surprised when I tell you that
Lee's g p A was not impressive. By isn't really
pulling through in the grades.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
No, he is.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
He's not doing great. Now it's kind of an open
question whether or not he's even going to graduate. Until
the last possible moment, his psychology teacher comes close to
failing him, and his psyche teacher actually calls Lee's mom Toddy,
because she teaches Spanish at the same school and as
a fund side, she gave her own son a D
once and like wrote on the report Carty, what she

(11:42):
wrote on the report card you need more discipline at home.
Her sounds report card.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
So this teacher goes to.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
But also take accountability my girl.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
What yeah, I mean, I mean I think it was
a bit but yeah, So this teacher goes to Toddy
and he's like, I don't know if I can pass
your kid, and she's like, yeah, you should just do
what's best. And he's like, yeah, I'll do what I
think is best for the boy. And ultimately he passes Lee,
even though the grades weren't there. He decides that Lee,
when he would talk in class, he was better. He
participated more than anyone else in terms of like classroom discussion.

(12:18):
He just again refused to study or do homework ever, right,
and it's this, this is the fateful decision that will
allow him to go to college. So I mean, really,
never show mercy to a student who's struggling. Teachers out there,
you know, cast her a lesson of this podcast. No
mercy to children. They'll turn into Lee Atwater if you

(12:39):
give him a second's grace. So Toddy had resigned herself,
you know, part way through this year, twelfth grade year,
to the likelihood that her son would not go to
college at all and would wind up working a menial
job despite his obvious intelligence. Lee himself wanted to leave
from graduation and immediately travel around the South with a
friend of his who was professional musition and like this

(13:01):
would be like a vacation, but I think it was
also the idea was he was going to explore maybe
whether or not he can make it as a musician.
This sounds like a positive development. Yeah, if only now Again,
it looks likely that this is going to be his
path forward because he applies to the University of South
Carolina and he gets rejected and that's like, not no offense,

(13:23):
University of South Carolina. But it's not like an Ivy
League school, right, Like his grades are not good. He's
getting rejected from like the state school. And Lee keeps
this rejection letter in his office for the rest of
his life. The fact that he gets this is something
he's got this weird sense of pride towards. But before
he can start his trip, his mom pulls some strings

(13:45):
and she gets him an interview with the dean of
admissions to Newbery College. Because she knows the guy and
she knows her son. She's well aware of the fact
that if he gets face to face with someone, he
can charm them right face to face. He's going to
do well.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
Even though he's like aids and emissions would get easily discarded,
but he would be compelling in like an actual meeting.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yes, and she knows this, and she gets him the
face to face meeting, and obviously Toddy's right. And the
Dean also seems to have understood Lee pretty well, and
he kind of plays hard to get right. He repeatedly says,
I don't think you have what it takes to handle
this college to be a Newberry man, right, And this
flips a switch in Atwater's head, and so he becomes

(14:27):
obsessed with proving the dean wrong. And so they make
a deal. If you take the gamified thing, yeah, right,
right now, it's a deal. Now I've been challenged. So
the deal is, if he can take two summer classes
at Newberry and do well, he'll get admitted to the fall.
And Lee takes an ace as both classes, which proves
that the only way to get him to actually work
hard is to trigger his oppositional defiant disorder. That's the

(14:49):
entirety of how this guy works, right, What a brat.
He's like the Republican Party distilled into one man. It's
just pure oppositional defiance. So Lee enters Newberry in nineteen
sixty nine. Nice. This is a tense year for America.
For students in America at colleges yet this year, but

(15:15):
not for Lee. Newberry is not kind of in. It's
off the beaten path a little bit. It's not one
of the schools that's going to be the center of
things happening. Lee later described it as a pretty laid
back environment. The anti war movement and the attendant protest
had mostly skipped the campus over and Lee doesn't find
himself pushed into political activism and immediately instead he gets

(15:39):
very into Greek life. And I'm going to quote from
an article by Eric Alterman in the New York Times.
At Water and his fraternity brothers used to rent black
and white pornographic movies in charge fifty cents admission. You
can bet nobody asked for their damn money back on
those flicks. He volunteers, sitting with his wife and parents
in the family living room. We weren't like the guys
who took your money and then showed a bunch of

(15:59):
people horsing around and Leotard's sir, you just.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Talking in front of his wife and kids.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, we showed the best porno in college. Sir.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
We didn't rip you off by showing you fake porno.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
No, nothing but real naked people fucking in our fraternity.
He opened a DIY porn theater. He opens a DIY
porn theater. That's how his fraternity makes beer money. It's
pretty funny. Now his frat is Alpha Tau Omega And
just for shits and giggles, I was like, I want
to see what kind of reputation ATO has.

Speaker 6 (16:30):
Well, I'm sure, I'm sure it's great. I'm sure we're
gonna learn ye love Garrison. It would be fair to
say in many schools they are regarded as a party house.
Just from stories in the last decade. I found an
article about a chapter the last Yes, just from that
the last decade, because there's not a lot recorded from

(16:50):
the sixties, right, a lot of stuff. What's gonna get
sexual assaults not getting reported generally, But within the last decade,
an ATO chapter in Muhlenberg College was suspended for hazing
and life safety violations due to out of control drinking.
You and Ce's chapter got suspended earlier this year for
alcohol violations and financial mouth seasons. The Ohio state chapter

(17:11):
was likewise suspended this year for hazing and alcohol violations.
I've also found multiple stories of brothers in different states
being investigated for sexual assault over the years. Now, Lee's
in college decades before these things go down, but cursory
examinations suggest that Atli's Just Got, it's had a long
reputations like this is a party house, right, That's the
case in Lee's day, and that's kind of the legacy

(17:33):
of this fraternity up to the present day.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
This is a party I.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Kst got shut down at my college when I was
in school.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Get that. I found a lot of stories of them
getting shut down. This was literally just seconds of googling, right,
just like a lot of ATO chapters Get in Trouble.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
And the fact that this.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Would be a party fraternity is consistent with the stories
Lee and his brothers would later tell reporters. He was
known for staying up all night drinking, dancing, and singing,
and then, in his words, would quote be the guy
to wake up the day shift with a flip top
at six am. So he's like still awake, waking his
friends up with a beer at six in the morning.

(18:11):
You know, to keep the party going. Never let the
party die.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Never let the party die.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Garrison, you remember when I showed you PCU the classic
nineties college film. It's a special movie starring Saving a
Parliament Funkadelic and then's with a p Funk concert.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Great film.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yes, I do remember this. Yes, I found an article
in the Newberry Observer that interviewed Carlos Evans, who is
another ATO member and like future executive at no relation
because he winds up as an executive at Wells Fargo,
and Carlos's recollections make Lee's life in this period sound
identical to the plot of PCU.

Speaker 7 (18:51):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
We was always joking around and entertaining his fraternity for
Brothers by improving crazy songs and his guitar, Evan said,
which made him an ideal social chair for his frat.
One slow, weakened on campus, no football or planned parties.
At Water came across a band whose trailer had broken
down on the side of the road, already running too
late to make it to their gig in the upstate,
Atwater convinced them just to stay a Newberry and play there,

(19:12):
thus creating an impromptu party. It's it's just literally the
plot of PCU. It just happened to Yeah, but his
life feels like a lot of different movie plots. Yes,
his life is written by John Hughes. Like I almost
feel like there's a stranger than fiction situation here. He's
like Will Ferrell in that movie, but written by John Hughes.

Speaker 4 (19:32):
I also wonder what his thoughts on Wild at Heart are.
Oh yeah, in terms of like the Elvis blues, like
dancing performance deception, like Nick Cage's whole character in that
has like a slightly similar vibe.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Unfortunately we'll never get to ask him. Garrison. Uh, spoilers
for where this episode ends. Speaking of spoilers, you know
what can't be spoiled these as quality? Yeah, the quality
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Speaker 3 (20:05):
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Yeah, one eight hundred dial of slut. You know, they
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Speaker 5 (20:21):
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Speaker 3 (20:30):
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just just some some honest, god fearing people.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Are we allowed to say blue apron on the pod
now or is it that?

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Is that?

Speaker 5 (21:01):
No?

Speaker 1 (21:02):
I don't know, Maybe we'll see. So Lee's been interested,
you know, since high school in the political process, but
previously it had been a game for him, purely a
way to amuse himself. College is where he gets interested
in and involved in real politics for the first time.
And there are two stories about how this happened, right,

(21:23):
and they're kind of divergent. I think there's a way
to reconcile them. His frat brother, Carlos, says that like,
basically in his first year, his grades were so shitty
that he had to go to summer school in order
to not get expelled, and then, per an article in
the Newberry Observer, while in summer school Atwater secured an
internship with a young senator named strom Thurman who was
sixty seven at the time. This fucking guy. He came

(21:45):
back that fall and he was a totally different person,
Evan's recalled. His hair was short and his dress conservative.
Gone were the remnants of the hippie saturated nineteen sixties.
Evan said at Waters went from coming dangerously close to
flunking out the previous semester to a straight A student,
and Evan said he became highly engaged in his political studies.
That was the point when we started to believe that
Lee had possibilities beyond being just a jokester and a

(22:07):
fun guy, he said. So Strom started like politically grooming
this guy. Yeah, yeah, that's that is. Every version of
the story has that part. The question is what leads
up to it, because Lee and his mom will later
tell a different story, like, instead of his it happening
in his freshman year because he had to take get
summer credits because he was failing in the summer of

(22:28):
his sophomore year. His mom says she convinced tchrom Thurman
to take her son as an intern, and that this
ignites his love of politics and gives him direction for
the first time in his life. So I claimed, I
decided that summer was time to get serious, and yeah, uh,
Thurman was by this point a Republican, and in a
Congress that was still full of white supremacists, he was

(22:49):
the one who was famous for being a white supremacist,
the most supremacist of yes, the whitest of the supremacists,
and the supremacistist stuff the whites. He and Lee got
along very well. Per The New York Times, Thurman remembers
a bright young boy of extraordinary energy and charm, who
in seven years progressed from college intern to political director
of Thurman's re election campaign. Atwater remembers listening to a

(23:11):
man who embodied for him the virtues of Southern conservatism,
economic libertarianism, a strong military opposition to federal interference. Both
men insist that the historical identification of Thurmand with the
segregation is unfair. The issue then, is now, Thurman insists,
was states' rights, And there's a couple of things about that.
First off, the discrepancy between his frat brother's story and

(23:33):
in his mom's story, I think is easy to reconcile.
I think his frat brother got the year wrong, which
is easy to do decades later. I think his grades
were shitty, probably in a sophomore year. And I think
his mom got in this internship because he needed summer
credit to not get kicked out of school, and she
pulled another favor. That's kind of my way of reconciling this.
But also there's a good documentary about Lee Atwater and

(23:57):
it interviews a lot of his friends at the time,
and a couple different people who knew him will say
variations are the same thing, which is that he didn't
believe in conservatism. He was not ideologically. He could have
done work for either party and been just as happy,
but he saw there was more of a place for
him in the Republican Party, in part because the Republican
Party at the start of the seventies is a party

(24:19):
in massive transition. One of the things that has happened
is that they have bled young people, and Lee has
an idea for getting young people to join the party,
and there's just more of an opportunity because the party
is in flux, because they're realigning. He can find a
place for himself there, and the Democratic Party he can't

(24:40):
find as much of a place for himself there. It
would be harder to insert himself and make a name
for himself. And so some of the people who knew
Lee will argue that's the only reason why he gets
involved in the Republican Party is that this is where
he can make a name for himself. And that's the
only thing he actually cares about, right, whatever the case,
you know, because in that version of events, season gives

(25:01):
a shit that strom Therman is an economic libertarian and
loves a strong military. He just again, this is a
guy he can because he's kind of disgraced and whatnot.
I can get involved in it, and I've got an inn.
This is where my inn is. It'll be easiest for
me to succeed here.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
I mean, yeah, he seems more interested in music and performance,
like like on like a personal level than like like politics,
even though he enjoys the process of it, and it
seemed like he had saw more opportunity for yeah, innovative work,
and we're having fun with the process in the Republican
Party at the time compared to the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Right, and the process is what he cares about. So
who gives a shit what the politics he's fighting for are?
You know?

Speaker 4 (25:37):
We need we we need him, we need one of
him for the left.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
We shared, we shared. Do you get that from some
of his friends who are like, can you if only
he had picked it different the other party.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
You know, we might have all had better off.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
We're going to be looking for a Lee at Water
of the left. Yeah, that's what we need, Not a
fucking Joe Rogan, a Lee at Water, somebody who can
fucking play hardball at any rate.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Every version of the.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Lee Atwater story is consistent that at this time strom
Thurman caused you know, his time with Thurman causes him
to take his life seriously right, and he's a different
guy when he comes back to school. Nineteen seventy two,
the year after his internship is an election year, and
Atwater is determined to do his part to get Richard
Nixon re elected. He realized that frat boys are Nixon's

(26:24):
natural candidacy, and he starts using frat parties and events
to sign up other young men to register as Republicans
and support Nixon. And this expands to he runs a
large get out the vote effort in South Carolina and
signs up twelve thousand people. This is a feat no
one gets close to equaling, No single person gets close
to equally in this period of time. Like Lee is

(26:46):
head and shoulders above anyone else in terms of like
their ability to do that for Republicans. That's a lot
of people for an election at this time. Yeah, yes,
that's a big deal. And this is what drives Lee
to do it in the first place. Right, it's not
dedication to Nixon. It's a desire to prove himself the best,
to get the most, to be to break the record. Right,
I've signed up the most people. That's what is appealing

(27:08):
to him is it's a way he can win and
set himself up as special. His frat brother Carlos Sevans claimed,
I would say the thing that really made him different
was that he was incredibly competitive. He was very much
focused on winning at every level. Lee's performance was so
shocking and noteworthy that he earned the attention of the
Republican Party itself in nineteen seventy three. The next year,

(27:29):
as a result of this feat, he is appointed national
director of the College Republicans by party chairman George H. W.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Bush.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
This fucking guy. Yeah, yeah, and this is unfortunately h W.
Bush has picked his man well, because Lee is really
good at this. Like the number of registered like college
age Republicans increases massively.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
He's organizing in polar After this period of time.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
He is really good at this. He's going all around
different campuses, he's giving speeches. He is very good getting
young men. And again he's this very modern figure of
it's this mix of like crude humor and misogyny and
kind of veiled racism that he's using to like get
these young men be like no, no, no, you don't

(28:14):
want to like do this hippie bullshit and vote for
the left, like you want to, like your interests are
being served by the Republican Party as like a young man, right,
Like that's who you need to be with. And he's
very good at this. And that's the first couple of
years of Lee's political career is like reforming and turning
college Republicans into a major force, right. And there's a

(28:37):
lot of butting heads. He has a lot of direct
competition and winds up in a lot of like ugly
fights with other people that he always wins. Anyone who
kind of challenges him for power, he beats the absolute
piss out of because he's just he's just extraordinarily good
at this sort of thing, which is it's just great.

(28:58):
You love to see this kind of shit. So, yeah,
before we discuss Lee's meteoric rise to what happens after
this point. I should peel back and give you all
a little refresher on how Republican party politics evolved from
the fifties to the start of the seventies, which is
the course of Lee's life to date. This is during
the period of time from when he is born to

(29:18):
when he starts being a political actor himself. Traditionally, Republicans,
the Party of Lincoln held the North and the South
was Democratic stronghold, and that had started changing dramatically in
the early twentieth century, which is often summarized as the
two parties basically switching platforms. The reality is a lot
more complex, but by the time FDR comes around, this
realignment is well underway, right, and this leaves Republicans in

(29:41):
a bind. Southern Democrats now felt alienated from the rest
of the party, but the main way to reach them
was with racism, and every year it got harder to
just say I hate black people and win an election.
Enter the Southern strategy. The gist of the Southern strategy
is that you advertise police that hurt black people and

(30:01):
maybe help white people. That part's not actually necessary without
saying that's why you're doing it now. There's a lot
of debate over how much of a role the Southern
strategy in particular plays and this post Civil Rights Act realignment,
because this starts in the early twentieth century, but it's
after the fifty seven Civil Rights Act that the realignment
really speeds up, and that like the Democratic Party really

(30:22):
loses the South, like that's when all that really happens.
And so it's you know, there's debate and valid debate
by political historians over like how much credit do we
give this the Southern strategy as opposed to these other
things that are going on at the time. The phrase
itself the Southern strategy gets popular after nineteen seventy, when
Nixon political strategist Kevin Phillips gives an interview for the

(30:45):
New York Times in which he says, among other things,
from now on, the Republicans are never going to get
more than ten to twenty percent of the Negro vote,
and they don't need any more than that. The party's
political future, he argued, was in making sure Southern whites
saw Democrats the party of black people. This would convince
them to switch parties and vote Republican. Right and again

(31:06):
We can debate how much of a factor this is
in the realignment and you know what happens to the
South and becoming a Republican stronghold, but it's certainly a
big part of it right totally. And Lee Atwater is
going to he's going to come start getting into politics
literally like a year or two after this. This Nixon
strategist has laid out the whole strategy on like in

(31:28):
this interview, and this is always going to be a
part of his understanding of how politics works. Right now,
one of his early political triumphs is when he's still
like with the College Republicans, there's a contest, there's an
election to see who's going to be chairman of the
College Republicans between Carl Rove and a guy named Robert Edgeworth.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Carl Rove, a lot.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Of you millennials will know he was George Bush's campaign
manager during Bush's campaigns, like he's the guy who got
w elected. He's famous as being a slide. Just look
at a picture of Carl Rove. He looks like he's
slithered in on a slime trail. No man has ever
looked more like a snail than Carl fucking Rove, like
touching him. Is his skin has the consistency of wet Plato.

(32:13):
You can just tell it by looking at a picture.
Sophie pulled the fucker up. I see him, You see him,
you see him. He's beautiful. He's beautiful, isn't he? I
got a face fulw Rove right now. Yeah, he's just
a majestic animal. Very smooth, very smooth skinned, and incredibly
smooth guy. Incredibly smooth guy just in terms of his
actual like uh texture, And to quote from an article

(32:36):
in PBS's website, quote, Rove lost, but Atwater mounted in
a peal of Edgeworth's victory. The contest was ultimately decided
by then Republican National Committee Chairman George H. W. Bush,
who gave the election to Rove. That was a pretty
early lesson for Karl Rove from less Joe Connison of
the Nation in Salon dot Com, that you could play
the hardest of hardball and get away with it. And

(32:57):
what Rove is Atwater is doing here is he just
starts challenging individual votes and he just keeps coming up
with and they're they're bullshit challenges like the other guy
had won. But he creates enough doubt that he's able
to create space for Bush to come in and just
decide the election. It's kind of a version of what
the Supreme Court will do for W in two thousand. Yes,

(33:20):
I was just thinking the fact that this is how
Carl Rove gets his start in politics, and this is
a lot very similar to what happens to W in
two thousand. Not a coincidence. It's cool stuff. I'm glad
that started, right, Yeah, it's it's it's really depressing. So
Lee Atwater in the early to mid seventies is an

(33:42):
early a chief acolyte and practitioner of the Southern strategy.
You know, he's this huge figure in getting the College
Republicans organized, and he graduates from that to being a
campaign like he's like a he's like a mercenary campaign
strategist and you know eight or whatnot, Like you'll bring
him on if you need a dirty tricks guy. And

(34:02):
he proved himself incredibly good at that. One of his
first big jobs in nineteen seventy eight is working as
an advisor to Strom Thurman's re election campaign. It's here
he would notch his first major victory. The guy that
Thurman is running against is Charles Ravenel, who The Times
described as the then rising young star of Charleston politics.
Lee set himself to the task of strangling Ravenel's career

(34:25):
in the cradle. Through relentless digging, he came across a
quote from Ravenel in a small This is how he
describes it. He finds like an interview in a small
weekly newspaper called Manhattan East, quoting Charles Ravenel as having
told a Park Avenue fundraiser that if elected, he'd be
the third senator from New York. You see, what's the
quote is him basically saying like, I know I'm running,

(34:47):
you know, in South Carolina, but if I get elected,
you know, if you donate and help me get elected,
I'll vote like a senator from New York. Right this
shouldn't be legal, right now. Ravenel denies ever saying this.
There's no actual evidence that he says this, and the
rumor is that Atwater planted the story. He either bribed
a reporter or an editor to put an article in

(35:09):
this tiny paper with minimal circulation because it didn't need
to get read by people. There just need to be
something he could grab and then like read out and
have put in attack ads. Right, yeah, he can turn
it into a problem, right, And this quote becomes the
single most repeated claim in Therman's attack ads against Ravenel.
And again, I can't tell you to a point of
certainty that he planted that story, but if he did,

(35:31):
it wasn't the only time he did that in a
nineteen seventy eight election, because that same year he also
consulted on a House of Representatives race for his old
friend Carol Campbell. This we talked about their friendship, they
were buddies in high school, and their competition of fame, yeah,
of soup, fame of the Campbell's fortune. The competition is

(35:51):
a guy named Max Heller. At the time, Max Heller
was the mayor of Greenville. He was also Jewish and
the literal Holocaust survivor. Right It like, oh, yeah, this
is going in such a dark direction. Per the New
York Dimes, Atwater's accusers claimed that as an informal adviser

(36:12):
to Campbell, he passed secret polling information to Don Sprouse,
a third party candidate, who then used the information to
undermine Heller's campaign. Political analyst Alan Barron has revealed that
Campbell's poster in nineteen seventy eight, Arthur J. Finkelstein of Irvington,
New York told him that his data showed South Carolina
voters would reject a foreign born Jew who did not
believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior. Marvin Chernoff, a

(36:35):
Democratic consultant in Columbia, claims that Atwater specifically told him
of passing Finkelstein's secret poll to Sprouse, and Atwater denies this.
But Sprouse is literally going up to Max Heller and
being like, do you believe in Jesus as our Lord
and Savior? And like saying like, I think at one
point you basically asked, like you did the Jews crucify Jesus?
Like it's really anti Semitic shit. And this is not

(36:57):
this is not Campbell, that's not the guy that Atwater's
working for. It's this third party who he is using
to be to put this racist stuff out so that
voters are thinking, well, this guy's not really a Christian, right,
And they're also they're not tying Campbell to the anti Semitism,
so he gets the best of both worlds. It comes
from a different origin, yeah, right, right, And this is

(37:19):
the way Atwater works, right, And you know he denies this,
there's significant evidence in a number of people who tie
him to this happening. Finkelstein and all of the Campbell's
campaign staffers deny the accusations too, but Campbell's campaign manager
has since admitted to a late night meeting with Sprouse
representatives in a Greenville parking lot before the election, and

(37:42):
the Finkelstein poll released by Campbell did ask voters to
compare how they would feel about a race between a
Jewish immigrant and a native South Carolinian. Oh that's good,
that's expert stuff. It's all this is all very very
Lee Atwater shit, right, And if true, these allegations are
just entirely consistent with what we've already seen from Lee
and high school. This is the guy who's making up

(38:03):
fake polls to swing elections. At Water is also engaging
it during this seventy eight election in more school uggery
on Thurman's behalf right to help the segregation of senators
shake off some of the bad pr from his constant
public racism. And this really shows you how smart at
Water is. His solution to the problem of Thurman being
a famous racist is very inative, it innovative. He has

(38:25):
campaign representatives announce that they're throwing all of their efforts
into getting out the black vote. Thurman goes so far
as to send his six year old daughter to an
integrated public school. So it looks like Thurman's really trying
to reform his image and get black people to vote
for him. But they know that's not going to work.
This is a feint. Right, Black people are not going
to vote for strom Thurman and at Water knows it.

(38:47):
But Ravenel's campaign, he knows, is going to panic when
they see Thurman going out for this vote, and they're
going to redouble their efforts to get the black get
the black pet which is already going to go to them. Yeah,
and that's that's number one. They're not focusing then on
the they're votes they need to get. And also it's
going to convince the white voters who is really who
the primary amount of Atwaters pr is going out towards that, Well,

(39:09):
this other guy is campaigning for black people. He only
doesn't care about white people. Right, That's the strategy and
it works perfectly. A Democratic Party operative at the time
summarized the result the Ravenel campaign looked like it spent
all its time going after black voters. Well, swing voters
are turned off, they vote for Thurmond and he retains
his seat. So yeah, that's that's where we are at

(39:32):
at nineteen seventy eight. He's gotten his political career off
to a rousing start. Yeah, that's that's a smart operation.
It's a smart operation, evil but smart. Speaking of evil,
but smart. The sponsors of our podcast all very evil,
but all geniuses. So why fight them, you know, just
let it happen to you if you can't beat him.

(39:54):
If you can't beat him, take their money and we're back.
So by nineteen eighty, Lee Adwater's got himself a reputation
not as a great political thinker or even as like
the best campaign strategist, but as a connoisseur.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Of dirty tricks.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
And so wherever a Republican is in trouble, he is
increasingly the guy they call for, or increasingly the guy
the RNC sends their way to set off a couple
of bombs. Right, he is their secret weapon. Like, we
can deploy Lee anywhere we need. We need some extra help,
and we're willing to be unethical with it. Right, They
just like air drop him in. Yeah, parasue, he's the

(40:38):
eighty second Airborne of being a scummy political campaign manager.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
Takes off his flight suit, has a black suit underneath, briefcase,
ready to.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Go, Ready to go.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
For example, in the nineteen eighty South Carolina congressional race,
he was brought in to do push polling for Representative
Floyd Spence. Spence was running against former state Senator Tom
Turnett Seed. That is a real name. I have really
got to focus on that. I have heard of Tom
turnip Seed before. Yes, Tom, maybe it's a name you

(41:08):
can't forget. It's it's impossible to forget Tom turnip Seed.
Now as a child, when he's like a teenage boy,
Tom has depression and he has to undergo shock therapy
like electroshock therapy for his depression, which is I think
probably was unnecessary at the time, but it's also a

(41:28):
not uncommon treatment at the time and obviously not something
he has any choice in because he's a child. Not
that this should be stigmatizing, but I don't think it's
often unnecessary when it's given in this period of time
for stuff like this. Tom had discussed this in public.
He had been open about the fact that as a
kid he struggled with mental health and he went through
this kind of treatment.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
This is the thing he.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Talked about because he, admirably I think, wanted to destigmatize
mental health treatment, and unfortunately this is going to make
him incredibly vulnerable to Lee at Water. So well, at
the same time that Lee picks up on the fact
that Tom's gone undergone electroshock therapy, he finds out that
Tom is a member of the N double ACP and
has been a civil rights activist.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
So he started off as a segregationist and then saw
the light.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
I guess, yeah, he's been he's been. He's been good
for a while on it. And Lee is going to
frame this as he's a radical leftist black supremacist, right.
He gets anonymous guys to do push calls you know
where they're or push polls where they're saying, are you
are you comfortable voting for like a man with ties
to the N DOUBLEACP who's like a radical civil rights

(42:39):
activist And at the same time, are you comfortable voting
for a man who received electroshock therapy for his severe
mental illness? Yeah? Okay, all right, buddy, On its own,
that's not enough to spin the election because push polls
only reached so many people. So he's got a question
of how do I launder the electroshock therapy thing into
becoming a central campaign issue with without looking evil, looking

(43:01):
like I'm trying to do it? And Atwater finds a solution.
He finds a couple of reporters. He's giving a press conference,
and he's talking with a couple of reporters before the
press conference and he brings up the electroshock therapy thing
in order to be like, basically say you should ask
me about this, Right, He's planting the question in their heads, right,

(43:21):
So they ask him about this, and you know, he
gives an answer and they ask him something else about
Tom turnip seed, and he responds being like, I'm not
going to respond to allegations made by someone who's been
cooked up to jumper cables, right, Like that's the way
he frames this, Like he gets this brought up so
that he can say I don't have to answer questions

(43:43):
from a man who got hooked up to the jumper.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
He has this retort pre planned and this was all
a scheme just to say that.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
He sets up the questions so that he can give
that answer, right, So turnip seed loses and Lee's dirty
tricks are often given some of the blame. Now, when
I was doing my research, I was cure as to
how Atwater planted questions with the press, and it seems
like he had a few different ways of doing this.
But what surprised me was that he would openly acknowledge
to the journalists that he used this way after doing so.

(44:12):
This is a quote from an article by Eleanor Randolph
in The New York Times. Lee Bandy, a respected political
journalist for the state newspaper in South Carolina, recalled the
time he accidentally helped one of mister Atwater's candidates, the
former governor Ronald Reagan of California. Later, mister Bandy recalled
that Lee laughed and said, Bandy, you got used. So

(44:33):
he celebrates this. He likes being like he wants you
to know when he's done this. For one thing, he's
proud of it. Right, It's like you can't help himself.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
No.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Now, Lee's main gig in nineteen eighty was working as
the Southern regional coordinator for Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty presidential campaign.
At this point, the Southern strategy had been named for
at least a decade and practiced for much longer, but
Lee had notes, and he suggested a revision his bosses.
After getting nominated, he urged Reagan should start his campaign

(45:05):
in Philadelphia, Mississippi. And before this, by the way, he
does like a fuck job on Bush, like he's helping
Reagan kind of win the primary against Bush, which is
going to like piss off Bush a bit, but it's
just not as interesting as his crimes against less deserving people.

Speaker 4 (45:21):
Yeah, I mean it makes sense because Reagan's a performer.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
So Reagan's a performer, right, So after getting nominated, he
urges Reagan to start his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. And
if you look at videos from this, it's just white
people in the crowd, right, And his point to doing
this is to like he's he's basically got a revamped
version of the Southern strategy. Writing for The Nation, Antonio

(45:46):
d Ambrosio describes this as a not so subtle attempt
to make race the central part of Reagan's presidential bid.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
It worked.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
In an article for the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley,
John Powell goes into more detail. They did so revamped
the sub strategy, but not only by criticizing federal civil
rights legislation and impugning federal desegregation orders, but by railing
against bussing government dependency and welfare, or by espousing such
seemingly race neutral ideas as states rights and local control

(46:15):
as signals to preserve Jim Croll from federal intrusion. Even
without making explicitly racist comments, the dog whistle was clearly
heard by those who were its intended recipients. These strategies, combined,
called the Southern Strategy, was designed to create a national
Republican majority built in part on white resentment. The dog
whistle worked because it was heard and understood by the

(46:35):
conservative white base, yet not by more moderate and northern whites.
It meant activating racial resentment for one part of the
population while denying that fact to the rest. The Southern
strategy married the conservative politics antipathy to marginal tax rates
and civil rights, labor and environmental regulations to corporate entities
with culturally conservative antipathy towards civil rights, women's rights, and

(46:56):
gay rights.

Speaker 4 (46:57):
And we've been stuck here ever since.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Yeah, this is a huge success, and to be clear,
I'm not giving Leetwinter all of the credit for Reagan winning.
He doesn't deserve it. He's not the main guy leading
the campaign, but he has a significant role in the South,
and he is He's a big part of He convinces
him to do his you know, to do that first

(47:19):
big meeting in Mississippi. He has a major role in
shaping how Reagan campaigns, right, you know. And it's worth
debating how integral was he to Reagan's ultimate victory in
his first term, but people within the party certainly saw
him as having played a significant role because he gets
a job in the White House, right, and he basically
has to have one created for him. And there is

(47:40):
fighting against this because a lot of people don't trust
him because he's the dirty tricks guy. Yeah, why would
you want the dirty tricks kind of right? Yes, right,
But they create it basically an entry level position for him,
where he's like White House deputy political director, Right, that's
the job that he gets under Reagan. Now in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
One, he's one of like the one of like the
supporting characters en v.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yes, he's but he's also kind of a mastermind behind
the seams because he starts scheming as soon as he
gets into this job, we'll talk about that. But in
nineteen eighty one, just as he's settling into the White House,
a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University named Alex
Lamis reaches out to Lee. Lamis is one of the

(48:24):
first people outside of the Republican Party who noticed that
Atwater is not just another consultant. Well, and he get
his hands dirty, but somebody's changing the way the game
is played. He's someone with like a generational understanding of
how politics works, that is shifting the way politics is done.

Speaker 4 (48:40):
Yeah, by playing the game the way he does, he's
actually changing the fundamental rules of the game.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yes, yes, exactly. And this guy Lambis is one of
the first people to realize it. And he interviews Lee
and it's kind of part on and part off the record,
but all of it's recorded, and this recording gives us
a fascinating insight. This is the thing that's famous about
Lee is this quote of him explaining the Southern strategy
in this interview. If you've ever read about it, you've

(49:06):
read that quote of Lee Atwater. And for a long
time people didn't know is this really Lee or not?
Because like the name kind of was out there. This
interviewer had basically claimed it, but like no one was proof.
There was no proof until fairly recently when the audio
got released and now you can hear him, which we're
going to hear in a little bit. But the interview

(49:27):
gives like a really fascinating insight into Lee's expectations on
the future of progress and how he talked about stuff
like racism in politics. He asserts in the interview, my
generation will be the first generation of Southerners that won't
be prejudiced, and this seems rich coming from a guy
who repeatedly campaigned on race.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Right.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Yeah, But Attwater's argument is that no, no, I got
I did a lot to get guys like Thurman to
shut up about the Civil Rights and Voting Act and
just focus on fiscal conservatism and cutting social programs R right. Yeah.
His argument is that the Southern strategy is actually a
step forward because you're hiding the racism, right, And there's

(50:08):
a degree of I don't know if it's shame or
guilt that he has when talking about how the Southern
strategy works, because Lambis basically asked him, like, how do
you square this belief that Southerners aren't racist with this
whole strategy based on racism, and Lee gives this answer
that's going to become super famous, one of those famous
quotes in the history of US politics. And he prefaces

(50:30):
it by saying, now, y'all aren't going to quote me
on this, right Jesus when they assure they aren't, and
they kind of don't. But anyway, here's what he says.
We're gonna play you the famous quote. This is the
actual audio of me saying it. There's a good chance
you've read this, but yeah.

Speaker 7 (50:46):
Yeah, Now y'all want to quote me on You start
out in nineteen fifty four by saying nigger, nigger, nigger.
By nineteen sixty eight, keeps saying nigger that hurts your
backbar So you say stuff like a fourth plus stakes
lights and all that stuff, and you get so abstract.
Now you're talking about cutting taxes and all of these

(51:08):
things you're talking about are totally economic things. In the
by product, maya blacks get hurt worse than whit and
subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that,
but I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract,
and that coded that we're doing the way with the
racial problem one way or the other, you follow me.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
I don't know if that's truly. It's interesting though that
he kind of seems like he has to believe that
that like this awful racist strategy just because like we're
doing away with more racism than we're embracing, right.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
I mean, like does he view this as like a
form of like progress in a way? I mean, I
guess he kind of does. That's part of what he's
outlying in the clip. Yeah, the effect is still the same, right.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
And that's the and the you know, it's an open question.
Does he really think that he's actually reduced racism at all?
Does he really think that this is better in that way?
Or is this just what he wants this academic to
believe because he doesn't want to have the he doesn't
want to have the legacy of a racist.

Speaker 7 (52:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Well, at least he wasn't quoted on that. At least
he wasn't quoted on that until now. And yeah, I
think that's a good point to end. We'll be doing
three parts this week, so you'll get them all this week, folks.
An next episode on Thursday, Garrison, anything you want to
plug before we close out for the day.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
Well, our show, it could happen here, which you were,
It's right, so on Robert and our weekly news round
up when it could happen here called Executive Disorder, which
now has its own special feed which you've been working
on for a long time. A whole bunch of different
series that myself, James Stout and Robert has put together
have their own feeds on a candept here now, so

(52:58):
it's easier to find episodes all in the same in
following the same story, like Mean Markop City, and also
Executive Disorder. So yeah, that's that's the main thing. Also,
I occasionally tell tell a mix of humor and jokes
based on terrorism at a at a at a bar

(53:19):
in Brooklyn that you can if you know, you know,
if you're if you're a gay person in Brooklyn, you
can figure it out.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Oh there you go go find Garrison in Brooklyn. Or
maybe don't do that, you know, do something, do something.
Uh yeah, even if it's bad, as long as you're
taking action, that's all that matters.

Speaker 4 (53:40):
I feel like you're really internalizing uh huh, Lie's uh's
water strategy.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
You heard as many people as you want as long
as you're doing something anything to quiet the sound of
your brothers screaming as he boils alive in oil. Christ.
You do have to keep remembering that every every one
of these things he's doing the like whatever you look
at Lee, he's just like smiling blankly at you. In
the You have to imagine in his head the only

(54:08):
sound going on instead of static, it's just his brother's
screaming as he dies. This sucks, good stuff.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
I am excited that at the bottom of this page
in the script where we're gonna get some we're gonna
get some black maniform and stone.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you did call it Garrison. Roger
Stone is a key part of this story. Yes, yes,
all that and more things to look forward to my
friends part trace.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
All right, everybody get off the Internet now.

Speaker 5 (54:43):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube.

Speaker 5 (54:58):
New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com. Slash at behind
the bastards