The Astrologer Who Managed The Reagan Presidency

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the
show where we tell you everything you don't know about
the very worst people in all of history. I'm Robert Evans.
My guess this week are Amalia Lambert and Tess Lynch
from the wonderful podcast Night Call. They're also writers and
people about Town is His's Golden Gloves Boxers. I think
we settled on just more accomplished people than me, is

(00:27):
what's important for you to know for your purposes. And
this week we are talking about someone who might be
controversial on this podcast, So I want to lead in
here before we introduce the subject by talking about my methodology,
because we're about a dozen episodes or so. In so far,
the focus on this podcast has always been the worst
people in history, which I define as the shittiest one

(00:49):
percent of human beings who have ever lived. Now, there's
about one hundred and seven billion people in the total
estimated human population, which gives us a big pool to
draw from, which is how I can internally justify covering
Adolf Hitler one week and Harvey Weinstein the next, even
though they're not, you know, quite on the same spectrum
of awfal. So our next subject today hasn't killed anybody,

(01:12):
she didn't cause a genocide, she's not a mass rapist.
I still think I can justify putting her in that
top one percent, although she's probably near the bottom of
that one percent. Have y'all ever heard of a lady
named Joan Quiggly? No, sounds familiar, But I don't know why.
I thought you were going to say, like Margaret Thatcher. No,
because she's got blood on her Yeah, she said in

(01:35):
the bottom of the one percent. I was like, there's
totally a Margaret Thatcher episode. But she's more in the middle, right,
She's up there, Joan Quiggly, Joan Quiggly. Now, Joan Quigley
does have a little bit of a connection to Margaret
Thatcher because Joan Quigley has a very deep connection to
Ronald Reagan because Joan Quigley was Ronald Reagan's astrologer. Really yep, yeah,

(01:58):
I can't wait. We're in so. I we were talking
about it today because I read her book and it
made me really hate her, And I don't know, some
people may disagree that she's terrible, So we'll get into
that too. Part of this podcast will be y'all telling
me if I'm a crazy person judging her unfairly, or
if you guys think she's awful too. But regardless of

(02:19):
what we conclude, I've named this episode Joan Quiggly History's
greatest monster. So let's dive into it. Joan Cecil Quigley
was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on April tenth, nineteen
twenty seven, at four to seventeen PM. That time is
critical because if you don't know the exact minute of
someone's birth, you can't properly cast their horoscope. This is

(02:40):
something I learned by reading four hundred pages of Joan Quigley.
Explain astrology to me. You read the whole thing? Oh yeah, no,
I have. Of course she a good writer. No, oh,
she's not. I'll give it in fairness, she's not like
bad like it's not. I'm not. I was never distracted
by the writing quality of the book. How did you
decide to read that? I realized that Ronald Reagan's astrologer

(03:01):
had written a book, and then I bought it. How
did you find out Ronald Reagan had an astrologer? I
was drunk and browsing the internet at some point, and
like I came across some little listical article talking about
like wacky facts about US presidents. I think that's I
remember that. She was also an astrologer to several other
notable people. Was she an astrologer to the stars? Yes,
oh yes, yes, yeah, I know, I know a little bit,

(03:24):
but I don't know enough. Keep telling us. Yeah, well yeah.
So Jones' father, John was a former lawyer who moved
to San Francisco and bought a fancy hotel. His wife
is named Zelda, which is like, if you know the
nineteen twenties, that's like the name to have if you're
a rich lady. It's like, that's like Jackson is today,
Jackson Jackson. Oh god, yeah, just jack Like they're all

(03:48):
club promoters. Okay. Yeah. So he and his wife Zelda
raised their daughters as high society ladies. They had a
penthouse on Knob Hill in San Francisco and went to
a private school. The Quigly Girls, as they were known,
had chauffeurs to take them to school. Parties generally enrolls royces.
In her obituary, The Los Angeles Times said that she
had quote come from the Creme de la creme of

(04:08):
San Francisco, gentility and her fancy, rich lady bonafides would
prove critical in earning her Nancy Reagan's trust. Joan went
to Vassar. She got a degree in art history. Her
mom was apparently an astrology nerd, and that's where Joan
caught the bug. She spent a year as a secret
apprentice to a soothsayer named Jerome Pearson. Her dad hated astrology,
and so she had to hide her chart making and
star watching while publicly doing normal aristocratic stuff like whatever

(04:31):
the Junior League is. I don't know what the junior
League is. Probably you dance with people, dance with other
rich people, like Catilians, but with a sportier sounding name. Yeah,
that's my guess. Katillion is the only word that came
into my mind when I read Junior league. I don't
even know what one is. It's a club for rich people.
I wonder if it's only women. Like the picture in
my head is that scene from Gone with the Wind

(04:54):
where the lady in the big dress descends the staircase. Yeah, yeah,
something rich people do so they can hang out and
wear fancy clothes. Do you have to wear a bustle? Ye?
It's probably kind of racist. Oh, definitely, there's no Yeah, yeah, okay.
So once Joan is out of college in junior league
or whatever and moves out of her dad's house, she
starts writing an astrology column for seventeen magazine, which I

(05:14):
didn't realize went back that far. And what year is this?
Like the forties? Yeah, this is in like the forties seventeen,
which back in the forties. Yeah, yeah, because they had
just invented teenagers, right, yeah, they're like, now they need
a magazine. Oh, people who live in past twelve. I
guess we gotta figure the thing out. Her gig at
seventeen didn't last long, though, because she didn't like writing
horoscopes for tabloids. She runted to read the stars of

(05:35):
the rich and famous and was kind of disgusted by
the idea that poor people might use astrology. I should
ask you this point, are either of y'all into astrology?
I mean, tangentially. We've done a couple of night calls
where we talked about astrology a bunch and sort of
why it's interesting whether you believe in it or not.
I personally do not believe in it, but I've also
said it's probably some of a a virgo and the boring
is and I love virgos, and I specifically aimed for

(05:57):
a virgo with one of my kids. Got locked down
that ago very please, how do you aim for that?
You know? Noulate, N Well, it's really more like ten.
Oh yeah, what do you think about astrology? I'm not
into astrology, but I like a good friend of mine
for back home in Texas who's like an accountant, is
really into astrology. It's just one of those grounded people

(06:18):
I know. So I don't think an issue. Well, what's
your sign's entertaining? If I may, I don't. I don't know.
What's your birthday? March? March? What? Twenty second? I think
you're a Pisces. Maybe I'm wrong. I have no true
astrology nerd would know. I know, but I you know,
we talked about this, liked it. It's like, even though
I don't believe in or like astrology, especially if you
live in Los Angeles, you meet a lot of people

(06:39):
but maybe are into astrology. There's also a thing I
don't like where people are sort of like misogynistic about like, oh,
women are so dumb they believe in astrology. Plenty of
men believe in astrology. There's plenty of dumb men who
believe in astrology. There's plenty of dumb men who believe
in it, like trickle down economics. I think it's like
it's like sports or something. It's just like a thing
to keep life more entertain than it is. I'll tell you,

(07:01):
I believe in it way more than I believe in chakras.
When people get and I'm just like, Wow, they took
you for a fool, because astrology you can, you know,
entertain yourself with for free, so it can't actually be that. Yeah,
I think so we've decided as soon as you're spending
money on it, then it's a day. Yeah. Yeah, And
that that's kind of how I feel about it. Like
I don't have any issue and I I like, I

(07:21):
tried to as I edited this podcast make sure that
I was not just attacking people astrology, because like, it's
whatever you get do to get through the day. I've
I've been superstitious about stuff when I've been in whatever,
when you need it. Sometimes, yes, life, anything you're into.
If you're doing it for Ronald Reagan, you're on the
wrong side of amen, Well that may be one. And

(07:41):
I'm also I'm trying to be fair to the Reagan's
in this, although I'm not a Ronald Reagan fans. You
do a history podcast about history, A's greatest monster we're
going to cover. We're going to hit on the Reagans
on this, but I think they're I think they're victims
of Joan Quickly in this, and we'll get to that
in a second. Like we like Joan Quickly, Now, yeah,
who scams the scammers? Ye? This is a complicated one.

(08:04):
If it was just one other person sitting here, that
wouldn't but two other people, I feel like we can
make the historical judgment. I think I didn't finish school,
so I don't know how historians make judgments, but I
think this is it. I'm absolutely positive that this is
exactly how it should be done. Fantastic. Okay. So Joan
didn't like doing horoscopes for poor people, and didn't like

(08:25):
doing horoscopes for anyone who could just afford to buy
a magazine. Her obituary in The Economist notes that quote
she did not make forecasts or cast up horoscopes for
ordinary people, only for corporate figures, celebrities, and those who
guided the destinies of nations. I wish the economist was
exaggerating about that. The sad truth is that Joan Quigley
was probably the most influential astrologer of the twentieth century. Now,

(08:46):
Donald Reagan was Ronald Reagan's Treasury Secretary starting in nineteen
eighty one and the White House Chief of Staff from
nineteen eighty five to eighty seven. And it's real funny
that Donald Reagan worked so closely with Ronald Reagan. Were
they related? So their last names are spelled differently? What
Donald Reagan is ourg Donald Reagan? Yeah, Donald Reagan. I'm
gonna call him Donald. Yeah, I should call him Donald Reagan.

(09:08):
Still yeah, still confusing. So yeah, Donald Reagan was the
chief of staff, which is like, that's a big job.
That was Steve Bannon's job until like a year ago. Now,
Jesus Christ, Okay, So Donald Reagan was the White House
Chief of Staff from eighty five to eighty seven. He
was a big trickle down economics guy. He was very
importantly the administration. But he was forced to resign in
nineteen eighty seven because he couldn't protect the President from

(09:30):
the fallout of the Iran Contra affair. So in nineteen
eighty eight, he published a memoir called for the Record,
where he revealed to the world the White House's quote
most closely guarded secret. No, not Ronald Reagan's growing senility.
Not the fact that we've been selling missiles too. Iran
joan quickly, this is a quote from Donald Reagan. Virtually
every major move and decision that Reagan's made during my

(09:51):
time as White House Chief of staff was cleared in
advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up
horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in favorable
alignment for the enterprise, can tinued, would that there had
been some other explanation, But there wasn't astrology, was it.
It was a daily, sometimes hourly factor in every decision
affecting the President's schedule. What what I didn't know anything.

(10:12):
I love this. I didn't know the depth of this.
Was she like living at the White House? Or was
she just was he calling from San Francisco? It was
Nancy who would call, Yeah, and we'll well, we'll get
into a little bit about how it worked. But yeah,
like she notes a number of times in her memoirir
and Donald Reagan backs it up. She had absolute control
of her when Air Force one took off and landed,

(10:34):
she could make it circle in the sky if she
wanted it to land at a different time, because the
stars said that was better. Well, hey, she went to Vassar,
she had her art history degree. She obviously knew a
thing or two. Yeah, yeah, no, the am Vassa is
famous for its air force. That's what I meant undergraduate.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, strategy sounds like a nightmare. But
also I'm like, wow, I didn't know the Reagans had

(10:57):
like a restputant. Yeah, it's very rare, like a lady Rasputant.
So I'm also maybe I like respect her as a
history scammer. If Joe had moved to d C and
been fucking all I guess the husbands in DC of
all of the powerful government people like Resputant did to
the ladies in the noble court in Russia, this would

(11:17):
be a very different podcast. In fact, she had to
do so much less work working remotely. You know, you
can't be understated how great they draw up the stars.
Yeah yeah, and she was not shot and drowned in
the Volga, which is spoiler, sorry, but you probably should
have been. Yeah, it wouldn't have been the worst thing
so far. I'm not really hating this lady. But let's

(11:37):
keep going. Let's let's get into a little bit. So
Donald notes that nobody other than some people very close
to the president knew about this relationship, including his Secret
Service detail. He even sort of mentions that he thinks
they'd be kind of pissed to realize that, after all
their years of carefully guarding the president, like Nancy, had

(11:57):
been talking about his moves ahead of time with this
astrologer over an unsecured phone line. He said, quote, surely
they would think that posed a security risk, which it did,
and that'll be a thing later. It actually kind of
led to a grand Soviet US astrology duel. But that's
a moment for I'm yeah, that's for later in the podcast.
I'm getting out of myself. Yeah, So, when mister Reagan

(12:22):
dropped the truth about President Reagan's astrologer, it hit Capitol
Hill like a bomb. The story sort of faded to
just a general political fable. Now, like I think most
people vaguely hear that the Reagans were into astrology, but
they don't know much about it. But at the time
it was as huge as story as it would be now,
although now it would only be a story for a
day and a half that best, maybe not even that.
So Nancy Reagan insisted that it hadn't been a big deal.

(12:45):
She claimed that her use of Joan had just been
a silly affectation, nothing serious. This made Joan very angry
in her mind. Not only had she not hurt the Reagans,
her astrology had been the secret power behind the throne.
So Joan decided to write a memoir of her own,
and on March first, nineteen ninety, she published what does
Joan Say? My seven years is White House Astrologer to
Nancy and Ronald Reagan. This is the book that I

(13:05):
read for this podcast, What does Jones Say? What does
Jones John? About three hundred something pages, had a lot
to say. I don't think it sold well. I wound
up having to order a very old hardcover copy of
it that had never been opened. There's no kindle edition
of it, so I had to underline the words the
old fashioned way. It was terrible taking notes on books

(13:27):
before Kendall's strenuous Yeah. Anyway, Joan made me work because
her book wasn't a success, and I may hate her
for that. She opens her memoir by saying, this is
a book I never thought I would write, which I
think is a lie because she published it really quickly
after Nancy Reagan's memoir. Joan claims that when Donald Reagan
spilled the beans on her existence quote, I rejected all

(13:48):
suggestions that I document my Reagan years. I said as
little as possible to the media. I tried above alt
to keep from damaging the president I had admired and
served for seven years with total dedication. But then she
claims that Nancy Reagan's memoire, My Turn, forced her to reconsider.
She said it reads like fiction, and much of it
as evasive. That is the beginning of what would become
several hundred pages of throwing shade at Nancy Reagan. To

(14:10):
my eyes, Jones memoir serves two purposes. Number one to
allow her to take credit for every achievement of the
Reagan era, and number two, to shit on Nancy Reagan. Now.
I know at this point you might be wondering how
credible is this lady, and obviously she's an unreliable narrator,
but multiple people do back up the fact that she
not only advised the president, she was actually the arbiter
of his schedule. Donald Reagan, who was again chief of

(14:30):
staff and would know, admitted in his memoirs that Joan
had total control over win Air Force one took offen landed.
He wrote that he, or in this case, she, who
controls the president's schedule, controls the workings of the presidency,
which seems accurate. In his book The Acting President, CBS
correspondent Bob Scheffer related a story that also backs up
Jones's importance. This is Bob Sheefer. The only real hitch

(14:51):
the campaign team had to deal with during those weeks
of planning in the fall of nineteen eighty three was
a conflict over when the president should formally declare his
Candidacylee Water in particular, wanted it done right away, but
he was repeatedly told that Miss Reagan did not feel
the time for that announcement was propreties. I think it's propitious, propitious,
thank you. That baffled him, and when he finally continued
to press for an explanation, Michael Deaver took him aside

(15:13):
and disclosed that Nancy's reluctance was based on the astrologer's warning.
So there's a lot a number of people. You can
find stories of saying that, like, yeah, we had to
change the time at the last minute, or we had
to do something at like midnight or three in the
morning or whatever, and when they would trace it back
because Nancy Reagan said, no, he can't go out at
that hour, like he has to go out now, or
he has to do this now. Was this because Joan

(15:33):
was insinuating that he would be assassinated if he Okay,
bingo boiler, Sorry no, no, no, this is this is
like immediately the next paragraph. So no, you landed on it.
So I'm going to get into how this weird little
relationship started. It kicked off in the nineteen seventies because
Joan was on the MURV Griffin show. Murf Griffin was
I be fair to call him like a late light host, right, Yeah,

(15:56):
like Jimmy Fallon of his era, but probably more talented. Yeah,
and I'm sorry if there's Jimmy Fallon fans out there,
I mean, he's history's greatest monster yeah at this point. Yeah,
but yeah, MERV Griffin, you know, was one of those
really connected people. So he liked Joan quickly, and she
did his astrology a bunch, and he also knew an

(16:19):
actress named Nancy Reagan, and he knew wh her back
when she was an actress and her husband was an actor,
and then he continued to know them after her husband
became the governor of California. Mervy knew that Nancy believed
in astrology. Joan claims he asked if he could give
her number to Nancy, and she said yes. This is
from Joan. The first time Nancy consulted me mostly about

(16:40):
personal problems. She had given me her exact birth time,
so doing her horoscope was easy. I remember I described
to her in detail the matter that she intended asking
me about before she asked it. From the beginning, my
accuracy impressed her. So Joan did her work on Nancy,
and Nancy was astonished at you know, how well it
worked or whatever, And so they had a little relationship
going on for a while. The Reagan's had always superstitious.

(17:00):
In nineteen sixty seven, when Ronnie was inaugurated as governor,
his inauguration was scheduled for twelve ten am in the
morning at the advice of a different astrologer. So like
this has been a thing in their life for a while.
So in nineteen eighty Reagan ran for president. One. In
her memoire, Nancy claims that Joan volunteered her services, which
just amounted to a few phone calls and advice on

(17:22):
wind to time certain events. Joan, however, claims that she
advised the Reagans extensively, particularly during then candidate Reagan's first
presidential debate with a guy named John Anderson. Anderson has
been forgotten and buried in history, as we all will
be someday, but he was Ronald Reagan's opponent in his
first debate, and this was important because Ronald Reagan was
a very old presidential candidate. No one had ever been
sixty nine and running for president before, so it was

(17:44):
important that he looked good and not seem old. Joan
took great care in timing their debate. She also claims
that she warned Nancy that the stars had told her
that someone was going to tamper with Ronald Reagan's microphone,
and apparently, according to Joan, Nancy found that the microphone
had been tampered with and turned down, and Jones says
that if Ronald had used the microphone without fixing it,

(18:06):
he would have sounded weak and therefore old what it
makes sense? Yeah, yeah, I mean it's kind of age
shaming to say that that weakness and age are correlated.
But I guess she's not necessarily wrong. I mean, we
also saw how that can be wielded very powerfully in
a presidential campaign. Weakness and age and you know, fallibility. Yeah,

(18:30):
like that's that. This is one of the ones where
I want to like attack her, but she may not
be wrong about it, right, I kind of think she's
But also, like, what if the mic wasn't turned down
and they just turned his mic up? You know, so
he was allowed to me to be a smart move.
That's still a smart move. Yeah, And this is Nancy
doesn't say anything about this, so I don't. It's we're
kind of have to take Jones's word that this microphone

(18:52):
thing happened. She does, however, take credit for Ronald winning
his debate against Carter, or rather, she says, I cannot
claim any credit for his winning the Carter debate. However,
I was definitely responsible for Carter's losing that crucial contest,
because she claimed she picked an astrological time that made
it impossible for Carter to win. Is sort of the
inauguration of her taking credit for everything that happens during

(19:13):
this time. So Ronald Reagan was elected, and Joan stopped
hearing from Nancy Reagan because at this point, you know,
Ronald Reagan's the president, and all the president's advisors are saying,
don't associate with astrologers. That's going to end badly for
us politically. If you know we're people, find out that
you're consulting an astrologer on things, it's just not going
to be good. But then on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one,

(19:35):
some guy shot President Reagan in a vital area his body.
President Reagan nearly died. I don't really like Nancy Reagan,
particularly her involvement in the War on drugs, but one
thing you can say for her and her husband is
that they were very much in love. By the reports
of everybody who knew the two of them, the assassination
attempt sort of broke Nancy Reagan. Most people would turn
to something comforting, either drugs or God or drugs made

(19:58):
out of God. After that kind of shock, Nancy turned
to astrology. So this is where we get into the
thing that I think makes Joan kind of a monster.
And so we're going to delve into that. But first,
do you guys like products and services? Who does it them? Oh? Man?
In currency? Oh yeah, Well, we're gonna sell some things

(20:20):
to you for you to spend your currency on ad
break and we're back. So it has been a long
opening so far. Nothing bastardy inherently about what Joan Quigley's done.
She's just been doing astrology for people who like having
astrology done. You know whatever, It's fine, We're getting to

(20:43):
wear I think she does something awful. So Ronald Reagan
is shot on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one. Nancy Reagan
freaks out in exactly the same way anyone who's spouse
gets almost assassinated would freak out. Now, both Nancy Reagan,
because I read Nancy's memoo, or at least the chunk
that deals with this. Both Nancy Reagan and Joan agree

(21:04):
that the aftermath of President Reagan getting shot is when
their working relationship in the White House started. Okay, they
both have a different recollection of how that happened. So
I'm going to read excerpts from both jones memoir and
Nancy's memoir, and y'all can tell me which seems more
credible to you. All right, So I'm going to start
with Joan. It's gonna be quick. Okay, this is what

(21:29):
she's said that day. I remember it verbatim. First she asked,
could you have told about the assassination attempt? Yes, of
course I could had I been looking. However, I haven't
been following your charts or tracking the mundane material for Washington.
I'm sorry. Had I been looking, I would have warned you.
She then said, and she's this is Nancy talking to her.
I'm getting terrible press. It's so unfair. I'm really a

(21:50):
very nice person. Can you tell me what to do?
I'm willing to pay you. So. In Jones's version of events,
Nancy Reagan asks, because you have predicted my husband's assassination attempt,
and then immediately asks after that, can you make me popular?
All right? So that's Joan's recollection. Here's Nancy Reagan in
her memoire, my turn, and now it is her turn.
That joke wasn't even a joke. I said it, and

(22:13):
you can't take it back. Here's Nancy Reagan. I remember,
as if it were yesterday, my reaction to what MERV
told me. On the phone MERV Griffin he had talked
to Joan, who had said that she could have warned
me about March thirtieth. According to Mirv, Joan had said
the president should have stayed home. I could see from
my charts that this was going to be a dangerous
day for him. Oh my god, I remember telling MERV

(22:35):
I could have stopped it. I hung up the phone,
picked it up again and called Joan. MERV tells me
you knew about March thirtieth. I said yes, She replied,
I could see it was a very bad day for
the president. I'm so scared. I told her. I'm scared
every time he leaves the house, and I don't think
I can breathe until he gets home. I cringe every
time we step out of a car or leave a building.
I'm afraid that one of these days somebody is going

(22:56):
to shoot at him again. So what do you guys,
Who do you guys think is credible here? Which story
do you believe? I mean, so, Joan is basically like,
I wasn't looking, so I don't know. So I didn't
know ahead of time, right, And then Nancy kind of
comes back at her, being like, well, I'd like you
to sign on for my own purposes to give me

(23:18):
better publicity, you know, to kind of milk the stars,
if you will, forge and try to get stop my
husband from getting shadow again. Meanwhile, Yeah, and then Nancy
is like she just wants to protect her husband. She'll
do anything. Joan saw it coming reached out via merv exactly.
I find Nancy's more credible. And if it depends on
how much money Joan was making, I think if Joan

(23:40):
needed the income from Nancy Reagan, then I kind of
believe in her reaching out. But if she was really
doing fine, it sounds like maybe she had a trust fund.
I don't really know why she would, especially because even
though I do like astrology, I wouldn't put any stock
in it. It seems like a big risk for her
to take, you know, I think, and I get the

(24:02):
feeling from the memoir and from the stuffing the end
to I think Joan wanted to feel close to power. Yeah.
I think that's what it is is. Joan wanted to
be influential. She wanted to use her powers to direct
the progress of history. And what I think is if
Nancy Reagan's version of things is true and MERV Griffin

(24:24):
didn't counter her at least when she recalled this. Then
this lady reached out to MERV because he knew that
MERV was going to talk to Nancy. Joan reached out
to MERV and said, oh, I predicted what happened to
President Reagan. I saw it coming in which case? So
in which case, one of two things is true. Either
astrology does work, and this lady legitimately saw that President

(24:49):
Reagan was in mortal danger, had the first lady's phone
number and didn't reach out and call her, or astrology
doesn't work that way. And Joan just lied to MERV
Griffin because she knew Nancy would hear from him. Wasn't
she just saying I could have predicted it if you
had had me on the job already. That's what her memoir.
That's what Joan says in her memoir. Nancy's like saying

(25:11):
that Joan called MERV Griffin and was like, I could
have stopped it. Yeah, according to what MERV said to
Nancy Reagan, Joan told MERV the president should have stayed home.
I could see from my charts that this was going
to be a dangerus day for him. I'm going to
go ahead and believe Joan. Yeah, me too, because really, yes,
because I think that it's way more credible that she
would say I wasn't looking. If I had been, then

(25:32):
I could have predicted it, because why would you know? Yeah,
I think that that's way more likely because if she
had known, she would have also tried to reach out
because she because it would have achieved the same purpose.
But Okay, the reason I believe Nancy's account is because
they both admit that Nancy stops calling Joan after Ronald
wins the presidency. But after the assassination attempt, wouldn't you

(25:56):
think that Nancy would kind of start reaching out. But
I think Nancy would start reaching out if one of
her friends says this astrologer tells me she predicted I
think Nancy was probably just looking for clues. She was
admittedly in freak out mode. She was admittedly in freak
out mode. But it also she she's presented with a solution,

(26:17):
which is that this lady predicted the assassination, and I
could have stopped it if I'd kept talking to her.
But don't you think that it also makes Nancy seem
like a more reasonable person if she claims that, well,
Ben Merv, who everyone loves, called me and said, you know,
like astrology's not bullshit as opposed to having to admit
I was so freaked out that I reached out to

(26:39):
my old astrologer that I only had to drop because
it was like kind of tacky. Well, she doesn't say
that she dropped Joan because it was kind of tacky.
She's actually totally positive about Joan, like Nancy Reagan's never
anything but nice, like the bodies are buried. Yeah, I
mean I don't know, like Joe never. Joe never talks
about the bodies being buried. Joe she got paid off

(27:01):
to just take this money for this memory invited to
pro Joan people. Oh yeah, this is what I want,
because I can't be mad at somebody for like scamming
Nancy Reagan, because Nancy Reagan sucks so bad that like
she but but tell us more. If there was only
money at stake, I'm just I wouldn't care if it
turns out that Joan was like Nancy Reagan, Like the

(27:22):
stars say, you should like pretend the AIDS crisis isn't happening,
Like then I'll turn on Joan again. Not quite that,
but it does tie the war on drive. I think
some of that is just Nancy Reagan. Yeah, that's yeah,
some of that's Nancy Reagan. I feel like I think
she called MERV so that she could get Nancy because
she knew that if Nancy heard from her, like she

(27:44):
would like be like, oh, I could have stopped this,
Like like that rings truer to me. The Nancy Reagan
calling Joan and being like could you have predicted it?
And can you make everyone love me? I still believe Joan.
I don't know. I know people who are very obsessed
with their astrologers, and I think some that's true that
they'll get sort of like not great readings and then

(28:04):
something scary happens and they reach out almost like a therapist.
That is plausible too. I just have trouble believing number one,
that the conversation immediately swung from can you stop my
husband from dying? To can you make America love me? No,
I don't think I think they're the same thing, because
she's like, if my husband dies, I'm not first lady anymore,
so like I both need my husband to stay alive

(28:26):
and then to be the most you know, because she's
an actress. She just wants to be playing the part
of the first lady that everyone loves. Yeah, I guess
part of it comes down to whether or not you believe.
And she's a shitty actress, which is why Well and
Ronald wasn't a great actor. But they are both not
good actors, which is why they're not believable. I mean,
in fairness, they were like two good actors back then. Yeah,

(28:50):
but they were the not good actors who snitched on
people at the Blacklist trials. So we knew that we
been knew there about it. Yeah, I don't know, So okay,
so we're you guys are coming down on Joan was
just responding to a legitimate job offer. And I'm thinking
Joan was trying to like sneak her way back into

(29:11):
the Reagan's life by taking advantage of an assassination attempt.
So that's where we are right now, all right, So
we'll see where everyone's opinions line up at the end
of this story. So I should probably note right now
for the sake of completion, Joan does claim at another
point in her memoir to have foreseen something terrible and
not told Nancy Reagan about it. She claims that she

(29:31):
predicted Nancy Reagan's cancer and said nothing. Nancy's horoscope had
indicated to me months in advance that she would develop
breaths cancer. I didn't want to alarm her by coming
right out and telling her I knew well too well
with a warrior she was, so I did what I
always do in such cases. I advised her to have
monthly checkups and frequent mammograms, certain that the doctors would
discover it the minute it developed, which strikes me as

(29:52):
a little bit of a dick move, But I don't know,
maybe that's astrologer's standard practice. I mean, the odds of
it of getting breast cancer if you're a woman are
so high that it's a pretty safe bet to say
at some point you'll get cancer. But I mean, if
she told Nancy Reagan, I see that you're going to
get cancer, what could Nancy Reagan have done other than

(30:14):
exactly what she advised her to do. I mean, what
can you do if you know you're about to get
cancer other than see a doctor. Yeah, And I think
this again may tie back to the fact that I
don't think she foresaw any of this, and she's just
claiming later after the fact. To have foreseen someone's cancer
to make her sound good doesn't make her sound good though, No,
it makes her sound terrible. There's no way to say,

(30:35):
I knew you were going to get cancer, didn't tell you.
But again, I'm not like surprised that the Reagans would
take all their advice from like an amoral scammer, because
that's what they are. Yes, and we'll we'll, I mean, yeah,
we're we're in that all moral California scammers. I also
feel like they were coming from like California, where it's
like nineteen eighty, like who doesn't have a personal skeletrap? Well, yeah,

(30:55):
which is part of the thing. Like they're like one,
she's always got these she's got all these pictures in
the book where it'll be like someone some senator or whatnot,
and she'll be like, Senators such and such didn't have
an issue with my astrology because he had an astrology. Okay,
if she had had like a like a priest on
call or whatever. Yeah, it seems like it's kind of
the same thing. Yeah, I mean, maybe more acceptable to

(31:17):
Middle America if she's got a priest than if she's
don't They love horoscopes, Yeah, who doesn't. Evangelicals might not. Yeah,
And I would say the difference between a priest and
a horoscope is that a priest And I'm not into
religion either, but a priest doesn't claim to be predicting
the future for you. A priest can just be like
like the priests the most presidents talk to. They're not
like being like, hey, what time should I take my

(31:39):
plane off? Like should I do this meeting? They're like,
what does God say about bombing people in the Sudan
or whatever? And apparently God's fine with it. But yeah, anyway,
we've we've gotten past the assassination attempt and Joan's prediction
of Nancy Reagan's cancer. So yeah, after the assassination attempt, Joan,

(32:00):
you know, gets the offer to become the astrologer for
the Reagan White House and she decides to take it on.
She says that, you know, she knew that if she
took the Reagans on quote, I would be giving up
all my time and effort, like those who take part
in any administration, sacrificing the rewards they command in the
private sector in order to serve their country. Was she
exclusive to the Reagans. No, oh no, she's this is nonsense.

(32:24):
This is just one of their client and she was
paid extraordinarily wealthy. You know how much do you know? Yeah,
three thousand dollars a month in nineteen eight, which is
today nine thousand dollars a month. What who else were
her clients? That's what I want to know. She doesn't
go into much detail. MERV. Griffin was definitely one of them,
but she was like a lot of famous San Francisco
socialites and stuff, wealthy people. And this, this is a

(32:45):
big trend in the book, is Joan bragging about how
selfless she is for working for the Reagans. She claimed
that Nancy begged her to take them on for free
because the Reagans didn't have much money, but they eventually
settled on a sum, which, again Joan claims were basically
poverty wages, but which was about nine grand a month
in modern money, which is in my mind, a lot
of money. She remarks regularly, like pretty much every chapter,

(33:09):
how heroic she is for taking just this pittance. Quote.
I charged Nancy a monthly fixed fee because she needed
much more of my time than she could afford. This
was very generous. On my part because I often worked
longer than full time for a while, when an emergency
would arise, I was working as long as nine hours uninterrupted.
Oh my good, Oh my god. Yeah, And this is
I guess another call out to the Dorito's people. If

(33:29):
they want to sponsor the podcast, I will work nine
hours uninterrupted on a Dorito's themed monster podcast. We're trying
to get the Dorito's people. Though Doritos comes through, Yeah,
I feel like they're the perfect chip for dictator based comedy.
We do. Moncho's might be in the running, but I
think Dorito's is more of like the you know from

(33:52):
De la crame as you might say, Yeah, yeah. Someone
on Twitter came up with a great hashtag Nachos not Nazis,
which I think, yeah, yeah, we can, we can sell
some Dorito's. Anyway, back to the Reagans, so yeah, in
Nancy's version of events, which again, nobody's credible here, which
is why I'm grateful to have y'all's perspective on the matter,

(34:12):
because I just wound up hating Joan in this book.
But you're right, Nancy Reagan does not deserve to be
taken seriously or literally at her own word either. So
Nancy claims that Joan became a crutch and something of
a therapist, but nothing more. You know, she would call
her when she was anxious about something or a meeting
that Ronnie was going to have. And I can't not
call him Ronnie now because I read that a thousand times,

(34:35):
and I think that Nancy is lying about this. I
don't think she's lying about using Joan as a therapist.
That does not seem out out of the pale at
all for me. But I do think that Nancy's fibbing
about Joan not having a big role in the administration
because Donald Reagan's account backs up Joan's claim that she
was important and she was making major calls. It is
interesting to me that Nancy's only nice to Joan in

(34:58):
her memoir. She says Joan was and emotionally supportive and
expresses admiration for how she handled the press when the
story broke. It's interesting to me that Joan spends her
whole book attacking Nancy Reagan and making her look like
a monster with quotes like Nancy was almost totally innocent
of history. I was often surprised by how little she
knew about it. She was in no way an intellectual
or deeply reflective, which I don't disagree with, but is

(35:22):
not a nice way to refer to the person who's
the only reason that you're noteworthy. Well maybe she thinks
it's not the only reason she's noteworthy. Yeah, And also
is the difference between a politician and a psychic. Yeah,
it's a plain dealer. Yeah. Yeah. And Joan makes a
big point about how much Nancy Reagan hated Eli with Sell,
the Holocaust survivor and author, and what he won. Was

(35:44):
it a nobel I think? Yeah. She says that Nancy
Reagan hated elizzl because of he made a big fuss
when Ronald Reagan laid a wreath at a cemetery where
Nazis are buried, which is a reasonable thing to be
angry about if you're a Holocaust survivor. When Roselle became
vocal about it and sparked an out cry, Joan claims
that Nancy said, he acts like he's crazy. It's his fault.

(36:06):
He's a fanatic. And after this point Joan chimes in
to say that she doesn't think Nancy was a racist
in the most racist way possible. To be fair, Nancy
was not a religious bigot. She liked her wealthy Jewish
friends as well as her friends of other religions. Ooh
oh no, but is that a way to know it's

(36:26):
just terrible. It's terrible. And that's one where I feel
like Nancy's I'm sure Nancy's awful about this. Well, I mean,
that's the thing is I'm like, is she just trying
to like call attention to how awful Nancy is while
still rottin. I think she recognizes it. I think she
legitimately she probably doesn't know anyone that isn't an anti Semite,

(36:47):
so she's like on a scale of aism, this was
just you know, she just hated him, but you know,
her her wealthy Jewish friends. As long as you're rich. Yeah,
And I don't think Joan Quickly ever talked to anyone
who wasn't rich. And that's what I'm saying. So she's
never met a non racist person in her life, yeah,
because I mean it's telling that she doesn't consider the

(37:07):
Reagans to be rich, right, because like they had a
ranch in Santa Barbara, but they're not old money. Yeah, yea.
She that's the line for her because she's you know,
San Francisco old money, and I'm sure some East Coast
people would be like, well, that's California, right, right, Yeah,
the astors are really raking her over the coals, and
they're all making fun of the Reagan being president is

(37:29):
so good, the talk of the Junior League. Yeah, exactly.
Speaking of the Junior League, I am pretty sure those
wealthy Jewish families aren't allowed at the Cotillions. Yeah. I
was gonna say, they're definitely not allowed in the Junior League. Yeah,
so yeah. Joan quickly claims her first big job was
to make Nancy Reagan likable. Nancy was being pilloried by
the press from the White House China. She planned to
buy to her expensive clothes. Her every movement was ridiculed

(37:51):
and criticized. Everywhere she said brought more public disapproval. So
Nancy was embarrassed at being a political liability and begged
for Jones help. I want everyone to love me. Where
Nancy's first words after I agreed to work with her
on a professional basis. I had to smile. The words
were so typical of a person with her kind of horoscope. Dude,
want now, I'm going to go home and look up
like what Nancy Reagan's sign was. Because based on that,

(38:13):
what am I thinking? Scorpio, I'm gonna find out why? Yeah, okay, research,
This is important, extra research that I didn't do because
I'm a hack and a frog. Yeah. So Joan claims
that she asked Nancy what charities Nancy wanted to work for.
Nancy kind of vaguely expressed an interest in drug rehabilitation
programs in the Foster Grandparents program, and Joan claims that

(38:35):
she's responsible for focusing Nancy Reagan. I told her that
these two charities would be what she would be known
for from now on, that she would talk about them
whenever she granted interviews and make them her personal crusade.
She must be a kind of ministering angel of mercy,
a sort of supernational mother figure. I told her to
set her staff to ferreting out appealing letters from children,
for instance, and make a point of answering them. Or

(38:57):
she could respond to some needy person, making sure this
same time that the story would be well publicized in
the media. Oh man, which is such a rich person?
Right about needy person? Like, what do you mean by needy?
That was the foster grandparents thing too. I wonder, I
mean that sounds like I guess it's a program to
help like connect underprivileged kids to like older men and

(39:20):
women who could be like So she really wanted to
just focus on issues that you can put on a mug. Yeah. Yeah,
it is only superficial things that she could be beloved for.
And Joan Quigley was like, yes, but you can't be
casual about it. If you're going to talk about drugs,
you've got to be a drug warrior. You've got to
be like lecturing the nation and claims basically to be
why Nancy Reagan became the face of the war on

(39:41):
drugs during the nineteen eighties, Well, apparently Nancy was a cancer,
just like oh, that's for sure. Ronald was the Aquarius,
the age of Aquarius. I mean the cancer's cancers are.
So they're water signs and they're very they do need
a lot of approval and they're very sensitive to being
reject So there are two water signs together. We water

(40:02):
signs together. Well, water signs are you know, they're fluid,
like there's you know, I'm just now I'm speaking personally
about the water signs. I know, but they're kind of mercurial,
like their temperament can change on a dime. They have moods.
They're moody people. Molly and I are Earth's signs around.
It's interesting that you say that water signs are fluid
because Nancy Reagan, the water sign was a major factor

(40:26):
in the escalation of the War on drugs, which is
why so many people have to take pissed tests to
prove their sobriety. WHOA, and while you were all reeling
from that connection, we have to break for some more ads,
so please pull out your credit cards and spend some money.

(40:48):
We're back and we're talking about Joan Quiggly, History's greatest monster,
or maybe not. We'll be deciding that by the end
of this podcast. One way or the other. It fits
into the behind the Bastard's theme. Either Joan Quiggley's a
bastard or Ronald Reagan the bastard behind the bases, which
in a way makes her less of a bast I mean,
it's like, still, she's the power behind the throne, and

(41:09):
the throne is evil, so I mean the war on
drugs thing I don't love. Right now, Nancy Reagan is
remembered for like just say no, yeah, she's you know,
criminalizing all that stuff, and also for being a horrible homophobe, Yes,
super homophobic. And there's because Joan is very conservative that

(41:30):
comes across and this thing. So I like, she doesn't say.
There's not a word about gay people in this. There's
not a word about the AIDS crisis in this, So
I like, I can't say anything about that because Joan
didn't consider it worth talking about what they did. Yeah,
and if you're an astrologer and you saw the AIDS
crisis coming and did nothing, then I'm going to go
ahead and say that's what I'm saying. She's a monster too.

(41:51):
And again, if you're like taking all the credit for
making Nancy Reagan the person she is, then like you're
taking credit for a lot of garbage. Actually, I'll say
this in Jone's defense. I don't think she could have
predicted the AIDS crisis because that would have been doing
the horoscopes of a bunch of low income gay people,
and Joan quickly did not work for port. But astrology
too is seeing world trends. Yeah, you know, you can

(42:12):
focus on an individual chart, or you can focus on
the planetary alignments, and she she throughout her book she's
very inconsistent about what astrology can do, because sometimes she'll say,
when something goes badly for Reagan, she'll say, like, the
stars were just so fucked up with that thing that
there was no way that anything anyone could have done,
no intervention. But she'll also claim that, like, you can
make anything successful if you pick the right time. That's all,

(42:34):
which is it, Joan, That's all New age bullshit, is
like it's infallible except sometimes yeah, but in this case
nothing could be right. Yeah, So there's there's a lot
of inconsistencies within it. But again, I don't have any
issue with astrology until you start determining when the president
speaks to national tragedies. From which point made me start?

(42:54):
Do you guys think Alex Jones is the Joan Quigley
of the Trump administration? Oh shit, you know that's not
a bad point. I saw him give a speech at
the Republican National Convention, like outside of the main convention floor.
I have never seen a human being get that red
because he's screaming, and it's like it was terrifying. But

(43:15):
I feel like with Trump too, it's like he also
like he cribbed so much from Reagan, and he also
does so much based on what he sees on TV. Yeah,
he's also the president who just watches TV all day
and he's superstitious. Yeah, he's definitely supersticititious. And I'm sure
they've got Alex Jones on a hotline. And I gotta
say I'm glad that Trump does not have one thing

(43:36):
Ronald Reagan had is personal charisma. Like if you ever
talk to anyone, even people who didn't like him, who
had face to face conversations, he was very good. He
was he was fun. He was good at charming people. Right.
That's so weird because I never got that from him
ever when you guys hung out, when we hung out
stories when he got shot and he was like dying

(43:58):
and being wheeled in for Sara, Like he like looked
up at the surgeon and he said, oh, I sure,
hope you're a Republican. It's like like little folk like
that's not funny Trump would, is it. I think it's
endearing in the moment. I don't think. I don't know.
I mean, look, he's not as bad as Trump. I
think in terms of interpersonal relationship, I think Trump Reagan
to me, like his charisma is I don't know. I

(44:20):
think it was more like the same thing with like
George W. Bush. It was like people were like, oh,
his folksy charisma, and I was like, what are you
talking about? Like, I don't see that. He just seems
like an idiot. But I think Reagan was more like George,
you know, he he seemed like like an old man
who used being old to like fake convey stateliness to
be that's an aspect of it, like one thing old

(44:42):
white man. It's hard to say how much of Trump's
unpopularity is due to the media cycle, and like if
Trump had been president in nineteen eighty one, would he
be more popular because we just wouldn't have as much
focus on it. But Reagan was more popular than Trump, right,
which I don't know. I mean imagine Reagan though, that
was I mean, that's one of the things about you know,

(45:04):
making a very like vanilla joke of like I hope
you're a Republican as opposed to like firing off some
crazy ass tweets where you're just so offensive exactly. Well,
I guess it's more like if Reagan were president now,
he'd be tweeting some crazy racist shit all the time.
I know what I mean. It would be because he
wouldn't know how to use Twitter because he's too old.
I think he might be mutton dressed as lamb on Twitter.

(45:27):
But I'm saying he at least for sure was saying
crazy racist, homophobic shit behind closed doors, behind closed doors.
But I think that's the I mean, not that it
makes it any better, but that it makes it easier
to be a charming person. Ye fit in the you know,
that's like what people think is charming about you, which
is obviously Donald Trump's voters are like, I love when
he talks about a politics. He grabs them by the

(45:48):
pussy and that's what I like, you know, But I
do think there's different kinds of racism and they're all toxic.
But like with Trump, you've got this more like I'm
going to be like, but news organizations are still like
a racially charged incident, you know, like they still won't
say he's being a racist, even though he's like using

(46:10):
racist terms and saying racist things. People still are like,
but he's the president, so we're going to treat it
with like the import of like the president saying something
but it's all the same platforms the Republican Party has
always had, which are like homophobia, racism, and like hating
poor people. Well, and I think more to the point,
what you're getting at, which which is interesting in that

(46:31):
it ties in here is one of the things that
has been so dangerous in regarding the intersection of the
press and this presidency, is that we traditionally treat the
presidency as this August position. There's like something special about
the president, like that there's a certain level of respect
that you should have for the president. And that's obviously
nonsense as it occurs to Donald Trump, because he's just

(46:53):
an asshole on Twitter. Well, it's nonsense in general. It
was nonsense then, yeacause this guy had a fucking astrology
telling his plain to ser full in the sky. The
stars weren't and all like the great presidents of history
were like slave owners, so like they were not keeping
their racism secret, you know, or rampaging alcoholics or too

(47:14):
fat to get out of a bathtub, like they're just
what they're just doing, which is just disgusting, right, And
I think the thing about Reagan was it was like
we're casting a guy who looks like he should be
the president to play the president on television, but he
doesn't actually like know or care. Well, that's where the
astrologer becomes an important That's where the astrologer but comes
back in let's get back to let's get back to astrologer.

(47:37):
When we were last talking about the astrology stuff, we
were getting into the fact that, yeah, Joan quickly insisted
that Nancy Reagan make drug policy be like her big thing,
and of course Nancy becomes the face of the just
Say No campaigns. You know, during the Reagan administration, the
number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses increased
from like fifty thousand to several hundred thousand, like four

(47:59):
thousand nineteen ninety seven. So, yeah, Nancy Reagan wasn't making
policy on that, but she was the face of it,
and she had a significant role in setting public opinion.
And some of that's on Nancy, and some of that's
on Joan Quigley, some of that's on Ronnie. Yeah, most
of it's on Ronnie because Joan and Nancy weren't making policies. Well,

(48:20):
I feel like it's also it's always like frowned upon
for the president to like listen to his wife, you know,
and make policy based on that. But she gets her
little pet projects right, but like incarcerating drugs, incarcerating everybody, yeah,
the homie things, yeah uh so yeah. In addition to
urging Nancy to make anti drug policy a cornerstone of
her first ladyship, Joan insisted that Nancy avoid doing any

(48:42):
interviews with fashion magazines. I think she mainly includes this
part so that you can take another shot at Nancy
or another shot at seventeen magazine. She doesn't mention in
magazine by name. It's just like screw magazines, magaziness. Poor
people go to form those only read gold. Yeah. She
says that not talking to fashion magazines was quote the

(49:03):
hardest thing for her to give that up. She tried
to wheedle me into letting her do it, but I
was firm. Joan claims at the time she picked for
Nancy to do her public appearances and her anti drug
speeches and stuff for as perfect as possible. She's very
proud of this work and says it's the reason that
Miss Reagan's reputation improved throughout her husband's time in office.
Here's Joan again, quite typically, when Nancy thanked me for

(49:23):
turning her image around, I said, and it was something
she was already aware of. Nancy Joe Kennedy paid between
one and two million dollars in nineteen sixty for what
I have done for thousands. In nineteen eighty one, she
claims Joe Kennedy had to pay publicists to make Jackie
Oh popular. Wish Oh. Come on, everybody would have loved
Jackie no matter what she did. She was fucking Jacklino
Nasis like, go to hell, John quickly. And then she

(49:46):
said to Nancy, really, you must admit it has been
a present. And again she was getting nine thousand dollars
a month in modern dollars. It's so hard because when
you're paying for astrology, any number seems both ludicrous and
completely safe. You know what I mean, nine thousand. If
you're if someone's giving you nine thousand dollars for this,
it seems easy to argue that that's a tiny amount.

(50:06):
And they're saying, I'm the only person who can give
you this information right also, I mean it. Joan Quigley
does not sound like a feminist, but in a way
advising the first lady to not push her cause in
fashion magazines is kind of a feminist stamp, and it
would be taken way more seriously if you avoid that
channel entirely. Like I'm kind of behind that. Yeah, I'm

(50:27):
not against that part. But also I'm like, Nancy Reagan
just wanted to be in fashion magazines. That's how she
wanted to be first Lady, so she could be on
the cover of Vogue or whatever. And if she'd just
been on the cover of Vogue and not been talking
about drugs, yeah, maybe would be in a better place
in the country. Should have stuck to fashion. Yeah, and more,
I guess more to the point, what irks me is
just like I'm sure that to Joan Quiggly, nine thousand

(50:49):
dollars a month was a pittance, but like that's just
further makes me dislike her, because it's like, like three
families could have lived on what you just for this one.
Joe Gurritos wants to pay us all to do astrology. No,
and you know, as horrible as Joan Quigley is, is
as good as cool ranch Dorito's taste after a hot
day not eating doritos. Okay, let's let's move back on.

(51:14):
Can we co opt this for our podcast? So now,
I like really wanted to if you guys get a
Dorito sponsorship, I just got to say, super, We're going
to try our best. I interviewed an influencer and I
was like, how do you get brands to sponsor you?
And she was like I just like at them and
I'm like, hey, sponsor me. And I was like that works,
and I was like I'm going to start. Yeah, now,
brands all the time listening this should hashtag at Dorito's

(51:36):
in the podcast and try to try tos for putting
us in this whole world where we all need to
be sponsored by brand to exist. Hell world, don't you
mean na choantastic world? I mean a cool a cool
ranch where it is a cool ranch. Well, Santa Barbara,
you brought it back there before. Yeah, I salute you

(51:58):
for that. Uh So Yeah. She own claims that her
advice made Nancy Reagan more popular, and it's hard to
argue with that, at least in the fact that Nancy
Reagan did get a lot more popular. She started with
like a fifty seven percent approval rating after her first year,
but rose to seventy one percent by nineteen eighty five.
So whether or not it was Jones doing Nancy Reagan
was a lot more popular by Ragie. She was right

(52:19):
about not doing the fashion magazines too, because the fashion
magazines would have just been a list of like what
expensive things she was doing exactly and wearing. But also
as the eighties, I thought that's all anybody wanted. No,
I think, I mean, I think she's trying. I think
Joan was trying to create the illusion of substance where
she found none. Well, you know, the main way, that's
what Jane would say, Yeah, right, true, big way to

(52:40):
create the illusion of substance is to not talk that much. Hmm,
that's true, or to just appear. I mean when she
had Nancy kind of choose her projects and then mention
those all the time. She's also kind of editing out
anything else Nancy might want to say, totally go over
way less. Well, she's giving her talking points. Yeah and yeah,

(53:00):
and Joan work started with Nancy Reagan's image, but it
did not end there. As the months and years went on,
Nancy came to rely on Joan more and more. It's
hard to say what influenced her husband's worsening health had
on this, but Joan's involvement in the Reagan administration became extensive.
Here's a quote from Joan. I was responsible for timing
all press conferences, most speeches. The State of the Union
addresses the takeoffs and landings of Air Force one. I

(53:21):
picked the time of Ronald Reagan's debate with Carter and
the two debates with Walter Mondale, all extended trips abroad,
as well as the shorter trips in one day excursions.
In other words, Reagan did not leave the White House
without Jones say so. She also helped the Reagans make
major health decisions. Quote. I delayed President Reagan's first operation
for cancer from July tenth, nineteen eighty five to July thirteenth,
and chose the time for Nancy's mistectomy. So she's got

(53:44):
an unbelievable amount of influence. Did anyone think it was
weird that they were having like press conferences at like
twelve twenty five or something, you know, they did? There
were like that's one of the quotes from earlier as
people talking about it, it it was weird the times they
would set for things, and nobody really knew exactly why,
but there would be myths, like Nancy said, this isn't
a good time. That seems like like some smoking gun

(54:07):
of that. Yeah, that Joan was picking the times that
they were weird times. No, it's one of those things.
Like it's definitely like no one who is who is
close to the administration is refuted any of this. Like
Nancy said, it wasn't that big idea. It's true, but
Donald Reagan's like, no, like the thing, Yeah, it sure
was a thing. It's important that you understand. Joan quickly
never claimed to be clairvoyant, which is how Donald Reagan

(54:29):
described her. I don't think Donald Reagan was an astrology guy.
She claims that a clairvoyant is a mystic or a psychic,
while Joane sees herself as basically a scientist, and this
is her view of astrology. I based my astrological analysis
on the data provided by astronomers and charts calculated by computers.
My conclusions are based on this accurate scientific material, in
the same way your doctor supports his diagnosis by the

(54:49):
laboratory reports, or an economist bases his predictions on statistics.
So Joan didn't have a computer of her own, this
was the eighties. She would send a lot of the
information that she was calculating off to third party companies
who had computers, which means that in addition to the
unsecured phone call she was having with Nancy Reagan about
the president's secret schedule, she was also sending off that

(55:11):
information to strangers. Was she saying in her was she
like sending postcards basically saying the President wants to have
Air Force one launching it to this place on this
date at this time. All she says is that no
one could have figured out what they were talking about
based on the info she gave those people. But we're
having to take her word from it, right right, So
I'm just setting that up that there's a severe breach

(55:34):
in the President's information security as a result of this
astrology thing that's going on. So Joan is a serious lady.
She had nothing but contempt for astrologers who write for
newspapers and magazines like she used to do when she
was young and needed the money. She rages that there
are at present no forced standards for astrologers and that
unworthy people cannot be prevented from assuming what should be

(55:55):
a respected title. So she's very angry about popular astrology,
which is, you know, the astrology that people can afford
if they can afford a newspaper. Miss quickly spent a
large chunk of her book trying to convince us that
astrologers have been historically necessary in government. She points out
that most great kings had astrologers, that Isaac Newton believed

(56:17):
in astrology, that Einstein believed in astrology. So like, she
spends a lot of her book trying to convince you
that it's fine for an astrologer to be advising the president. Now.
In her view of the world, every achievement of the
Reagan era, and also every human achievement in general, was
made possible by the combination of the stars being in
the right position. She credits the miracle of flight to
the fact that Neptune and Pluto were together in the

(56:39):
air sign of Gemini in the early nineteen hundreds. That's true, Okay, good,
good to know. I thought it was like people, Oh yeah,
everybody met the air and dying until they got it right.
But no, it's good. That's magnets, yeah, stars. I could
go back and forth about like all the different things
Joan believed. I wound up putting a lot more of

(57:00):
that in the first draft of this that I trimmed
out just because, like, let's keep it to the Reagans.
It is important. You know that. She claims to put
in a huge amount of work to the charts that
she was doing so. For example, exact birth times are
necessary for good horoscopes. Since Ronald Reagan was born back
in the olden times before people kept track of when
babies were born, Joan had to rectify him, which is
the term she uses for some reason for figuring out

(57:21):
someone's birth time using backwards math. So she claims to
have calculated both Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan's birth times. Did
Joe tell me tell you how what backwards math is? Like,
I'm dying to know about back It's a little bit
of magic, are you? I got that quote? When you
don't know what time of day an individual was born,
and for serious astrology, the exact birth time is indispensable.

(57:43):
You must figure it out from such clues as the
known events of that person's past, their appearance in psychological
and physical characteristics, not already explained by the other factors
in their horoscope. Oh it's not math at all. No, no, no,
she claims to know the exact manner. Oh so it's
like reverse. She's like, oh, he seems like he was

(58:04):
born in around twelve twenty five, so exactly, it seems
like an afternoon or yeah, seems like a fourth using
personality to be like okay, yeah, sure, yeah yeah, And
everyone who could have proved her wrong on this has
been dead for decades because Ronald Reagan was born in
like the teens. Yeah, you know clocks then either, So
we have to cut for some what are those things

(58:27):
where people sell stuff and other people learn about products
and service Doritos. We're having a Dorito's break now, so
you guys have a crunch tastic time listening to these
taste ads, and we're back. So we were just talking
about how Nancy Reagan figured out what she claimed to

(58:48):
be Ronald Reagan's exact time of birth, uh, and also
Gorbachov's exact time of birth so that she could do
their charts, which which comes up later. But let's let's
veer back right now and talk about the Challenger Space
shuttle disaster. I ran across some Twitter, unverified Twitter comments
by people claiming that Ronald Reagan's astrologer had picked the
time for the Challenger Shuttle launch. I found no evidence

(59:10):
of that, but Joan does claim that she's the reason
the President ordered an investigation of NASA after the Challenger disaster.
According to Joan, the President had Nancy ask her whether
or not the stars said NASHA should be investigated after
seven astronauts died in an explosion, which, yes, regardless of

(59:32):
what the stars say, someone should investigate. But yeah, Joan
says that she analyzed the charts for the launch and
the astronauts and said that there ought to be an investigation.
The Twelfth House indicated that sabotage, at worst or at
least inexcusable negligence had been involved in the crash, which
was obviously true because space shuttles aren't supposed to explode.

(59:54):
That seems like a like a like an easy get
for for Where was Joan before the Launch's interested in
right in flight? Now? Yes, well get close to the stars. Yeah,
it's weird that she didn't call that one right the
same time, but she doesn't know when bad things are
going to happen. She also she only knows that she
could have predicted them. Yeah, if she. If only I

(01:00:15):
hadn't been doing if only you gave me more money,
I would have known. Yeah, that this what happened. Yeah,
so yeah, she's the reason there was an investigation in
an assa after this. Now, older listeners may remember that
Ronald Reagan was known as the Teflon President because many
many scandals during his presidency didn't seem to stick to
him up until you know the very end. John quickly
claims credit for this too, in a chapter of her

(01:00:36):
book titled Astrology. Was the Teflon and the Teflon Presidency beautiful?
It's great, It's a work of art. Really, here's Joan.
For almost six years, the president dominated his press conferences,
partly because he was well prepared, and finally because the
times I chose for his press conferences enabled him to
appear at his best. She repeatedly insists that my control
over the departure times at Air Force One when the

(01:00:57):
President was aboard were absolute. Her most vivid story of
sort of deflecting a scandal for the President came during
the run up of his trip to Germany in nineteen
eighty five. He was going to help shore up Helmet Cole,
the German Prime Minister in a reelection campaign. There was
a big photo op opportunity that was supposed to be
important to the German public. Where the two men were
going to go to a cemetery in Bittberg where they'd

(01:01:18):
lay to rest a wreath commemorating the dead of World
War Two. It was a lovely gesture, but the President's
team failed to account for the forty nine dead Waffen
ss men buried there. This became a huge issue in America.
I just talked about kind of Illeisel was very angry
about it. People marched in the streets. Israeli and American
Jewish leaders were outraged, but Helmet Cole insisted the visit
was necessary, and most Germans seemed to agree. Ronnie needed

(01:01:39):
to support Cole because his re election was critical to
write Reagan's Cold War strategy, something about where he wanted
to put missiles. So bereft of good options, Ronald Reagan
turned to Joan Quigley. She claims to have suggested that
the administration basically make a visit to bergen Belsen concentration
camp before going to Bittberg, and that they would publicize
that a lot more. She also claimed that the timing
on when they visited Bitberg was critical, so she picked

(01:02:02):
an exact like minute and like this is the minute
that Air Force one has to land. And what mattered
was not the context of the president's visit or that
he was laying a wreathit a cemetery that included dead
asss men. What mattered was that astrologically the right time
was chosen. Jones time didn't work out with the president's
existing plan. They're supposed to have a picnic or something,

(01:02:23):
so she canceled the picnic, and then she had the
Air Force One fly around in circles for as long
as it had to in order to land at Bitberg
at her chosen time. So she just had the Air
Force One just circling for hours, waiting for the right
astrological time, burning jet fuel. How did the public receive
this visit? They didn't know. I don't know. It was
actually a disaster. This is Michael Moore. One of the

(01:02:45):
first times he shows up on TV is as at
a crowd of protesters at Bitburg. Hold. Yeah, yeah, but
Helmet Cole was re elected in the controversy did eventually fade,
which Joan credits to the fact that she had Air
Force one burn enough fuel that yeah, they were able
and at her specifically chosen astrological time. So again, people

(01:03:05):
noticed at the time that the Reagans had really weird
timing issues because there were like White House correspondents that
had worked with other presidents who didn't use astrologers. Joan
notes that like or who did with their astrologers, gave
them like times, you know, hour normal people till Yeah,
because Joe, it's always like twenty minutes past the Yeah
with you, because that's how you make it seem like
it's a special time. Yeah. No, twelve twenty five. Yeah.

(01:03:26):
I keep feel like we all keep saying twelve twenty five,
Well there's probably an astrological Yeah, it's when the seventh
house is in the night House. Yeah. Well it's also
Christmas when the moon is in the seven twelve twenty
five wait what oh yeah wow yeah, yeah, that's when George,
you should be an astrologer. Because you just did a
whit on me. I was like, why I played it

(01:03:48):
being an astrologer on AOL instant messenger when I was
in like junior high almost got to charging people money,
and I was like, no, I can't do this. Well,
stream of Bay, I know you could be that kind
of astrologer, not this president but I'm saying, what if
you did and then you like were able to bring
it down, you know, because if you have that much power, right,

(01:04:08):
you could be like, you know, serious saying I'm in
the wrong. Oh so definitely. Donald Trump reads everything on
the teleprompter like an anchorman. You know, you could just
get him to say anything. Yeah. So I'm just maybe
I should be the presidential astrologer. Yeah, as long as
he doesn't listen to this podcast, you can't get that
job here, I know. Yeah. There's a quote in Jones
book from Bill Plant of CBS which is fascinating to

(01:04:32):
me because he was basically talking about how the White
House correspondence would always wonder why the timing was so weird.
We wondered if there was any strategy involved, and we
were relieved to learn that the obvious reason was astrology.
Keep being quotes. It's like, why were you relieved at that?
Like what was going on in the eighties could be
something even weirder. Yeah, yeah, god, yeah, you're right. Just

(01:04:54):
I mean I would have just assumed panic attacks, like
every time someone's late, I'm like, oh, it's a panic attack,
or I would have it was like to throw off
the rhythm of the press Corps or something to keep
people on their toes. Yeah, but you make people wait,
it's like a power move. Yeah. So yeah. Joan takes
credit for being the Teflon in the Teflon presidency. She
also takes credit for the being the only reason that

(01:05:16):
Ronald Reagan stayed alive through his term. Quote, the fact
that the cancer did not reoccur is due to the
excellent time I chose astrologically. So she claims to have
been the reason his cancer didn't come back, which I
would give to the doctor, but whatever. She also takes
credit to the fact that Ronald Reagan was not assassinated
during his time in office. While Reagan had times where
he could have been assassinated, I was always able to

(01:05:37):
protect him by warning him not to appear in public
at vulnerable times. Now I'm angry at her for stopping
Ronald Reagan from being and save your assassination wants for
other more worthy people. You know, there's a lot of people.
I got so into just hating her in the book
that I was just angry at her for taking credit
for everything. Yeah. But again again, right, she's taking credit

(01:05:57):
for like was that, Well, it's just it's like she
talks about like the invasion of Grenada, and like there's
no discussion about like whether it was morally right or
like the people who died. It was all about like
I had to make sure Air Force one landed at
the right time. When he gave his speech about like
the Grenada invasions, like that's not the thing to be
concerned about. Joan quickly, well, that's varsity league. She's in

(01:06:18):
junior league. It's totally different to handle different things, you know.
It's very frustrating. So yeah, Joan takes credit for everything
good that happened during the Reagan administration. The only mistake
she admits to making is in picking the time for
Reagan's first debate with Walter Mondale during his nineteen eighty
four re election campaign. Mondale is generally seen as winning
that debate, but Joan actually kind of takes credit for
this too. So when she was charting it, she put

(01:06:41):
his son in a prominent position in the location chart
for the time and place in the debate. A reason
that he had so little charisma and personality that the sun,
normally indicative of these traits, would simply emphasize his deficit. Characteristics. Unfortunately,
she claims that putting the sun in that position in
his chart in the time she picked actually made Mondale

(01:07:01):
unstoppably powerful in the first debate, which is why Reagan lost.
So that's good to know for Walter Mondale, if he's
listening to this podcast, he had an even more powerful astrologer. Yeah,
you know who just died before the second debate wis Yeah,
well we're gonna get to some dueling wizards a little
bit here. Well, maybe she's also responsible for hiding President

(01:07:24):
Reagan from the public during the days after his biggest scandal,
Iran Gate broke. For those of you who don't know,
the Iran Conscious scandal started in nineteen eighty five when
a group called Hesbalah and Lebanon kidnapped seven Americans. America
went to Iran and was like, hey, could you guys
get hesbel At a chill out for like and give
us these guys back, and if you do, we'll give
you missiles which you can use to shoot at Iraq.

(01:07:45):
Iran in Iraq were war at the time. We were
also giving a Raq weapon so that they could shoot Iran.
But President Reagan was like, why not arm both sides
of the conflict and free some hostage at the same time.
So we had Israel sell weapons to Iran, and then
we paid back Israel in more way weapons, and then
there wound up being a bunch of extra cash leftover
after this. And a guy named Alie North was like, oh,

(01:08:07):
you know, we've got all these far right wing rebels
in Nicaragua fighting the socialist government there. And there's an
Act of Congress called the bowl In Amendment that says,
we can't give the contras more money, but what if
we just keep selling more missiles to Iran and give
the money to the Contras now? And so anyway, that's
what they did, and it's different from what gangs do

(01:08:27):
because everyone wore suits. So that's the Iran Contra scandal
in a nutshell. The story broke in late nineteen eighty
six and Americans got very angry that the president and
his men had illegally funded a terrorist group linked to
twelve hundred attacks. Joan claimed that the stars were too
bad for her to help with this scandal. The major
cosmic forces had so turned against Reagan that what I
had been able to do earlier was impossible for me

(01:08:50):
to do. Then, so she just advised Nancy Reagan to
not have the president talk to anybody, and Donald Reagan
criticizes her during this for limiting the president's exposure to
the media and the public. This period, people were yelling
basically for President Reagan to say something about this gigantic scandal,
and he wouldn't say a word, which apparently all due
to Joan Quickly saying don't talk to anybody, which I

(01:09:11):
don't know. Maybe President Reagan would have made the choice
to shut up no matter what, but I'm sure Joan
telling him it was too dangerous for him to talk
to the press about all these missiles he had sold
people did not help matters. So I think that goes
in the Joan Quickly bad pile, if you're keeping track.
But I mean, like, if he had said something, we
don't know what he would have said, sorry, would have

(01:09:32):
been nice. Maybe she knew him so well at that
point that she knew that what he would say would
be even worse than just nothing. Yeah, And the way
Joan puts this is the media was crying out for
press conferences, which in my opinion, would have been disastrous
to the president's interest in during which he would have
been at a disadvantage, which again she doesn't express any
care for the nation's interests or for the fact that

(01:09:54):
an actual crime had been committed. It's just this is
bad for the president, right, and that's my only concern.
And he's famous and that reflects on me, right. Yeah. Well,
no one knew about her at this point, right, But
to her, she knew she was the power. Yeah. Yeah,
she didn't want it to go bad. She also claims
to be responsible for beginning the end of the Cold War. Uh. Yeah, no,
that's a big one to say, credible. Yeah, I was

(01:10:15):
heavily involved in what happened in the relations between the superpowers,
changing Ronald Reagan's evil empire attitude so that when he
went to Geneva, so that he went to Geneva prepared
to meet a different kind of Russian leader and one
he could convince of doing things our way. See. Joan
claimed she did Gorbachev's chart and figured out his birth
time and figured out that he and Ronald had the
potential to be best friends and bring peace to the world.
Best friends. Yeah, best friends, Reagan and Gorbachev. You remember

(01:10:39):
when they brought world peace? Yeah? Where we have world peace.
It's now. Yeah, it's great, fair, that's perfect now. Yeah.
So Jones saw that there was the potential for an
incredible collaboration between these two. She just had to cool
Ronald Reagan's hot heart. So she incepted the idea of
peace with the USSR into Ronald Reagan by bringing the
idea up to Nancy Reagan. I'm going to read this

(01:11:00):
orbatim because it's just just charming. Do me a favor.
I told Nancy Ronnie can be so charming and persuasive.
Get him to exercises super salesmanship ability on Gorbachev. Get
him to sell arms reduction, democracy, human rights, and free
enterprise to the Secretary General. She added, it only makes
sense for both sides to agree to reduce the grandiose

(01:11:20):
military expenditures that are causing the national debt to rise
in the USA and the Soviets and abysmal standard of living.
Ronnie will be able to reason with Gorbachev and convince
him of doing things our way, you know, freedom and
free enterprise. Which, yeah, I wait, am I siding with
Joan because she wants to curb military Sunday? I mean,
it's it's just the way she phrases it. It's a

(01:11:41):
goof just get him to sell arms reduction. It's like
how she says it, like it's a horoscope though. Yeah, yeah,
like don't go on a trip tomorrow. Yeah, no, I
don't disagree with like, I mean, that's obvious. It's the
only good policy thing she said so far. Yeah, I'm
not that good, like better than that in the fashion magazine. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:12:03):
it's it's it's not bad. I have trouble believing that.
That's what convinced Ronald Reagan to deal with Do you
find it difficult? But you know, freedom and free enterprise.
You have to give her the wins along with the lawsuits.
You're right, you're right, You're right. That's fair. So Joan
wound up had there was a big secret meeting in
Rekkievic between Grbachav and Reagan. It was a big deal

(01:12:25):
because you know, fucking cold, what is like red dawn
yere So the fact that they were actually sitting down
and talking was a big deal. Joan did this in
spite of the fact that she had no idea where
Reikievic was. Nancy mentioned their meeting to her and asked
if the president should go and Joan's first question was
where on earth is Reikievic and how do you spell it?
Which maybe ought to be like your your sign that

(01:12:46):
you shouldn't be weighing in on this, But there, what's
that Jay doing in there? It's true, it's a confusing
ass Jay, and the why is a little weird too,
But Joan still did the work. And while the Reikievic
meeting didn't end with any conclusive because President Reagan wasn't
willing to give up his Star Wars missile defense plan,
it was a big step towards thawing in the Cold War,

(01:13:06):
and it led eventually to the signing of the Intermediate
Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or the IF Treaty. This treaty
basically pulled a lot of short range nukes out of
Europe and led to the elimination of something like twenty
six hundred missiles, which, regardless of your politics, is a
good thing. Twenty six hundred less nukes in the world
because of this treaty. So negotiations for the inf actually
had been ongoing through back channels and shit since like

(01:13:27):
nineteen eighty one, but by nineteen eighty seven, Gorbachev was
ready to fly over to America and sign the treaty.
The decision for whden where to host the meeting, of course,
was Jones, so she plotted everything out and sent her recommendations.
The Russians agreed at first, but then they kept switching
around the times and changing their plans, often at the
last minute, until the dates for the summit and the
times for the signing were fixed at, according to Joan,

(01:13:47):
close to the worst possible astrological time to do it. Oh,
this is probably not a coincidence. In fact, it was
almost certainly the result of a great untold duel between
a US astrologer and the Soviet Union. Nancy had been
Joan for years at that point, informing her about secret
meetings with Soviet premiere months before they actually happened. There
was zero informational security in this meeting. So not only

(01:14:08):
is Joan sending off information about this to random computer
people to have it computed, but like they're talking on
an unsecured line. They did sometimes talk through the White
House switchboard and gonna I'm gonna quote from Joan's recollection here.
Nancy always chided me for refusing to leave my full
name and number with the switchboard. I told her it
made me uneasy. I told her operators talked. She said

(01:14:31):
I was silly to worry about something like that. I know,
She said, all White House operators are secretive and reliable.
Nancy told me she would give me an assumed names
that I could always get through to her through the
White House switchboard. She would choose the assumed name for
me and put it on a list. This would automatically
give me access. The name she chose was Joan Frisco
Ha. Ha Ha was from San Francisco. So Joan is convinced

(01:14:56):
that their conversations were intercepted by the Soviet Union. The
Soviet Union changed the time times of the treaty meeting
in order to favor themselves and hurt Ronald Reagan as
much as possible. Very well, maybe what happened now Astrology
was illegal in the Soviet Union? Really Yeah, well they were.
Religion was illegal. So they're not big on superstition in
the Soviet Union, so I think they are, which is

(01:15:17):
why it has to be banned. Yeah yeah, yeah, well
you forget astrology science. Well I was saying, maybe Resputant
was still alive. Well, I think it does tie back
to resputing. Yeah. I think that's probably a big part
of why it was. So it seems like one of
the two. Either the Soviets found an astrology they hadn't
in prison and had that person pick the worst times,
or they just made sure to always fuck with the
timing once that Reagan said it, because they knew that

(01:15:39):
it would upset him that he wasn't doing that. I
think that's what happened. But it's funner to think of
it as like a I could sell a screenplay on
an astrology duel. But yeah, definitely in the United States,
so there's any producers on them, or if Dorito's wants
to back the first Dorito's feature film original content, Yes,

(01:16:00):
favorite streaming platform this is. This is going to make
us a lot of money. I'm so exciting, Okay, I
hope so yeah, I mean that would just be a pittance,
but I'll take it. I'll do that work on Yeah.
Oh damn it, watch out, we're gonna take your sponsorship. No,

(01:16:20):
you're so much better at this than me. Yeah. So
Joan blames the information leaking on Nancy's cunning ruse, calling
her Joan Frisco. I think it's just as likely that
it happened because she was they were talking on home
phone lines or she was sending stuff off to computer people.
Either way, clearly wasn't a secure situation. Joan found the

(01:16:40):
best time of day to do the signing, even with
all of the Soviet fuckery, and she warned Nancy Reagan
that since they weren't signing in a great day, she
had to be super careful to use the exact time
that Joan suggested for the day that they did sign it,
but Nancy messed up and they signed like twenty minutes later.
Joan suggests this is because Nancy had just said cancer surgery,
you know from the case answer that Joan claims she

(01:17:01):
foresaw it didn't warn Nancy about, and then adds, under
such circumstances, she can't be blamed for not arranging the
signing with her usual foresight and precision, which is nice.
It's the only break she gives Nancy Reagan in her
whole book. So the IONF Treaty is probably one of
the most inarguable accomplishments of the Reagan era. Thousands of
nuclear weapons were destroyed. Both sides were allowed to send

(01:17:21):
advisors over to inspect the process. The whole world was
made a little bit safer by the implementation of this treaty.
Here's what Joan said about it. The execution of the
if treaty signing time was flawed. The exact time I
had asked for would have had the effect of filling
up a tea cup nearly to the brim at the
same time ensuring that the tea cup would not fill
up too fast or spill over. Then Joan mixes the
shit out of her metaphors. What we now had, in

(01:17:42):
effect was a car whose brakes had failed, checked through
crowded intersections, just a classic filled tea cup car speed
through an intersection. So Joan claimed that either the treaty
was going in disastrously for the world, because she wrote
this in nineteen ninety before all the effects, the treaty
was going to end disaster, or it was going to
be like a thoroughbred racing unchallenged towards the finish lines.

(01:18:05):
That's awesome. She only hedges her bets when she's talking
about the future. Whenever she talks about a prediction she
made in the past, it was always very clear to her.
But Joan's not consistent. Is what I'm saying here, So yeah,
to this day, I don't know how safe that treaty
is for us or the world. I haven't had the
heart to progress that signing chart as I did the
other it was fine. I haven't had the heart and

(01:18:26):
alsor they're not paying me anymore. They're not paying me anymore.
So yeah, Joan quickly wasn't sure that the IF treaty
was a good idea, but she's damned sure that Nancy
Reagan is a monster. At times, she writes about Nancy
Reagan like Nancy was a vampire. Basically, I mean, is
she wrong again? I guess not. No, she's not wrong.
Two people can both be monsters. Yeah, two people can

(01:18:47):
both be monsters. She claims that Nancy grew stronger as
Ronald Reagan grew weaker, as if she was like feeding
off of Ronald's essence again, you know, like a vampire.
Maybe she knows she was close to Nancy. Yeah. When
I say she knows where the bodies are buried, I
mean she was. She's a vampire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess.

(01:19:09):
Like to me, I get frustrated because I'm like, even
if you're within an awful administration, you got to be
loyal to the people who are the only reason that
you're noteworthy, and like Nancy Reagan is the reason you
got it brought into this. She was very nice to
year in her shitty memoirs. You should be not a
monster to her. But again, the astrologer's job is to
tell the truth and the politician's job is to, you know,

(01:19:31):
try and make everybody happy. And that's that's fair because
certainly Nancy Reagan doesn't deserve any equivocating here, that's right. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
it's be real about Nancy Reagan. And she's polite but bad. See,
I get too drawn in when I read someone's terrible memoirs, yea,
And I don't. I don't hate Nancy Reagan as much
as I ought to because her memoirs are better written.
Probably she had more money for a good ghost write. Ah,

(01:19:53):
that's why. Yeah. So I don't want to defend Nancy
Reagan anymore. I do want to make it clear that
Quigley was terrible at predicting the future, because while she
usually equivocated between you two points and would say like, oh,
the treaty is either going to be a disaster or
fine to kind of like sometimes she did make specific
predictions in her memoirs about things that were going to

(01:20:14):
happen in the future, and they are all wrong. Here's
one aiding the Contras wasn't popular in many circles. History
will one day prove that Ronald Reagan was strategically correct.
The Contras signed a peace treaty with the government in
nineteen eighty seven. The leader they were fighting, Ortega, is
still in charge of Nicaragua. Joan Quiggley said that if
this remained the case, all of Latin America would fall

(01:20:34):
to communism, still waiting on that. She also includes the
text of a letter she sent to Ronald Reagan saying
that development of SDI the Star Wars Strategic Defense initiative,
was a brilliant strategy. So he said he would go
down in history with Lincoln and Roosevelt as the best
American presidents, but he would be known as the greatest
of America's presidents because while Lincoln just solved slavery and

(01:20:56):
Roosevelt just solved World War Two, Donald Reagan would quote
bring peace to the world. Oh man, what if if
only she'd been right. Yeah, Well, she wasn't right about
any of that, because the Strategic Defense initiative was scrapped
in nineteen ninety three for being expensive nonsense. World peace
still has not happened. Yeah, but also Trump brought up
the Star Wars thing like yesterday. Definitely made an impression

(01:21:19):
on him. Yeah, yep, so she did say conduct the
course of history. Yeah. Well, in a way, she was
a Charlatan, but she was working for Charlatan's Yeah, so
he'd been working for the good guys. She probably would
have done good guys stuff. I mean, just anything to
advance her own interest, right, Yeah. She just seems like

(01:21:40):
a self interested person. Yeah, that's she's definitely a self
interested person. Most of my distaste for her comes from
I feel like she was taking advantage of a scared
lady whose husband had just gotten shot. Yeah, but who
cares if it's Nancy Reagan. Yes, you takes just a
scared lady. Yeah. Maybe that's why Nancy got so bad. No,

(01:22:01):
it was bad, she was bad. I mean, I think
like a lot of it probably comes from the fact too,
that if you don't view astrology as any in any
way legitimate, which I'm barely saying I even I do.
By the way, Rob is an aries not a Pisces,
just to make that clear. But he is on the cusp,
so I wasn't that far off. But uh, I mean,

(01:22:21):
I think it's easy to see people who do believe
in astrology or who charge to make astrological predictions as manipulative.
And but I mean they're different than clairvoyance. It's true
because they're actually looking at something that they believe they can. Yeah,
they're looking at math, and they're trying to apply logic
to an insane world to make people comforted by the

(01:22:42):
idea that there's like a structure and a float of
things and that you can predict what it'll be. I
think they believe in their own abilities. Well yeah, And see,
this is one of the things that I question is
whether or not because Joan isn't entirely consistent number one
in her claims about what astrology can do, because there
will be times when she was like, there's nothing that
could have changed the outcome this, and there's other times
where she's like, you can guarantee the success of any

(01:23:03):
endeavor if you do this and this and this. She's
a scammer, But she wasn't like giving the advice she
was giving them was mostly about what time to do
the bad things they were going to do, as opposed
to being like, do this thing. Yeah, they were like,
when you make the announcement about the horrible thing you're doing,
do it at twelve twenty five. The only thing she
claims that she was specifically giving advice that went beyond

(01:23:26):
timing is for Nancy Reagan's war on drug stuff. Yeah.
I mean, I think you've done a great job of
convincing me again that Nancy Reagan is one of his
greatest monsters and we're getting behind a bastard here for Yeah.
I mean, I think also she really used the fact
that she was like, you know, the first lady to
hide the fact that she was a horrible person and

(01:23:50):
should be remembered as such. And just because she was
insecure doesn't mean that she didn't I mean, everything she did. Yeah.
The Reagan's legacy has benefited so much from the nostalgia
with conservatives that they look back on it as like
the last great time. They were all in coke at
that time too, for sure, And also we know people
were maybe like not so cogent during points of the

(01:24:10):
presidency and somebody maybe it was all over North, you know,
somebody was in their ear being like, do this horrible thing,
and they were saying yes. So you know, you still
have the the president you can say like no, I
don't want to. Yeah. So I don't think we should
put too much on the people that influenced the Reagans.
I think we should really just lay the blame at
the feet of the Reagans for being such assholes. Well,

(01:24:32):
there's definitely a lot of blame to go around for
the Reagans, I guess might I don't think Joan was
the I don't think she's the one to blame. I
think if we're gonna blame anyone, let's blame Aliver North.
I think she gets some blame, though, cause I think
number one just for the war on drugs, not just
for the war on drugs. I still think that Nancy's

(01:24:52):
recollection of how Joan came back into her life rings
truer to me than Jones does. And I think that
Joan was taking advantage of that. And I also think
I think Joe knew that she was not as I
think whether and I think she must have believed in
astrology to some extent, obviously, but I think she knew

(01:25:15):
that it was not as cut and dry and clear
cut as she claims in her book, and I think
getting involved in global geopolitics to the extent that she
did with no qualifications. Yeah, but again that's what the
Reagans did. That's a good point, you know, I mean,
especially Nancy. He definitely for Nancy. He'd been a governor
at that point, but he wasn't a good governor, and

(01:25:37):
he got cast in the role because he was like
someone you know, he was like Trump. He was somebody
that really evil. People were like, this guy will make
a good face for our evil white supremacist and he
seemed able to be manipulated, and he was able to
be manipulated, which made him a good you know. And
I think people do kind of use the excuse of like, oh,
maybe he was senile, And there's rumors he had Alzheimer's

(01:25:58):
at a certain point in the presidency. Definite. But again
it's like he still thought it was a good idea
to be president. He wasn't like, hey, maybe I'm not
the most qualified person. He like, let all those people
gas them up. To be fair, if you have Alzheimer's
or your senile, you're not going to be you can't
be held accountable for your decisions, even if they're terry. Right.
But I'm saying, don't thinking had Alzheimer's when you became governor.

(01:26:19):
I think you had ambitions. But you know, if your
ambitions are like I'll do whatever it takes to stay
in power and get into power, you probably shouldn't be
in power. I don't disagree with that when it comes
to Ronald Reagan or for Nancy. But I don't think
that the fact that a number of unqualified people got
into national leadership excuses what Joan did either. But I don't,

(01:26:40):
I don't. I just think if you're scamming the Reagans,
like the Reagans deserve to be scammed, you know. And
when I added up, it's like she she's mostly culpable
for like being a bad friend. Yeah, as opposed to
she's a bad friend, and you're not really someone's friend
if they're paying you to be their friend. But it's
like compared to Info Wars, for instance, I mean, when
you when you think about the statements she was actually

(01:27:02):
making and the way that she was wielding the power
that she had, she could have been so much worse.
She could have been so much worse. She was saying
what time to land the plane? She wasn't saying, like
everybody who you think is like a child in a
cage is an actor. That's true, and like that person
is in the ear. But ive Donald Trump, and he
believes that stuff even though he's making the policy which
is like more insane. Well, I will say, though, if

(01:27:24):
you start comparing people from anyone from the Reagan administration
to anyone from today's administration, all the people from back
then are going to look better. We know, what did
she do? But what did she do that was so bad? Bad?
Just because the gloves are off, they were doing the
same shit. It's just Nancy was going to choose a
bad policy to get behind. And I think that Joan
was correct in saying that the war on drugs was

(01:27:45):
a way to play the public and to create a
cause and fabricate a solution that wouldn't be effective but
would have the illusion of being this really incredible, like
we're all going to be so happy this was passed.
But what if Nancy Reagan, what if she was like,
all right, choose like a b C and everything was
even worse. But what if Nancy had just done a

(01:28:05):
bunch of fashion magazine interviews and nobody she'd never gone on.
Well that's stupid, though, why should she? She was the
first lady? Because I think that what Joan was saying
is that people need to take you seriously. You don't
have the knowledge, You don't have the gravitas to be
able to make people like you, because they're just gonna
think you're and also because you're a bad person who
has no substance and you're just like a homophobic, horrible socialite.

(01:28:31):
Isn't it bad to tell someone who has no substance
and horrible opinions on things to make their opinions count
by becoming ac she was already Yeah, but she just
wanted to talk about fashion. Well, that wouldn't have ever
made her possul being first ladies to talk about fashion
and also pretend to care about some pet issue. It's

(01:28:53):
like being a socialite on a super scale. So it
makes sense that a socialite would have the best advice
on how to be like a socialite. Yeah, well I
guess this. This, this, this is not something we're gonna
settle to either of our anyone's mutual agreement. I think
she took advantage of Nancy Reagan in a moment of

(01:29:15):
weakness and light about having predicted her husband's assassination. Y'all
are on a different side of that, and think that
Nancy probably just called her up, called her up. I
was gonna say. I think our side, our platform is
fuck Nancy Reagan. I don't disagree with fun Nancy Reagan.
But I add John quickly to that. John gets as

(01:29:37):
scot Free. We're pro Joneses. You the listeners at home,
will have to decide for yourselves who you think the
bastards in this story were. But I think we can
all agree there were a lot of bastards everyone's talked
about today. And Donald Reagan, by the way, is also
kind of a dick, but we'll get into that. Yeah,
I think we should be the people whose names we
don't know yet. Yeah, those are the real Yeah, we

(01:29:57):
didn't even watch Ollie North should take a lot more,
That's what I'm saying. And if we're gonna blame someone
for the Reagans, that's not the Reagans. It ain't the psychic.
Not the psychic I mean, but she's not. She's not
a psychica. She's astrology, a planetary scientist, maybe the stars.
Maybe the stars were misaligned and that's why they were
all such terrible people. Yeah, true, because she's definitely it's

(01:30:19):
just the way she writes things. I'm not saying she's likable.
I'm just saying she's not as bad as the Rigans.
And maybe maybe I'm not saying she's as bad as
the Reagans. I am saying she's history's greatest monster. Okay,
this has been enlightening, and I'm glad y'all had a
different opinion on all of this than me, because it's
hard for me to have much perspective after three hundred

(01:30:41):
pages of the Twelfth House and the Seventh by the
way I should, I want to add one last thing.
So the end of Joan Quigley's book is just a
bunch of stuff on how astrology works in politics, and
so she talks about all the different houses, which I
don't understand what any of that means. But there's like
the twelfth House in politics is apparently all the poor people,
but also journalists and saboteurs and like poor people, the homeless,

(01:31:07):
drug addicts and journalists and the same a lot. No,
she's the right astrologer for the Reagans for sure. Anyway, Uh,
you guys want to plug your pluggables? Yeah, sure. Come
listen to Night Call. It's on the Audio Boom network
of podcasts. And if you have a question, a comment,
an astrological prediction, you can give us a call at

(01:31:27):
two four oh four six night You can also text
us at the same number, or you can email us
at Night Call podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah, and
we can do like some cross coverage. If you've got
thoughts about the Reagans and astrology, you send them to
Night Call and we will talk about them there too.
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so
much for fun. Thank you guys for being on you
listeners at home. If you have an opinion over whether

(01:31:49):
or not Joan Quickly is history's greatest monster, or if
I'm being too hard on her, drop us a line
at at Bastard's pod on Twitter and either yell at
me or agree with me, whichever is your preference. You
can also find us on the internet at behind the
Bastards dot com. We'll have some pictures up there. Joan
Quigley commissioned a drawing of like a presidential seal with
astrological symbols on it. That's super kooky. We'll get a

(01:32:11):
picture of that for you. So yeah, I'm Robert Evans.
You can find me on Twitter at I write Okay,
please check us out. We're back every Tuesday. So next
Tuesday we will be talking about someone probably with millions
of deaths on their hands. Hey, when are you gonna
get to some Freemasons? Yeah, they're all Freemasons. All right.
This has been behind the bastards. I have been Robert Evans,

(01:32:33):
and I love like forty percent of you.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Astrologer Who Managed The Reagan Presidency