Assassination Week #3: How The Reagan Assassination Attempt Made Everything Worse

The gang sits down to talk about John Hinckley Jr., mental health, and what happens when you try and fail to kill the President.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is assassination week. Oh God, my left arm, pet,
it hurts so much. Land doesn't feel so good. Ronald
Wilson Reagan. Six, six, six, six letters in any way, whatever. Um,
I'm Robert Evans. This is it could happen here, a

(00:22):
podcast about assassinating world leaders. Um, that's why it's called
it could happen here, and today we're talking about a
time where it did, when John Hinckley Jr shot Ronald
Wilson Reagan. Um, with me today James Stout, Garrison Davis,
Um and of course, of course, the ghost of Ronald Reagan,

(00:42):
who was a regular contributor to our to our podcasts,
along with the ghost of the Queen. And Yeah, now
the ghost of the Queen has joined the team. Very excited. Um. So, obviously,
John Hinckley shot Reagan. We're gonna get into a lot
of detail about Mr Hinckley's life. This is something that
is joked about a lot on the Internet, including by me. Um,

(01:05):
but you know, it's it's it's interesting because there's there's
two strains of people who will like come out and
tell you it's not cool to joke about John Hinckley
JR shooting Ronald Reagan. And one of them is right.
which are the people who are like, well, actually like
it's pretty messed up story, and he like it's it's
kind of messed up to to laugh about this family's tragedy,

(01:25):
because it was a family's tragedy, and the other people
are like, no, it's fucked up because he had the
hots for Jodie foster and what was actually going on
there was a lot more complicated um than that. So
we're gonna talk about all of the things that happened
in this shooting, which was messed up and which I
probably shouldn't joke about on twitter, Um, because it's actually
really bleak Um, and in order to understand both why

(01:47):
it's sad on a personal level and why it's a
tragedy for the entire country. Um, yeah, I'm just gonna
start by talking about John Warnock Hinckley Jr, who was
born on May nine and more Oklahoma, which is about
two and a half hours from where I grew up
in Oklahoma. Unlike me, John's Dad, who was John Warnock

(02:07):
Kinkley SR, was the chairman and president of Vanderbilt Energy.
So they had lots of money, a lot of a
lot of walking around money and vanderbilt money. Yeah, and
like most people who have good money, they don't stay
in Oklahoma. Um, they have any owls and the vanderbilt
is big must. I'm certain they did add owls to

(02:27):
this story. As you picture John's childhood. Um, so their
richest hell and they get the funk out of Oklahoma
and moved to Dallas Texas when John was four, which
is so far weirdly like my life in a lot
of ways, although I was a bit older. Um, maybe
that's why I didn't get the madness. So that's not why. Normally,
getting kids away from Oklahoma really really fix his stuff.
But John was taken. John was taken to the only

(02:51):
place more toxic than small town Oklahoma, a wealthy neighborhood
in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. He attended highland park
high school. This school where I would later lose several
speech and debate competitions and when one or two as well. Um,
it's where, if you if you're in the DFW area,
the rich kids who don't have good drugs go to

(03:11):
highland park, but which rich kids with good drugs go
to Jesuit because they're private school kids. But Highland Park
is like the rich kids who are gonna like try
to sell you a shitty ditch weed. Anyway, these are
this is important Dallas Fort Worth context, and I assume
it was the same when he was a child. Um,
as far as I've ever found any information, he was
a pretty your normal young man for that time and place. UH,

(03:34):
there's no one really seems to notice anything particularly different
about him. Um, he does reasonably well in school. Uh,
later in life he's going to express some racist thoughts
in his diary and in other writings prior to the shooting.
It doesn't really seem to have ever been a motivating
factor in his life and to the extent that he
had regressive beliefs, they seem to have been due to

(03:56):
the fact that he grew up in a sheltered, rich,
all white environment. Um, and that's not great for you. Um, shocked. Yeah,
shocked one in Texas no less one right up in
the new republic describes his childhood this way. Perhaps it
is fear of what lies outside that makes the interior
of the family so rigid and subdued, like life in

(04:17):
a well run bunker. The world of the hinkleys was
the rootless middle class sun belt culture that nurtures pro
family values, Christian fundamentalism and occasional mass murderers. Families move frequently,
but without compromising their parochialism. Everywhere people are White, Christian Republican.
Joanne explains John's egregious prejudices by saying he had never
been around people of other races. Somewhere outside there are

(04:39):
malign elements, minority groups, rock musicians, big government and the
cynical Gosmus cosmopolites who dominate the media. Mothers in this
culture do not lavish attention on their children, but on
their furniture. Now that is a coastal liberal elite like
fucking paragraph. Trying to describe like people who grow up
in this situation as someone else who grew up in

(04:59):
a similar area. I think most of that is pretty
silly and, more to the point, it doesn't get to
why John does this. We're getting to why John does this.
It's not because he grew up sheltered and a little racist. Um.
That is not why he shoots the president. Um. There is, however,
a bit of that that that does strike me as accurate. As, again,

(05:20):
a kid who grew up near here a couple of
decades later, which is the description of his childhood as
life and a well run bunker, which is kind of
how it feels to live in these wealthy enclaves in
the Dallas Fort Worth area. I grew up in plain Oh,
which is, you know, a couple of steps down the
economic rung from Highland Park, but not all that far.
and Um yeah, that's that's not a bad description of it.

(05:42):
It just doesn't generally lead to kids shooting the president.
More often it leads to them shooting up heroin and
then dying of heroin overdoses, which was the big problem
in Plano when I was a kid. That said, it's
also worth noting that his parents are not, as far
as I can find, like fifties stereotypes, like his dad's
not this super masculine I who's like mentally abusive to
his kid. His his MOM's not like checked out. Neither

(06:05):
of them are against the idea that their son might
have a mental illness and need help for it. In fact,
it seems like they're kind of more open to the
idea of reaching out for professional mental health for their
kids than a lot of parents would have been at
the same time period in nineteen seventy six, John Drops
out of Texas tech to go to Hollywood and try
to make it as a musician again. His parents are

(06:26):
very supportive of him. One cannot say they didn't try
to help their son live his dreams. When he gave
up on music and he wanted to be a writer,
they paid for him to take a class at Yale.
We'll get to that in a second. It doesn't go well, UM,
because he's yeah anyway. But John's not being honest with
his ambitions, nor is he open with his parents about
his mental health. We now know that John Developed Schizophrenia

(06:48):
as a young man and had a series of psychotic breaks.
When he would get money to do stuff like this
Yale writing class, he would take it and buy guns.
He did go to Yale, but it was mainly to
Stalk Jodie Foster, who was going to ill at the
same time. Um, now this is all occurring in the
late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, which is the
fucking Dark Ages for treatment of this particular condition and

(07:09):
a lot of other conditions. There are not a lot
of good options. Among other things, I just said, he's
not open with his parents about the fact that his
mental health is declining. I don't know how he really
could have been I don't understand. I don't think it's likely.
It's certainly not the case. This didn't happen to John,
but I don't think it's very likely for a young
man in this time and place to be well equipped
by his education or society to express what is going

(07:31):
on in his head to his parents. Um, and it's,
you know, to be fair to his parents, they're not
equipped with a lot of like, you know, an ability
to really help him out here, and they're doing the
things you would want them to do. Again, they repeatedly
are bringing in professionals to try to help. Um. None
of it is particularly useful, but it's not for lack
of trying. Um, like a lot of people who struggle

(07:55):
with similar mental health issues, John Seeks refuge in fiction.
Unfortunately for everybody, the movie that he finds himself most
drawn to is taxi driver, and I think most people
are aware of this part of it. It's a bad choice.
That's a really bad choice. Yes, if he had found
maybe adventure time or something, it would have been a
lot healthier, but instead taxi driver. If you haven't seen it.

(08:19):
There's the main characters. His Kid, Travis bickle, played by
a very young Robert de Hero. It is weird to
watch him because we're also used to old man Bob
Denro Um, who is thinking about assassinating like a presidential candidate,
and then kind of through movie magic, rescues a child prostitute,
played by Jodie Foster, from a pimp. Um, and Hinckley

(08:41):
thinks the movie is kind of talking to him and
providing him with like information about how he can fix
his own life. He starts dressing like Travis bickle. He
starts wearing like an army jacket and boots and drinking
the way that bickle drank. He starts buying guns. He
gets really into guns for you know. Um, he starts,
you know, in letters that he's writing home to his parents.

(09:02):
He starts talking about this relationship he has with a
woman named Lynn, who isn't real but who sounds a
lot like one of the women that Travis Beckel has
an interest with in the movie. Um. And Yeah, this
is kind of the start of his obsession with jodie foster.
And there are people who will like say that he's
a pedophile because she's thirteen. In the movie. That doesn't
seem to be the case when he is actually stalking

(09:25):
her and most obsessed with her. She is eighteen and
he is stalking her in real life and calling her
on the phone and stuff, which is like bad and
messed up. But he's not into her because she's young.
In this movie. He's into her because he's he's kind
of losing his mind and obsessing with her. Right. So,
while this is all going on kind of in the
late stages of this, his parents bringing a psychiatrist Um again,

(09:47):
they're they're willing to fund and support him and seeking
professional help. The doctor they wound up getting for him.
I don't know if he's a bad doctor for the time,
but he's wrong as Hell. He kind of looks at
the fact that John has been normal, quote unquote and
quote unquote, in high school and like at the start
of his college career, and so he looks at this
kid who's like seems to be developmentally normal up to

(10:09):
a certain point and then goes off the rails and says, well,
it's because you were sheltered and coddled by your rich
parents and you're just lazy, right. That's that's that's what
this guy says. So a big part of his like
advice to mom and dad is you gotta cut him off.
You can't. Can't keep giving him stuff, can't keep giving
him money, can't keep taking care of him. Um. So
while this is happening and this guy is like making

(10:30):
them make plans for John to be less reliant on
his parents, John Hankley is getting way more into guns.
He does a lot of target shooting. He also plays
a lot of Russian roulette with himself alone in his basement,
which is not not great. Um, in Christmas of nineteen
seventy nine, he takes a very famous photo of himself
holding a handgun to his temple. Now John is increasingly

(10:52):
harassing jodie foster in this period. Now, what he's doing
is not he's not just obsessing with her and it's
one sided. He is reaching her on the phone. They
talk a couple of times, yes, they do. She is
always very terse in their calls. Always you can tell
is kind of frightened, but is very controlled and careful.
I would describe the way she handles this is very

(11:14):
responsible and, like you can tell, she's talked with like people.
I think like her manager or something and been like
I have been advised, like I don't want you calling it.
She's very tries to be very clear here. Um, and
I think handles this as well as a person can
possibly handle, you know, being stalked in this way. I
believe he's able to get her number because, like, it's
the eighties and people just have numbers in the phone book. Um. Again,

(11:37):
she's kind of taking a break from Hollywood right now
and is going to Yale. Um, his obsession with foster
veers between these kind of like fantasies of like harming
her or harming a guy that she's with, or harming
himself and eventually harming the president of the United States.
Now he is not want to shoot the president for
political reasons. He has no kind of particular her anger

(12:00):
at the president that he wants to work out with
a gun. He wants number one to impress her and
he wants everyone to know his name and know his
name associated with jodie foster. Right, because, again, he's very ill. Um,
he starts following Jimmy Carter around. He goes to like
three different Jimmy Carter rallies in D C and in Ohio.
There's video of him twenty feet away from Carter at

(12:22):
one point. He probably has a gun on him. Um,
like he gets really close to Carter again. One of
the through lines here is that, like presidential security wasn't
great a night. Yeah, it's not very good. Um, Carter.
John Thinks about shooting Carter. He's probably there and equipped
to do it, but he just can't get himself into

(12:44):
the frame of mind to shoot Jimmy Carter, which is
understandable because it is. It is Jimmy Carter right, like
he is a hard Amanda want to shoot to death.
So there's a moment where he like yeah, so he's

(13:05):
he's kind of bouncing around. After this period where he
like is he thinks about shooting Carter, but he doesn't.
He is in communication with this Nazi ideologue and they
almost have a meeting, but they don't. Um, that's all
kind of obscure, kind of unclear. And then on October
six nineteen eighty, he gets arrested at the Nashville airport

(13:26):
with a briefcase full of handguns and a pair of handcuffs. Now,
hoops hasn't been in this situation. The gun bag and oops, yeah,
he says he's just trying to sell them and they're like, well,
you still can't get on a plane with a bunch

(13:46):
of guns, Johnny. This is yeah, this is pre night eleven.
So he you have to assist. He's looking weird. He's
like sweaty and in an army jacket and talking to it,
and they're like, well, we've literally never searched a single
person before in the entire life of this airport, but
let's check this guy. What's this massively heavy brief case?

(14:09):
There's a fun there's a dude just walking in with
a Stinger and they're like no, no, let that guy on,
but we gotta check John Ainkley Um. So he flies
to Dallas, where he buys more handguns and some explosive
twenty two caliber bullets. We will talk about that in
a little bit, but they are explosive bullets, twenty two
caliber bullets. There are bullets that are to explode on impact.

(14:33):
Is he like reading soldier of Votune magazine at this point?
Because this is nobody. He's like a gun culture. So
I haven't we have to assume. I think his family's
kind of casually conservative. He is kind of maybe as
is embodied by the Nazi thing, probably dabbling in some
areas again. I think that's that's certainly not good for him.

(14:53):
It's also, I don't think politics. I haven't seen any
real evidence that politics is a motivating factor. And what
this guy is doing, Um, he does get explosive bullets.
Probably helps that he has explosive bullets in terms of
making this less dangerous. These are not good explosive bullets.
They are meant to be fired out of a larger
weapon than he fires them out of, but they are

(15:15):
supposed to. Basically, the idea is this. These are twenty
two caliber round, so the idea is that this little
explosive charge in them makes them more like a thirty eight.
So we're not talking about like military grade weaponry or
anything here. Why is he doing? You may not know,
of course, but like if he's a massive gun dog,
he's not a massive no, gun culture is different than right.
He's buying a bunch of handguns. He's shooting a lot.

(15:37):
I don't know that it would be. He's not particularly
good or knowledgeable with right. Okay, yeah, yeah, but gun
cultures very it's harder to get information about guns right.
Maybe the day, he would have gotten a lot more
into you like just flipping through magazines exactly. You can't
look something up online. Yeah, yeah, he's twenty two, good
for assassination, just exactly. And this is also like this

(15:59):
is what he can afford. He gets kind of he's
lost his better guns right their property of the state,
so he winds up with this twenty two and he
gets these explosive bullets to try to make it give
more of a kick. Obviously, the thing that's going on
in the background here is that Jimmy Carter and Ronald
Reagan having a presidential election which Reagan wins. Um, we'll
talk a little bit about kind of that a bit later,

(16:21):
but that happens. Reagan is the president elect. Um, he
flies home, Hinckley flies home. Things continue to deteriorate in
his own life. He's continue to like travel around. John
Lennon is assassinated and he kind of goes a little
bit nuts over that because he loves John Lennon. Also
might kind of think that he is John Lennon. So

(16:43):
that does not help his mental state. He visits the
the the what is it? The shrine to him in
New York at one point and kind of. When he
gets back in March of nine, his dad cuts him
off basically like says, you know, you've got your here's
your car, here's two hundred dollars. We can't take air
of you anymore. John, and I think this is his
dad basically trying to take that psychiatrist advice of like it.

(17:05):
We need to have tough love. He has to be
forced to kind of get his ship together. But John
Hinckley is not really capable of getting his ship together
because he is profoundly ill. So he uses that money
to pay for hotel rooms in Denver where he sits
alone watching television with a gun. Um. Not Great Treatment
for schizophrenia. Reagan wins the election, uh, in what was
a sweep electorally but fairly tight in terms of popular vote.

(17:29):
He's got like fifty point five percent of the popular vote,
something like that. It's pretty close. And soon after taking
office he gets hammered on a bunch of stuff. Right,
the economy is not great, he's this, he's he's back.
He's like going for a bunch of far right policies
to unwind the new deal, a lot of which are
unpopular and some of which, he said he wasn't gonna
do and debates with Carter. He's not. He doesn't have

(17:50):
the kind of traditional grace period most presidents get where
they're broadly popular. Right, Um, it's not looking great for
kind of the midterms, is what I'm getting at Um.
So Reagan's a is struggling to right the ship, trying
to figure out like, how do we how do we
fix all this? Reagan or Hinckley while this is going
and gets convinced that like shooting the president is a
pretty good idea. He doesn't have a lot of other options.

(18:12):
He's kind of like running out of money and he's
able to get a little bit more from his mom,
but he's he's increasingly unhinged and alone and desperate. On
March twenty nine, he checks into a hotel in D
C where he finds in a local paper the president's schedule.
He loads his twenty two caliber revolver, he writes a
letter to Jodie foster and he travels to the Hilton

(18:32):
where the president is set to deliver speech to union workers.
Here is how John's letter to uh to her ends. Quote.
I will admit to you that the reason I'm going
ahead with his attempt now is because I just cannot
wait any longer to impress you. I've got to do
something now to make you understand in no uncertain terms
that I am doing all of this for your sake.
By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope

(18:54):
to change your mind about me. This letter is being
written only an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jody,
I'm asking you to please look into your heart and
at least give me the chance, with this historical deed,
to gain your respect and love. I love you forever,
John Hankley. It's not great. Yeah, yeah, not a great

(19:15):
letter to get, not a great letter to send. was
was this actually like delivered in the mail? I believe so. Yeah,
I think this she ends up getting this. I mean,
like she has to come to court and stuff when
he goes on trial. It's like something he kind of
demands and I think she does to just make it
easier for things to move along. Um, obviously she. She

(19:36):
does nothing wrong at any point in this process. She's
just living her life and this guy is out of
his out of out of his head and has easy
access to guns, Um, which is a problem at PM
on March nine. One John Hinckley JR opens fire at
the president's entourage from just a few feet away. Reagan
had been speaking to a bunch of union guys at

(19:57):
this this thing at the Hilton Anyway, and they're kind
of like walking out into towards the Lima when this happens.
John's first shot hits James Brady, the press secretary and
former PR man for Philish loafly in his head. Uh.
He then wounds a police officer and a secret service agent.
He actually does not hit probably doesn't. I don't. I
think there's still a little bit of debate because it's

(20:19):
like ballistics are kind of fucky. But he probably doesn't
directly hit Reagan. Instead around fragments and bounces off the
armored limousine, penetrating the president's lung. None of the explosive
bullets explode because they're not the right bullets for the gun.
The barrel is too short, Um, so it doesn't. It
might even do less damage than it would have done,
although maybe they fragment because they're these weird explosive bullets

(20:41):
and that's why Reagan gets hurt. Anyway. Hard to say.
Nobody really understands ballistics. That all that well. Today there's
a lot of debate over how all this stuff works.
Reagan had been in office for sixty nine days and
no real plan existed for what to do if the
president gets shot and is alive but is unable to
do the job of the president. Um, fucking George H
W Bush is in the air a bunch of this

(21:02):
time and like people can't reach him, Um, and they're
like but he's they're saying you need to come back
to watching now. Um. So kind of the people running
the country for a few hours is Al Hague, the
Secretary of state, and like a room full of guys
in the cabinet who were all disagreeing about everything and
none of whom are constitutionally supposed to be running the country. Um,

(21:23):
it's a real big problem. Like the fucking like the
press ask at one point, because hey goes out there triping,
like hey, the president's in surgery, and they're like, well, who's?
WHO's in charge, like with the nukes and stuff? WHO's
running the country? And he's like we got a whole
room for the guys. Don't worry, it's all fine, and
they're like is that with the law? Sense because I
don't think that's how it's supposed to go. Um, it's

(21:45):
it's not great. It's actually a real problem. And they
do they make a bunch of changes after this to
make sure that, like we never don't know who the
president is when, if this kind of thing happens, at
least Um. But on a political level this is fucking
Yang Busters for the Reagan administration, and I'm gonna quote
from a write up an Lpie here. The assassination attempt

(22:07):
silenced criticism of his administration at a critical point early
in his term. Explains H W brand's, author of the
biography Reagan the life in an email the good humor
he exhibited during his recovery. He spent only twelve days
in the hospital, convinced many skeptics, some of some of
his followers believe that God had forgiven him to allow
him to finish his work, and it is possible that
Reagan thought so too. On the thirtieth anniversary of the

(22:29):
assassination attempt, journalist Del Wynton Wilbur published raw hide down,
a thorough investigation full of revelations of what happened that day.
The book is written in the style of true crime
and its title is a reference to the Secret Service
Code name given to Reagan, raw hide. Joe Biden's code
name is Celtic and jnald trump's was mogul. It reaches
two important conclusions. Firstly, it argues that Reagan became the

(22:51):
first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms because of
the way he and his team handled the assassination attempt.
And secondly, the White House did not reveal the seriousness
of his injuries. He walks into the hospital and then
stops breathing and collapses Um like. He walks in specifically
because he wants to be seen walking in, and it's
like they don't know that he's been shot at first.

(23:12):
It's not like bleeding a bunch outside, he's bleeding internally.
So it's this is like legitimately the best case scenario.
It would have been hard to figure out what had
happened to him, kind of because you can't immediately tell
that he's bleeding. A lot of people have been shot
and so everyone just kind of assumes he's having a
heart attack, which is why they take him to the hospital.
He thinks, actually, I think he believes that his secret

(23:32):
service agent broke his ribs getting him into the Limo. Um,
but if they've taken him to the White House first,
he would have fucking died. He loses half of his
blood in the surgery, like it's that's which is like
bad if you lose half your blood. That's not like
a great injury. Um, just it's his lung collapsing. Is
that was happening, like yeah, they've got him on oxygen

(23:53):
and stuff. He's like barely able to joke with the doctors,
which he does, which is one of the things that
like goes viral from this and make some so popular,
because he's he's Yucking it up old Ronnie um his yeah,
this is believed. There's a number of massive long term
fucking consequences. One of them is that this is why
h Nancy brings in Joan quickly the astrologer, like this

(24:15):
is when she you can refer back to behind the
bastards two part or on the Reagan astrologer. But this
is why the Reagan astrologer becomes like they start they
stopped having him do events. When the astrologer says it's
a bad day for it and ship because, like Nancy,
this kind of breaks her and it also kind of
breaks Ronald he's not the same man after getting shot, which,

(24:36):
to be fair, he is seventy when this happens, so
getting shot in the lung at seventy, most people are
gonna come back all the way. This is also probably
doesn't help. The Alzheimer's May accelerate the timetable there. But
on a political level this goes fucking great for the
Republicans and it allows them to do a lot of
really fucked up ship, and I'M gonna quote from CNN here. Today,

(24:57):
Reagan is the only modern president who receives high marks
from Republicans, Democrats and independence alike. A look at the
polls can quantify the roots of this enduring goodwill. Despite
elect an electoral landslide over Jimmy Carter with a forty
four state win in nineteen eighty, Reagan won a narrow
popular margin, a fifty point seven percent. Moreover, gallops, valuable
presidential poll tracker, shows that Reagan's approvable ratings were significantly

(25:18):
split along partisan lines after his nineteen eighty one inauguration,
with seventy four percent Republican support and fifty three percent
from independence, but thirty eight percent from Democrats. When Reagan
came back to the capital on April to push for
his economic recovery act, he was greeted by a hero's welcome.
In a three minute Standing Ovation, he leveraged his political
capital to help publish pass his agenda. Before the end

(25:40):
of the summer, the Reagan tax cuts had passed the
House of Representatives, led by Democratic speaker tip O'Neil, and
the Republican controlled Senate, reducing the top tax rates from
a confiscatory seventy and unleashing an entrepreneurial era. That's how
CNN categorizes that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um, and in
nineteen eighty four, again winstine states and the popular vote.

(26:04):
It is very clear kind of how this happens and
what this allows Reaga to do. It's fascinating because you
have in Britain, like less than a year later. All right,
we have Margaret Thatcher right like, who is similarly not
doing very well, until she gets to go to war
for two tiny little cold islands in the Atlantic and
no one knew about before, and then they proceed to

(26:27):
just ravage like the post World War Two social democracy consense.
Just suck it up and fucking here we are now here.
We are two and people are going to die of
cold in Britain this winter. I will say in terms

(26:51):
of just to be fair, one of the things people
will say is a positive from this is that this
is one of the things that helps push the arms
treaty deals with the Soviet at union, because Reagan is
like God saved me for a reason, and maybe it's
to make nuclear war less likely. That's a bigger topic
than today. It's a thing that he will claim and
generally speaking, the fact that the Soviet Union and Reagan

(27:14):
started talking about nukes during this period is not a
bad thing. Um, always good to be talking about nukes, Um.
But yeah, what I will say, if we're looking at
kind of the only clearly good thing that came out
of the shooting, it's the fact that the justice system
actually worked in this one instance pretty much exactly how

(27:34):
you would want it to. Hinckley was clearly not mentally
competent to understand his actions, what he had done or
to stand trial, and he was declared not guilty by
reason of insanity. His father, tearful took blame for the
shooting for cutting his son off from resources. The psychiatrist
who had botched his diagnosis, admitted his mistakes on the
stand and expressed regret. Hinckley was sent to a psychiatric

(27:57):
facility where he received decades of treatment. The treatment seems
to have really helped him. On December seventeen, two thousand three,
a federal judge ruled that Hinkley was entitled to unsupervised
visits with his parents. This is five years before his
dad died, so they get time together again. In two
thousand seven he has a request for unsupervised visits as
long as one month. This is denied, not because of

(28:18):
any problems but because of issues the hospital had not
taken to prepare for the transition. In July of two
thousands sixteen, Judge Paul Friedman concluded that Hinckley did not
pose a threat to himself or others and ordered him
released Um. The conditions initially limited him to his residence,
residence where he lived with his mother in parts of
southern California. He was obviously forbidden from contact with pastor

(28:39):
president presidents of the United States or any of their
family members or graves. From banning. He was banned from
contact with Jodie foster or other entertainers he was prohibited
from watching violent movies, television or online media. In two
thousand eighteen, a restriction confining him to his mother's house ended. Uh,
he can now live anywhere he once with doctor's approval. Uh.

(28:59):
And on September one, John Hinckley Jr, age sixty six,
was approved for unconditional release by district judge Paul Friedman.
Friedman noted that, quote, very few patients at St Elizabeth's
Hospital have been studied more thoroughly than John Hinckley. And again,
that's pretty much how it ought to work, right. Like, yeah,
he shoots the president, but clearly because he's sick and

(29:23):
you don't just punish sick people when they don't know
what they've done. So he gets treated for decades until
he's better. And now, yes, it's really good. Quite surprising.
It is very surprising, and part of why it's surprising
is that one of the other negative lingering effects of
John Hinckley attempting to shoot the president is that a

(29:43):
lot of changes are made in many states to make
it much less likely that people benefit from the same
understanding judicial system that John Hinckley Jr does. Okay, I'm
gonna quote now from a write up from famous trials
DOT COM, which has a pretty good, pretty good bit
on just kind of everything that happened here. A fair,
Pretty Fair summary, I think. Within a month of the
Hinckley verdict, the House and Senate we're holding hearings on

(30:05):
the insanity defense. A measure proposed by Senator Arlen Specter
shifted the burden of proof of insanity to the defense.
President Reagan expressed his support for the measure with the
comment if you start thinking about even a lot of
your friends, you would have to say, Gee, if I
had to prove they were saying, I would have a
hard job. All Right, tells us more about you that.

(30:25):
Maybe that says a lot about your administration, who are,
by the way, at this point, deep in like Iran, Contra, Shit,
selling cocaine and in anyway. We were talking about all
of this on an upcoming episode of bastards, but like yeah,
they're all monsters. Joining con Congress and shifting the burden
to proof were a number of states. Within three years
after the Hinckley verdict, two thirds of the states placed

(30:46):
the burden on the defense to prove insanity, while eight
states adopted a separate verdict of guilty but mentally ill.
In one state, Utah, abolished the defense altogether, always delivering.
So the system works really well for John Hinckley Jr.
Um Ethically, I think the Justice Department of the United

(31:09):
States this is maybe one of it. Probably in history
you will not find many cases of a guy shooting
an active world leader and being treated ethically by the
justice system like he's handled very reasonably, I think. Um,
and never again, never and again will that happen for anybody,
even if they don't shoot the president. So Um, obviously

(31:32):
I wish John Hinckley jr well. I I hope his
musical career goes fine. Um, I fuck Ronald Reagan. Um,
hate him and UH yeah, it's probably made the world
a lot worse that John Hinckley Jr tried to shoot
Ronald Reagan, because it empowered Ronald Reagan. One of the

(31:52):
lessons here, if we're talking about assassinations, is that, um,
it's a real wild cards trying to assassinate a president
or any other politician and as a general rule, people
are kind of programmed to think that somebody's cool if
they get shot and don't die, like it's one of
the cooler things that like look it just objectively. It's
what do you do if you want to show John

(32:14):
Mcclain as hard as hell, even get like hit in
the arm or something and just like work through it? Right,
like what do people people talk about like Teddy Roosevelt
when he was shot and how bad it was that
he gave it bad asset was that he gave a speech,
or how cool it is that fucking Andrew Jackson, who
they don't say any of these things about, is JFK
that's right. Is Not cool, not col not over the

(32:36):
roof of a church. Yeah, lame as hell, Um, but,
like you know, this is the look. If, if you
want John F Kennedy to stop being the president and
you can successfully kill him, you will get what you want.
He's no longer the president. Um, if you were to
have a political motivation, and again, Hinkley doesn't. Hinkley, it's

(32:56):
not thinking about the top marginal acts right when he
does this. Um. But if you if that had been
his goal, this is the opposite of that, right, because
it just makes Reagan look cool and helps him, makes
everybody feel like an asshole for fighting him for a while. So,
like he gets a bunch of ship through and also

(33:17):
a bunch of laws get worse for mentally ill people
and uh in. On the whole, bad, bad, bad assassination. Zero, zero. Yeah,
I have to say, based on based on the evidence
we have here, shooting Ronald Reagan not a good idea.
They didn't do it. Now let the whole team down

(33:37):
and we should just plug his album. It's out on
as Pesto. We should plug his out because, again, he's
not responsible for this. Yeah, you know, I think he's
if he's happy speaking songs, I'm happy for him. Yes, yes,
I wish you the best of luck, John. You can
buy his t shirts. He's got t shirts that he's
trying to move, which I don't know. I don't think
it's bad to encourage his music career, like seriously, like

(33:58):
we're all doing it with a little bit of a smile.
But what's the harm? If John Hickley Jr thinks that
people like his music, that doesn't hurt anybody. And maybe
if people can see that, like if you treat people
with mental illnesses like people who are ill, not sucking
terrible people, then they can get to a place where
they can sing songs on Youtube. And yes, that's good.
That's an example again of the only time it worked

(34:21):
the way it's. It's but it did work out pretty
well in this case. Yeah, UM, so I don't know. Yeah,
take whatever lessons you want to out of this. Many,
many possible things can be a lot, a lot of
different lessons we can take out of this. Don't Hire
Our Hague, but I feel like that's that's a generally

(34:45):
good lesson. Yeah, there's a Phoenix Punch Bang called Jody
Foster's army, I've just read as well. Who makes songs
about him. Great by their records too. Fine. Yes, no
strong opinions on that either way. Anyone else got anything
to say about John Hinckley JR or the assassination attempt
on Ronnie Raw Hide Reagan? Also, we're talking about the

(35:10):
I R a a lot this week. Probably not for
nothing that Joe Biden's code name is Celtic. M MMMM,
and the Queen Dies now makes you think you're telling
me it's a coincidence. I still suspects trust personally. I
think that maybe Joe Biden shook hands with Liz trust and,
like like, transferred a nerve poison onto her hand and

(35:34):
then she touched the Queen, definitely possible. She wanted Joe
Sipping againness on the plane back, knowing that he's done
his job and his Batta clava and he speakably one anyway.
Hopefully nobody who has stuff going on listens to that
and takes the wrong message out of it. Yeah, kind

(35:56):
to one another anyway. We're done. Okay, it could happen
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(36:18):
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